The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

by Philip Carlo

  “Sammy know about this?” the mark asked.

  “No. This is off the record.”

  “Sure, I can move it. Got a taste?”

  “Out in the van,” Richard said, thinking this was going to be easier than he thought. They both walked outside.

  Inside Richard’s van, parked just off Eighteenth Avenue on a quiet side street, Richard knocked the mark unconscious with a jawbreaker, taped him up, covered him with a plaid blanket, and headed for Pennsylvania…rat country. He didn’t particularly like to drive so far with the mark in the back of the van, but if he was stopped by cops or state troopers, he’d shoot them dead in a heartbeat. He had a .38 right under the seat for easy, quick access. He did, however, stick to the speed limit and drove carefully, listening to country music as he went. A few times the mark acted up, but Richard told him to be quiet or he’d beat him with a hammer.

  Richard hadn’t intended to do this anymore—feed people to rats. But if Gravano wanted the guy to really suffer, so be it. It was convenient, easy to do, and very effective. Richard was curious, still, to see his own reaction to this barbarity he had created.

  By the time Richard reached the caves where the rats dwelled it was nearly 3:00 A.M. He made the mark walk to his own grisly end. There was a nearly full moon out and it was easy to see. Richard knew the rats had acquired the taste of human flesh, that they’d be on the mark like white on rice, as he puts it. The mark tried to run but Richard knocked him down, made him get up, and marched him into the cave. The stink of the rats was strong—a foul, pungent, fetid odor. Richard made him lie down, used duct tape and bound his legs together. He set up the camera. He could hear the rats toward the back of the cave, even saw a few of them, skulking about the shadows. The mark was moaning and begging. Richard turned and left.

  The following day Richard returned to the cave. There was no sign of the mark, not a bone, not even a piece of cloth. Richard retrieved the camera, set up a meeting with Gravano, went to Brooklyn, and showed both Gravano and the girl’s father the tape. Neither of them could bear looking at it. Pleased, the father paid Richard twenty thousand dollars. Richard went back to New Jersey. A few days later he left for Zurich.

  Pat Kane had to do something. The investigation was going nowhere fast. Richard had completely stopped coming to the store. Dominick Polifrone was in the store just about every day, playing cards, shooting the breeze, brilliantly telling dirty jokes, waiting on Richard to no avail. Kane went and spoke to Lieutenant Leck.

  “I have an idea, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “We need to shake up Kuklinski. We’ve got to stir up the pot.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’d like to go talk to him…ask him a few questions—see what kind of response we get…. I’m thinking it’s time we rattle his cage, Lieutenant.”

  “Have you run this by Dominick?”

  “I did. He thinks it’s a good idea. Right now nothing at all is happening, Lieutenant. We’ve got to be more proactive.”

  “Give it a go. Take Volkman with you.”

  “Okay,” Kane said, though in truth he didn’t want to take Ernest Volkman with him. Volkman had been one of the most disbelieving of Kane’s colleagues, had made wisecracks about Kane’s theory that Kuklinski was a serial, contract killer hiding in plain sight, had laughed the loudest.

  Nevertheless, Kane went and found him. He readily agreed to go confront Richard with him and together they set out to “rattle Richard’s cage.”

  By now it was late August of 1986. Richard had just returned from Zurich. He was planning to drive down to Georgia come nightfall. It was very hot and humid when New Jersey State detectives Pat Kane and Ernest Volkman pulled up in front of the Kuklinski residence. Richard’s car was in the driveway. Although it was nearly ninety degrees, both Kane and Volkman had to wear jackets and ties. This was mandated by the state police dress code. Kane was looking forward to this. For years now Richard Kuklinski had played a big part in his life, had taken on a larger-than-life omnipotence, and for the first time he was about to confront him—up close and personal. Not knowing what to expect, the two detectives stepped out of the air-conditioned black Plymouth, walked to the Kuklinski’s front door, and rang the bell. The family dog, Shaba, started to bark. It was a loud, bellowing bark. The inside door slowly opened. Suddenly, Richard was before them, his huge size completely filling the doorway.

