The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer Read online

  Mug shot of Richard Kuklinski on the day of his capture, 1986.

  2013 Bantam Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1993, 2013 by Anthony Bruno

  Foreword copyright © 2013 by Jim Thebaut

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover and in slightly different form in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1993, and subsequently in paperback by iUniverse in 2008.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Bruno, Anthony.

  The iceman : the true story of a cold-blooded killer / by Anthony Bruno.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-54009-6

  1. Kuklinski, Richard. 2. Murderers—New Jersey—Biography. 3. Serial murders—New Jersey—Case studies. I. Title.

  HV6248.K75B78 1993

  364.1′523′09749—dc20 92-44003

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover photo © Millennium Films

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  by Jim Thebaut, producer and filmmaker of The Iceman Tapes

  My involvement with the Iceman story started in 1986 when I first learned about Richard Kuklinski, a mass murderer who claimed to have killed scores of people while maintaining an outwardly normal, suburban lifestyle with a wife and three children. The police had nicknamed him “the Iceman” because he had frozen one of his victims for two years to see if he could disguise the time of death. Clearly this was not a run-of-the-mill killer. I was intrigued, but at the time I had no idea how deeply his story would affect my life. What a long strange trip it has been.

  While serving as executive producer on A Deadly Business, a CBS Television dramatic special, a friend and adviser on that project told me that a dangerous killer had just been arrested in New Jersey, and he felt that this man’s incredible story would make a great film. A Deadly Business delved into organized crime’s involvement in the illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Garden State. The killer, Richard Kuklinski, had been apprehended on the quiet suburban street where he lived. My adviser, who at the time was the director of New Jersey’s Organized Crime Task Force and later became a deputy attorney general of the state, told me that Kuklinski would have to be tried before I could approach any of the principal individuals in the case about doing a film, but he would help me get the cooperation of the police and prosecutors. Approximately two years later, in 1988 after Kuklinski’s conviction, I started my quest to turn his story into what I hoped would be a powerful and successful motion picture.

  What attracted me to this project was the opportunity to explore the dark side of human behavior. Kuklinski claimed to have killed more than 100 people. I wanted to know what created this monster. Was he born this way, or had his upbringing shaped him? I set about to secure the rights to the stories of the people who knew him best: his wife and children, as well as the federal undercover agent who had gotten close to him and secretly taped him talking about his crimes. After several months of negotiation, I was able to obtain options on those rights.

  Shortly after, I received a call from the director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, who had prosecuted the case against Kuklinski, asking if I would be interested in interviewing Kuklinski at Trenton State Prison, where he was incarcerated. Naturally I accepted, with the understanding that at a later date I would be allowed to conduct an on-camera interview with him.

  My initial meeting with the Iceman lasted two and a half hours. I was first struck by his size—six-foot-four, well over 250 pounds—and immediately recognized how intimidating he must have been on the street. We met one-on-one in a room reserved for lawyer/client conferences. I found him to be straightforward, cordial, and articulate. I felt that his dark story could potentially become a compelling, frightening, and unforgettable documentary, but first I had to see how forthcoming he would be and if he could cinematically sustain a one-hour program. I needed to discover what buttons, if any, I could push to elicit emotional responses on camera. When I asked him about his relationship with his son, he showed deep sadness, and tears came to his eyes. Later on, I realized this line of questioning might show the human being beneath the killer.

  The very next day I pitched the idea to executives at HBO. I convinced them that Kuklinski was not just a thug with a gun and a chip on his shoulder. There was a real story here, I told them, an important story. They felt my passion and agreed to move forward with the project.

  My first meeting with Kuklinski at the prison laid the groundwork for our on-camera interview, which lasted a total of seventeen hours. In the early spring of 1991 I took a film crew to the prison and, over a three-day period, interviewed Kuklinski for fifteen hours. The prison gave us a room next to the execution chamber, which hadn’t been used in fifteen years. Officials from the attorney general’s office simultaneously taped the interview for their own use. Their hope was that Kuklinski would provide information regarding unsolved murders he was suspected of having committed. I met with them at the end of each day, and over pizza and wine we discussed what I would ask Kuklinski the next day. My challenge was to ask him questions that might provide factual information while making sure that his responses were visually compelling for the camera.

  On camera, Kuklinski was sly but frank. He spoke of many murders, some at great length, but he was often stingy with the kind of specifics that might lead to new indictments. Perhaps he didn’t want to go through another trial. I suspect he enjoyed the attention I gave him, and perhaps he feared that if he told me everything, I would lose interest in him. But his matter-of-fact retelling of his crimes was mesmerizing.

