by Philip Carlo
Stanley had a reasonably good job as a brakeman for the Lackawanna Railroad. It was not hard work as such, though it was always outdoors and he regularly suffered under the summer heat and the frigid, brutal winters. At first the hasty union between Stanley and Anna seemed a good one. They rented a cold-water flat in a two-story clapboard house on Third Street, just down the block from St. Mary’s Church. But Stanley liked to drink, and when he drank he became short-tempered and mean, and Anna soon came to know that she had married a jealous, possessive tyrant who would beat her as if she were a man for the slightest provocation. Because Anna was not a virgin on their wedding night—she could never bring herself to tell her husband that she’d been raped by a priest over and over again—Stanley accused her of being a tramp, a whore. She hated this but stoically suffered through his verbal abuse, which all too often became violent. Stanley was not a large man, but he was strong as a Brahma bull. When drunk he’d toss Anna about like she was a weightless rag doll. Anna was tempted to tell her brother Micky about the abuse, but she didn’t want to make a bad situation worse, and divorce wasn’t even an option back then. Anna was still hyper-religious, and good Irish Catholics did not divorce, period. Anna learned to accept her lot in life.
In the spring of 1929, Anna gave birth to a baby boy, one of four children she’d eventually have with Stanley before the marriage soured and finally ended. They named him Florian after Stanley’s father. Anna had little memory of her own parents; the only memories she had of her childhood were bad ones—beatings and abuse.
Anna was hoping Stanley would mellow with a child in the house, but just the opposite happened. When drinking he took to accusing Anna of infidelity, even said Florian was not his, that she had fucked another man while he was away working.
Sometimes Stanley was kind to young Florian, but for the most part he seemed indifferent to the child, and it didn’t take long for Stanley to start beating Florian, too. If Florian cried he got hit, if Florian dirtied his bed he got hit, and Anna could do nothing. Her answer was to go to St. Mary’s down the block and light candles and pray. There was nowhere else for Anna to turn, and she grew to loathe Stanley and often thought of leaving him, even killing him, but none of that ever came to pass.
Still, Stanley frequently had sex with Anna whether she wanted to or not. He considered himself quite the ladies’ man and was often on Anna without notice or warning or any kind of foreplay: wham, bam, it was over.
Anna became pregnant a second time and gave birth to another boy on April 11, 1935, and they named this child Richard. He was a mere five pounds and had a thick head of shiny hair so blond it seemed white.
With mounting bills and another mouth to feed, Stanley became even meaner and more remote. When he came home on Friday night he was always drunk, and often had the smell of other women about him and lipstick on his collar, but Anna could do little, for Stanley would beat her at the drop of a hat. He viewed her as his personal property to be used and abused any way he wished. Worse, he took to beating Florian and Richard for both real and imagined infractions, and both boys grew to fear and dread their father, becoming sullen and quiet, painfully shy. Stanley always wore a thick black garrison belt, and he’d quickly slide it off and lay into his sons with it, mercilessly whipping them. If Anna tried to intercede, she too was beaten. Violence seemed to fuel Stanley’s sexual appetite—often, after beating his wife and young sons, he wanted to have sex, and before Anna knew it he was forcing himself inside her.
As far back as Richard could remember, his father was beating him. He recently related: When my father—father, that’s a joke—came home and I said “Hello,” he’d say hello by slapping me across the face.
Stanley drank hard whiskey with beer chasers—boilermakers. When he drank he became even meaner and his violence grew more indiscriminate. He took to wrapping his garrison belt around his hard-knuckled fist and punching his sons with it. It was like being struck by a two-by-four. He was fond of hitting them in the head with his belted fist, and often knocked both Florian and Richard out cold. Richard became so utterly terrified of his father that he wet his pants just at the sight of him or the sound of his voice, which caused Stanley to become angry and beat the boy for wetting himself. Little by little Stanley was, in effect, beating the very necessary human elements of compassion and empathy out of his second-born, clearly delineating the path Richard’s life would ultimately take.
