The Iceman Read online

  As court broke for lunch and Percy House was leaving the stand, prosecutor Waldron saw Kuklinski glare at his former associate as he pointed his finger and cocked his thumb as if he were firing a gun at House while mouthing the words “You’re dead.” The jury was still in the courtroom when this happened, and Waldron immediately brought it to Judge Kuechenmeister’s attention. The end result was that the jury accepted the prosecution’s contention that as bad as Percy House was, he was only the foreman in the gang. Richard Kuklinski was the boss.

  Gary Smith’s wife, Veronica Cisek, testified to the events on the night of December 20, 1982, when her husband arrived home unexpectedly while he was on the run. He had been hiding out from the police, but he had risked coming back to see his daughter one last time. She testified that when her husband walked in the door, “He was very upset. He was very nervous. He couldn’t relax or even sit still. In fact, he walked into my daughter’s room and just stood there and looked at her and stood there crying.”

  “How long was he in your daughter’s room?” Chuck Waldron asked.

  “Oh, about three or four minutes.”

  “And when he came out, how did he look?”

  “He was crying. He had tears rolling down his face.…”

  Veronica Cisek later testified that her husband felt he couldn’t escape from Richard Kuklinski, even though he knew Kuklinski intended to kill him, “for the simple reason that Richie had told him that he was going to kill our daughter if he ran.”

  Even the severely impartial Time Machine was moved by this testimony.

  James “Hoss” DiVita willingly told of his role as the fence for the stolen Corvettes. He also told of conversations he’d had with Kuklinski in which the Iceman had admitted to killing Danny Deppner, “the quiet guy,” and spoken of his desire to eliminate Percy House. Questioned by Bob Carroll, DiVita paraphrased the Iceman’s statement to him the day before the arrest: Richie Kuklinski “said that everybody was disappearing around him. He felt like he was in this big circle and he was the only one left standing.”

  Rich Patterson was a bundle of nerves when it was his turn to testify about the trip he had taken to the woods of West Milford with Richard Kuklinski to dump Danny Deppner’s body. But despite his distressed appearance, he held to his statements under vigorous cross-examination. As with Barbara Deppner, the jury did not take his nervousness as a symptom of guilt or lying. They saw it as fear of the Iceman.

  Darlene Pecoraro, the flight attendant who had taken over Rich Patterson’s studio apartment in Bergenfield years after the murder, gave testimony on the condition of the gold-colored carpeting in that apartment when she moved in, and Investigator Paul Smith followed with a description of how the bloodstain was discovered on the reverse side.

  Dr. Geetha Natarajan then provided expert testimony on the autopsies of Smith and Deppner. Her statements were precise and detailed, intentionally loaded with medical terminology.

  “If a person were to ingest a quantity of cyanide,” Bob Carroll asked her, “what would be the possible symptoms that could be manifested?”

  “The symptoms of cyanide poisoning will depend primarily on the dosage. The lethal dose—the amount that is necessary to kill a human being—of sodium or potassium cyanide is from thirty milligrams to about sixty or seventy milligrams.

  “Now if a smaller amount is consumed orally, smaller than thirty milligrams, the person will have a burning sensation on the roof of the mouth and the food pipe, and he will then have dizziness, headaches, confusion, depending on how hypoxic he gets or how much of the cyanide there is in the material he consumed and how much of it has blocked the cellular respiration.…”

  “How long does cyanide typically remain in a body after death?” Carroll then asked.

  “Cyanide is metabolized premortem.… The cyanide is broken down and converted in the liver. The person’s liver converts the cyanide which is lethal to an inert compound called thiocyanate which is nonlethal and it’s done by an enzyme reaction in the liver. The enzyme is rodense.…”

  It was Dr. Natarajan’s policy to bombard the jury with her technical knowledge whenever she testified in court. In her experience she had found that explaining medical issues in lay terms often lessened her credibility because juries tend to regard women doctors as somehow inferior to men. It was all right if they didn’t understand everything she said, just as long as they believed that she knew what she was talking about.

