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What did you want them to think as they died?

Just see my pretty face.

I take it to them.

The last thing they ever saw was me.

And if they carry that glimpse to eternity, infinity, or whatever it is,

going to be thinking of me all that time.

Welcome to Very Scary People.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

He was living a double life.

He seemed like a quiet husband and father, but he was a vicious, cold

killer. Richard Kuklinski was a part -time hitman and a full -time

His disturbing collection of murders was motivated by money, by rage, and

sometimes by nothing at all.

He was so skilled at killing and covering up his crimes that to this day

true extent of his sins is unknown.

So how did Kuklinski evade capture for so long?

Even I can't believe the story you're about to hear.

Here is part one of The Iceman.

In September of 1983, a fellow that was working for the road department in

Orangetown, New York, was cutting grass on a roadway.

And he saw a series of plastic bags and he thought he saw flesh.

He went over, looked at it, and it was a body.

He was brought to the medical examiner's office and examined.

Several interesting things came from that.

This subject, after he had been killed, had been methodically wrapped in

plastic, 27 layers of garbage bags.

And it looked at first as if perhaps he'd recently died.

This turned out to be Louis Mazgay.

Louis Mazgay disappeared in July 1981.

Two years before the body was found.

But he had the same clothes on.

That he disappeared two years prior.

They knew that this was pretty strange.

Even more interesting is they found what they termed as ice crystal artifacts.

Which indicated that he, in fact, had been frozen.

In the hope that the time of death would be not known.

Later, we were able to establish that Mr. Mazgay had been taken to a garage in

North Bergen, New Jersey.

That garage, we believe, was a killing ground.

And he was shot once in the back of the head.

Then took his body and placed it in a freezer where it remained for

approximately two years.

Until it was dumped.

That particular crime.

was the genesis of the name Iceman.

We knew we were looking for somebody that had literally frozen a person.

An evil person.

Evil to the core.

One part of my life, I have killed people for nothing. Just for somebody to

at me wrong, I would kill them.

From what we understand, Kuklinski got a job working in a film lab in New

York City where he was dealing with videotapes and making duplicate copies,

he also segued into making copies of pornographic films.

He met a man named Roy DeMille through the underground pornography industry.

Roy DeMille was a soldier within the Gambino crime family.

And that's known for killing people. He had a crew of sociopaths, basically,

who operated out of the Gemini Lounge.

They used to chop up people in the Gemini Lounge, just like in The

where they put them in the bathtubs, they chopped them up, and then they'd

rid of the bodies.

The male saw Kuklinski as someone who could be an asset for him.

Kuklinski was a very large fellow.

very intimidating, so he thought he could be an enforcer. If he came to you

asking for money, you would pay.

But it wasn't long before DeMeo discovered that Kuklinski was probably

valuable as a killer.

As the story goes, Roy DeMeo wanted to find out what Kuklinski was capable of.

One day, they were riding in a car, and Roy DeMeo said, okay, well, kill this

guy here.

There was a guy walking his dog.

Didn't know the man. Couldn't have been me walking down the street.

Could have been anybody.

Richard got out.

He shot this man.

And at that point, Roy DeMeo knew that Richard had essentially

what it takes.

And that's how Richard got into the business of murdering people for profit.

From that point, from there, he launched a career being what he represented as

one of the most prolific mob killers.

It's interesting because a person like Kuklinski, the one area of knowledge,

base foundation of knowledge, was in killing.

He really prided himself, it seems, on the various ways and different ways in

which he killed people.

According to Kuklinski, he killed with firearms, with knives. He also

He said that he killed an individual.

that was involved in a pornography business.

He said that he went there and he rang the doorbell and the person asked who

there. And when that person looked through the peephole, he squeezed the

and blew the guy's head off.

On another occasion, he stated that he had thrown a person off a building in

Hawaii. In one case, he claimed to have allowed rats to eat a person alive.

He talked about how he had some people beg for mercy.

Kukunsky was a different breed.

A different breed.