Finally, Stanley Kuklinski did the unspeakable—he murdered his son Florian with one of his beatings. He hit the frail boy on the back of the head one too many times, knocking the hapless boy to the floor, and Florian never got back up. Stanley made Anna tell family and friends and the authorities that Florian died by falling down the stairs and striking his head. No one questioned their story, and Florian was laid out in the Kuklinski living room, just down the block from St. Mary’s Church, where this ill-matched couple had been wed.
Richard was just five when his brother was killed by Stanley. Anna told Richard that Florian was hit by a car “and died.” Richard had no conception of what death really was. He just knew that Florian was in a cheap wooden coffin that smelled of pine in the living room as if he were asleep, but he would not wake up. His mother and other relatives were there crying, praying, lighting candles, holding shiny black rosary beads, but no matter what, Florian would not wake up. Five-year-old Richard stared at his ghostly pale dead brother, the only friend he had ever known, wondering why he wouldn’t get up. He had always gotten up before….
Wake up, Florian, wake up, he silently begged. Don’t…please don’t leave me here alone. Florian…Florian, please wake up….
Florian never woke up.
2
Mean Streets
After Florian’s murder, Stanley let up on Richard for a while, but it didn’t take long before he went back to his old ways. Now the beatings became even more brutal and frequent. Stanley seemed to blame Richard for everything unjust that ever happened to him, for all the curveballs that life threw him, and he regularly and indiscriminately beat his son. Anna’s answer was still going to church and silently asking God for help—even after Stanley had murdered Florian. She took to facing a wall and praying fervently as Stanley beat the young Richard. Richard often went to sleep with bruises, aches, and pains; sometimes he was so bruised and covered with eggplant-colored welts that he couldn’t go outside or to school.
Richard grew, not surprisingly, into a painfully shy, awkward child with little confidence in himself. He viewed the world as a brutal, violent place filled with pain and turmoil. He often wondered where his brother Florian was but could never find out. His mother told him “in heaven,” but he had no idea how to get to this place. Richard had been very close to Florian, held him tight when his father beat their mother and smashed the meager possessions the family had, and now Florian was gone and Richard had to face his father alone. He was a thin, frail boy, and it didn’t take long for neighborhood toughs to start picking on him, which only compounded Richard’s feelings of isolation and resentment; his anxieties mounted.
Two Irish brothers that lived on the block regularly accosted Richard. One Saturday morning they gave him a particularly severe beating. Richard managed to get away from them by running. Stanley was home that day and saw what happened from the front window. When Richard arrived upstairs, Stanley took off his belt and beat the boy, demanding that he go back downstairs and fight the brothers. “No kid’a mine’s gonna be a chicken shit!” he bellowed, and struck Richard across the face with his belt.
Confused, his face burning, a red welt forming, Richard hurried back downstairs. “Go get ’em,” Stanley ordered from the window, and Richard did exactly what he was told. With newfound ferocity and pent-up hostility, he laid into the brothers, caught them off guard, and gave them both a terrific beating. Their father, a tall, gangly Irishman named O’Brian, then came out of the house and roughly pushed Richard away.
Amazed, Richard watched Stanley actually leap out
of the second-story window, land squarely on his feet, storm across Third Street, and slap O’Brian, saying, “When your kids beat up my kid, you watched and did nothing. When my kid fought back, you stopped it.” Stanley then hit O’Brian so hard that he knocked him out right there on the sidewalk in front of everyone, just down the block from St. Mary’s Church.
Richard wanted to run to his father, hold him, and thank him for sticking up for him, for making everything right, but he knew he could never do such a thing. Showing outward affection to his father was forbidden. Richard learned that Saturday afternoon that might was right. Richard often wondered why his father and mother didn’t like him, what he had done to deserve their indifference and violence. He drew further and still further into himself, was always alone, couldn’t seem to make friends; and a seething, fiery rage slowly grew inside the small boy.
