Richard Kuklinski

This article deals with the felon Richard Kuklinski . For the Polish CIA agent, see Ryszard Kukliński .

Richard Leonard Kuklinski , called "The Iceman" (born April 11, 1935 in Jersey City , † March 5, 2006 in Trenton , New Jersey ), was an American felon with Polish and Irish roots. He worked for several Italian-American criminal families and claimed to have murdered over 200 men. According to his own statements, he killed his first victim at the age of 13. He was the older brother of the convicted rapist and murderer Joseph Kuklinski .

Life

Early years

Kuklinski was born in Jersey City's working-class neighborhood to Stanley and Anna Kuklinski. In his childhood he was mistreated and beaten by his parents. In 1940 his older brother Florian died of an injury sustained by his father. The case was presented to the authorities in such a way that Richard Kuklinski's brother fell down a flight of stairs.

At the age of ten, Kuklinski began to develop aggression towards animals and to torture them. He committed his first murder three years later when he beat up the leader of a small gang with a clothes rail and finally killed him. He threw the body into a river after removing its teeth and cutting off the fingertips. So he wanted to prevent identification.

Roy DeMeo

In his early 20s, Kuklinski began working with Roy DeMeo , who later became a member of the Gambino family . He had met him through an acquaintance's money problems, when Kuklinski had paid his debts for him. He started out with minor robberies and trading in porn films. Kuklinski got more and more orders from DeMeo, who soon hired him for murders. Over the next 30 years, Kuklinski killed between 150 and 200 people, an official number was never released by authorities. The methods of killing varied, ranging from shootings to poisoning with cyanide , as well as the method of disposing of the corpses that he put in acid barrels or sunk in the sea. He married while working as hitmen Barbara Pedrici, with whom he had three children. He has always been a successful businessman to his family and neighbors.

Decline

Kuklinski repeatedly froze corpses for long periods in industrial ice compartments in order to conceal the time of their death. In the case of Richard Masgay, he dumped his body before it was thawed. This informed the police that freezing his victims was part of his modus operandi . That led to his nickname The Iceman .

In 1986, Kuklinski was finally stopped and arrested on the street by a task force made up of police and FBI officers after the investigation began six years earlier. The police relied on, among other things, sound recordings of an undercover investigator and his statements.

Kuklinski was serving his sentence in New Jersey State Prison (formerly Trenton State Prison ). While in custody, Kuklinski was interviewed several times by prosecutors, psychiatrists, criminologists, writers and TV producers about his criminal life. On this basis, two documentaries were made. A book about him was also published in 2006.

death

Kuklinski died at 1:15 a.m. on March 5, 2006, at the age of 70 in a safe wing of St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton , New Jersey . A short time later he should have made a testimony against another Mafioso ( Salvatore Gravano ) who was suspected of murder and who was acquitted without Kuklinski's testimony. The ordered autopsy of Kuklinski confirmed his natural death.

Movie

In 2012 , the film The Iceman with Michael Shannon in the leading role and Winona Ryder as Deborah Kuklinski (real: Barbara Pedrici ) and Ray Liotta as Roy DeMeo was released based on the publications by Philip Carlo and Anthony Bruno .

literature

• Carlo, Philip : The Ice Man: Confessions Of A Mafia Contract Killer. St. Martin's Press, 2006.
• Carlo, Philip: ICE MAN, Confessions of a Mafia Killer. Piper Verlag, May 2011. ISBN 978-3-492-26434-1
• Anthony Bruno: The Iceman. The hunt for America's most brutal killers . Hannibal Crime, Höfen 2013, ISBN 978-3-85445-431-1 (Original edition: The Iceman )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Carlo, Philip: The Ice Man, Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, pp. 26-27, HarperCollins Publishers , 2006, Sydney ISBN 978-0-7322-8496-1, ISBN 0-7322-8496-1
2. ^ Inmate Search: Richard Kuklinski . New Jersey Department of Corrections . Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 5, 2015. 

Web links

• Richard Kuklinski in the Internet Movie Database (English)