September 3, 2025 • 43 mins
❄️ By day, a loving father in suburban New Jersey. By night, the mob's most feared hitman—freezing bodies to mask time of death. 🔪 Richard Kuklinski's 200+ kills included experiments with cyanide spray, ice cold bullets, and rat poison. 🎭 Exclusive prison footage reveals his double life: "I'd murder a man then go home and cook breakfast for my kids." 🌍 International crime experts study his methods—still copied by hitmen worldwide. 💉 Never-before-seen FBI files expose his "testing" of new killing methods on random victims. ⚠️ Warning: Contains graphic details of mob hits and family deception. 😱
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Richard Koklinsky was a stone cold, without conscious killer.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Richard is a self contained, lethal animal.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Everyone was afraid of him.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
He looked in his eyes and you had to be afraid.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He appeared to have a normal family life, yet he
would enter into this dark universe where he would be
moving from murder plot to murder plot, killing people.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
He would hurt you in a minute. That's his world.
He controls, he rules. You don't like your diet. If
that's not the devil, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
September nineteen eighty three, a warm fall afternoon, on a
rural highway near Spring Valley, New York.
Speaker 7 (01:06):
Cop cars lined the road.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
City workers had found a large mass wrapped in dark plaster.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
It was shaped like a body.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
The police peeled back the plastic and uncovered a bound corpse.
Apparent cause of death two bullets to the head.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The first thing that they found was that the body
was pretty much intact. It had not decomposed a great deal.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
It appeared the man had been recently killed and disposed of.
But when the coroner's office examined the body, they found
something they didn't expect.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The pathologist is feeling around and he hears crunching around
the heart, and he sees there's ice crystals around the heart,
and it's like it's summertime. How did this happen?
Speaker 7 (01:54):
It happened because this was no recent murder.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Someone frozed this body for some reason, and for a
long time, the fact that someone would have taken that
level of care in storing the body was.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So much frightened. Who police, He says, We're dealing with
an iceman here.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
The frozen corpse was authority's first glimpse into the ice
cold world of one of the country's most prolific and
sophisticated murderers. Richard Kouklinsky, aka the Iceman. Richard Leonard Kouklinsky,
(02:34):
was born on April eleventh, nineteen thirty five, in Jersey City,
New Jersey, an industrial town just across the Hudson from
New York City. He was the oldest of three children
born to immigrants Stanley and Anna Kuklinsky. The family lived
in a small apartment in the Jersey City Projects, crowded
(02:56):
among the city's large Polish population. Anna provided a meager
income for the family, working days at a meatpacking company
and knights scrubbing floors at a local church. The overworked
mother observed a strict discipline at home. She would beat
Richard with a broom handle or pots and pans.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
He said, she's cancer. He hated her. He hated his
father even more.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Stanley Kuklinsky worked as a breakman for the Lackawanna Railroad,
but drank away most of the family's money.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
He was missing as much as he was home, and
when he came home he was a holy terror. He
would beat the kids, particularly Richard. Richard was the oldest
child of the family, and he took the worst of it.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
Richard grew up tall and scrawny.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
To save money, his mother bought his clothes several sizes
too large. The saggy clothes an awkward appearance made Richard
a prime target for bullies.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
There was a boy who taunted him constantly, and the
kid we called Richard, hey Pollock, Hey Pollock, Were you doing?
Where you going? What are you doing?
Speaker 6 (04:12):
The taunting turned physical as the bully and his friends
dished out frequent beatings. But there was just so much
Richard was going to take. On a frigid winter night,
he devised a plan to exact revenge. He knew that
in the evening after school, his tormentor would cross the
(04:33):
courtyard outside his apartment building. He removed the rod from
his family's soul closet and waited in the shadows.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
The kid shows up by himself and he sees that
Richard's holding the pole, and he says, what are you
going to do with that pollock? And Richard, out of nervousness,
swings at him, hits him in the head, knocks him down.
Now he's more scared than ever. He loses track of
what he's doing, and he's just beating and beating him,
(05:06):
and he kills him.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Terrified, Richard ran back to his apartment and hid the
closet rod.
Speaker 7 (05:15):
He waited days for the police to find him out.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
By the third day, it rains and he looks out
the window and he can see that the chuck outline
is draining away, it's disappearing, and he said, that's when
I knew that murder was a way to solve my problems.
And that was the birth of a killer.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
By the mid nineteen fifties, Richard had dropped out of school.
He earned a paycheck at some legitimate warehouse jobs, but
made most of his money hustling pool.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
He was an outstanding pool player, and he went to
this one particular bar and drew in crowds, and that
was his life.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
For the first time, Richard had money in his pockets.
But with the easy cash came trouble.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
In a pool hole he was hustling another guy. The
guy figured out that he was being taken and a
fight ensued.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
It was a one sided affair. Kuklinska used the tool
of his trade, a pool queue, to rain down blows
until the man's blood ran red in the alley.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
He was an anger killer at that point. He spoke
in vague terms of road rage incidents. People would take
him off, someone would cut him off in the highway.
He chased them down, run them off the road, start
a fight and be killed him there.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
He liked killing people. How they died, watching them struggle,
watched them squirm. He felt a joy today.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
By nineteen sixty, Kuklinsky supplemented his pool hustling with a
job at Swift Line trucking company, where he met a
pretty Italian girl named Barbara Padrisi. The twenty year old
worked as a secretary while Richard manned the docks.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Richard was very good looking.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
I mean I did notice amount on the platform, you know, tall, slim,
very good looking, an interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Little bit old.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The twenty five year old Koklinsky also noticed Barbara and
fell hard. Richard bought her a bouquet of flowers and
asked her out.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I said, you come up and meet my mother.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
So Saturday came and he came in, very polite. I
don't think another day passed that I didn't see Richard.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
Barbara knew nothing of her suitors. Dark and violent passed,
but she did notice that things in her life were different.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
I wasn't seeing my family, I wasn't seeing my friends.
My life changed suddenly, dramatically.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
There came an afternoon for the young couple when Barbara
suggested they spend some time apart.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
We were sitting in his car and he had his
hand on the back, you know, behind me. I really
didn't realize until I felt blood running down my back.
You stay at me, so I said, what are you doing?
He said, that's an object lesson. Don't ever try to
leave me.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Kuklinsky had made his point.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
We were married in September nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I was not one bit happy.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Trapped and angry at myself and questioning, how the hell
did I look happened? Maybe it was the bad voicing.
You know, it happens. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (09:08):
Three years later, a daughter, Merrick, was born. Two more children,
Kristen and Dwayne, followed. In the mid nineteen sixties, Koklinsky
left the trucking company and took a better paying job
at a film duplication lab in Manhattan, making copies of
children's movies for sale to retail stores.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Richard was bringing home from her children's films, which was
really nice for my children, and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 6 (09:38):
But Richard discovered that the lab wasn't quite as squeaky
clean as it seemed. By night, his co workers were
illegally duplicating pornographic films. They made a big profit from
copying and selling porn to theaters and stores at a
fraction of the prices charged by film studios. He wanted
(10:00):
in on the scam, but to get started he needed
money for the film stock. One of his coworkers had
connections to loan sharks from the Gambino crime family. Kuklinsky
took out a sixty five thousand dollars loan, but the
first time entrepreneur didn't anticipate that his customers would be
slow to pay him. Richard defaulted on his loan to
(10:23):
the Gambinos, crossing one of their most feared enforcers, a
man suspected of killing more than seventy people, Roy de Mayo.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
The only person I ever heard that he was afraid
of was Roy de Meo. That's the only person.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
To Mayo paid him a visit at the lab late
one night with two of his thugs, and they beat him.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
All even at six four and two hundred and seventy pounds.