Because Stanley spent most of the money he earned on weekend drinking binges and whoring around Jersey City and Hoboken bars, the family had little, and there was never enough food or warm clothes. All of Richard’s clothes were tattered and dirty, and his schoolmates took to calling him names—dumb Polack, skinny, scarecrow—because of his gangly arms and legs. Richard quickly developed an inferiority complex he would carry with him for the rest of his life. There were running feuds among the Polish, Italian, and Irish kids, and Richard became a target for the Irish and Italian kids’ barbs, taunts, and put-downs. They made fun of the holes in his clothes, the ripped and tattered shoes he wore. Anna didn’t seem at all interested in Richard’s appearance; her only concern was the church, praying, lighting holy candles, and saying the rosary—none of which helped her son.
Anna soon became pregnant again and gave birth, prematurely, to a girl they named Roberta. She became pregnant still again, and the Kuklinskis soon had a fourth child, a boy they named Joseph, who, like his older brother Richard, would grow into a remorseless killer—a psychopath.
Having three small children to feed and clothe made Stanley meaner still. Stanley took to bringing home loose women he found in bars and openly fornicating with them as he pleased. When Anna complained, he beat her with his belt, fists, and feet. He was the king of the house and would do whatever the fuck he pleased. Once Richard tried to come to his mother’s rescue, and Stanley hit him in the head so hard he knocked the boy out for half the night. When Richard came to he had a lump on the side of his head the size of a lemon, and for hours he didn’t even remember who he was. Richard grew to hate his father and often fantasized about killing him.
Finally, Stanley took up with a Polish woman and, thankfully, came around less and less. Anna was now working two jobs: one at the Armond Meatpacking Company, the other cleaning floors at St. Mary’s Church in the evening.
Anna, who had become a flaming religious zealot, tried to force the fear of God on her children, particularly Richard—she insisted he attend Catholic school—but he had come to loathe the church and its restrictive, hypocritical teachings. Much of that had to do with how brutal the nuns and priests were at St. Mary’s, how quick they were to use corporal punishment; they seemed, he came to believe, even more wicked and mean than his father, no easy task, Richard explained. Richard was highly dyslexic, had a lot of difficulty reading, and when he tried to use his fingers to keep his eyes in the right place a nun would inevitably slap his hand with a metal ruler.
Richard took to fooling around in class. He enjoyed making others laugh, and this invariably earned him a slap. Sometimes the bitter-faced, austere nuns yanked his overly protrusive ears. Richard believed they actually enjoyed hitting and slapping their young charges.
At Anna’s insistent urging Richard became an altar boy. Every Sunday he got up early, went to St. Mary’s, and assisted the priest with mass. When taking the pulpit, the priests seemed nice enough, talked glowingly about giving and kindness and avoiding sin; they acted compassionate, as if they cared. But Richard believed that they were mean-spirited men who drank alcohol, were quick to condemn, and reprimanded, even slapped boys who didn’t do their assigned tasks around the altar to their liking. One priest made inappropriate overtures to Richard about sex, started talking about the virtues of masturbation, and Richard made sure he was never alone with this priest. Richard knew little about sex, but he knew what was in the priest’s eyes, behind his face, was wrong—a sin.
The nuns, too, were quick to use sudden, irrational violence against the children in their care. One nun liked to use the narrow edge of a metal ruler and would hit Richard so hard across his knuckles she caused him to bleed. After this happened several times, he became fed up and said, “You hit me again, you cunt, I’ll break your fucking head—bitch!”
The nun, stunned by Richard’s words, the sudden fire in his eyes, hurried from the classroom and soon returned with an irate, red-faced priest who slapped Richard so hard his face stung and a huge strawberry-colored welt quickly formed. Rubbery dots swirled before his eyes. The priest grabbed Richard by the ear and dragged him to his office, where he proceeded to beat the boy with a book—a Bible, Richard realized. Later that night, Richard received a second beating from his mother.
