by Philip Carlo
“Really?” Kane said, beginning to believe her, sensing she was telling the truth, but still wary.
“Yeah, really,” she said.
This was a hard pill to swallow. Why, Kane wondered, would this Kuklinski guy kill Gary Smith, risk a murder charge, when all that was going on here was burglary? It didn’t make sense. Though one look at Barbara, her trembling hands, her worried face, told Kane what she said was true.
“Where…where’s Gary Smith now?” he asked.
“They left him there, in room thirty-one, under the freaking bed. He was found there, by the police. Check if you don’t believe me. Go ahead,” she said. “Check.”
Kane immediately took her up on this, picked up the phone and called the North Bergen Police.
When Percy House was first arrested and Danny and Gary were indicted, Richard knew he had to take fast, decisive action. Already he regretted ever getting involved with Percy House and this motley crew, but House was Phil Solimene’s brother-in-law, Phil had vouched for him seven ways from Sunday, and little by little, over a period of several years, Richard had become more and more involved with them—and now it was all coming back to haunt him.
At first Richard tried to help Gary and Danny, to hide them from the police. He did in fact put them up in the York Hotel, paid for them to stay there, warned them in no uncertain terms to stay put. But Gary went to see his five-year-old daughter. Richard knew he could have been spotted by the police and picked up, so Gary had to go. As far as Richard was concerned, Gary killed himself by disobeying him. Richard went to a diner near the hotel, bought three hamburgers, sprinkled cyanide on Gary’s, went to the hotel, acting all warm and friendly, served up the burgers, and sat down to eat with Danny and Gary as if he were a good friend, when in truth he was the grim reaper. Richard had become quite the actor. He could fool the stripes off a zebra if he put his mind to it. Almost immediately, Gary succumbed to the poison, fell over, had spasms, turned blue, but didn’t die, and Richard had Danny strangle him, so Danny would, by extension, be guilty of the murder, part of it, and so keep quiet about it.
Then, after the deed was done, Richard made another mistake, as he had with George Malliband: he didn’t permanently dispose of Gary’s body. He foolishly had Danny stash it under the bed. Though he carefully wiped the place clear of prints, they left Gary there like that, dead, as blue as a rotting violet. When recently asked why he didn’t dispose of Gary’s corpse he said, There was a security guy at the hotel and people about; but Richard could have dumped Gary in a steamer trunk and gotten him out of the room, not just leave him there to be found.
The room had been rented twelve times, couples had lustful hotel sex on the bed with Gary there, rotting away, and it was ultimately the stink of his corpse that caused him to be found and the cops summoned. Also, had he not been stashed under the bed, the incident might have been written up as a heart attack.
Meanwhile, Richard had Danny stay in Richie Peterson’s apartment while Kuklinski let Richie stay in the spare room in his house. At first he didn’t want to kill Danny; but that would change soon enough.
Detective Pat Kane quickly found out that a body had, in fact, been discovered in room 31. That didn’t necessarily prove that what Barbara had said was true, he was thinking, but it sure as hell pointed in that direction. He asked the North Bergen police if they’d return to the room and see if a lamp cord had been taken from the lamp there. Within a half hour they called Kane back. The lamp cord was missing from the lamp.
Now, sure that Barbara Deppner had told the truth, knew the inside story, Kane was confronted with a diabolical homicide—and the possibility of another one. If this Richard Kuklinski killed Gary for just going to see his kid, surely he’d kill Danny Deppner, and God knew who else. Kane first made sure to find a safe place for Barbara and her eight children. He then focused his energy on locating Danny Deppner, getting to the bottom of what had happened, and finding this Richard Kuklinski. Kane couldn’t quite get out of his head how Barbara kept saying Kuklinski was the devil, how terrified she was. It was “disconcerting,” he would later say.
Kane now directed his attention to finding Richard Kuklinski. It didn’t take him long. He soon learned that Kuklinski actually lived close to him, only two towns away, and that Kuklinski was married and had three children. He found out too that Kuklinski was a film distributor. Kane phoned up the Dumont police, spoke to a detective, and learned that Kuklinski apparently had a very bad temper: on two occasions he had broken the car windows of people whose driving had somehow offended him. First he punched a hole with his bare fist in the windshield of a car filled with teenaged boys, and in the second incident a woman at a red light ticked him off, and he got out of his car and punched a hole in the passenger window. This was no easy task, Kane knew, punching holes in car windows, but this Kuklinski guy had done it twice. He was, Kane learned, six foot five, 280 pounds, and he was obviously endowed with great physical strength.