  Defense attorney Neal Frank repeatedly tried to poke holes in her testimony regarding Danny Deppner, pointing out that the cause of death was officially listed as “unknown” until it was determined that the deceased had been associated with Richard Kuklinski. It was only then that the cause of death had been amended to murder by poisoning. The defense presented other pathologists who raised other possibilities for the presence of pink lividity on the bodies of Smith and Deppner, but Dr. Michael Baden, medical examiner for the New York State Police and former ME for the city of New York, testified for the state and buttressed Dr. Natarajan’s findings in clear, unequivocal statements that did not go over the jurors’ heads.

  Yet despite all this condemning evidence, no one had actually witnessed Richard Kuklinski committing murder. As damning as all this testimony was, it was largely circumstantial. The prosecution’s job now was to prove that its contention—that Richard Kuklinski had killed Gary Smith and Danny Deppner with the help of cyanide—was consistent with the facts presented so far. Consistent. It was a word that Bob Carroll would hammer home in his summation. And to prove that these crimes were consistent with Richard Kuklinski’s regular pattern of behavior, he called the state’s most important witness, Special Agent Dominick Polifrone.

  On the afternoon of March 2, 1988, Dominick Polifrone sat in the front row of the courtroom, ready to take the stand. As the accused was brought in, their eyes locked. He hadn’t seen Richard Kuklinski face-to-face in more than a year, not since that December morning at the Vince Lombardi Service Area when they’d made their final plans to murder the “rich Jewish kid.” Though he was slightly nervous about testifying before the judge and jury, Dominick narrowed his eyes and met Kuklinski’s gaze without flinching. Just as at their first meeting at the doughnut shop, Dominick would not allow the Iceman to intimidate him.

  Kuklinski’s stare was cold. He was playing his intimidation game. But Dominick knew that he was playing with an empty hand.

  On the stand Dominick told of his undercover assignment, how he had worked to establish a relationship with Kuklinski, then, once that relationship had been established, how he had secretly recorded their conversations. Portions of the Nagra tapes were played in court, and the jury heard Richard Kuklinski in his own voice connect himself to the crimes of which he was accused.

  He was accused of using cyanide to kill Smith and Deppner. On tape he had explained to Dominick in great detail how to kill with cyanide, how to mix it in someone’s food, how you have to make sure to mix it in with something “gooky” so that it’s palatable to the intended victim.

  Richard Kuklinski was accused of putting cyanide on a hamburger and giving it to Gary Smith. On the tapes he had told Dominick Polifrone that he had put cyanide on a guy’s hamburger once and that the guy must have had “the constitution of a fucking bull” because it took him so long to die. This was consistent with the testimonies of Dr. Natarajan and Dr. Baden, who said that Gary Smith had been strangled probably because the cyanide didn’t appear to be working. It must have seemed that the dose wasn’t big enough. But in fact, Richard Kuklinski and Danny Deppner had just been impatient. Had they waited a few more minutes, the cyanide would have certainly killed Gary Smith.

  All through Dominick Polifrone’s testimony, Richard Kuklinski’s words came back to haunt him time and time again. The tapes played on and on, and for Richard Kuklinski this burden of proofs accumulated by the prosecution got heavier and heavier. On tape Kuklinski had spoken of his need for cyanide to take care of “a couple of rats.” In
one conversation he had told Dominick about “the pointer” who could send him to jail, and in another he had mentioned Percy House by name. From the testimonies of House and Barbara Deppner, it was already obvious to the jury that these two knew too much.

  The tapes rolled on, and the jury heard Richard Kuklinski lend his unique expertise to the plan to kill the “rich Jewish kid.” They heard about the egg sandwiches that Kuklinski would lace with cyanide. They learned how to dispose of a body in a fifty-five-gallon drum. They heard all about sealing a barrel and dumping it. They heard about disposing of the rich kid’s car after he was dead, selling it for parts and making it disappear. They heard Kuklinski’s warning to Dominick not to go back to the kid’s apartment more than once after they’d killed him because that was how guys got caught. The jury heard the expert advice of an old hand at murder.

  When it was all over, Dominick Polifrone had been on the stand for a day and a half, and Richard Kuklinski was buried under a landfill of his own words.

