69 South
Podcast 69 South is about mystery, true crime, attempting to find the truth in a world full of chaos. We dig deep in to current and past true crime incidents. Reporting what we find to our listeners. We want to become your reliable source for all things relevant, while we live in a society that is truly lost.
69 South
A Life Twisted by Violence: Richard Kuklinski
Witness the chilling transformation of Richard Kuklinski, a man whose life spiraled from a traumatic childhood into the heart of New Jersey’s criminal underworld. What drives a person to commit such unspeakable acts? This episode unravels the dark roots that gave rise to "The Iceman." From enduring horrific abuse at the hands of his father to escalating his violent tendencies on the streets, we explore how tragic family events shaped Richard into a feared contract killer. Discover the unsettling details of his early crimes and the brutal methods he employed as he navigated through his complex relationships and brutal assignments for mob bosses.
Explore the depths of Kuklinski's violent career, from his tumultuous marriage to Linda to his ruthless involvement with the Gambino crime family. We'll take you through the terrifying moments when his personal and professional lives collided, revealing the savage measures he took to maintain his fearsome reputation. From truck hijackings to his sadistic enforcement tactics, Richard's life story is a harrowing look into the making of a cold-blooded killer. Don't miss this episode for an unfiltered look at the grim reality of mob enforcement and the chilling legacy of Richard Kuklinski.
69 South 69 South 69 South 69 South. Welcome everyone to Podcast 69 South, where we cuss and discuss true crime, cold cases, current events and hot topics, along with our state of society today. This is your trigger warning. Our podcast content is produced for adult listeners, 18 years of age and older. We discuss situations that may be offensive and triggering to some listeners. Sit back, relax and enjoy.
Speaker 1:Okay. Law enforcement authorities have arrested one of the most notorious contract killers in state history. He is such a cold-blooded killer they call him the Iceman. This is unwarranted, unnecessary. These guys watch too many movies. A self-employed Bergen County man is behind bars, charged with five murders, and prosecutors are investigating his involvement in dozens more. After being convicted of two murders, he confessed to two others in court today. I shot George Malabon five times, Louis Mazgay on July 1st 1981. I shot him once in the back of the head. I've never felt sorry for anything I've done other than hurting my family. The only thing I felt sorry for, anything I've done other than hurting my family. It's the only thing I feel sorry for Welcome to 69 South Podcast.
Speaker 2:I am Chop and I'm your host today. Julie is still investigating that big series of episodes we're going to do so. Stay tuned for that. Today we're going to talk about Richard Kuklinski the Iceman. I know a lot of you have heard of him and a lot of you probably have not. He got his nickname the Iceman because he liked to use an ice pick to kill some people. But, as you're going to find out today, he had several methods of killing people. A lot of them are pretty obscure. A lot of them are pretty sick. So heed the warning at the beginning of this episode. We're going to go ahead and get right into it. Start at the beginning of Richard's life and get all the way to the point of his death.
Speaker 2:Richard's father was named Stanley Kuklinski. He's known as Stan. He was a Polish immigrant from Warsaw, poland. He was what they call a brake man for the railroad. His mother was an Irish woman, anna McNally. Both her parents died and her and her two brothers grew up in an orphanage. So that was always rough when a little kid grows up in an orphanage. Not much was reported on Richard's father's early childhood life, but we do have some information on Anna McNally's life. She was reportedly molested in the orphanage by a priest at the age of 10. And she also said the nuns like to beat literally beat the fear of God into her. No, stan Kuklinski, he liked to drink and Miss Anna quickly found out that she had been married to a very jealous man. And when he did drink he liked to take his jealousy and his rage out physically on his wife. Back in the 20s and 30s, divorce pretty much wasn't an option. Man, you got married and you stuck with it. So she was stuck in the marriage.
Speaker 2:Richard was born on April 11th 1935. Now he did have a slightly older brother named Florian. He was named after Stanley's father and old Stan. He liked to beat his kids too. It was said that he beat the boys, and they were so scared of the father that Richard would literally piss himself when he heard his dad yelling or coming through the door from work drunk. And as does situations like that, it usually progresses over time. On Monday, february 1st of 1941, stanley went a little bit too far and he beat Florian, richard's big brother, to death. He was seven years old. Stanley has told his wife, when the authorities got there, that the little boy had fell down the staircase and back then, just like you, had to stick with the marriages, especially with a woman beating husband, you pretty much did what he said, or when the authorities left, you'd probably get your ass whooped again.
