The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer Page 17

  The bicyclist ran back to the road and marked the spot where he’d entered the woods with a fallen branch. He intended to ride down to the nearest house and call the police, but a car happened to come by, and he flagged it down. He told the driver to call the police, there was a body in the woods.

  The police arrived within the hour and summoned Dr. Geetha Natarajan, the acting chief medical examiner of Passaic County. She examined the body at the scene but left it in the garbage bags. After photographs were taken, the body was carefully lifted off the ground and put in a body bag. Samples of the dead leaves underneath the body were taken. They would help Dr. Natarajan determine when the body had been left there. The body was then taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Newark, where she would perform the autopsy.

  At the ME’s office, Dr. Natarajan’s first task was to remove the plastic bags, taking note of how many were used and how expertly the victim’s limbs had been bound with paper tape. Then came the one job she detested most: dealing with the bugs. She took samples of all the insects and larvae she found present on the body, mainly carrion beetles and blowflies. The number of insect generations on the body would help determine how long it had been left in the woods. Identifying the types of insect would also be helpful since different species thrive at different times of the year. When Dr. Natarajan was certain that she had samples of all the species present, she hosed the rest of the swarm down the drain and ground them in the garbage disposal, glad to be rid of them.

  Laying the body on a stainless steel worktable, Dr. Natarajan then began the autopsy. The victim was a male, six feet one and a half inches, 173 pounds. The man’s face was almost totally skeletonized, and there was only partial flesh on the limbs, but the torso was very well preserved. Spring had come late that year, so the cold had kept him relatively fresh, and fortunately the buzzard had not had that many meals off this carcass.

  She removed the clothing—a white V-neck T-shirt with extensive brown-red staining, a pair of blue jeans, a black leather belt, blue socks—and took note of the absence of shoes or a coat. There were no gunshot or stab wounds, but she did find hemorrhaging on the neck just above the Adam’s apple and on the whites of the eyes. A pinkish flush was apparent on the skin around the shoulder and chest on one side. This kind of discoloration, called pink lividity, can indicate several things, most commonly carbon monoxide poisoning.

  When Dr. Natarajan got to the stomach contents, she found more than two pounds of undigested food: beef, beans, potatoes, carrots, and beer. It was a large meal but not unusually so for a man this size. There was no sign of gastric emptying—the food hadn’t moved on from the stomach through the digestive tract—which meant that the man was killed soon after he had finished his meal, perhaps during the meal. She examined the food itself and noticed that the beans had been burned. The meal was probably home-cooked, she believed, because a restaurant couldn’t get away with serving burned food. The man must have been very hungry to eat it.

  In the pocket of the man’s jeans she found a black wallet that contained no money or identification. She did find five wet slips of paper in the wallet, which turned out to be motel receipts. There were also three photographs that had stuck together. She soaked them and carefully separated them, laying them on paper towels to dry. They were pictures of children, two boys and a girl. Dr. Natarajan bagged them and sent them up to the Passaic County prosecutor.

  When he received the photos, the prosecutor laid them on his desk and stared at them. There was something familiar about those kids, but he couldn’t place them. The pictures sat there for two days, haunting him, the little faces staring out at him, like three pathetic little orphans. Then it dawned on him. He did know those kids. They’d been in the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office with their mother and her lowlife boyfriend/common-law husband, whatever the hell he was, Percy House. Those were Barbara Deppner’s kids. He picked up the phone and called the ME’s office to tell Dr. Natarajan he had a good hunch who her body was. It was the father of those three kids, Daniel Everett Deppner.