  Defense attorney Neal Frank attempted to paint a different picture, suggesting that all this talk was nothing more than that, just talk. He offered the possibility that his client was “blowing smoke” at the undercover agent, that he saw Dominick as a bad guy and felt that he had to project an equal image in order to do business with him. When you deal with people like “Dominick Provenzano,” as Frank admitted his client sometimes did, you had to brag, you had to inflate yourself and show that you could be bad, too.

  The jury didn’t buy it.

  After four weeks of testimony the jury took a total of four hours to reach its verdict.

  Richard Kuklinski was found guilty on all counts.

  On the murder charges, however, the jury did not find him guilty of murder by his own conduct. In the absence of eyewitness testimony on the murders and given the fact that Danny Deppner was the one who had actually strangled Gary Smith, the jurors did not feel that they could go all the way. In this sense the defense achieved its goal. This conviction could not carry the death penalty in New Jersey. Neal Frank had succeeded in saving his client’s life.

  After prolonged posttrial negotiations Richard Kuklinski returned to Judge Kuechenmeister’s courtroom on May 25, 1988, for sentencing. As he was led into the courtroom, Kuklinski spotted Dominick Polifrone sitting in the spectators’ section. “Hello, Dominick,” he said with a smile. “How ya doing?”

  “Good,” Dominick replied. “How’re you doing?”

  Even as he was about to face sentencing, Richard Kuklinski would not let on that any of this bothered him. He wouldn’t give Dominick Polifrone the satisfaction.

  The judge emerged from his chambers, and the proceedings began with Bob Carroll outlining the terms of an agreement Richard Kuklinski and his attorney had reached with the state. At the arrest Barbara Kuklinski had been charged with possession of an illegal weapon because she had been in the red Oldsmobile when the .25-caliber handgun was found under the seat. Kuklinski’s son, Dwayne, had also been facing a minor marijuana possession charge in an unrelated incident. In exchange for dropping these charges against his family, Richard Kuklinski agreed to confess to the murders of George Malliband and Louis Masgay, thereby saving everyone the agony of a second trial.

  Standing before Judge Kuechenmeister, Richard Kuklinski stated for the record, “I shot George Malliband five times.” When asked why, he replied, “It was … it was due to business.”

  As for Louis Masgay, “On July 1, 1981, I shot him once in the back of the head.”

  Judge Kuechenmeister then pronounced sentence. Citing the futility of commenting on the “depths of depravity reached in these cases,” the Time Machine imposed two life sentences on Richard Kuklinski—one for Smith and Deppner, the other for Malliband and Masgay. For Smith and Deppner, a mandatory sixty years would have to be served before parole could be considered—thirty years for each slaying, one consecutive to the other. For Malliband and Masgay, the same penalty was imposed. The two sixty-year terms would run concurrently.

  Richard Kuklinski was transferred to the Trenton State Prison in the state capital. From the north end of this maximum-security facility, inmates can see the sharp angles of the nearby Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex, where Deputy Attorney General Bob Carroll’s office is located.

  After sentencing was passed, Dominick Polifrone was asked to comment on the Iceman’s future.

  Dominick looked down and showed a weary but satisfied smile before he answered. “For twenty-one months the last thing I saw at night before I shut my eyes and the first thing I saw in the morning when I opened them was Richard Kuklinski’s face. But now, for the rest of his life, every time Richie goes to bed at night and every time he wakes up in the morning, he’s gonna be seeing mine.”

  Richard Kuklinski will not be eligible for parole until he is one hundred and eleven years old.

  AFTERWORD

  In many ways Richard Kuklinski remains a locked box. At his arraignment Deputy Attorney General Bob Carroll referred to Kuklinski as a “killing machine,” but the exact number of people he has killed is unknown. Kuklinski no longer maintains that he is an innocent man, and he has estimated his personal body count to be around a hundred victims. From time to time he will allude to murders he may have committed, refusing to give whole names, being deliberately vague about dates and places. His only complaint with his conviction is that he wasn’t tried for the “right things,” and therefore, the state didn’t get him “fair and square.”