Speaker 2:Richard was five years old at the time of his brother's death and after that, since he only had one child to beat on, richard took the blunt of the. He basically took up the slack of it. Sometimes the beatings were so bad and he was bruised up so much he couldn't even go to school. Now Richard Kuklinski was a frail kid back then. You can't really tell by the way he looked when he became infamous, because then he was about 6'5 and about 300 pounds. Eventually, a little sister, roberta, and a little brother, joseph, kuklinski, came into the picture. Not much was ever said about the sister, roberta, but the brother Joseph ended up being a killer as well. In 1971, joseph Kuklinski he went to prison for killing and raping a 12-year-old girl.
Speaker 2:As the children got older, richard Kuklinski said that his father started caring less and less about the family and he started drinking more and laying off of his jobs and he would end up bringing women home having sex with them in front of the family, just didn't give two fucks about him. Pretty much, richard said he often fantasized about killing his dad at a very young age. Finally, old Stanley got tired of taking care of his family and he split and he ended up shacking up with another Polish woman. Richard was the oldest boy and he was left there to help his mother. You know, fend for the family, help him put cash, pay rent, buy food, help old mom out. Well, he started committing crimes at a very young age, richard said. When he first started stealing to bring money into the household, his mom beat the shit out of him like his dad used to over stealing. But I guess after a while the money coming in was you know it was really helping. But I guess after a while the money coming in was you know it was really helping. So she basically said fuck it and she just let him do it because it was bringing in food. Also, at a very young age, just like Henry Lee Lucas, richard had a weird problem with catching small animals and torturing them and lighting cats on fire. Unlike Henry Lee Lucas, it was never reported that he was doing nasty things with the animals, just torturing them and killing them.
Speaker 2:Richard said that he committed his first murder when he was about 12, 13 years old. See him and his mother. They lived in a housing projects in New Jersey. There was a boy there named Charlie Lane and he was the leader of this gang in the district where they lived in. And the gang would always be hanging around and they'd catch Richard alone and they'd call him dumb Polack and they'd rough him up, beat the shit out of him, just shun the hell out of him. Back then he had raggedy clothes because his mother was raising three children. They were poor.
Speaker 2:Richard got tired of that shit and on January of 49, he thought he'd get old Charlie Lane back. So he took a two inch wood pole and he stopped Charlie Lane and he waited till Charlie was alone walking home one night and Richard hid behind a building and waited till Charlie come around the corner and all the years of teasing and frustrating and name calling and ass whooping just come out all at once. He said he just went into a blind rage and he beat Charlie until the boy had no life in him at all. So Richard stole a car and he put Charlie in the trunk of it. Like I said, richard was skinny and frail at this time. So it was January. He used the ice on the road to drag Charlie over to the stolen car. He put him in a trunk. He drove about two hours away and he put Charlie on a frozen pond. Then he got in the trunk of the car and he used an axe. He knocked out all of Charlie's teeth. He cut off his fingertips and then he buried him in the woods there To pass his time. When he was around that age he would steal crime magazines and I guess that's where he got the idea for you know the fingertips and the teeth. So he was already breaking into his role as not being able to get caught.