  Several months later I went back into the prison with my film crew and a representative from HBO and conducted two more hours of interview, but something had changed. Unlike our previous experience, Kuklinski was uncooperative, and the effort was a waste of time.

  I envisioned the Iceman project taking severa
l forms—first, as a documentary, then as a book, then as a feature film—and I proceeded with this in mind. As it turned out, the first two stages of my plan were accomplished in relatively quick succession. The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer was first broadcast in the spring of 1992. The book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer, written by crime writer Anthony Bruno, was published in hardcover in 1993. Both were very successful. The Iceman Tapes became one of HBO’s highest-rated documentaries and was nominated for a Cable Ace Award. The book stayed in print for many years, and foreign editions were published in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. I felt confident that a movie deal would soon follow.

  Unfortunately the toxic nature of the Kuklinski material seemed to infect the project itself. Success should have engendered further success, but instead it created greed, bruised egos, frustration, and enmity. The relationships I had worked so hard to build eroded around me. Suddenly I was seen as a “Hollywood producer” with all the negative attributes that phrase implies, and my motives became suspect. While my goal never changed and my intentions were exactly what they had been when I started, the tainted perceptions of others put obstacles in my path and kept me from making the film.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that the rights holders (the cops who investigated and arrested Kuklinski, the prosecutor who tried him, and Kuklinski’s family) could not maintain the degree of solidarity I needed to make a feature film. I suspect the law-enforcement side wasn’t comfortable being on equal footing with the family of a mass murderer, and those who had lived under Kuklinski’s roof must have learned from him not to trust anyone. Securing options on their rights had been time consuming and labor intensive, requiring a great deal of legal wrangling. But it didn’t take long before mistrust altered their thinking. They sought out attorneys and agents to protect their interests. Ironically, one member of the Iceman task force was represented by a former girlfriend of mine!

  The rights holders were perfectly within their rights to seek representation, but as the saying goes, too many cooks spoiled the soup. “Hollywood” pockets are seldom as deep as most people think, but the rights holders failed to understand that. And none of them wanted to be paid less than anyone else. Rumors spread that HBO had compensated Mrs. Kuklinski handsomely, and the cops understandably felt the criminal’s family had profited from his evil deeds. HBO’s actions in effect stuck a large knife into my efforts. I did my utmost to secure funding to keep the project afloat, but as option periods ran out and agreements had to be renegotiated, the demands became unrealistic. Some of the principals went their own way and attempted to sell their rights to other producers. All Iceman and Iceman-related projects failed to get off the ground, including mine.

  A lawsuit filed by Mrs. Kuklinski followed, which further hindered my efforts. It dragged on for years and was not settled until 1996. I couldn’t help but think that Richard Kuklinski’s noxious presence hovered over the project. While HBO executives reveled in his demonic qualities, I, like many members of the Iceman task force as well as his family, felt that we were poisoned by his influence. As silly as it might seem, anyone who came into contact with him was liable to be affected.

  After many years of frustration, I turned my attention to other projects. My interests had taken me away from the dark side, and I focused on creating educational documentaries and implementing public policy regarding the evolving global water and sanitation crisis and its ultimate impact on international security. This became my passion.

  The curse was broken in 2013 when Kuklinski’s story finally made it to the big screen. The film, The Iceman, starring Michael Shannon as Richard Kuklinski and directed by Ariel Vromen, is based on this book and the seventeen hours of interviews I conducted with Kuklinski. It took more than twenty years, but my objective was finally realized.

  Over the years a great deal of misinformation about Richard Kuklinski has circulated, most of it coming directly from Kuklinski himself. In interviews for two subsequent HBO documentaries and for another book, he spun tall tales and portrayed himself as the monster he thought the world wanted him to be. He was allowed to glorify himself. But he was enough of a monster on his own, unembellished, and all the more frightening because he didn’t come from hell as he might have wanted the public to believe. He was the result of his upbringing. Under the right—or should I say, wrong—circumstances, any one of us could have grown up to become just like him. That’s the real terror of his story.

  I’m proud of my work on the Iceman project and how it contributed to this book. Our intent was to show the horrifying ripple effect of child abuse and the resulting post-traumatic stress syndrome, which took an aberrant turn in Kuklinski’s case. The message I hope you come away with is that violence begets violence.

  Read on and you will be fascinated and horrified by his strange tale. You will also become engrossed in the story of the brave men who came together to stop him. Read on and learn the truth about the Iceman.