  As for the plan to kill the “rich Jewish kid,” he claims that he never intended to go through with it. He also claims that he never intended to murder “Dominick Provenzano.” Yet in a statement made to the police two days after Kuklinski’s arrest, John Sposato, who had represented himself as Tim, the arms dealer, said that Kuklinski did indeed intend to kill Dominick that very Saturday when they would have lured him down to a warehouse in Delaware to complete the big arms deal for the Irish Republican Army. Sposato had been arrested on the same day as Kuklinski, but he chose to cooperate with the state and willingly confessed to his involvement with Kuklinski. Charges against him were dropped, and he was released. He later assisted the Secret Service and the New Jersey State Police with an investigation into an international arms sales and currency counterfeiting scheme.

  Exactly what was going on in Kuklinski’s mind on the morning of December 17, 1986, may never be known. When the three egg sandwiches were recovered from the trunk of Kuklinski’s red Oldsmobile, the contents were combined so that the state chemist could accurately measure the amount of quinine present in the sandwiches against the total amount he had previously put into the square brown glass vial. But in doing this, the number of sandwiches that were poisoned was never determined.

  If only one sandwich had been poisoned, it’s possible that Kuklinski did intend to go back and fulfill his part of the bargain with Dominick. But if two sandwiches contained the simulated cyanide, perhaps Kuklinski had decided to kill both the rich kid and Dominick. The promise of the big arms deal had been dangled in front of his face for months, but nothing had materialized. Perhaps he had lost faith in Dominick and decided to settle for the bird in the hand, killing these two and taking the entire eighty-five thousand dollars that the rich kid was supposed to be bringing to buy three kilos of cocaine.

  Or it may have been that Richard Kuklinski’s obsessive love for his wife overruled his desire to make the score. When he learned of Barbara’s illness that morning, returning home to take care of her may have become his paramount concern. Though he did prepare the sandwiches, perhaps he changed his mind. Getting her to the doctor may have become the only thing that really mattered to him that morning.

  The police never found the two-tone blue van Kuklinski had told Dominick he had waiting just down the turnpike from the Vince Lombardi Service Area. He did not get a vehicle from Hoss DiVita in Connecticut the day before, and John Sposato was apparently so broke that day he couldn’t even afford to rent one.

 
Kuklinski has also reasoned, “Who would eat a cold egg sandwich?” No one, not even a cocaine addict, would eat something that had been hanging around as long as those three sandwiches had.

  But if in fact, he did not have a van that morning, perhaps he never intended to kill the “rich kid” at all. But he had poisoned at least one of the sandwiches, so who did he intend to kill?

  Perhaps the sandwich was actually intended for John Sposato. Kuklinski had never forgiven him for showing up at his house with his two goons. Overweight and slovenly, Sposato was hardly a picky eater. The fact that an egg sandwich was cold and a little stale might not have mattered that much to him.

  Another possibility is that Richard Kuklinski was just lazy that day. Why bother killing the rich kid for half of eighty-five thousand dollars when all the while he intended to rip off Dominick later in the week for half a million? Kuklinski knew the police were after him for murder. Why add another killing to his résumé for a relatively paltry amount of money? He didn’t know who this rich kid was, and he had always been very cautious when he killed. Despite Dominick’s assurances that the kid wasn’t connected to the mob, Kuklinski may have feared that their intended victim could very well have had Mafia ties. A spoiled rotten cokehead with money to burn was just the kind of friend a wiseguy would want. Perhaps Kuklinski figured killing this kid simply wasn’t worth the risk.

  But only Richard Kuklinski knows why he didn’t show up to kill the “rich Jewish kid” that morning. It is one of many items in the locked box.

  Though he admits to freezing Louis Masgay’s body and keeping it on ice for more than two years, Kuklinski will not say where he kept the body all that time. A freezer big enough to hold a man would have to have left some kind of mark on the floor of his rented garage in North Bergen, but the police found no hard evidence that a unit that large had ever been there. The refrigerated lockers inside Mr. Softee’s ice-cream truck would have been big enough to hold a body with room to spare, but when asked about all this, Richard Kuklinski just smiles.