Speaker 2:After Charlie was gone, the rest of the gang kind of died down a little bit and Richard started to get some confidence in him. So he methodically got each and every one of them boys by themselves and he ended up whooping all their asses. This come out of Klinsky's mouth and I'll tell you what. After watching the interviews and doing all the investigation that I've done on this man, I believe it. Richard was starting to make a little name for himself and at age 14, he quit school. He started hustling, pulling the pool halls and he got pretty good at it and a few of the other rough boys in the neighborhood started clicking up with him and they started their own gang. They called their gang Coming Up Roses and the reason they called them that is because they said if anybody fucked with us they was going to be plant fertilizer kind of like pushing up daisies today, I guess. So just in the little neighborhoods he got to be known as a pretty tough MF-er around New Jersey. They were him and his gang were doing robberies, they were doing holdups and eventually he got him a little .38 from a pool hall out of a pool game he hustled some guy out
Speaker 2:of. He said his second murder was a drunk cop they called Doyle. Richard said he beat Doyle in a pool game and the cops started calling him dumb Polack like old Charlie did. So he did something to Doyle. He caught him off guard, waited until he went out of the bar and old Doyle passed out in his car. Richard took the gas can out of his car, went and filled it up, dumped it on the passed out Doyle, set his ass on fire, stood back and watched him burn. I guess this was the beginning of him liking to watch people suffer. They say when a child goes through a lot of pain and that shit all stays bottled up inside him that somehow it makes him feel better to watch other people suffer, like when you're a kid's bullied when he's younger he may bully people when he gets
Speaker 2:older. Now word travels through the street pretty quick and it wasn't very long that Carmine Genovese no relation to Vito Genovese, the leader of the Genovese crime family at that time, but he was still a rich and powerful dude in New Jersey. He had his own big crime syndicate going on. They were doing gambling houses. Now, richard being the little leader of this gang, carmine Genovese got at Richard. He gave him a picture of a guy, said the guy lives in Lincoln Park. He said I got a little test for you. The only thing he said was this dude's got to
Speaker 2:go. Another little dude in Richard's gang was named John Wheeler. Richard told him being the boss of the gang. He told him he was going to be the trigger man. So they jumped in the ride and they went over to Lincoln Park and they seen the dude come out of a bar and little John Wheeler froze up. Richard was the driver at the time. They followed the guy to another spot. Again, john Wheeler froze up. They followed him to another spot Without hesitation or saying anything. Richard got out, shot the dude in the back of the head, jumped back in the car and they drove off. It was never talked about again, but with that they had passed the test to the crime syndicate that they were doing the hit
Speaker 2:for. They started making some pretty big money. You're talking about 16, 17-year-old kids. They were making enough money. They were flying back and forth to Las Vegas 16, 17 year old kids. And they were making enough money. They were flying back and forth to Las Vegas. They was buying cars. They were doing big things, as they say
Speaker 2:nowadays. Well, john Wheeler and Jack Dubrowski he was another, jack was another kid in the gang. They started getting real ballsy and they, without saying anything to Richard, they held up a card game of the DeCantes. It was another crime family and a soldier told Richard had a meeting with him and he said hey, man, your two dudes was recognized and you're the leader of this gang, you're the man we deal with. So basically, you're responsible for these two dudes. These dudes held up the rival gang. So what you need to do is you need to go basically take care of your two dudes. These dudes held up the rival gang. So what you need to do is you need to go basically take care of your two dudes and pay all the money back. And realize, folks, it wasn't about the money, it was a respect thing. Richard was a little fucked up about it. I mean he, he begged the dude. He was like please, man, don't make me kill my buddies. But dude wasn't, he wasn't sliding on it. So he left that little meeting and he went and found his buddy Jack. You got to think these were his two of his best friends in the
Speaker 2:world. When you live in the projects and especially in New Jersey back in the days, man, when you had a gang and you wasn't, you know, getting along with your family and shit, the gang is your family. He went and found his buddy and he shot him right in the head. He left him lay right in the street where he shot him at. He was about 19 years old at this time. That puts four murders under his belt. He said sometimes I would leave New Jersey and I would go to Manhattan. And the first time I went to Manhattan there was an old bum on the street kept begging me for money and he pissed me off. He said I pulled out my knife and stabbed the shit out of him till he was dead. He said I only did it because he got on my nerves. That's about the time he started using an ice pick. He said I just like to get drunk and the drunker I got the madder I'd get and I just ended up smoking