  NINETEEN

  Barbara Kuklinski didn’t know what to think as her husband held the door for her and she walked into the carpeted lobby of the restaurant. Richard was wearing his dark glasses, even though it was evening, and he’d been wearing them all day around the house, which always made her uneasy, but now he was dressed to the nines in his dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a maroon tie. This was their favorite French restaurant, the place they always went to when they had something to celebrate. He’d specifically asked her to wear the dove gray Christian Dior suit he’d bought her a few months ago. As they went up to the maître d’s station together, out of the corner of her eye Barbara saw him take off the glasses and put them in his pocket. He smiled at the maître d’ as he gave him their name. She couldn’t figure it out. Richard seemed to be in a good mood, but the dark glasses made her suspicious. Was this really the good Richard, or was it a new incarnation of the bad Richard?

  The maître d’ nodded to Richard and raised his finger as if to say “just one moment.” He turned and stepped into the dining room, waving his hand at the pianist until he caught the woman’s eye. He nodded once to her, and she stopped what she was playing and started a new song. Barbara recognized it immediately, Kenny Rogers’s “Lady.” When the record had first become popular, Richard declared it “her song,” and whenever he was in a very good mood, he’d call ahead to the restaurant and make sure it was played for their arrival.

  “Thank you, Richard,” she said as the maître d’ led them to their table.

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I haven’t done that in a while.”

  “It’s very sweet of you.”

  “Who else have I got to be sweet to?”

  She smiled and squeezed his hand. But she was still suspicious.

  As soon as they were seated, a waiter came and asked if they’d care for drinks. Richard wasn’t much of a drinker, but he did like wine with his meals. The waiter fetched the wine list for him, but Barbara already knew what he’d order, a good Montrachet, their favorite red wine. The ones Richard ordered were never less than a hundred dollars a bottle.

  The waiter returned with the bottle of Montrachet and showed Richard the label. He nodded his approval, and the waiter uncorked the wine, placing the cork in front of Richard, then poured a little into his glass. Richard took a sip, looked down, and considered it for a moment, then told the waiter it was very good. The waiter filled Barbara’s glass first, then Richard’s, then left to let them study the menu.

  Barbara forced herself not to look at Richard over the top of her menu. She wasn’t convinced that this was really the good Richard, and she knew from experience that anything could set the bad one off, though she was usually safe in public. Most times he saved his temper for behind closed doors. But not always.

  There was the time she’d talked back to him at the house. He didn’t sit on his temper that time. The explosion was immediate.

  Barbara’s father had been scheduled to undergo surgery that morning in Florida, and she was anxious to hear how he was. She and Richard weren’t even dressed yet when the call came from her father’s wife, and Barbara took it in their bedroom. She was understandably relieved when she heard that the surgery had been a success and her father would be fine. As she hung up the phone, Richard was just coming out of the bathroom in his underwear.

  “So is the bastard dead?” he asked with a smirk.

  She stared at him, stung by the senseless cruelty of his remark. “That wasn’t necessary,” she snapped back.

  His face froze, and his eyes narrowed. Then she saw that look that always terrified her. His eyelids fluttered, and the eyeballs rolled back for a split second the same way a shark’s does just before it’s going to bite.

  Panic filled Barbara’s chest. She was already backing toward the door when he lunged.

  “You do not talk back to me,” he yelled. “Do you understand that? You do not talk
back to me.”

  She broke free from his grasp and ran down the steps into the living room, then down the flight of stairs to the front hallway, like a deer being chased by a grizzly bear. Though she was in her slippers and bathrobe, she didn’t hesitate to throw the front door open and run out into the snow. Outside she’d be safe, she figured. He never showed his temper in public. She stood on the sidewalk, out of breath, clutching the robe close around her neck, wondering how long she’d have to wait before he calmed down and she could go back in.

  But then the sound of the electric garage doors startled her. As the doors rose, an engine roared to life, and she saw the tailpipe of the red Calais spewing out exhaust on the cold air. The car screeched out of the garage in reverse. Richard was behind the wheel in his T-shirt. He bellowed out the open window, “You do not talk back to me.”

  Barbara could see that he was out of his mind with rage.

  She started to run. The sound of spinning tires was right behind her. He drove up onto the sidewalk, determined to run her down.