Normally when we think of serial murder, we think of the lust killer, somebody

who's getting perverse sexual satisfaction of killing.

However, there are a number of types of serial murders.

We have another type who kills for profit.

and a serial killer who killed for power and control. And those two seem to be

fused for him in most cases.

He did it because he liked it.

He had no remorse whatsoever.

He loves that stuff.

He's into it.

He was a killing machine.

He could do it on a moment's notice, with no hesitation, no conscience.

This guy, I thought, made Richard Amira the night stalker seem like a quarry boy

lost in the wood.

Believe it or not, he was truly a devoted family man.

He kept his work life very separate from his family.

Richard Kukwinski married Barbara in 1961, and they had three children, two

girls and a boy.

He loved them more than anything.

They were his pride and joy.

They moved to Dumont, New Jersey, which is a pretty nice town, and lived a

suburban lifestyle.

None of his neighbors.

had any clue who this guy was who lived next door.

He was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He had a duality that is very, very, very

rare. He could be the nicest, sweetest, giving guy, a good neighbor, somebody

who wanted to live next door, and the next minute he could be slowly torturing

somebody.

His wife Barbara told me she really didn't know too much about what he did.

I think she knew him as a businessman.

I don't think she knew much more than that.

He liked that the victims were looking directly at him.

Pleasure from seeing someone terrified and a sense of power and control.

Should have got one time in it as soon.

Adam's app.

See how long it would take him to die.

How long did it take?

A few minutes.

He drowned, actually.

Drowned in his blood?

Mm -hmm.

I was with somebody else. We had a $50 bet.

I lost.

Richard Kuklinski was a mafia contract killer.

But he was also a freelance killer.

He would do jobs on the side.

He became involved in a series of what we would call the commercial murders.

After making contact with somebody, he would lure them into thinking that he

able to provide a quantity of something that that person was looking for,

whether it be videotapes, whether it be a pharmaceutical product.

And he got them to bring cash to locations.

With the hope of making a score.

And all of a sudden they weren't seen again.

Nor was the money.

He didn't just rob them. He would kill them so they could never come back and

say anything about him.

Then the money would dry up in spells.

And he'd have to go out and hunt again.

Just like a lion in Africa.

Trying to select his prey.

Then come home with the goodies.

In 1980, Kuklinski met up with a man named George Malabant.

Malabant's brother had indicated he was supposed to meet somebody.

The purpose was to buy videotapes, and he had to bring cash.

We're sitting in a van. I'm in the driver's seat.

Georgie Boy was over here in the next seat, which was, you know, just like

He was shot by Kukwinski.

His body was taken and was put in a 50 -gallon drum.

Kukwinski couldn't get his body into the drum because Malaban was a large male.

And he cut his leg, the ligaments, so he could bend his legs and stuff them into

the drum.

And then he tossed it from a cliff.

His body was found.

On February 5th, in a Jersey City industrial area.

As the state police and the local authorities investigated that murder,

very few leads.

Case didn't go anywhere at the time.

Nowhere. They had a body in a barrel.

They had some ballistics.

So it was a completely unsolved crime.

You have said of Richard, there are two Richards.

I never knew who'd be walking in the door. He could be generous to a fault or

the meanest man on earth. Tell us more about that. That's true.

He was kind, considerate. You know, he would have done anything for all of us.

Very generous gifts and flowers and the best dinners and nice wine.

But when whatever twisted him, whatever happened, it didn't matter how good

those times were.

Because the bad was so bad. And he abused you physically.

He certainly did. What did he do?

Stabbed me.

Broke my nose.

Lost consciousness many times. Strangled me.

Would wake up, you know, 2 o 'clock in the morning with a pillow over my face.

And he would tell me that he decided that was the day I die.

So the idea that he may have killed you was not outside of the realm of

possibility. Absolutely not. Mary, he talked to you about that. What did he

He had said that if he ever went too far with Mom.

Killed her.

Right.

that I would have to understand that he would have to take care, you know, get

rid of all of us because he could leave no witnesses and that it would be hard.

He'd have to kill you?

