The CAT scan indicated no stroke. The biopsy indicated no cancer. Yet, Richard’s health continued to decline. His blood pressure fluctuated abnormally: first it was high, then low.
The holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, all passed, and Richard didn’t call his family, as he always had done. The family became very concerned. I now tried to visit Richard at the hospital, but was told by a prison official that was not possible, that only immediate family could visit. Barbara and Chris did go to see him and were shocked by his gaunt appearance due to his loss of weight.
“It looked,” Barbara recently explained, “like he lost a hundred pounds. He spoke in little more than a whisper. He told us ‘they’re trying to kill me,’ that we should call the police; ‘call the media,’ he said. At this point I thought—perhaps incorrectly, I’m thinking now—that he was just delusional. The police were there, I mean guarding him, three guys in plainclothes and two uniform cops. He was in a nice room at the end of the hall. We sat there for forty-five minutes. He was drifting in and out. He then said, ‘If I don’t leave the hospital it’s because I was murdered.’”
“‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why are you saying that, Richard?’ He did not answer me. Chris had not seen him in quite a few years, and she was shocked at how thin he’d become; for that matter I was, too. I now asked him why he had signed himself out of the hospital. He said he did not sign himself out, which, of course, I thought was…strange.”
Barbara explained that she absolutely did not love Richard, that any warm feelings she once had for him were long gone, but still he was the father of her children and she wanted to make sure anything that could be done for him was done.
Richard’s health continued to fail. Doctor Wong told Barbara he didn’t think Richard would survive. Barbara and her daughter Merrick visited him again on February 9. He looked still worse. He could now barely speak. Though he did, again, tell Barbara and now Merrick that he was being killed…murdered, he said.
Merrick was very traumatized by her father’s appearance due to his illness. She still very much loved her dad, indeed loved him more than ever, and she prayed for him and tried to tell him he’d be OK, that he should will himself to get better. Again, however, he just managed to say that he was being “murdered.”
“By who, Dad—who?” Merrick asked.
“Them,” he whispered. “If I don’t get out of here alive, it’s because I was murdered,” he said yet again.
Distraught, Merrick held her father’s hand, a once powerful killing tool, now weak and frail, pocked with black and blue marks from the IV needles. That day there were four IVs feeding him different fluids and medications. Barbara was informed that he was also bleeding internally, that blood was in his urine, and issuing from his rectum. Doctor Wong said it was probably an ulcer, which Barbara found kind of odd for Richard had no history at all of ulcers.
Merrick left her father that day crying, upset, and traumatized, remembering how he so diligently cared for her when she was a child, when she was in the hospital. She was heartbroken to see her father, a mere shell of the powerful, omnipotent man he had once been.
Doctor Wong called Barbara on the evening of February 28th and said Richard did not have long, and, in fact, he passed away Sunday morning March 5. Barbara was relieved. “We finally have closure,” she said.
Richard was laid out at the Gaiga Funeral Home in Little Falls, New Jersey. The service was attended by only the immediate family, me, Gaby Monet, and friends of Merrick, Chris, and Dwayne. There was no priest.
Barbara said, “If we had a priest eulogize him, Richard would have sat up in his coffin and said ‘get him the f—out of here!’”
In all the time I spent with Richard, it was hard not to grow fond of him. I know people will be offended by my saying this, ask how I could feel warmly about such a cold-blooded killer. I did not know Richard on the outside world. By the time I’d met him he’d been incarcerated for many years. I found Richard to be warm and considerate and very polite, in a word—a gentleman. He always asked after me and my family and was solicitous and thoughtful when I couldn’t visit because I had the flu. Truth is, he was a hell of a nice guy, and certainly one of the funniest people I’d ever known. He had a keen, dead-pan sense of humor (pun intended), that was very rare indeed. One time, I remember, I told him, “Richard you are the funniest guy I’ve ever known; you should have been a stand-up comedian.”
He said, “Yeah, I’ll come out on stage with my tacky prison garb, say good evening ladies and gents. I got a hundred jokes that’ll kill you, and if they don’t kill you, I will,” laughing as he said this.