Speaker 2:somebody. Now, a little bit later, the 25 year old Linda that he was with, she ended up getting pregnant. Richard said he married her but he didn't love her. He just basically married her for the child and uh, you know that's never a good reason just to marry somebody, but that's what he did. I guess he saw, you know, the broken home that he came from and he was just trying to do the right thing, even though he was always doing the wrong shit. He ended up having two sons by her. The oldest one was Richard Jr and the youngest one was
Speaker 2:David. Now, with two kids and a wife to support, he had to hustle even harder. He was going to pool hall making a little money winning pool, making a little money hustling pool, and with those pool halls, you know, always comes in trouble. He said one night he was in a pool hall and he got to a fight with a dude that was just as tough as him. He said that dude whipped his ass. And later on, when he was leaving the pool hall, that dude and two of his buddies tried to jack him and his money and take his ride. Well, they didn't know that old richard had a little 38 snub nose under his coat. He said he pulled it out, shot all three of them. He then said he quickly threw him in a car and rode that car down to the hudson river. Never told a soul about that until the interviews of the ice man either. You got to realize a lot of this shit was going on. This was in the 1940s in New Jersey. New Jersey is a pretty small state and back in the 40s the population was only about 4 million, so that's a lot of people per capita. See the reason that he was having to hustle so much pool and do the small
Speaker 2:shit. Now, as the crime boss Carmine, he had been in prison and he got out. He found Richard when he first got out. He said and I got a job for you, so missing that bigger money that he was making. When the crime boss was out, he jumped right on it. He said Richard, I got somebody I want you to take care of. Man. He said this dude done something to my best friend's wife. He said this one's going to be a little bit different though, man. He said not only do I want him to disappear, but he said I want you to bring back a piece of him and I also want you to make him suffer for what he did to my buddy's
Speaker 2:wife. Richard found this dude man, and the guy was a car salesman. So Richard parked his own car down the road quite a ways and he walked into the car a lot. He saw the guy and he was like hey, he was acting like he was interested in buying a car. So he asked him can we take a test drive in the car? And you know the car salesman was like sure. So they jumped in the car. Richard started driving to his own car. They got up to where Richard Carr was. I'm sure it was parked in an alley or someplace a little seclusive. Richard got out and he told the guy I want to look in the trunk for something. Guy got out. Richard popped the trunk when the dude kind of looked
Speaker 2:in. Richard took a pair of brass knuckles and knocked the dude out. Well, after he knocked the dude out, he put tape around the dude's ankles. He put tape around his hands, drove him about two hours away, he said, and he tied the guy to a tree. He took a big ratchet you know the kind that you put sockets on and he broke dude's wrist, broke dude's ankles. Make sure he wasn't going to go anywhere. And he's also making him suffer at the same time. Then Richard said I cut all the dude's fingers off. And when he said that I thought that he was going to say that, hey, I took the fingers back to Carmine, you know, to prove it and bring back the peace. No, he didn't stop there. He ended up cutting the dude's head off and putting it in a bag. He took that bag with dude's head in it back to Carmine. Carmine gave him $10,000. That's a pretty big
Speaker 2:lick. Back then Richard was doing a lot of stuff for different mob bosses. But the one thing that kind of screwed Richard is he was Polish. So not being Italian man, you could never be a made man. So not being a made man for any certain crime family. That means he could do work for all the crime families, kind of like he wasn't contracted out to one. Just like every, every job does the jobs get bigger and better and pays
Speaker 2:more. Well, carmine had the soldier that was working for him named Arthur de Leguilno. He was stealing fromine and not only did Carmine tell Richard he wanted this guy to suffer, but he also wanted to humiliate him too. So he told Richard after you kill the guy, he said I want you to take all his credit cards and I want you to shove them up his ass. So when they find him, they'll find him ass first, with his credit cards and his money up there, and they'll know why he got killed. Kind of send him a message, kind of thing. Richard was happy to do it and, like I said, the dude was a soldier for the crime family. So he had a driver and his nephew there with him. So richard just killed them just because they was right there in the same spot and was in the way. No witnesses now around this time, him and his wife and his two kids, they started spending less time, less time
Speaker 2:together. Well, richard found out that Linda had had an affair. While he was out doing his thing he found the dude and he literally beat the dude almost to death but to make him suffer, he beat him literally within an inch of his life. He broke 99 percent of the dude's bones, I think. I think the report said that only one of his femurs weren't broke. He also took Linda and he cut off her nipples so her breasts wouldn't be attractive anymore. That's some cruel ass shit right there and I'm sorry this is so graphic folks, but I'm just telling the story Now, as does this