Kouklinsky knew better than to mess with three members of
a mafia family. He took beating like a man.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Demeyo took a film canister and smashed on Richard's head.
And Richard, when I met him, you know, he showed
me the scar, he says, that's Roy.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Within a week, Kuklinsky collected from his debtors and paid
off his mob loan in full. Demeyo decided to pay
Kouklinsky another visit. This time he had a different agenda.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Taking the beating and making good on the loan probably
got it. Tomeyo's attention. He saw that he's a guy
who has the size and the ability, so let's develop him.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
Kouklinsky now had a connection to one of the most
prominent mafia families in the world, and then Roy DeMeo
Kouklinsky would find a mentor who would teach him that
there was no such thing as too much money.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
Or too much murder.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
By the late ninth seventies, Richard Kouklinsky had sed the
life of poverty he'd grown up with in the projects
of Jersey City. He was married with three children and
had moved down to a comfortable home in suburban Dumont,
New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
At that point he was better. It was calm, He
worked long hours, he took any overtime.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They'd give him. More money was coming in.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
But the real source of the family's newfound comfort was
Richard's sale of illegally dubbed porn flicks, and future prospects
were good. Kuklinsky had caught the eye of notorious mobster
Roy de Meyo. Richard Kouklinsky was a newcomer on the
(12:51):
mob scene with a striking advantage.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
He was a huge, massive man, about six or four
half two hundred and seventy five pounds. Where's a leather jacket?
Mutt chops with a beard. When he walks down the street,
people walk out of the way. He owns you.
Speaker 6 (13:14):
At the time that Kouklinsky met to Mayo, the mobster
was in the market for street help.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
He said, I could use you, He said, a guy
your size. I got a lot of dead beats who
don't pay me, and you will get them to pay me.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
Koklinsky lapped at the offer, maybe with a little too
much enthusiasm. Some of the men he was sent to
collect from couldn't come up with the cash.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Koklinsky went overboard.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Richard didn't understand that a dead deadbeat is never going
to pay his debt. Tomeyo said to him, I have
another job I think you'd be much more suited for.
And that was his introduction to becoming a headman.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
The Mayo was seven years younger than Koklinsky, but light
years ahead and the methods of murder. It was the
Mayo who came up with the savage formula for hit
man everywhere, nobody, no crime.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Koklinsky could meet with him at the Gemni Lounge, and
I was leged there that you know they would murder
people up there, cut them up, cut the bodies up,
and get rid of them. Richard kind of made his
bones there.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
Koklinsky became the Mayo's go to hitman for mob contracts.
He was sent from coast to coast, never knowing more
than a name and location.
Speaker 8 (14:43):
It seemed like everywhere this guy went somebody would turn
up dead.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
On a trip to California, he found the target especially
sorry for his sins.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
He had a contract to kill this individual, and when
he cornered the guy, the man's please, God, don't kill me.
Don't let him kill me, and you know he was pathetic.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Richard says, you know you're a god fearing, god loving man.
I'll tell you what I do. You got a half
hour pray to God. If he comes down and pardons you,
I'll leave. He had that guy for a half hour pray.
Thirty one minutes later, he put a bullet in his head.
He walked out because God didn't come down, he said.
Speaker 7 (15:29):
On the streets.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
Kuklinsky was a ruthless killer, but at times the violent
hit man persona followed him home. There were two fathers
and two husbands living in that suburban Jersey house.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
The good Richard at lavish attention on his family, bring
home designer addresses, fancy wine, so on. And then there
was the bad Richard, the Richard who had the foul temper.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
One Christmas Eve, late for the family's holiday dinner, Kuklinski
brought his bad day home.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You're late, I might have said, or dinner is almost ready,
or dinner is ready, and he hit me and broke
my nose. My eye is turned black almost immediately. I
mean I was sitting at the table. Nobody said a word.
My children are so upse that they can't swallow. It
was a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Why don't you just leave him, It's the obvious question,
she said. I thought about it many times, but I
was afraid of what he might do to the kids,
so she stayed.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
While Richard could be a menace to his family, he
was also fiercely protective.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Associates that have survived have said that if there's even
the slightest mention of his family, he would react with
murderous intent.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
In February nineteen eighty, one of Richard's associates, George Malaban,
found this out the hard ways. Earlier, Malaban had sought
out Kouklinsky for a loan, and Kouklinsky introduced him to
Royd Mayo. But just as quickly as Malaban got the cash,
(17:13):
he started falling behind on payments, and the Mayo called
them both in for a meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
To Mayo, with his hair trigger temper, goes to Koklinsky
and says, look, you introduced me to George Balaband. He
owes me money. If he doesn't pay, you have to pay.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
As they drove back from the meeting, Koklinsky urged Malaban
to pay up.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Malaban tries to him in Hawe and he says, don't
get pushy with me, Richie. I know where you live.
I've been to your house. Koklinsky reaches into his jacket,
pulls out of thirty eight, and he pumps five bullets
into Malaban's side. You do not You didn't think that
(18:03):
you could get to his family.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Kuklinsky attempted to dispose of the body in a fifty
five gallon drum, but the three hundred pound Malaband wouldn't fit.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Kuklinsky had to sever his tendons behind his knees and
his arms and so forth to be able to fold
him to get him in the drum.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Kuklinsky disposed of the body and took the loss, paying
off the Mayo out of his own pocket. George Malaband
had crossed the line. By the early nineteen eighties, Richard
Kuklinsky had established himself as a top hitman for the mafia,
(18:43):
but despite his success, Kouklinsky hadn't fully mastered his trade.
While working on a mafia contract, the killer found someone
who shared his passion, Robert Pronge aka mister Softy.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
Remember Pronga drove an ice cream truck. They called him
mister Softee.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
If parents ever knew what else was in that van,
they would run screaming.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Pronge would show Koklinsky lethal weapons he'd never imagined. The
forty five year old was ready to take the art
of killing to a whole new level.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
By the early.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
Nineteen eighties, Richard Kouklinsky was a ruthless contract killer for
the New York Mob, a profession he hid from his family.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
I had an idea that he was a wholesale distributor.
He had cards, he had a business, he had an accountant.
I mean the whole nine yards.
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Kouklinsky was bringing in tens of thousands of dollars per
mafia hit, and he'd just found a new partner. Robert
Pronge aka Mister Softy. The ParaMed on a hit ordered
by Roy Demeyo and shared an interest in the finer
points of murder.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
He found the que to his Double oh seven. Just
as Q had all the neat gadgets for James Bond,
Robert Prongue had all the neat methods that Richard then
put into practice.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Robert Prongae was an Army trained demolitions expert, skilled in
the use of plastic explosives, grenades, and various bombs. On
one contract hit, Prongy and Koklunsky had trouble getting to
their target, and the pair put pronga As skills to use.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
They would put plustique explosives on command cars little remote
control cards. So what they did is they drove it
under his limosse. It was about to take off and
they gloom up there.
Speaker 7 (21:04):
Koklinsky was sold.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
He bought a garage across the block from where Prongae
stored his Mister Softy truck. Ready to learn from the master,
Pronge unveiled his favorite weapon to Koklinsky, something much quieter
than explosives. Cyanide.
Speaker 9 (21:26):
A very small amount of cyanide is enough to kill
a person. We're talking about one hundred milligram for an
adult male, so that's like one third of an aspirin tablet.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Kind of entice Keokwinsky about how effective this new substances
could be in killing people. And unless the medical examiner
knew they were looking for it, they would have looked
like a heart attack.