And how old were you when he told you this?

That was probably about 14.

Your father said, if I accidentally kill your mother in a fit of rage, I'm going

to have to kill you too.

But that could have happened at any time during the rages that he could have

slipped and killed any of us, all of us. And you accepted that?

Well, at times that that might have been easier.

There was no choice. What was the choice?

What did you think of your father?

Merrick and him were very close. I was not close with him. I was more, I

protected my mother, and that was where my alliance laid.

Merrick, you made excuses for him?

For his behavior at home.

I don't know if it was excuses per se, but I

think that I tried to make him see different,

to try to calm him.

And so my role was to try to keep him happy, to keep him calm so that the

outbursts were less.

Good dad was always overshadowed, but bad dad could be there any second.

We had to be the perfect family, smiling.

That's the difference. When he was around, we had to smile.

We were born into this, and this was normal life for us. This is what home

was all about. We didn't know that our friends didn't live like this.

In his own sick, weird way, he loved them more than anything.

They were his pride and joy.

The only time I ever got any emotion out of him during all the many hours I

spoke to him was when he spoke about his family, his dear, profound, twisted,

sick love for them.

Probably the smartest thing that Richard Kuklinski did as a hitman or as a

killer was to leave very little trace of what he had done.

One of the methods Richard used to kill and actually preferred was cyanide.

Cyanide is a toxin that can work very fast on the body.

It's a really potent...

Toxin, meaning that it doesn't take much in the way of milligrams to cause

toxicity.

Kuklinski used a number of different means of delivery of cyanide. He talked

about putting it on food.

There's also injection.

He could walk into a bar, bump elbows with the guy.

He's got cyanide in the drink.

Spill the drink on them.

And leave.

Everybody just looks around and thinks you were drunk or that you just had an

accident or something.

Meanwhile,

it's soaking through their clothes into their pores and into their system.

And eventually, they'll die.

Then there's the sprain in the face that he talked about.

You can put it into a spray bottle.

This guy takes

five, no more than ten steps, falls to the ground.

There's no turning around from that at all.

Not at all.

Once they ingest that into their system, it's going to kill you.

As a murderer, I can see where Cook -Clemson thought this was a good method

because there's always the problem of the body.

He wants to take somebody out. They suddenly look like they're having a

attack.

No one thinks it's cyanide.

Chris, did you ever wonder why your mom didn't take you and flee the situation?

Oh, many times.

I begged her. Please, let's get out of here. Let's leave. Let's go someplace.

There wasn't anywhere to go.

They planned to poison him, Barbara and Chris.

They actually were planning to kill him, but they realized that if they tried to

do that and it didn't work, that he would kill them.

Paul Hoffman was a pharmacist in New Jersey.

At the time, the drug tagament.

was very popular, and was being ordered in large quantities by a lot of the

populace. It was a very expensive drug.

Hoffman wanted this drug that Kuklinski said he had.

I don't know what the price was going back then, but let's just say if the

price for the medicine was $5, he was going to buy it for under a dollar.

He was going to make a ton of money.

Richard Kukwinski told Hoffman that somebody was going to deliver a van

with tagament for him. And Hoffman emptied out his bank account.

He had, I believe it was $20 ,000 or $25 ,000 in cash.

Kukwinski had Paul Hoffman come to his garage on New Kirk Avenue.

And he closed the door.

He says, how am I going to get this merchandise?

I put the gun under his chin, and I said, there is no merchandise.

And I shot him.

Paul Hoffman did not die.

He was struggling and gurgling, and Richard tried to shoot him again, and

gun malfunctioned.

Took a tire iron out.

And beat him to death.

He then took his body and he put it in a 50 -gallon drum.

And he placed concrete on top of the body and he sealed the drum.

And that's how Paul Hoffman met his demise.

The murder seems.

Pretty cruel.

Callous.

No feeling.

No remorse at all.

Welcome back to Very Scary People. By 1982.

Police say Richard Kuklinski had killed three men in New Jersey, George

Malaband, Louis Mazgay, and Paul Hoffman, as part of what was dubbed his

commercial murders.