Speaker 2:mob. Life catches up with everybody. It caught up with the boss car mine and he was making dinner in his house and somebody snuck up on him and shot him in the back of the head right in his own kitchen. That did spook him a little bit and his crime work kind of dried up a little bit because that was the main dude he was getting the work from and the dude that was always vouching for him. So he ended up getting a legit job driving a truck and loading trucks and before long that money wasn't enough for him. So he started hijacking the trucks, started selling the goods, stealing his own trucks that he was driving, selling the goods from that. I guess that became pretty lucrative for him when he was 26, everything
Speaker 2:changed. He met an American, italian woman named Barbara Patrick. Now, barbara knew nothing about his criminal activities or that he was a serial killer or a hit man for the mob. All she knew is they met at this trucking company. They dated for a little bit. She was a lot younger and she was a beautiful young lady. They said he was a jealous man and he treated her as such real
Speaker 2:possessive. Well, she ended up getting pregnant and while she was pregnant she ended up taking off to Miami and hiding out. Well, this just drove Richard crazy and he started hounding her family, harassing her mother and finally, after a good little bit of time I believe it was about a year or so her mother ended up giving Richard the money and told her where she was at, to her surprise when he showed up on her doorstep. And she was pretty pissed off at her mother for doing that. But to keep her family safe and just because she feared the man so much, she ended up marrying him. But he was still mean and real possessive to her. One time he caught her smoking cigarettes while she was pregnant. He took her outside, stomped on her feet, eventually breaking some of her toes. He made her sleep outside for a day or two and she ended up losing the baby. It was never reported if she lost the baby because of any physical abuse that he did to her at that time, but I don't know. It was kind of suggestive a little
Speaker 2:bit. But they kept chugging along at the relationship and in 1962, they moved from Miami, never elaborated on any reason, but he wanted to go straight man, he really cared for Barbara. So he got a job with her uncle doing film work. He got pretty good at being the printer guy and you know that money didn't last long being a legit job, so he started bootlegging Disney films. She ended up getting pregnant again, lost a second baby Still no explanation for that. She ended up getting pregnant a third time, lost that baby. She did end up getting pregnant the fourth time and had a successful pregnancy and so was born Merrick they called her. She was a real sick child and she spent a lot of time in the hospital. But by all accounts Richard was a model father. He really loved his daughter, took care of her. He was right there for her all the time. You know, the best he could. Not too long after that they gave birth to a second daughter they called Christian. So same old story two kids and a
Speaker 2:wife. Money started getting short again. Shit he was doing wasn't paying the bills, so he took on a hijacking job himself. A guy paid him to hijack a truck of Casio watches and I'm sure back then in New Jersey a whole truckload of them that probably paid a pretty penny. Well, when Kuklinski hijacked the truck, he took him to the guy that was soliciting him per se to hijack the truck, and the dude wasn't going to pay him. So Kuklinski pulled out his gun. He shot dude and both of his associates that were there trying to basically take the truck off his hands for nothing. Well, that pissed Richards off. So he took out his pistol right there and shot the dude, and the dude had three of his associates waiting to unload the truck to kind of have his dudes back too. So him and his two associates ended up shooting the other three dudes too. They ended up taking the truck for themselves and they sold it to a guy named Phil
Speaker 2:Solomon. Now this dude is going to be a very important name in this story because he ended up being one of his associates for quite a long time. Well, phil, he had a store over in Pennsylvania and he would take a lot of stolen goods from guys that was doing the hijackings and he would fleece this stuff off in his store in Pennsylvania. It was kind of out of New Jersey, so that's how he was getting away with that. At the same time he had got involved in the film industry. So he started bootlegging porn and that led him to the Gambino crime family, which the Gambino crime family. At the time they had a lockdown on all the adult shops in the United States. If you was going to sell a porn movie, you had to go through the Gambinos or you would pay dearly. He started making pretty good loot with
Speaker 2:that. But one day a union film worker he started noticing that Kaczynski was spending a lot of time with the equipment and working a lot of extra, extra hours doing this porn stuff. So, this union film worker man, he took a notice to it and he got Richard in the back room one day and started accusing him of doing this type of shit. Well, that pissed him off. He ended up taking his pistol right out there and shooting the dude. Well, just like everything else, he was pretty meticulous that he took the dude outside of his wife's uncle's film shop. Pretty meticulous, sat, he took the dude outside of his wife's uncle's film shop, wrapped a rope around his neck, threw him in a tree and everybody ended up thinking the dude killed himself. Nobody ever questioned the suicide, nobody ever thought another thing about it. As you can see, we're starting to get quite a bit of number of deaths contributed to Richard Kuklinski. Let's just take a second and hear how he responds to a question of how many people he did kill, and then we'll move on with the story.