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Pronga had developed an effective way of delivering the poison
through a spray bottle. He claimed that one spray to
a victim's face meant most instant death. Kuklinsky decided to
take the new weapon for a test drive.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
He picked out a guy who looked like a likely
heart attack victim. Guy in his fifties, overweight, bad shape,
and he walked toward the man who was coming down
the sidewalk. He reached in his pocket, took out a
handkerchief and the little Sini bottom. As he passed the guy,
he feigned to sneeze, covered his own mouth, and sprayed
(22:30):
in the guy's face. He took maybe four steps more collapsed.
Everyone thought he had a heart attack.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
As Kuklinsky schooled himself in the art of murder. His
relationship with Roy Demeyo suffered.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Kuklinsky wanted to control you, dominate you, and you work
for him and he'll tell you what to do.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
But to Mayo, a made man, saw Richard as a threat.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
They were at the Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn. They were
all yucking it up, but they're drinking and they're eating,
and all of a sudden, Tomayo's face changes and he's scowling,
and he pulls out an oozy submachine gun and he
points at Kuklinsky and he says, it's so funny, Polock.
You want to die today. You want to die today.
(23:22):
And Richard just put down his fork and he said
it's all in your hands, Roy, and he just threw
down the machine gun and kept eating.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Kuklinsky began to distance himself from the Mayo and the
contract killings. It turned out to be a smart move.
Within two years, the Mayo would turn up dead in
the trunk of his own car, the victim of the
same kind of brutal gangland murder he dished out.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
For decades.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Without the contract killings, Kuklinsky found a new racket to
line his pockets and satisfy his bloodlust. He put out
the word that he had cheap items for sale drugs, guns,
or retail items, and lured in potential buyers. His first
(24:12):
target was Lewis Mask in nineteen eighty one. Mask was
the owner of a general store in southern New Jersey.
Kouklinsky promised Mask that he could supply him with a
hot new commodity, videotapes at a bargain price. They set
up a deal date and location, but Kuklinsky never showed.
(24:35):
While Mask wondered what went wrong, Koklinsky sat back and
let his plan unfold.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
He would be kind of like a cat playing with
a ball. He would entice the victim in, push the
victim back, constantly getting the desire of the victim to
participate with him.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
Kouklinsky stood Mask up three more times. Finally, on July first,
nineteen eighty one, he met Maske in northern New Jersey.
The store owner brought with him nearly one hundred thousand
dollars to complete the deal for the videotapes. Maska never
returned home. His car was found three days later.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
No evidence of foul play at that time, and mister
Masgay was gone and the money was gone, so for
all intents and purposes, he was a missing person.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
Two years would pass before police finally found out what
happened to Lewis Masgay. At the time, Kouklinski also kept
his pockets full with another.
Speaker 7 (25:37):
Racket, auto theft.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Richard had met MAB associates Percy House, Gary Smith, and
Danny Deppner while trafficking his foreign films throughout Jersey's black market.
Richard and the crew had moved on to stealing corvettes,
but on December seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, they ran out
of luck. The police had enough evidence to arrest House
(26:04):
for multiple counts of theft, and our warrant was issued
on Smith and Deptner. Kouklinsky felt the heat closing in.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
So he had a figure, I got to get rid
of this whole crew because they know what I'm involved with.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
He said.
Speaker 8 (26:21):
I don't make any mistakes. I don't leave any loose ends.
Speaker 6 (26:26):
To sew up the loose ends, Kouklinsky would take a
page from the book of his mentor and murder Robert Prongey.
A day after the bust, Kuklinsky ordered Smith and Deppner
to stay put at a cheap motel in North Bergen,
New Jersey. He let them sit around all day, then
(26:49):
finally arrive a sack of hamburger's in hand. He passed
the burgers around, and the hungry men each dug in.
Within seconds, Smith began to violently.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Choke Koklinsky lay to hamburgers with cyanide. The ones with
the pickles had the cyanide, the ones without didn't.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Smith gasped for air.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
And Koklinsky told me he was on the bed watching
him and laughing, and he couldn't believe his eyes.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
He goes.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Normally, when they take a bite of the cyanide, usually
their eyes rolled back. He said, this guy had a
constitution of a bully. Says, you couldn't believe it.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
To finish him off, Kouklinsky ordered Depthner to strangle him
with a lamp cord. Afterwards, Kouklinsky and Dptner hid the
body under the flimsy hotel mattress. Three days later, the
stench of Smith's rotting corpse forced the maids to open
the room. What they found wouldn't be fixed by a
(27:54):
mint on the pillow. Doctor Githa and Atarajehan was one
of the first to examine the body.
Speaker 10 (28:05):
His entire skin had blackened and blistered, his facial features
had altered.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
But she noticed no signs of poison.
Speaker 9 (28:14):
Sinaide will disappear from the body very rapidly once it's ingested.
Speaker 10 (28:19):
It has a half life of one hour for the
first six hours.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
According to Gary Smith's death certificate, this was a homicide
by strangulation. With Smith out of the way, next up
on kle Klinsky's hit list Danny Deppner. On February fifth,
nineteen eighty three, he ordered Depner to the apartment of
his daughter's boyfriend, who was out of town. Kuklinsky prepared
(28:50):
a beef stew for Dapner. It was his last meal.
Depner's body was found weeks later in a New Jersey
for As Preserve. By mid nineteen eighty three, Deafnir and
Smith were out of the picture, but Percy House was
(29:13):
nowhere to be found. Richard worried his former crewmate had
turned rat. He began to destroy any evidence that might
link him to the Cartheffs or to his many murders,
but as he did, an icy remnant from his past
(29:33):
was about to come back to haunt him and lead
investigators right to his front door. The double life of
Richard Kuklinsky was on the verge of collapse.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
In the early nineteen eighties, Richard Kuklinsky.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Embarked on a series of brutal murders across northern New Jersey.
The cops discovered many of his victims George Malaban, Gary Smith,
Danny Depner, but didn't know who was responsible.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
But he never followed a pattern which made him even
more dangerous.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
But one of Kokuski's kills would shock even veteran investigators
and lead them directly to the iceman. September nineteen eighty three,
authorities were called to a crime scene in Rockland County,
New Yorker. A body had been found wrapped in plastic.
(30:36):
It was identified as that of Lewis Maskey, owner of
a general store in New Jersey. He'd been shot twice
in the head, and the corpse looked fresh. Detectives were
shocked to find that mask had been missing for more
than two years.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
When they did the autopsy. Then they found the body,
They find crystal, They find ice to shoot in his body.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Maska was also discovered to be wearing the same clothes
as the day he disappeared, the cops put the grizzly
pieces together. Someone had killed mask and they kept his
body on ice for two years, So.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
We believe with a high degree of certainty exactly what
occurred here. In fact, that's where the name Iceman was born.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
The police informed Maskay's wife that they found her missing husband.
In turn, she shared a valuable piece of information. On
the day he disappeared, her husband was heading to meet
a man named Richard Kuklinsky. It wasn't the first time
cops heard the name. Kuklinsky had begun to pop up
(31:43):
as a person of interest and other murders as well.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
But we didn't have a lot of specific information.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
We had r K.
Speaker 8 (31:52):
We had a big guy, a lot of different things
that pointed towards Richard Koklinsky, but nothing that's said that
Richard Koklinsky killed this guy.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
The detective spade Kouklinsky a visit.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Richard was very cordial and then said, if you want
to speak to me in the future, I'll meet you somewhere.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Don't ever come to my home again.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
To bring down the Iceman, the cops would need to
get much closer. In nineteen eighty six, After three years
of gathering information, the New Jersey Attorney General's office initiated
a multi agency task force to go after the iceman.