His curiosity piqued—the hunt on—Kane took a drive over to Dumont. He cruised past the Kuklinski residence. There were two cars in the driveway. He copied down their license-plate numbers and made his way over to the Dumont police barracks. There he met a detective he knew, and found out that the year before, Kuklinski had been brought in on a bad-check incident, but the case never went anywhere because Kuklinski made the check good.
“But we took his mug shot.”
“Mug shot,” beamed Kane.
“Sure,” the detective said, and he rummaged through his desk and handed the mug shot to Kane. He was looking at a balding man with severe eyes, who sported a well-trimmed goatee. The Dumont detective made a copy for Kane, who soon returned to his office, pulled out a yellow manila file, wrote the name Richard Kuklinski on it, and put it in his top right drawer. Thus began an exhausting investigation that would take four and a half years, strain Kane’s marriage, cause him to be ridiculed by his colleagues; an investigation that would, ultimately, expose one of the most prolific killers in modern times; an investigation that would put Pat Kane in the crosshairs of Richard Kuklinski’s .22 Ruger rifle.
Now, Kane knew, he had to find Danny Deppner, which proved to be a difficult thing to do. But Kane kept digging, and soon found out that Richard Kuklinski was a large distributor of porno movies, and had possible links to organized crime. He added this to the Kuklinski file in his desk.
For Richard the killing of Gary Smith was nothing more than swatting a nuisance fly. Richard knew that Gary could and probably would implicate him in the burglaries, and he wanted to be safe, not sorry. As always, Richard’s way of dealing with potential problems was murder, and thus he killed Gary. Now he had to deal with Danny Deppner. At first he tried to help Danny, hid him from police scrutiny, but it didn’t take long for Richard to learn that Danny had told his former wife (Barbara) all about Gary’s murder, and for Richard, that was reason enough to kill Danny, which he did two weeks after killing Gary Smith.
Danny had been staying in Richie Peterson’s apartment, where Richard had been bringing him meals. When Richard made up his mind to kill Deppner, he did so with cyanide. Deppner readily ate a roast beef sandwich Richard bought him, and soon he was near death. Richard then shot him in the head with a .22 equipped with a silencer. The problem was that Richard had hurt his back and wasn’t able to carry Deppner’s body so he could get rid of it. Because of that, he says, he asked Richie Peterson, his daughter’s boyfriend, to help him get rid of the corpse, and Peterson obliged. Richard told Peterson that Deppner had died of a drug overdose, and he believed him. Peterson set fence posts for a living and was particularly strong; after Richard wrapped the large, two-hundred-pound body in black leaf bags, Peterson carried it to Richard’s car. They drove to Clinton Road in West Milford and dumped the now stiff body in a desolate spot, near a reservoir, and there the body became a feast for all manner of creatures that feed on the dead.
Paul Hoffman, the larcenous pharmacist who had been selling Richard lethal
poisons for several years, wanted to buy hijacked Tagamet, a popular drug used to treat the pain caused by ulcers. It was easy to sell, and he kept badgering both Richard and Phil Solimene to find him a stolen load.
“I have cash money,” he kept telling Phil, who of course reported this directly to Richard. Paul Hoffman was writing his own death warrant by telling the likes of Richard Kuklinski and Phil Solimene that he had all this cash he was so anxious to spend. Richard had never liked Hoffman. He thought of him as a greedy scumbag that would sell his own mother to turn a buck. If it wasn’t for the poisons Hoffman had been providing him, Richard might well have killed him long ago.
On April 21, 1982, Paul Hoffman showed up at Solimene’s store, saying he had twenty-five thousand dollars with him and he wanted Tagamet. The going rate was thirty-six dollars for one hundred tablets. Hoffman believed he’d be paying nine. Richard had offhandedly mentioned to Hoffman several times that he might be getting a load, but it hadn’t come to pass yet. He was in a very real sense setting out the bait. Phil now called Richard and told him that Hoffman was in the store claiming to have all this money with him.