Speaker 1:How many people have you killed? I'm at an approximate guess, approximate we'll go with more than 100. How do you feel about killing? I don't, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't have a feeling one way or the other.
Speaker 2:I think if I had a choice, I wouldn't. That's pretty cold man the way he said that, but the thing is about. It is I think he did have a choice and a lot of times like he self-admittedly went to Manhattan and was just killing for fun. But we're going to get right back into the timeline here. Just like everybody else in the mob industry, they want their piece of the pie. Well, he ended up coming across Roy DeMaio, and that's going to be a pretty good name in this story too.
Speaker 2:Roy DeMaio was a psychopath. He was also a hit man for the Gambino family and there became an issue one time with a payment on a stolen truck worth of goods and Roy DeMaio and two of his henchmen ended up jumping on Richard and Richard knowing that these dudes were in deep with the Gambinos man. He just basically had to take an ass whooping and they put him in the hospital. But keep in mind, he kept that in mind for years and years and years and never let that shit go. He knew one day in the back of his head he was going to get them three guys for that. That did kind of calm him down a little bit and he kind of focused on making money. For a little bit of a time period he started making real, legit money. So he moved his family to a super nice home in Dumont, new Jersey. He spoiled his family. He bought his kids anything they wanted. They had an in-ground pool put in. It was a regular-like neighborhood with middle-class people, upper middle class. They had cookouts all-American family when he was in the neighborhood. They had cookouts all-American family when he was in the neighborhood. Keep in mind at this time people he had claimed to kill over 70 people.
Speaker 2:He started getting more ruthless in his killings, started enjoying more torture, started enjoying watching people suffer. He allegedly took a guy who raped a 14-year-old girl. He took his dude out, tied him to a tree. He ended up cutting the dude's genitals off. This was also for the Gambino crime family. But he would take a knife and he cut slits all over this dude's skin while he was tied to a tree and he would rub salt in the dude's wounds and just sit there and watch the dude scream and suffer.
Speaker 2:And that wasn't it. After the guy wasn't really suffering, no more. On all that, richard put the dude in a straight jacket, took him out and threw him in the bay where he couldn't even swim and he drowned. But the dude was probably happy about that. I know I would be. I'd be ready to get that shit over with by then. Ready to get that shit over with by then. He said because of what that dude did, that murder and watching that dude suffer and torturing him didn't bother him a bit. He said he was cool as a fan when he left that guy and he, going down the road, headed back to Roy DeMeo, the guy that hired him to do the deal to the little child raper and he got into a road rage accident with about three dudes.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess they followed him into an alley, richard Kuklinski said, and they didn't realize that he had a pistol. He shot all three of them, dudes Calmly, pulled off like nothing had happened, went straight to DeMayo and gave DeMayo the little baggie of dude's genitals that he just cut off. Richard Kuklinski was slick man in what he did. He never talked about nothing, he always went alone. He always wore gloves.
Speaker 2:In 1976, carlo Gambino died and around that time Roy DeMeo became a made man and he was pretty close to Paul Castellano. Paul Castellano wasn't as smart as Carlo Gambino. Paul Castellano did have made a lot of mistakes. He was getting tracked by the FBI Bugs in his house, bugs on his phone, and he didn't ever even notice it. That was a good little time before Richard's downfall. After that there's a whole lot more people that get involved. There's a whole lot more murders and Kuklinski changed up his murder method. He started using cyanide, which inevitably caused his downfall and got him caught. We're going to get into that next week. I appreciate you joining this week and I can't wait to tell you the rest of the story. I think it's the best part of the second part, so stay tuned for next week. No-transcript.