It included Prosecutor Bob Carroll, FBI agent Paul Smith, an
(32:38):
ATF agent Dominic Polophrone. Polophrone's specialty was undercover work. He
grew up just miles from Kouklinsky's New Jersey home and
was blessed with the gift of gab and a healthy
dose of street smarts. Agent Polophrone took on the role
(32:58):
of a mob associate named Michael Provenzano.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I presented myself as a bad guy. I was in
armsdal I had connections all over the place. Knew. I
was hooked up with people in New York City.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
For months, Polophrone hung out at the same diner that
Koklinsky frequented and adjacent store served as a front for
a fencing operation in hijack Goods. The undercover agent talked
up his connections and Koklinsky finally took notice.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
It was unexpected. Phone call comes in. We meet at
the Duncan Donuts. We feel one another album. He mentions
after while about pure cyanide. He needs pure cyanide.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Richard needed the poison to take care of a problem.
His old crew member, Percy House Polophone wore a wire.
Speaker 11 (33:55):
I just have a few problems I want to dispose of.
I have some brints.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
I want to get rid of it.
Speaker 11 (33:59):
Yeah, tell me the thing I don't understand.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Don't you use a piece of mind to these people?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Use this.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Can do a nice and calm Polophrones saw his chance.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
He says, you can get the pure sign out it.
He gives me a telephone number. Those numbers that he
gave me, well, the numbers he gave the other bad
guys that wound up missing a dead.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Slowly, the ATF agent built a relationship with the iceman.
He began to pry information out of the big rich.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
We started a little bit elaborating about killing people, so
that circumstantial eleven is now is becoming direct evidence. And
he's telling me how he did this.
Speaker 11 (34:43):
You put that stuff in a mist He sprayed in
somebody's face and they go to sleep. As long as
he's dead, that's the bottom line. But that's the thing,
isn't it No matter how it was done. I mean,
I know guys that went to sleep and never woke
up again.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
With me.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
The task Force suspected there was a reason why the
Iceman had opened up to Dominic.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Koklinsky was going to kill Dominic.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
The incriminating tapes on Kuklinsky were damaging, but the cops
wanted to make sure their case was rock solid. They
developed a scheme that had iceman written all over it.
Paulophone approached Kouklinsky about a murder for hire. Agent Paul
Smith would play the clueless victim, a rich Jewish kid
(35:33):
who bought cocaine from Polophrone.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
We set it up so that Richard looked at it
as a possibility to do an easy hit and make
a lot of money.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
Koklinsky played right into the task Force hands when as
a weapon of choice he suggested his old favorite cyanide.
The undercover agent said he would be happy to supply
the poison. With Kouklinsky on board for the hit, the
trap was ready to snap shut. They'd finally be able
(36:08):
to take the Iceman off the streets for good. By
the winter of nineteen eighty six, in North Jersey, Richard
Koklinsky was in serious trouble. The wolves were howling at
the door. He just couldn't hear them undercover atf Agent
(36:33):
Dominic Polophrone had spent over a year working his way
into Koklinsky's inner circle. When he finally made it in,
the iceman began to thaw, spilling stories of his murderous ways.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
I mean to tell me, your way is nice and clean,
and nothing shows up.
Speaker 11 (36:48):
Oh it may show, my friend, but it's quiet, it's
not messy. It's not as noisy, it's not you know. Yeah,
but you put it together like you know what I'm saying. Oh,
there's always a way, as a will is away, my friend.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
For Koklinsky, the conversations were everyday business. He had no
reason to fear Polophone. In his mind, the undercover agent
was just a dead man talking. On December seventeenth, nineteen
(37:23):
eighty six, the Task Force put their plan into motion.
Agent Poloprone met with Koklinsky at the Vince Lombardy service
station off the New Jersey Turnpike.
Speaker 7 (37:37):
Koklinsky thought he'd be receiving.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
A fresh supply of cyanide, but agent Polofrone had other plans.
He had the State crime lab mix a fake batch
of the lethal drug.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
No matter of both times where I went, I always
felt that I would always be one step ahead of him,
and I made sure that I did that.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
Despite his confidence, paulafron knew the danger he faced.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I wore leather jacket, had a firearm in my pocket,
and I said, have ever ever pulled out a spray?
I'm gonna have to kill him. Of course, he's not
doing that to me.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
The exchange of the fake cyanide went smoothly, and the
parties went their separate ways. After Kuklinsky returned home, the
authorities were ready to take down the iceman. Kouklinsky, however,
had made a pickup his wife, Barbara.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
We got in the car and then there were just
men everywhere with rifles on the hood.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
At my window, at his window.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
The cops cuffed the mass of Kuklinsky. The killer seemed
resigned to his fate until he saw his wife also
being put into cuffs.
Speaker 8 (39:00):
He just wanted to berserk. He was able to lift
himself up and push some of us off until we
were able to come back down and you know, complete
the arrest. But he was that strong. He was that
strong of a guy.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
Kouklinsky was finally secured and taken into custody. He was
charged with five counts of first degree murder. In January
of nineteen eighty eight, Kuklinsky went on trial for the
murders of Gary Smith and Danny Deppner. The other murders
(39:36):
were separated into another trial. Prosecutor Bob Carroll's case began
with the audio tape confessions recorded by agent Dominic Polophron.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
When you hear a tape recording where he's talking to
someone openly friendly about terrible things, you know he's intended
on killing this person. Okay, it's Ryslboord.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
In twenty five years, I never heard Richard talk like that.
Never I thought he was a coward because of what
he did to me. Did I think all those years
I'm living with the murder enough. No. I had to
get my mind around that.
Speaker 6 (40:20):
The shock of hearing Kouklinsky on tape also affected the jury.
After just four hours of deliberation, they found the fifty
three year old guilty of killing both Smith and Defner.
He received two consecutive life sentences. Facing another trial for
the murders of George Malaban and Lewis Maska, Kouklinsky opted
(40:43):
to forego the proceedings and plead guilty to the murders.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
And she closes that yes, and.
Speaker 10 (40:50):
How did you do that?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
I just asked, how do you killed the individuals? And
he said, I shot one in the back of ahead,
and I shot to the other three times. And judge
asked why this was strictly business.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
After the trial, Kouklinsky took an unprecedented step and opened
up about his murderous ways. He granted several interviews to
the media. His most startled in claim was that he
killed over one hundred men.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Richard's body count is a hotly contested issue. Just as
he needed to have money in his pocket to be
somebody once the press started paying attention to him, he
needed more murders to make himself greater in his own eyes.
Speaker 6 (41:44):
On March fifth, two thousand and six, after eighteen years
in state prison, seventy year old Richard Kouklinsky passed away
due their natural causes. Barbara Kouklinski has moved on, but no,
she can never fully escape her past.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
If you notice my name is Sti Koklinsky. I could
easily have changed and that to me would have been
cowardly because it doesn't manna, I am.
Speaker 7 (42:16):
Just me for authorities.
Speaker 6 (42:19):
It was the closing chapter and the story of one
of the most evil killers in New Jersey history.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
He's a completely isolated example of a sociopath like we
never faced before.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The way he killed, the reasons he killed, his absolute
asocial cold bloodedness make him unique.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
He's the only guy that I know can walk on
colds burning and it wouldn't affect him. If that's not
the devil, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
I wished him dead, probably every day for twenty five years,
and if I could have done that, I probably would have,
but I couldn't
Richard Koklinsky was a stone cold, without conscious killer.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Richard is a self contained, lethal animal.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Everyone was afraid of him.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
He looked in his eyes and you had to be afraid.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
He appeared to have a normal family life, yet he
would enter into this dark universe where he would be
moving from murder plot to murder plot, killing people.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
He would hurt you in a minute. That's his world.