  “What do you want?” asked Richard, looming in front of them. Kane was taken aback by how big he was. At six foot five, nearly three hundred pounds, Richard towered over them.

  The detectives showed their gold badges and introduced themselves.

  “Okay, what do you want?” Richard repeated, annoyed by their presence and the fact that they had the temerity to come knocking on his door unannounced. Nothing riled Richard more than uninvited people coming to the house…especially two grave-faced cops with obvious bad intentions. Richard was wearing tinted prescription sunglasses, so they couldn’t see his eyes, but they could feel the quiet animus coming from them like the August heat issuing from the sidewalks.

  “We are investigating several murders,” Kane said. “We’d like to talk with you about that.”

  “Yeah, well, talk,” said Richard.

  “Did you know either Louis Masgay, George Malliband, Paul Hoffman, Danny Deppner, or Gary Smith?” Kane asked.

  “Can’t say that I do,” Richard said, realizing now that this was the cop that had been investigating him all along, the cop that smelled the smoke but didn’t yet know where the fire was.

  “So you say you don’t know them?” Kane repeated, knowing Richard was lying.

  “Nope.”

  “How about Robert Pronge or Roy DeMeo. Did you know them?” Kane asked.

  Richard stared at them, taken aback to hear Kane mention DeMeo’s name. Richard had borrowed DeMeo’s car when he was using Richard’s van, and Richard figured—incorrectly—that the police had copied down the plate number of Roy’s car when it had been in front of the house. Richard had no idea until just recently that Freddie DiNome, one of DeMeo’s serial killers, had tied him to DeMeo.

  “I know you guys saw his car in front of my home. You know I know him,” Richard said.

  “You know anything about his murder?” Volkman asked.

  “It’s hot out here. Come on in,” Richard said, breaking the cardinal rule of the street: you never talk to cops.

  The Kuklinski house was nice and cool, clean and well appointed, neat and tidy. Barbara was out shopping. The kids were off with friends. Richard offered the detectives iced tea. They both declined. They’d never accept anything from Kuklinski out of fear of poison, no matter how thirsty they were. Richard sat in his easy chair as the detectives stiffly sat on the couch facing him. He kept his sunglasses on. Kane looked at a loving oil portrait of Richard and Barbara on the wall above his head.

  “I know nothing about the murder of Roy DeMeo,” Kuklinski said.

  “But you knew him?” Volkman asked.

  “Sure, I knew him. You guys know I knew him. Why don’t you like me, Mr. Kane?” Richard asked.

  “Who says I don’t like you?” Kane asked, surprised by the question. Truth was, Kane hated Richard. Kane truly believed Richard was evil, an agent of Satan himself.

  “I can see that…. It’s in your eyes,” Richard said matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t take any of my work personally,” Kane said. “For me you’re just work product. So you say you didn’t know Deppner, Masgay, or Smith?”

  “That’s right,” Richard said, daring Kane to prove he knew them. Kane, of course, had documentation that a call from Kuklinski’s home had been placed to the York Hotel, where Gary had been found under the bed, and he now reminded Richard of that phone call.

  “Really? I don’t know anything about that,” Richard said, caught off guard that Kane had so carefully scrutinized his phone calls. He didn’t like that. Now Richard knew for sure tha
t this cop Pat Kane had been the thorn in his side for the last few years. A thorn he wanted removed. Richard stared at Kane with malice, though Kane could not see the disdain because Richard kept his shades on. They asked him a few more questions, to which they got evasive answers. Richard remained a gentleman, but he let them know he didn’t want to talk anymore. He stood up. They followed suit. He led them to the door. Kane couldn’t get over how big he was.

  “Thanks for talking to us,” Kane said as he stepped back into the stifling, white August heat.

  “Anytime,” Richard said, closing the door.

  This really pissed Richard off. How dare these motherfuckers come around his house? How dare they knock on his door unannounced? Who the hell did they think they were?!

  Richard believed that if he got rid of Kane this whole thing would more than likely go away. The murders he was asking about were years old—yesterday’s news. If Kane was taken out of the equation, they’d stay old news.