My meeting and getting to know Richard Kuklinski so intimately was a unique, sobering experience—an education—and made me much more aware of the nuts and bolts, the wheels and pulleys that make a psychopath work. Regardless of my warm feelings for Richard, however, I have no doubt that he was a particularly cunning, highly motivated psychopath. In all my interaction with him, I never lost sight of the fact that he was a very dangerous man, a human predator the likes of which have not been seen in modern times. Personally, I came to view Richard’s life as a classic case of a severely abused child, filled with seething rage, becoming an abuser, and turning into a remorseless killer. As of this writing the tests to determine if Richard had been poisoned have not been completed.
Rest in peace Richard Leonard Kuklinski.
POSTSCRIPT
Detective Pat Kane was promoted to lieutenant before retiring from the New Jersey State Police. Today he is working as a fire ranger and loves being outdoors.
ATF Agent Dominick Polifrone is presently retired. He had been training younger agents in successful undercover work.
Bob Carroll retired from the state attorney general’s office and today is a practicing attorney; his specialty is criminal law.
Stanley Kuklinski died of a heart attack in 1979. Until the end of his life Richard regretted not having killed him.
Richard’s sister, Roberta, moved to the West Coast, and he didn’t hear from her in the thirty years leading up to his death.
Barbara Kuklinski has severe arthritis, chain-smokes, loves to read, loves her grandchildren. “My whole life,” she says, “is my children and grandchildren.”
Charges against Sammy Gravano for the murder of NYPD detective Peter Calabro were dropped the day after Richard Kuklinski died.
Roy DeMeo’s boss, Nino Gaggi, died in a federal prison of a heart attack.
The police never discovered any of the videos Richard made of feeding people to rats.
HBO’s Gaby Monet had been planning to do yet another special on Richard Kuklinski, this one entitled The Ice Man Cold Case File, which would have explored more unsolved murders of Richard’s.
Detective Robert Anzalotti was promoted to sergeant because he was able to get Richard to talk about murders he committed that the police knew nothing about.
Richard’s three children, Merrick, Chris, and Dwayne, are doing very well; all of them live in New Jersey.
Author Philip Carlo is living in southern Italy, working on a new book.
You may contact author Philip Carlo at:
PCarlo1847@aol.com
www.philipcarlo.com
INDEX
abortion
Academy of Holy Angels (Demarest)
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau of (ATF)
Allstate Insurance Company
Anastasia, Albert
animals, torture of
Another Way (Guttenberg, New Jersey)
Anzalotti, Robert
Archer’s (Cliffside Park)
Argrila, Anthony
DeMeo and
Armond (Barbara’s uncle)
Armond Meatpacking Company (Jersey City)
Arnold, Louis
assassination techniques See also poisons; rats
Ativan
Atkins, Jon
Baden, Michael
Bella Luna (Hoboken)
Bennul
, Mark
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
Bergen County Superior Court
Bergin Hunt and Fish Club (Queens)
bestiality
Bilotti, Tommy
Bob (Roy DeMeo’s fishing trip murder victim)
boilermakers
Bonanno crime family
Bonanno, Joe
Bonventre, Caesar
Borelli, Henry
Brasi, Luca
Brazil
breaking-and-entering operations
Briguglio, Sal
Bronson, Charles
Brooklyn Credit Union
Buccino, Bob
Bucks County (PA) caves
bullies (bullying)
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)
Calabro, Carmella
Calabro, Melissa
Calabro, Peter
contract killing of
Camorra crime family
Canarsie, Brooklyn
Capeci, Jerry
capo, defined
Capone, Al
caporegime (capodecina), defined
Caracappa, Steven
Carl (Barbara’s cousin)
Carmella (Barbara’s grandmother)
Carroll, Bob
current update on
Operation Ice Man and
trial of Kuklinski and
cartoons, pirating of
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Casso, Anthony “Gaspipe”
Castaway, The (Miami)
Castellano, Kathy Gambino
Castellano, Paul
appointment to head Gambino family
contract killing of
DeMeo induction and
Esposito killings and
Galante killing and
Catholic Church
caves of Bucks County Pennsylvania
Cayman Islands
Chemtex Plant (Jersey City)
Chicago, and De Peti
children, love of
Christmas
Cisek, Veronica
cocaine
Coming Up Roses gang
consigliere, defined
contabile, defined
contract killings See also specific figures
Coonan, James
Copacabana Palace (Rio de Janeiro)
Coppola, Nino
corporal punishment
corruption, in Jersey City government
Cortez, Denny
Cosa Nostra
counterfeiting
currency-exchange deal
cyanide
cyanide sprays
Dahmer, Jeffrey
De Cavalcante crime family
De Gillio, Arthur
Dellacroce, Aniello
Dellacroce, Armand
Demarest Pond
DeMeo, Anthony
DeMeo, Gladys
DeMeo, Paul
DeMeo, Roy
Argrila and
background of
Castellano killing and
contract killings
drug dealing
Esposito killings and
fishing trip
Galante killing and
Gambino family induction
Gotti brothers and
Governara killing and
killing by Kuklinski of
Rothenberg killing and
Denning, Ed
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)
De Peti, Anthony
Deppner, Barbara
Deppner, Danny
breaking and entering jobs
murder of
Smith killing and
Detroit, contract killing in
Devonshire Academy
Dewey, Thomas E.