“I’ll be right there,” Richard said, and left his house and drove over to Paterson.
Richard knew a state police detective had been asking questions about him, driving past his house, but with both Deppner and Smith dead he figured, incorrectly, he had nothing to worry about. Percy House was still in jail, couldn’t make bail, but Phil had assured Richard a dozen times that Percy was “stand-up,” that he’d keep his mouth shut. Richard had even given Phil money for Percy’s lawyer. He was, he recently explained, trying to do the right thing. Richard was thinking that this state detective smelled the smoke but had no idea where the fire was, as he put it, and wasn’t overly concerned now that Smith and Deppner were dead. Richard drove over to Paterson without concern that day. As always he was armed, had two handguns on him and a hunting knife strapped to his massive calf. As always, he made sure he wasn’t being tailed, made sudden U turns, pulled onto the side of the road, sat there, waited, moved on. It was a nice spring day, a comfortable seventy-one degrees.
Richard met Hoffman at the store; they talked; Hoffman assured him he had the money, and Richard said the load of Tagamet had come in and that it was at his garage in North Bergen, where Louis Masgay was still stashed in the well with the ice-cold water. The garage was perfect for what Richard had in mind—sudden murder. Richard now drove over to North Bergen and Hoffman followed him.
There were some empty boxes against the back wall of the garage. Richard said they held the Tagamet. Hoffman pulled his car into the garage, thinking he was finally getting his hands on the much-sought-after drug. The moment was right. Richard pulled out a .25 auto and shot Hoffman in the neck without a moment’s hesitation. Richard pulled the trigger again, but the auto jammed and couldn’t fire—
Like a man possessed, Hoffman leaped from his car and attacked Richard with a lionlike ferocity. Hoffman was fighting for his very life. He was not a big or particularly strong man, but his adrenaline gave him nearly superhuman strength, and he fought Richard so hard he almost took control of the situation, even with a bullet in his neck, bleeding profusely. Richard finally managed to grab a tire iron and with it beat Hoffman over the head, finally subduing him, destroying him, killing him there in the garage.
Richard was covered with Hoffman’s blood. It was everywhere. Even inside his shoes. As usual, Richard had a change of clothes in his trunk. After he washed up and changed he put what was left of Paul Hoffman in one of the fifty-five-gallon black metal drums, sealed it well, and put it in his van. He next drove over to Solimene’s store and offered to split the money with him, but Solimene told Richard to keep it all when he heard what had happened. Richard kept the twenty-five thousand.
Richard wanted to get rid of Hoffman’s body, so he drove over to Harry’s Luncheonette on Route 46 in Hackensack. He had a roast beef sandwich and a diet Pepsi, and decided to put the barrel with Hoffman in it right behind Harry’s Luncheonette. He discarded it there as though it were a used tire that had outlived its purpose. For the longest time the barrel was there; a few times Richard actually had his lunch, a nice Harry’s sandwich, right on the barrel. Then one day it just disappeared, and no one said anything about finding a body. Richard was amused by the whole thing. To this day he has no idea where the barrel with Paul Hoffman in it disappeared to.
43
The Disassembling of Roy DeMeo
Roy DeMeo had gotten himself into a heap of trouble. His egotistic, nothing-can-touch-me attitude had finally caught up to him and now had a stranglehold around his bull-like neck.
First, the senseless murder of Vinnie Governara had come back to haunt him. Nino Gaggi’s nephew Dominick Montiglio had gotten himself in trouble because of drugs and wound up making a deal with the feds to get himself out of trouble, if he gave up his uncle Nino—and Roy DeMeo—which is exactly what he did. Additionally, DeMeo was arrested for dealing in stolen cars, and he was responsible for Nino Gaggi getting arrested for killing Jimmy Esposito and his son Jimmy junior. There had been bad blood between DeMeo and Jimmy junior, stemming from a coke deal in which Jimmy junior believed he was beaten for several thousand dollars. The senior Esposito, an old-time Sicilian made by Carlo Gambino himself, complained to Paul Castellano that Nino and Roy were selling coke. In the old days, under Carlo’s reign, this might have been a death sentence for Nino and Roy; Esposito was, in fact, trying to get them killed. But times had changed. Castellano himself had been taking a lot of money “made off the record,” and he ultimately gave Nino the proverbial nod to take out both Jimmy senior and Jimmy junior.