  She ran for the next door neighbor’s yard, slipping on the snow, heading for the big tree in the backyard. It was the only thing she could imagine that would protect her from the impact of the car.

  She slipped once more before she reached the tree, falling on it, scrambling behind it, clutching it close, breathing so hard her chest hurt.

  When she finally dared to peer around the tree, Barbara saw that the car was at an angle on the snow-covered front lawn. The engine was idling, and Richard was behind the wheel, but it wasn’t moving. He wasn’t pursuing her anymore. She took a closer look and saw that Richard was punching himself in the head, again and again, hitting himself hard with a closed fist. It was what he did when he was frustrated and couldn’t vent his rage any other way. If he couldn’t hit anyone else, he’d hit himself.

  Reliving that horrible winter day, Barbara could feel her heart beat faster as she stared blankly at the menu in her hands. She refocused and started to read the selections quickly, afraid that Richard would know what she was thinking.

  “Do you know what you’re going to order, Rich?” she asked, looking over the top of her menu.

  “Hmm?” Richard wasn’t looking at his menu. He was staring at something at the back of the restaurant.

  Barbara turned around and saw two couples seated at a leather banquette. One of the men was gesturing with his arms, telling a story that was making the others howl with laughter. The man was heavyset with a fleshy, oblong face and thin dark hair combed straight back. His jeweled cuff links glittered as he motioned with his hands. The women were considerably younger than the men, and one of them looked like a high-class call girl. The two men looked like hoods.

  The corners of Richard’s mouth drooped as he stared at the man telling the story. His eyes were narrow.

  Barbara couldn’t understand why this man was upsetting her husband. Her heart started to pound.

  Richard Kuklinski touched his forehead where the scar was.

  Barbara glanced quickly over her shoulder, but she didn’t see any resemblance between this man and anyone she’d ever met. She shook her head, confused and anxious that their evening would be ruined after all, fearful that he would erupt right here in the middle of the restaurant.

  He kept staring at the man. Suddenly Richard’s eyes shot back at her. “That guy sort of reminds me of Roy.”

  Barbara swallowed hard and looked down at her menu, praying to God that this wouldn’t set him off.

  TWENTY

  Roy DeMeo had a very bad temper, the kind of temper that flared fast and hot and came when you least expected it. A soldier in New York’s Gambino crime family, DeMeo was subject to dramatic mood swings. He’d give you the shirt off his back one minute and cut your throat the next if you hurt his feelings.

  Richard Kuklinski had seen for himself how evil DeMeo’s temper could be one summer day in the late seventies, when DeMeo chartered a fishing boat out of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, to take a few of his associates out for a pleasure cruise. They’d brought beer and wine, Italian bread and provolone cheese, sandwiches made with all kinds of Italian delicacies. Roy was a jolly host that day, regaling his men with jokes and stories as he encouraged them to eat, eat. It was a bright, sunny day, and the cool breeze was a relief from the sweltering heat of the city. The boat went out several miles, taking them to good fishing waters. The mood on board was pretty raucous by the time the captain cut his engines and moved to the stern, where he started to chum the waters with cut-up chunks of fish and fish blood in order to attract game fish. Chumming often attracts sharks, too, and Kuklinski noticed several fins starting to circle the bloody water around the back of the boat. The men joked about the sharks and threw beer cans at them. Roy DeMeo had just finished making a toast to everyone’s health and long life, his beer can held aloft, when out of the blue his face suddenly changed and he glared at one of his guests.

  “You know, you got one motherfucking big mouth, pal.”

  The man was stunned. Everyone was. “Roy,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “You know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

  DeMeo reached into the beer cooler, pulled out a pistol, and shot the man in the head, just like that. The man collapsed to the deck, and DeMeo put another bullet into his back. DeMeo then ordered his other guests to throw the bastard overboard to the sharks. No one dared object. The agitated sharks lunged for the body before it even hit the water. Their violent thrashing as they tore the body apart gave the mobster a grim satisfaction that only he understood completely.