He controls, he rules. You don't like your diet. If
that's not the devil, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
September nineteen eighty three, a warm fall afternoon, on a
rural highway near Spring Valley, New York.
Speaker 7 (01:06):
Cop cars lined the road.
Speaker 6 (01:09):
City workers had found a large mass wrapped in dark plaster.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
It was shaped like a body.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
The police peeled back the plastic and uncovered a bound corpse.
Apparent cause of death two bullets to the head.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The first thing that they found was that the body
was pretty much intact. It had not decomposed a great deal.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
It appeared the man had been recently killed and disposed of.
But when the coroner's office examined the body, they found
something they didn't expect.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The pathologist is feeling around and he hears crunching around
the heart, and he sees there's ice crystals around the heart,
and it's like it's summertime. How did this happen?
Speaker 7 (01:54):
It happened because this was no recent murder.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Someone frozed this body for some reason, and for a
long time, the fact that someone would have taken that
level of care in storing the body was.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So much frightened. Who police, He says, We're dealing with
an iceman here.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
The frozen corpse was authority's first glimpse into the ice
cold world of one of the country's most prolific and
sophisticated murderers. Richard Kouklinsky, aka the Iceman. Richard Leonard Kouklinsky,
(02:34):
was born on April eleventh, nineteen thirty five, in Jersey City,
New Jersey, an industrial town just across the Hudson from
New York City. He was the oldest of three children
born to immigrants Stanley and Anna Kuklinsky. The family lived
in a small apartment in the Jersey City Projects, crowded
(02:56):
among the city's large Polish population. Anna provided a meager
income for the family, working days at a meatpacking company
and knights scrubbing floors at a local church. The overworked
mother observed a strict discipline at home. She would beat
Richard with a broom handle or pots and pans.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
He said, she's cancer. He hated her. He hated his
father even more.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
Stanley Kuklinsky worked as a breakman for the Lackawanna Railroad,
but drank away most of the family's money.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
He was missing as much as he was home, and
when he came home he was a holy terror. He
would beat the kids, particularly Richard. Richard was the oldest
child of the family, and he took the worst of it.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
Richard grew up tall and scrawny.
Speaker 6 (03:53):
To save money, his mother bought his clothes several sizes
too large. The saggy clothes an awkward appearance made Richard
a prime target for bullies.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
There was a boy who taunted him constantly, and the
kid we called Richard, hey Pollock, Hey Pollock, Were you doing?
Where you going? What are you doing?
Speaker 6 (04:12):
The taunting turned physical as the bully and his friends
dished out frequent beatings. But there was just so much
Richard was going to take. On a frigid winter night,
he devised a plan to exact revenge. He knew that
in the evening after school, his tormentor would cross the
(04:33):
courtyard outside his apartment building. He removed the rod from
his family's soul closet and waited in the shadows.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
The kid shows up by himself and he sees that
Richard's holding the pole, and he says, what are you
going to do with that pollock? And Richard, out of nervousness,
swings at him, hits him in the head, knocks him down.
Now he's more scared than ever. He loses track of
what he's doing, and he's just beating and beating him,
(05:06):
and he kills him.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Terrified, Richard ran back to his apartment and hid the
closet rod.
Speaker 7 (05:15):
He waited days for the police to find him out.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
By the third day, it rains and he looks out
the window and he can see that the chuck outline
is draining away, it's disappearing, and he said, that's when
I knew that murder was a way to solve my problems.
And that was the birth of a killer.
Speaker 6 (05:42):
By the mid nineteen fifties, Richard had dropped out of school.
He earned a paycheck at some legitimate warehouse jobs, but
made most of his money hustling pool.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
He was an outstanding pool player, and he went to
this one particular bar and drew in crowds, and that
was his life.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
For the first time, Richard had money in his pockets.
But with the easy cash came trouble.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
In a pool hole he was hustling another guy. The
guy figured out that he was being taken and a
fight ensued.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
It was a one sided affair. Kuklinska used the tool
of his trade, a pool queue, to rain down blows
until the man's blood ran red in the alley.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
He was an anger killer at that point. He spoke
in vague terms of road rage incidents. People would take
him off, someone would cut him off in the highway.
He chased them down, run them off the road, start
a fight and be killed him there.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
He liked killing people. How they died, watching them struggle,
watched them squirm. He felt a joy today.
Speaker 6 (07:09):
By nineteen sixty, Kuklinsky supplemented his pool hustling with a
job at Swift Line trucking company, where he met a
pretty Italian girl named Barbara Padrisi. The twenty year old
worked as a secretary while Richard manned the docks.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Richard was very good looking.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
I mean I did notice amount on the platform, you know, tall, slim,
very good looking, an interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Little bit old.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The twenty five year old Koklinsky also noticed Barbara and
fell hard. Richard bought her a bouquet of flowers and
asked her out.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I said, you come up and meet my mother.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
So Saturday came and he came in, very polite. I
don't think another day passed that I didn't see Richard.
Speaker 6 (07:58):
Barbara knew nothing of her suitors. Dark and violent passed,
but she did notice that things in her life were different.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
I wasn't seeing my family, I wasn't seeing my friends.
My life changed suddenly, dramatically.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
There came an afternoon for the young couple when Barbara
suggested they spend some time apart.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
We were sitting in his car and he had his
hand on the back, you know, behind me. I really
didn't realize until I felt blood running down my back.
You stay at me, so I said, what are you doing?
He said, that's an object lesson. Don't ever try to
leave me.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Kuklinsky had made his point.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
We were married in September nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
I was not one bit happy.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Trapped and angry at myself and questioning, how the hell
did I look happened? Maybe it was the bad voicing.
You know, it happens. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (09:08):
Three years later, a daughter, Merrick, was born. Two more children,
Kristen and Dwayne, followed. In the mid nineteen sixties, Koklinsky
left the trucking company and took a better paying job
at a film duplication lab in Manhattan, making copies of
children's movies for sale to retail stores.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Richard was bringing home from her children's films, which was
really nice for my children, and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 6 (09:38):
But Richard discovered that the lab wasn't quite as squeaky
clean as it seemed. By night, his co workers were
illegally duplicating pornographic films. They made a big profit from
copying and selling porn to theaters and stores at a
fraction of the prices charged by film studios. He wanted
(10:00):
in on the scam, but to get started he needed
money for the film stock. One of his coworkers had
connections to loan sharks from the Gambino crime family. Kuklinsky
took out a sixty five thousand dollars loan, but the
first time entrepreneur didn't anticipate that his customers would be
slow to pay him. Richard defaulted on his loan to
(10:23):
the Gambinos, crossing one of their most feared enforcers, a
man suspected of killing more than seventy people, Roy de Mayo.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
The only person I ever heard that he was afraid
of was Roy de Meo. That's the only person.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
To Mayo paid him a visit at the lab late
one night with two of his thugs, and they beat him.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
All even at six four and two hundred and seventy pounds.
Kouklinsky knew better than to mess with three members of
a mafia family. He took beating like a man.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Demeyo took a film canister and smashed on Richard's head.