  He would, he resolved, kill Kane. That was the answer. Of course. You have a problem, kill it. The solve-all remedy.

  It didn’t take Richard long to find out that Kane worked out of the Newton barracks. Richard borrowed a van from John Spasudo, went and staked out the barracks. He spotted Kane leaving the squat brick building after his shift and followed him. He had the cut-down Ruger rifle with him; he’d use it to do the job if the situation presented itself.

  When Kane left Richard’s house that day, he figured they’d done what they’d set out to do. Even now he didn’t truly comprehend how dangerous Richard was. He never thought Richard would really stalk him, kill him. Pat Kane was part of a culture in which police were not murdered. To kill a cop was, he knew, like sticking a pointed stick into a hornet’s nest. It just wasn’t worth the risk. But Richard was intent upon killing Kane. The question wasn’t if but how he should do it—make it overt, make it look like an accident, or maybe just make him disappear. He decided on the latter.

  Richard followed Kane to a nearby bar called the Wander Inn, a crowded blue-collar place. Kane began putting away drinks while standing at the bar. Richard actually walked in and watched Kane from a darkened corner. This, Richard thought, will be easy. The guy’s a lush. But it didn’t take long for Richard to figure out that Kane was drinking with cops; the place was filled with cops, and he slunk out the door unnoticed, like a giant, silent snake.

  When Kane left the bar, he got into his car, not realizing he was being watched—stalked—and drove straight home. By force of habit he checked his rearview—most cops do—but Richard was exceedingly adept at trailing people unnoticed and soon learned where Pat Kane lived with his wife and two children.

  The thing Pat Kane had dreaded from the very beginning had just happened.

  Now, Richard thought, it was just a matter of figuring out how best to do this—dispose of Pat Kane once and for all and for it not to come back to him. To amuse himself, Richard took a bead on Kane with the rifle as he stepped from his car. Bang, you’re dead, he whispered, though he didn’t pull the trigger.

  49

  I’ve Got Some Rats I Have to Get Rid Of

  The more Richard thought about killing Kane, the more he realized the law-enforcement firestorm he’d bring down on his own head. The link between anything happening to Kane and him would be immediate, he knew. To do this job properly, he decided, he had to make Kane’s murder look like an accident; that was the key, and he was sure he could do that, but he needed poison. He needed the cyanide spray to pull it off, though he didn’t have any. He began asking people he knew in the underworld in Jersey City, Hoboken, and New York if anyone could get his hands on some cyanide. No luck. Richard’s plan was to spray Kane in the face as he was leaving the bar after a few drinks; he’d keel over dead right there. Everyone would believe it was a heart attack. Perfect. Applied with the right dosage, cyanide was very difficult to detect.

  He’d first give Kane a flat, and as he was changing the tire, he’d get him. It’d be a piece of cake. He smiled at the thought, knowing it would work. However, he was having a hard time finding high-grade, lab cyanide. He had only one shot at this, he knew, and it had to work. There would be no second chance. Kane was armed and dangerous.

  Richard was supposed to go to Zurich that Friday, but he put off the trip until the following week. He’d plot and plan Pat Kane’s murder.

  Now, for the second time in less than a week, strange men came knocking on Richard’s door, and this second incident upset Richard to the point of absolute distraction. It was, for him, a Waterloo of sorts—in a sense the beginning of the end. It all had to do with John Spasudo.

  So far, with Richard, John Spasudo had made a small fortune, but he was a degenerate gambler, and not only pissed the money away but indebted himself to drug dealers, to cocaine wholesalers. He was apparently taking drugs on consignment, selling them, and losing the money gambling, and he had got himself in hot water with some Colombians. Spasudo had never been to Richard’s home. However, by using a trace on Richard’s license plates, he was able to find out Richard’s address.

  When the Colombians put a squeeze on Spasudo, he got it in his head to tell them Richard had their money, which wasn’t at all true, and Spasudo actually took two of them to Richard’s home. Spasudo believed Richard wasn’t in town, that he’d gone to Zurich, but he was actually in the house when they knocked on the door. Richard saw them through the curtain—Spasudo sitting in the car—and was angry beyond words that street people, thugs, had come to his home.