This, however, was not an easy task. The senior Esposito was a wily Sicilian. He didn’t trust Gaggi, definitely didn’t trust DeMeo. Nino finally managed to lure Jimmy senior to “a friendly sit-down” at Roy’s place. On the way there, at a stop along the Belt Parkway, Nino and DeMeo shot both Espositos to death, which proved to be a stupid, ill-conceived crime, for people driving on the Belt Parkway actually saw it happen, the police were summoned, and after a brief chase Nino Gaggi was arrested. DeMeo managed to get away, but this had all essentially been his plan, and he was now in deep shit: he had indirectly caused his boss—a Mafia captain—to be arrested and charged with a double homicide. A potential death sentence.
Roy believed his days were numbered now. The strain was taking an obvious toll on him. He didn’t look or act in charge anymore. He seemed like a beaten man, disheveled, confused, drinking too much, a man about to crack; a man who might very well go to the police and try to make a deal for himself, for his family, to keep his money, for a new identity. The underworld knew DeMeo had a cousin that was a noted, highly respected law professor, Paul DeMeo, and rumors began to circulate that DeMeo couldn’t be trusted, that his cousin was advising him to make a deal with the government. This numbered the days DeMeo had left. Men in all the crime families began sitting down and talking about the danger DeMeo posed, how much he knew; they talked about taking Roy DeMeo out.
Richard, of course, heard these drumbeats resonating loudly through the underworld jungle.
Detective Pat Kane’s investigation was going nowhere fast. He couldn’t find Danny Deppner anywhere. Barbara Deppner hadn’t heard a word from him, and she kept telling Kane that he was surely dead, that Richard Kuklinski had killed him. But there was no proof of that, no body—nothing.
Still, Detective Kane believed that Richard was a stone-cold contract killer, master criminal getting away with murder. This was having a bad effect on the young Kane. His belief in what was right and just and proper was being turned upside down. He was beginning to drink more than he should. The relationship with his wife, Terry, was becoming strained. Even his colleagues thought he was “seeing more into this than there really was.”
But Kane wasn’t about to give up. He kept tirelessly working the case, kept looking into what he believed was the bold, insidious lie that was Richard Kuklin
ski’s life. Kane knew Richard was liked by his neighbors, was thought of as a devoted family man. He knew also that Richard went to church every Sunday, was even a church usher. Still, he was sure that Richard was a monster, an agent of the devil himself disguised as a family man. Kane was a religious individual—he fervently believed in the Catholic Church and all its teachings and mandates. He was sure he was on a God-given mission to put an end to Richard Kuklinski’s bloody career, a mission he could not fail.
Kane couldn’t get out of his mind how Kuklinski had killed Gary Smith with a poisoned hamburger because he’d gone to see his little girl. What the hell kind of man was capable of such a thing? He thought too about how Richard had smashed his fist through the windshields of a teenager’s and a woman’s car over everyday driving incidents.
With nowhere else to turn, Kane began back at the beginning and went to see Percy House. House was still in jail, still couldn’t make bail.
Percy House was a brutal outlaw, a sneering, mean-faced bully who abused anyone weaker than he. He beat up both Gary Smith and Danny for not following his orders; he beat up Barbara Deppner; he even beat up her children.
Richard didn’t like anything about Percy House. One time he had seen Gary after Percy gave him a beating and he looked like he’d run into a truck. Richard would surely have killed Percy House if it weren’t for the fact that his sister was married to Phil Solimene. House had been stewing in jail for many months now, and his nasty disposition had soured even more, if such a thing was possible. Right off Kane came to the point: “I want Kuklinski. I know who he is and what he does. You help me nail him, I’ll see to it that you make a plea bargain. Something you can live with. You help me, I’ll help you. My word of honor. If you don’t, I’ll make sure you rot in jail! I mean rot!” he added.