And Richard, when I met him, you know, he showed
me the scar, he says, that's Roy.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
Within a week, Kuklinsky collected from his debtors and paid
off his mob loan in full. Demeyo decided to pay
Kouklinsky another visit. This time he had a different agenda.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Taking the beating and making good on the loan probably
got it. Tomeyo's attention. He saw that he's a guy
who has the size and the ability, so let's develop him.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
Kouklinsky now had a connection to one of the most
prominent mafia families in the world, and then Roy DeMeo
Kouklinsky would find a mentor who would teach him that
there was no such thing as too much money.
Speaker 7 (11:53):
Or too much murder.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
By the late ninth seventies, Richard Kouklinsky had sed the
life of poverty he'd grown up with in the projects
of Jersey City. He was married with three children and
had moved down to a comfortable home in suburban Dumont,
New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
At that point he was better. It was calm, He
worked long hours, he took any overtime.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
They'd give him. More money was coming in.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
But the real source of the family's newfound comfort was
Richard's sale of illegally dubbed porn flicks, and future prospects
were good. Kuklinsky had caught the eye of notorious mobster
Roy de Meyo. Richard Kouklinsky was a newcomer on the
(12:51):
mob scene with a striking advantage.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
He was a huge, massive man, about six or four
half two hundred and seventy five pounds. Where's a leather jacket?
Mutt chops with a beard. When he walks down the street,
people walk out of the way. He owns you.
Speaker 6 (13:14):
At the time that Kouklinsky met to Mayo, the mobster
was in the market for street help.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
He said, I could use you, He said, a guy
your size. I got a lot of dead beats who
don't pay me, and you will get them to pay me.
Speaker 6 (13:31):
Koklinsky lapped at the offer, maybe with a little too
much enthusiasm. Some of the men he was sent to
collect from couldn't come up with the cash.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Koklinsky went overboard.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Richard didn't understand that a dead deadbeat is never going
to pay his debt. Tomeyo said to him, I have
another job I think you'd be much more suited for.
And that was his introduction to becoming a headman.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
The Mayo was seven years younger than Koklinsky, but light
years ahead and the methods of murder. It was the
Mayo who came up with the savage formula for hit
man everywhere, nobody, no crime.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Koklinsky could meet with him at the Gemni Lounge, and
I was leged there that you know they would murder
people up there, cut them up, cut the bodies up,
and get rid of them. Richard kind of made his
bones there.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
Koklinsky became the Mayo's go to hitman for mob contracts.
He was sent from coast to coast, never knowing more
than a name and location.
Speaker 8 (14:43):
It seemed like everywhere this guy went somebody would turn
up dead.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
On a trip to California, he found the target especially
sorry for his sins.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
He had a contract to kill this individual, and when
he cornered the guy, the man's please, God, don't kill me.
Don't let him kill me, and you know he was pathetic.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Richard says, you know you're a god fearing, god loving man.
I'll tell you what I do. You got a half
hour pray to God. If he comes down and pardons you,
I'll leave. He had that guy for a half hour pray.
Thirty one minutes later, he put a bullet in his head.
He walked out because God didn't come down, he said.
Speaker 7 (15:29):
On the streets.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
Kuklinsky was a ruthless killer, but at times the violent
hit man persona followed him home. There were two fathers
and two husbands living in that suburban Jersey house.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
The good Richard at lavish attention on his family, bring
home designer addresses, fancy wine, so on. And then there
was the bad Richard, the Richard who had the foul temper.
Speaker 6 (15:57):
One Christmas Eve, late for the family's holiday dinner, Kuklinski
brought his bad day home.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You're late, I might have said, or dinner is almost ready,
or dinner is ready, and he hit me and broke
my nose. My eye is turned black almost immediately. I
mean I was sitting at the table. Nobody said a word.
My children are so upse that they can't swallow. It
was a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Why don't you just leave him, It's the obvious question,
she said. I thought about it many times, but I
was afraid of what he might do to the kids,
so she stayed.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
While Richard could be a menace to his family, he
was also fiercely protective.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Associates that have survived have said that if there's even
the slightest mention of his family, he would react with
murderous intent.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
In February nineteen eighty, one of Richard's associates, George Malaban,
found this out the hard ways. Earlier, Malaban had sought
out Kouklinsky for a loan, and Kouklinsky introduced him to
Royd Mayo. But just as quickly as Malaban got the cash,
(17:13):
he started falling behind on payments, and the Mayo called
them both in for a meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
To Mayo, with his hair trigger temper, goes to Koklinsky
and says, look, you introduced me to George Balaband. He
owes me money. If he doesn't pay, you have to pay.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
As they drove back from the meeting, Koklinsky urged Malaban
to pay up.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Malaban tries to him in Hawe and he says, don't
get pushy with me, Richie. I know where you live.
I've been to your house. Koklinsky reaches into his jacket,
pulls out of thirty eight, and he pumps five bullets
into Malaban's side. You do not You didn't think that
(18:03):
you could get to his family.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Kuklinsky attempted to dispose of the body in a fifty
five gallon drum, but the three hundred pound Malaband wouldn't fit.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Kuklinsky had to sever his tendons behind his knees and
his arms and so forth to be able to fold
him to get him in the drum.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Kuklinsky disposed of the body and took the loss, paying
off the Mayo out of his own pocket. George Malaband
had crossed the line. By the early nineteen eighties, Richard
Kuklinsky had established himself as a top hitman for the mafia,
(18:43):
but despite his success, Kouklinsky hadn't fully mastered his trade.
While working on a mafia contract, the killer found someone
who shared his passion, Robert Pronge aka mister Softy.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
Remember Pronga drove an ice cream truck. They called him
mister Softee.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
If parents ever knew what else was in that van,
they would run screaming.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Pronge would show Koklinsky lethal weapons he'd never imagined. The
forty five year old was ready to take the art
of killing to a whole new level.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
By the early.
Speaker 6 (19:28):
Nineteen eighties, Richard Kouklinsky was a ruthless contract killer for
the New York Mob, a profession he hid from his family.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
I had an idea that he was a wholesale distributor.
He had cards, he had a business, he had an accountant.
I mean the whole nine yards.
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Kouklinsky was bringing in tens of thousands of dollars per
mafia hit, and he'd just found a new partner. Robert
Pronge aka Mister Softy. The ParaMed on a hit ordered
by Roy Demeyo and shared an interest in the finer
points of murder.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
He found the que to his Double oh seven. Just
as Q had all the neat gadgets for James Bond,
Robert Prongue had all the neat methods that Richard then
put into practice.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
Robert Prongae was an Army trained demolitions expert, skilled in
the use of plastic explosives, grenades, and various bombs. On
one contract hit, Prongy and Koklunsky had trouble getting to
their target, and the pair put pronga As skills to use.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
They would put plustique explosives on command cars little remote
control cards. So what they did is they drove it
under his limosse. It was about to take off and
they gloom up there.
Speaker 7 (21:04):
Koklinsky was sold.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
He bought a garage across the block from where Prongae
stored his Mister Softy truck. Ready to learn from the master,
Pronge unveiled his favorite weapon to Koklinsky, something much quieter
than explosives. Cyanide.
Speaker 9 (21:26):
A very small amount of cyanide is enough to kill
a person. We're talking about one hundred milligram for an
adult male, so that's like one third of an aspirin tablet.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Kind of entice Keokwinsky about how effective this new substances
could be in killing people. And unless the medical examiner
knew they were looking for it, they would have looked
like a heart attack.
Speaker 6 (21:48):
Pronga had developed an effective way of delivering the poison
through a spray bottle. He claimed that one spray to
a victim's face meant most instant death. Kuklinsky decided to
take the new weapon for a test drive.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
He picked out a guy who looked like a likely
heart attack victim. Guy in his fifties, overweight, bad shape,
and he walked toward the man who was coming down
the sidewalk. He reached in his pocket, took out a
handkerchief and the little Sini bottom. As he passed the guy,
he feigned to sneeze, covered his own mouth, and sprayed
(22:30):
in the guy's face. He took maybe four steps more collapsed.