  INTRODUCTION

  I remember when I first laid eyes on Richard Kuklinski’s face. It was a weekday afternoon in 1992, and I was in my living room in front of the TV, a stack of VHS tapes piled on the coffee table. My agent had called me a few days earlier and told me that he had a possible book project for me. A producer named Jim Thebaut was making a documentary about a mass murderer from New Jersey nicknamed “the Iceman,” and he wanted a book based on seventeen hours of taped interviews with the killer. He was looking for the right author, someone who could make the Iceman’s story come to life and read like fiction. I had published several well-received crime novels at the time. And, born and bred in North Jersey, I knew the Iceman’s territory.

  To be totally honest, the project didn’t sound like a winner to me. Kuklinski claimed to have killed more than 100 people, but I had never heard of him. Not surprising considering that his trial happened at a time when two other crime stories were eating up the headlines, the trials of Robert Chambers (the “Preppy Murderer”) and Margaret Kelly Michaels, a teacher accused of sexually abusing thirty-three preschoolers. (She was convicted, but it was overturned on appeal.) I had been approached to do other books about criminals and I knew that for the most part in real life they aren’t that interesting as people. They’re rarely as clever and sophisticated as the murderers in novels, characters like “Hannibal Lecter.”

  So as I pressed play on the VCR, I intended to watch only as much as I needed to give a polite but informed “no thanks.” But long past midnight I was still watching. The next morning I picked up where I’d left off and stayed with it until I’d viewed the entire seventeen hours. It was just Kuklinski, the camera focused on his face, Jim Thebaut off camera asking him questions. No supporting footage, no crime-scene photos, no family photographs, just him. But I couldn’t stop watching.

  There was something about him that riveted my attention. He wasn’t a wild man or a snarling demon. There was a curious disconnect between his appearance and his manner. He was a huge man—bald, long face, hollow cheeks, full gray beard, small wary eyes. Sometimes when asked a question, he would pause and suck air between his teeth, waiting and making the moment uncomfortable. Other times he was affable, flashing a winning smile, and it became easy to see how he could fool people into thinking he was on the up-and-up and that he could get them whatever merchandise they wanted at a great discount, when in fact all he wanted was their money. And once he had it, he eliminated his customers.

  He was totally blasé as he described killing after killing—mob hits, road-rage slayings, experiments in murder techniques, lethal scams. He was philosophical about murder, and he understood human greed better than any psychiatrist, using it subtly and seductively to lure his victims with promises of deals that were too good to be true. His victims brought money, he brought a gun—or in some cases, a small spray bottle of cyanide.

  I called my agent as soon as I finished the tapes. I was hooked. I wanted to write this book.

  Unfortun
ately Kuklinski wasn’t as excited about me as I was about him. Though he had given Thebaut an extended on-camera interview, he refused to talk to me. Instead he sent me letters. Lots of letters, some of them quite long. Handwritten accounts of various murders. He also sent me newspaper articles with Post-it notes attached. The messages were cryptic: a place, the name of a restaurant, a gun-caliber, “pop-pop-pop like balloons breaking.”

  He gave me lists of names, many of them dead mobsters. Some were men he might have met through his association with Gambino soldier Roy DeMeo; others were puzzles. Was he bragging, implying that he had killed them?

  He seldom took direct responsibility for any murder he described. His stories typically started, “There was a guy …,” but it was obvious that he was the guy.

  Some of his claims were dubious. For example, he claimed he was part of the hit team that killed Gambino boss Paul Castellano in midtown Manhattan in 1985. It’s highly unlikely that such an important assassination would have been entrusted to someone who wasn’t a made member of the Mafia. As with all his claims, if I couldn’t get some kind of corroboration from law enforcement, I didn’t put it in the book.

  When Kuklinski wrote me a letter in which he described in great detail the murder of a “man with a big mouth” in Detroit, it was clear that he was taking credit for the murder of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. When I first read his account, I thought I had struck journalistic gold, but when I consulted investigators who knew the Hoffa case well, the details of Kuklinski’s story didn’t check out. I wondered why he felt he had to add extra value to his brand. Weren’t the crimes he had actually committed enough?

  Even though many of his stories didn’t pass the smell test, these letters were nevertheless invaluable … and maddening. They kept coming—thirty in all—but he still refused to see me. I had been working on the book for a year and had completed a first draft when I finally got word from his wife that he would sit for an interview. On January 16, 1992, I spent five and a half hours with him, just the two of us locked in the “lawyer’s room” at Trenton State Prison, no barrier between us, no guards in sight. Before letting me in, prison officials had me sign a release stating that I had no official business there and that if Kuklinski took me captive, no extraordinary measures would be taken to save me. I was on my own.