  Richard Kuklinski would never forget the twisted, sadistic look on DeMeo’s face that day on the boat. It was a look he came to know very well.

  DeMeo’s crew hung out at a bar called the Gemini Lounge, on Flatlands Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. Roy’s cousin Joseph Guglielmo lived in the apartment behind the bar. His nickname was Dracula. One night Kuklinski had gone to the Gemini Lounge to see DeMeo, and Roy invited him to stay for dinner at his cousin’s place. Kuklinski accepted the invitation and followed DeMeo through the back hallway into the apartment, where several young men were seated at the kitchen table. They were all members of DeMeo’s crew. DeMeo preferred young guys; he felt they were hungrier and more willing to carry out his orders, no matter how gruesome.

  Kuklinski took a seat at the table just as DeMeo’s cousin Dracula was pouring out the big pasta pot into a colander in the sink. Steam plumed up around Dracula’s head like a mushroom cloud. One of the young guys poured wine for everyone, and a big steaming bowl was brought to the table—angel hair and sausage. Kuklinski dug in. Wiseguys knew good food, and this was excellent. He was halfway through his meal, reaching for the bowl of grated Parmesan cheese, when all of a sudden DeMeo stood up and pointed a .22 fixed with a silencer at the kid across the table from him.

  The kid dropped his fork. His eyes bugged out. “Roy! Roy! What—?”

  “Shut up!”

  The shots sounded like balloons popping. The kid’s chair toppled over backward, and he crashed to the floor, dead.

  DeMeo sat back down and returned to his meal, twirling pasta on his fork. One of the other crew members got up to move the body. “Leave him,” DeMeo barked with his mouth full. “Finish eating,” he ordered. “Everybody eat.”

  They all ate.

  When DeMeo finally gave them the okay, his men did what they did best: They made the body “disappear.” They took the kid’s corpse into the bathroom and threw him in the tub, where they drained his blood, then proceeded to cut him up and wrap the pieces in small sealed packages. The packages were distributed to a number of Dumpsters around the city. DeMeo’s crew had honed this chore down to an efficient assembly-line process. They’d done it many times before. As the boys went to work, DeMeo and Kuklinski sat down to espresso and biscotti and talked business.

  In the mid-sixties Barbara Kuklinski’s uncle had worked at a film lab in Manhattan, Deluxe Films, a
nd through him Richard Kuklinski had gotten a job there. At the lab Kuklinski discovered that there was money to be made selling bootleg copies of popular films, particularly the Disney cartoon features. Kuklinski had access to 8mm loops, master copies from which legitimate copies were made. But he soon found that on the black market there were lesser-known celluloid heroines who were far more lucrative than Snow White and Cinderella, played by actresses with names like Holly Bangkok, Ginger Sweet, and Amber Licke.

  Bootleg copies of legitimate films could only be sold piecemeal; selling more than five reels to a single customer was considered a big order. But porno movies, Kuklinski discovered, sold by the dozens to adult bookstores and mail-order outlets. Kuklinski saw that there were big profits to be made in porn. All he needed was a little venture capital. But this wasn’t the kind of loan he could go to a bank for. The only alternative for financing illegal enterprises is a loan shark, and Kuklinski knew someone who knew someone who knew a loan shark who was an associate in the Gambino crime family.

  Kuklinski was lent sixty-five thousand dollars, seed money to start mass-producing porno films. Kuklinski had no problem using the lab’s equipment after hours to make the films; the problem he hadn’t anticipated, though, was distribution. Selling porn wasn’t like selling Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck out of the trunk of his car. He was sending his product across the country, and payments weren’t always prompt. He had expenses to meet in order to keep his production up, so he just figured he’d put off the loan shark for a little while until those late payments came in. When he got paid, the shylock would get paid.