Everyone thought he had a heart attack.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
As Kuklinsky schooled himself in the art of murder. His
relationship with Roy Demeyo suffered.
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Kuklinsky wanted to control you, dominate you, and you work
for him and he'll tell you what to do.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
But to Mayo, a made man, saw Richard as a threat.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
They were at the Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn. They were
all yucking it up, but they're drinking and they're eating,
and all of a sudden, Tomayo's face changes and he's scowling,
and he pulls out an oozy submachine gun and he
points at Kuklinsky and he says, it's so funny, Polock.
You want to die today. You want to die today.
(23:22):
And Richard just put down his fork and he said
it's all in your hands, Roy, and he just threw
down the machine gun and kept eating.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Kuklinsky began to distance himself from the Mayo and the
contract killings. It turned out to be a smart move.
Within two years, the Mayo would turn up dead in
the trunk of his own car, the victim of the
same kind of brutal gangland murder he dished out.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
For decades.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Without the contract killings, Kuklinsky found a new racket to
line his pockets and satisfy his bloodlust. He put out
the word that he had cheap items for sale drugs, guns,
or retail items, and lured in potential buyers. His first
(24:12):
target was Lewis Mask in nineteen eighty one. Mask was
the owner of a general store in southern New Jersey.
Kouklinsky promised Mask that he could supply him with a
hot new commodity, videotapes at a bargain price. They set
up a deal date and location, but Kuklinsky never showed.
(24:35):
While Mask wondered what went wrong, Koklinsky sat back and
let his plan unfold.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
He would be kind of like a cat playing with
a ball. He would entice the victim in, push the
victim back, constantly getting the desire of the victim to
participate with him.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
Kouklinsky stood Mask up three more times. Finally, on July first,
nineteen eighty one, he met Maske in northern New Jersey.
The store owner brought with him nearly one hundred thousand
dollars to complete the deal for the videotapes. Maska never
returned home. His car was found three days later.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
No evidence of foul play at that time, and mister
Masgay was gone and the money was gone, so for
all intents and purposes, he was a missing person.
Speaker 6 (25:25):
Two years would pass before police finally found out what
happened to Lewis Masgay. At the time, Kouklinski also kept
his pockets full with another.
Speaker 7 (25:37):
Racket, auto theft.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Richard had met MAB associates Percy House, Gary Smith, and
Danny Deppner while trafficking his foreign films throughout Jersey's black market.
Richard and the crew had moved on to stealing corvettes,
but on December seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, they ran out
of luck. The police had enough evidence to arrest House
(26:04):
for multiple counts of theft, and our warrant was issued
on Smith and Deptner. Kouklinsky felt the heat closing in.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
So he had a figure, I got to get rid
of this whole crew because they know what I'm involved with.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
He said.
Speaker 8 (26:21):
I don't make any mistakes. I don't leave any loose ends.
Speaker 6 (26:26):
To sew up the loose ends, Kouklinsky would take a
page from the book of his mentor and murder Robert Prongey.
A day after the bust, Kuklinsky ordered Smith and Deppner
to stay put at a cheap motel in North Bergen,
New Jersey. He let them sit around all day, then
(26:49):
finally arrive a sack of hamburger's in hand. He passed
the burgers around, and the hungry men each dug in.
Within seconds, Smith began to violently.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Choke Koklinsky lay to hamburgers with cyanide. The ones with
the pickles had the cyanide, the ones without didn't.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Smith gasped for air.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
And Koklinsky told me he was on the bed watching
him and laughing, and he couldn't believe his eyes.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
He goes.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Normally, when they take a bite of the cyanide, usually
their eyes rolled back. He said, this guy had a
constitution of a bully. Says, you couldn't believe it.
Speaker 6 (27:31):
To finish him off, Kouklinsky ordered Depthner to strangle him
with a lamp cord. Afterwards, Kouklinsky and Dptner hid the
body under the flimsy hotel mattress. Three days later, the
stench of Smith's rotting corpse forced the maids to open
the room. What they found wouldn't be fixed by a
(27:54):
mint on the pillow. Doctor Githa and Atarajehan was one
of the first to examine the body.
Speaker 10 (28:05):
His entire skin had blackened and blistered, his facial features
had altered.
Speaker 7 (28:11):
But she noticed no signs of poison.
Speaker 9 (28:14):
Sinaide will disappear from the body very rapidly once it's ingested.
Speaker 10 (28:19):
It has a half life of one hour for the
first six hours.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
According to Gary Smith's death certificate, this was a homicide
by strangulation. With Smith out of the way, next up
on kle Klinsky's hit list Danny Deppner. On February fifth,
nineteen eighty three, he ordered Depner to the apartment of
his daughter's boyfriend, who was out of town. Kuklinsky prepared
(28:50):
a beef stew for Dapner. It was his last meal.
Depner's body was found weeks later in a New Jersey
for As Preserve. By mid nineteen eighty three, Deafnir and
Smith were out of the picture, but Percy House was
(29:13):
nowhere to be found. Richard worried his former crewmate had
turned rat. He began to destroy any evidence that might
link him to the Cartheffs or to his many murders,
but as he did, an icy remnant from his past
(29:33):
was about to come back to haunt him and lead
investigators right to his front door. The double life of
Richard Kuklinsky was on the verge of collapse.
Speaker 7 (29:49):
In the early nineteen eighties, Richard Kuklinsky.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Embarked on a series of brutal murders across northern New Jersey.
The cops discovered many of his victims George Malaban, Gary Smith,
Danny Depner, but didn't know who was responsible.
Speaker 8 (30:05):
But he never followed a pattern which made him even
more dangerous.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
But one of Kokuski's kills would shock even veteran investigators
and lead them directly to the iceman. September nineteen eighty three,
authorities were called to a crime scene in Rockland County,
New Yorker. A body had been found wrapped in plastic.
(30:36):
It was identified as that of Lewis Maskey, owner of
a general store in New Jersey. He'd been shot twice
in the head, and the corpse looked fresh. Detectives were
shocked to find that mask had been missing for more
than two years.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
When they did the autopsy. Then they found the body,
They find crystal, They find ice to shoot in his body.
Speaker 6 (31:00):
Maska was also discovered to be wearing the same clothes
as the day he disappeared, the cops put the grizzly
pieces together. Someone had killed mask and they kept his
body on ice for two years, So.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
We believe with a high degree of certainty exactly what
occurred here. In fact, that's where the name Iceman was born.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
The police informed Maskay's wife that they found her missing husband.
In turn, she shared a valuable piece of information. On
the day he disappeared, her husband was heading to meet
a man named Richard Kuklinsky. It wasn't the first time
cops heard the name. Kuklinsky had begun to pop up
(31:43):
as a person of interest and other murders as well.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
But we didn't have a lot of specific information.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
We had r K.
Speaker 8 (31:52):
We had a big guy, a lot of different things
that pointed towards Richard Koklinsky, but nothing that's said that
Richard Koklinsky killed this guy.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
The detective spade Kouklinsky a visit.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Richard was very cordial and then said, if you want
to speak to me in the future, I'll meet you somewhere.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Don't ever come to my home again.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
To bring down the Iceman, the cops would need to
get much closer. In nineteen eighty six, After three years
of gathering information, the New Jersey Attorney General's office initiated
a multi agency task force to go after the iceman.