DeWitt Clinton Park (Manhattan)
Dial, Pamela
Dietz, Park
DiNome, Freddie
Disney cartoons, pirating of
Disney World (Orlando)
disposal of bodies See also Bucks County caves
DiVita, Jimmy
DMSO
documentaries
Donahue, Ron
Dougherty, John
drinking problem
drug dealing See also cocaine
Dubrowski, Jack
Duke (dog)
Dumont, New Jersey
dyslexia
Eastwood, Clint
egg sandwiches
Eppolito, Louis
Esposito, Jimmy, Jr.
Esposito, Jimmy, Sr.
Exodus (movie)
Favara, John
Featherstone, Micky
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
female contract killers (femme fatales)
Ferret Face
Final Round (Hoboken)
Florida vacations
food, stealing of
fragmentation grenades
Frank, Neal
French Connection
Gabe (hit man)
Gacy, John Wayne
Gaggi, Marie
Gaggi, Nino
death of
DeMeo induction and
drug dealing
Esposito killings and
Galante killing and
Governara killing and
Rothenberg killing and
Gaggi, Rose
Galante, Carmine
Gambino crime family
Castellano and
contract killings
DeMeo and
Galante killing and
Gotti and
Gravano and
Gambino, Carlo
gambling
Garofalo, Eddie
gay bars
Gemini Lounge (Brooklyn)
Genovese crime family
Genovese, Carmine “Meatball”
contracts for killing
incarceration for gambling charges
Genovese, Vito
Gigante crime family
giovane d’honore (independent contrator)
Giuliani, Rudolph
Glasser, Leo
Goldberg, Chris
Goldfarb, Sol
Gone with the Wind (movie)
Gotti, Frank
Gotti, Gene
Gotti, John
Castellano killing and
Governara, Vincent (aka Vinnie Mook)
Gravano, Gerald
Gravano, Sammy “the Bull,”
Calabro killing and
Castellano killing and
contracts for killing
current update on
trials of
Guglielmo, Joe “Dracula,”
Hamil, John
Harry’s (Jersey City)
Harry’s Luncheonette (Hackensack)
HBO
heroin
High Noon (movie)
hijackings
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoffa, Jimmy
Hoffman, Paul
Holy Angels Academy (Demarest)
homosexuality
House, Percy
arrest of
breaking and entering jobs
Kane investigation and
Masgay killing and
Smith killing and
Howard Johnson (Los Angeles)
Hudson Hotel (Hoboken)
Hy Tulip (Brooklyn)
Ice Man and the Psychiatrist (documentary)
Ice Man Cold Case File (documentary)
Ice Man: Secrets of a Mafia Hit Man (documentary)
Ice Man Tapes: Conversations with a Killer (documentary)
James, Sammy
Jersey City, New Jersey
JFK International Airport (New York City)
Joe and Mary’s (Brooklyn)
Kane, Ed
Kane, Helene
Kane, Patrick
arrest of Kuklinski
background on
Castellano hit and
current update on
Deppner and
Dumont residence, visits to
House and
initial burglary investigation
Kuklinski’s desire to kill
Operation Ice Man
Polifrone and
Smith and
Solimene and
Kane, Patrick, Sr.
Kane, Terry McLeod
Kassner, Herb
Kennedy International Airport (New York City)