From that day on Richard had little interest in religion, and came to believe that the nuns and priests were a bunch of sadistic creeps who used religion and the always ominous specter of God to scare and manipulate people into doing what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted. Religion was one big con job, he thought, and he soon turned away from the Catholic Church, its teachings, mandates, and disciplines. He did, however, find solace sitting in the church when it was empty. He’d stare at the pained face of Christ up on the cross and ask him questions—where Florian was, why people were so cruel, why his mother and father beat him. He never received an answer. If there really was a God, he came to believe, he would never allow the violence that parents, nuns, and priests so readily dished out to children.
Not surprisingly, Richard soon turned his rage on animals.
Stray dogs and cats became the focal point of his anger. Richard devised terrible tortures, sadistic beyond what a child should be capable of: he’d capture two cats, tie their tails together, then hang them over a clothesline and gleefully watch them tear one another apart. He threw stray cats down the incinerator, then lit it and enjoyed the cats’ screams, how they tried to claw their way up the chute to no avail. He’d hunt down dogs, set them on fire with gasoline, and watch them run around in flames. He used clubs and pipes and hammers to beat the dogs to death.
He killed so many stray animals—all practice for the indiscriminate killing of human beings—that he cleared the neighborhoods of them. Something was very wrong with the young Richard Kuklinski, but no one addressed his problems, the demons already inside him, and they grew to monumental proportions.
3
Sticky Fingers
Richard first started stealing to eat. As religious as Anna Kuklinski was, she was not a good mother. She didn’t seem to realize that her children had to eat, and eat on a regular basis. When Stanley finally abandoned the family, Anna became the lone, hard-pressed provider, working at the meatpacking company and cleaning St. Mary’s floors at night. However, with four to feed, and rent and utilities to pay, there was never enough of anything, and Richard took to stealing food. He’d get up early and lift cakes and cookies from the Drake’s delivery truck, which made daily deliveries to shops and homes all around Jersey City. Although shy and awkward, Richard was particularly ballsy when it came to stealing.
Catlike, he’d stalk the Drake’s delivery truck, and when the deliveryman made a drop-off, Richard would sneak into the truck, quickly grab cakes and milk, and take off. He did this several times a week, and like this his sister, Roberta, and brother, Joseph, had something more to eat than the cheap porridge Anna provided—somewhat reluctantly, it seemed.
Anna too was a firm believer in corporal punishment. She’d had a mean streak beaten into her at the Sacred Heart Orphanage, and Richard sometimes thought his mother was even meane
r than his father—no small thing. Anna tried to stop Richard from stealing, hit him with most everything she found in the house: shoes and broom handles, hairbrushes, wooden spoons, pots and pans. She often hit him on the head—this even after Florian was killed that way—and knocked Richard out cold. She’d come up behind him and strike him when he didn’t expect it. One time after Anna hit him with a broom handle, Richard ripped it out of her hands. Like his father, Richard had a very bad temper. Anna picked up a skillet, and he hurried from the house.
Why, Richard often wondered, did his mother hate him so? Why, he wondered, was she so cruel? What had he done to make her so hateful?
Another good source of food was the train cars that lined the huge railroad yards all over Jersey City. The boxcars were filled with all kinds of food from across the country, and Richard took to breaking into them and stealing pineapples, oranges, and huge chunks of frozen meat from icy freezer cars. Anna learned to accept the bounties Richard brought home. She could never afford such food items, and she soon stopped punishing Richard for his pilfering. He was, after all, the man of the house now, and he was inadvertently filling the role of his father. He had effectively taken the place of Stanley, and Anna, Roberta, and Joseph looked to the young Richard as the breadwinner. Richard liked this role. It made him feel important, grown up, older than his years. His stealing got so bad that if it wasn’t nailed down, Richard would bring it home.
4
First Blood
Somehow Anna managed to get a federally subsidized apartment in a new four-story redbrick housing project complex at New Jersey Avenue and Fifteenth Street. This was a real step up for the family. The project was heated, well insulated, had all the modern conveniences. Everything was spanking new and clean. Richard loved this new home, the new hardwood floors, how the sun streamed in through the windows, how everything was clean and shiny and nice to look at.