  This was not supposed to happen.

  Richard had always been scrupulously careful about keeping the street, his nefarious dealings, far away from his home, his family. Now the street was actually knocking on his door, ringing his bell. He recently explained: I realized that day that I’d made mistakes. I’d allowed what I was doing to touch my family. It was what I’d always dreaded and yet it happened. For me…for me it was like getting hit by a speeding train. I would fix it. I had to fix it. My plan was to kill them all. To kill everyone close to me—I mean everyone!

  As the Colombians stood there, Dwayne innocently pulled into the drive. The two of them approached Dwayne and asked where his dad was. They were friendly, but there was an undercurrent of danger, of threat.

  “He’s out of town,” Dwayne said.

  That seemed to placate them for now. They told Dwayne to tell his dad they’d been there and would be back. One of them touched Dwayne’s arm as he spoke. Richard saw this from the window and nearly exploded with rage. His lips twisted into a snarl. He wanted to run outside and kill them with his bare hands, but that would have to wait. He controlled himself, gritting his teeth, as the soft clicking sound came from his lips. They got back into their car and left. As they pulled away, Richard stared at Spasudo there in the backseat. Rage made his head spin. He actually had to sit down.

  Early that evening, Richard went and found Spasudo. He was shocked to see Richard.

  Richard bellowed, “How fucking dare you bring those spics to my house!”

  “Rich, I thought you were out of town. I was just trying to stall them. I’m sorry; I’m sorry, Rich!”

  If, Richard recently explained, he hadn’t been doing things with Spasudo, he’d have killed him right then and there, gotten rid of his body—fed him to the rats. But that luxury, for now, wasn’t his; though Spasudo’s days were now numbered. Richard pulled out a pistol and stuck it right in Spasudo’s mouth, pulled the hammer back.

  “You ever bring someone near my home again, I’ll kill you, John. You understand?”

  “I do, I swear, I understand!” he mumbled.

  Richard then went to kill the two Colombians. By doing this, he was getting Spasudo out of debt, but that certainly was not his intention. He just wanted to kill the men who had dared to come to his door.

  Next would be Pat Kane.

  Now, out of irrational desperation, Richard did what Pat Kane and Dominick Polifrone had been hoping and praying for all along: he
used a pay phone and called Phil Solimene. Polifrone was, by pure happenstance, sitting in the store playing cards.

  “Hey, Big Guy,” Solimene greeted Richard.

  “That friend you have, this Dom, he around?” Richard asked.

  “Yeah, he’s sitting right here.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Hey, Dom,” Solimene called out. “It’s for you: Big Rich.” He smiled and winked as he handed the phone to Dominick.

  “How ya doin?” Dominick said, very pleased that finally, after all these months, he was actually making contact with the elusive Richard Kuklinski. The devil himself was calling.

  “I’m good. I hear you have some good contacts.”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “Let’s talk. I need something special. I don’t want to come there. Can you meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street?”

  “Sure, Rich, no problem,” the agent said.

  “Five minutes?”

  “Okay,” Polifrone said, and hung up.

  Solimene was smiling. “I told you he’d call.”

  “That you did,” Dom said. “He wants to meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  “I’ll be here,” Phil said, and Dominick left.

  Dominick walked outside. There was no time to contact Kane or even his own ATF people. He was truly on his own, and he had to move fast. He slid into his black Lincoln sedan and drove over to the Dunkin’ Donuts. He knew he should have been wearing a wire, but there was no time for that. It was 10:45 A.M. The sky was filled with somber grays. Dominick was nervous, excited, concerned, all at the same time. He had been planning this for so long, had begun to think it would never happen. But it was. He’d just spoken to the devil himself. Dom was armed. He had a Walther PPK in his pocket. He was an excellent shot. He didn’t think Kuklinski would try to pull something in broad daylight, at a Dunkin’ Donuts, but he had no real idea what was up, what Kuklinski wanted—what was in the wind. As he pulled into the parking lot, he spotted Richard. He was in Dwayne’s silver Camaro. Polifrone parked and walked over, swaggering as he went, now seriously in his wiseguy mode.