It included Prosecutor Bob Carroll, FBI agent Paul Smith, an
(32:38):
ATF agent Dominic Polophrone. Polophrone's specialty was undercover work. He
grew up just miles from Kouklinsky's New Jersey home and
was blessed with the gift of gab and a healthy
dose of street smarts. Agent Polophrone took on the role
(32:58):
of a mob associate named Michael Provenzano.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I presented myself as a bad guy. I was in
armsdal I had connections all over the place. Knew. I
was hooked up with people in New York City.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
For months, Polophrone hung out at the same diner that
Koklinsky frequented and adjacent store served as a front for
a fencing operation in hijack Goods. The undercover agent talked
up his connections and Koklinsky finally took notice.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
It was unexpected. Phone call comes in. We meet at
the Duncan Donuts. We feel one another album. He mentions
after while about pure cyanide. He needs pure cyanide.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Richard needed the poison to take care of a problem.
His old crew member, Percy House Polophone wore a wire.
Speaker 11 (33:55):
I just have a few problems I want to dispose of.
I have some brints.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
I want to get rid of it.
Speaker 11 (33:59):
Yeah, tell me the thing I don't understand.
Speaker 5 (34:01):
Don't you use a piece of mind to these people?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Use this.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Can do a nice and calm Polophrones saw his chance.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
He says, you can get the pure sign out it.
He gives me a telephone number. Those numbers that he
gave me, well, the numbers he gave the other bad
guys that wound up missing a dead.
Speaker 6 (34:26):
Slowly, the ATF agent built a relationship with the iceman.
He began to pry information out of the big rich.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
We started a little bit elaborating about killing people, so
that circumstantial eleven is now is becoming direct evidence. And
he's telling me how he did this.
Speaker 11 (34:43):
You put that stuff in a mist He sprayed in
somebody's face and they go to sleep. As long as
he's dead, that's the bottom line. But that's the thing,
isn't it No matter how it was done. I mean,
I know guys that went to sleep and never woke
up again.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
With me.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
You know.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
The task Force suspected there was a reason why the
Iceman had opened up to Dominic.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Koklinsky was going to kill Dominic.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
The incriminating tapes on Kuklinsky were damaging, but the cops
wanted to make sure their case was rock solid. They
developed a scheme that had iceman written all over it.
Paulophone approached Kouklinsky about a murder for hire. Agent Paul
Smith would play the clueless victim, a rich Jewish kid
(35:33):
who bought cocaine from Polophrone.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
We set it up so that Richard looked at it
as a possibility to do an easy hit and make
a lot of money.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
Koklinsky played right into the task Force hands when as
a weapon of choice he suggested his old favorite cyanide.
The undercover agent said he would be happy to supply
the poison. With Kouklinsky on board for the hit, the
trap was ready to snap shut. They'd finally be able
(36:08):
to take the Iceman off the streets for good. By
the winter of nineteen eighty six, in North Jersey, Richard
Koklinsky was in serious trouble. The wolves were howling at
the door. He just couldn't hear them undercover atf Agent
(36:33):
Dominic Polophrone had spent over a year working his way
into Koklinsky's inner circle. When he finally made it in,
the iceman began to thaw, spilling stories of his murderous ways.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
I mean to tell me, your way is nice and clean,
and nothing shows up.
Speaker 11 (36:48):
Oh it may show, my friend, but it's quiet, it's
not messy. It's not as noisy, it's not you know. Yeah,
but you put it together like you know what I'm saying. Oh,
there's always a way, as a will is away, my friend.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
For Koklinsky, the conversations were everyday business. He had no
reason to fear Polophone. In his mind, the undercover agent
was just a dead man talking. On December seventeenth, nineteen
(37:23):
eighty six, the Task Force put their plan into motion.
Agent Poloprone met with Koklinsky at the Vince Lombardy service
station off the New Jersey Turnpike.
Speaker 7 (37:37):
Koklinsky thought he'd be receiving.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
A fresh supply of cyanide, but agent Polofrone had other plans.
He had the State crime lab mix a fake batch
of the lethal drug.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
No matter of both times where I went, I always
felt that I would always be one step ahead of him,
and I made sure that I did that.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
Despite his confidence, paulafron knew the danger he faced.
Speaker 5 (38:05):
I wore leather jacket, had a firearm in my pocket,
and I said, have ever ever pulled out a spray?
I'm gonna have to kill him. Of course, he's not
doing that to me.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
The exchange of the fake cyanide went smoothly, and the
parties went their separate ways. After Kuklinsky returned home, the
authorities were ready to take down the iceman. Kouklinsky, however,
had made a pickup his wife, Barbara.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
We got in the car and then there were just
men everywhere with rifles on the hood.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
At my window, at his window.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
The cops cuffed the mass of Kuklinsky. The killer seemed
resigned to his fate until he saw his wife also
being put into cuffs.
Speaker 8 (39:00):
He just wanted to berserk. He was able to lift
himself up and push some of us off until we
were able to come back down and you know, complete
the arrest. But he was that strong. He was that
strong of a guy.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
Kouklinsky was finally secured and taken into custody. He was
charged with five counts of first degree murder. In January
of nineteen eighty eight, Kuklinsky went on trial for the
murders of Gary Smith and Danny Deppner. The other murders
(39:36):
were separated into another trial. Prosecutor Bob Carroll's case began
with the audio tape confessions recorded by agent Dominic Polophron.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
When you hear a tape recording where he's talking to
someone openly friendly about terrible things, you know he's intended
on killing this person. Okay, it's Ryslboord.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
In twenty five years, I never heard Richard talk like that.
Never I thought he was a coward because of what
he did to me. Did I think all those years
I'm living with the murder enough. No. I had to
get my mind around that.
Speaker 6 (40:20):
The shock of hearing Kouklinsky on tape also affected the jury.
After just four hours of deliberation, they found the fifty
three year old guilty of killing both Smith and Defner.
He received two consecutive life sentences. Facing another trial for
the murders of George Malaban and Lewis Maska, Kouklinsky opted
(40:43):
to forego the proceedings and plead guilty to the murders.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
And she closes that yes, and.
Speaker 10 (40:50):
How did you do that?
Speaker 5 (40:54):
I just asked, how do you killed the individuals? And
he said, I shot one in the back of ahead,
and I shot to the other three times. And judge
asked why this was strictly business.
Speaker 6 (41:06):
After the trial, Kouklinsky took an unprecedented step and opened
up about his murderous ways. He granted several interviews to
the media. His most startled in claim was that he
killed over one hundred men.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Richard's body count is a hotly contested issue. Just as
he needed to have money in his pocket to be
somebody once the press started paying attention to him, he
needed more murders to make himself greater in his own eyes.
Speaker 6 (41:44):
On March fifth, two thousand and six, after eighteen years
in state prison, seventy year old Richard Kouklinsky passed away
due their natural causes. Barbara Kouklinski has moved on, but no,
she can never fully escape her past.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
If you notice my name is Sti Koklinsky. I could
easily have changed and that to me would have been
cowardly because it doesn't manna, I am.
Speaker 7 (42:16):
Just me for authorities.
Speaker 6 (42:19):
It was the closing chapter and the story of one
of the most evil killers in New Jersey history.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
He's a completely isolated example of a sociopath like we
never faced before.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
The way he killed, the reasons he killed, his absolute
asocial cold bloodedness make him unique.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
He's the only guy that I know can walk on
colds burning and it wouldn't affect him. If that's not
the devil, I don't know who it is.
Speaker 4 (42:53):
I wished him dead, probably every day for twenty five years,
and if I could have done that, I probably would have,
but I couldn't
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