The murders were committed and the bodies dumped in three different

jurisdictions. And though Kuklinski was thought to be the last person to see

each of them alive, these killings were unsolved and unlinked for a long time.

But all that was about to change.

In the 1980s, Kuklinski began working with a small crime ring in the northern

part of New Jersey.

They were doing house burglaries and stolen cars and stuff like that.

Richard Kuklinski was the boss.

Underneath him was Percy House.

Two of the more productive of his crew, if you call it that, were Gary Smith and

Danny Deppner.

I had 40 house burglaries in a three -county area.

And I had an informant with me. That was part of the crew.

I said to him, where's all these proceeds going to?

He says, you don't want to know.

I said, why don't I want to know? He says, because the guy running this whole

thing, if he finds out that you're on to him, he's coming after you.

He said, he is the most vicious person I've ever seen, I've ever heard of. All

he has to do is look at you, and you feel like running for the hills.

I said, give me his name.

I want his name.

He gave me the name Richard Kuklinski.

After time, there was enough evidence to indict several of those individuals on

several charges regarding stolen property, including Gary Smith and Danny

Deppner.

Although there was not enough connection to implicate Richard Kuklinski.

Kuklinski knew that Deppner and Smith posed a real threat to him.

They could possibly talk.

and give him up.

Building on his lifelong evolution of a killer, these were risks that for him

were unacceptable.

And he got rid of them, one by one.

Kuklinski took Gary and Danny off the street and moved them to a series of

motels.

Eventually, they were put into the York Motel, which he would visit them, bring

them food.

told him not to leave the room under any circumstances.

On December 23rd, Kukwinski decided that he was going to kill Gary Smith.

Kukwinski got together with Deppner and Smith for a meal.

They ordered hamburgers.

Kukwinski decided he would kill Smith by poisoning him with cyanide.

Cyanide looks just like salt, table salt.

So Kuklinski had mixed cyanide in the ketchup that was then brought on a

hamburger to Gary Smith.

Gary Smith started to eat the hamburger.

Gary, about halfway through, his eyes went goofy and rolled back in his head,

and he fell back on the bed.

He was gagging and trying to breathe.

Kuklinski went next to the bed.

ripped the lamp cord off of the lamp, threw it to Danny.

And he then ordered Danny Deppner to finish him off with the cord, which

Deppner did.

He got behind him, put the cord around his neck, and choked off his Airstream.

Gary Smith's body was then laced under the mattress in the bedroom of the

and it remained there for a number of days.

The room was rented out to several guests several times. They had no idea

this guy's corpse was underneath it before the odor finally got the hotel

to find it and call the cops.

There was decay that had occurred. So the body had actually turned the skin

in color to the point that they thought it was an African -American male

initially.

Kuklinski knows that there's someone else who has to be eliminated from the

case, and that's Mr. Deppner.

May? Of 1983, Danny Deppner's body was found by a reservoir in the woods and

wrapped in multiple layers of garbage bags.

When I got to the scene, I remember saying to myself, you son of a bitch,

going to get you now.

Come hell or high water, I'm going to get you.

And that's when I started to zero in on him.

We found three reports.

They were sitting in like a dead file, going nowhere.

Hoffman. Nascay and Malibu.

The police made the connection that Richard Kuklinski appeared to be the

person who had been seen by these three men who subsequently were murdered.

When I discovered that, I go, oh, wow.

How many people did this guy kill?

They didn't have anything that linked Kuklinski to these cases.

For sure.

Given that Kuklinski was pretty experienced as having been a mob hitman,

how to cover his tracks. He was very careful about making sure nobody would

find out what he had done.

They had a lot of disparate crimes.

And because Kuklinski was actively working to eliminate evidence, it was

lacking with proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

They needed to find a way to link Kuklinski to all these different

They needed direct evidence. They needed to hear from Kuklinski himself.

how he murdered these individuals.

I am what you call the person's nightmare.

Because of the way I project myself, people think they can get by.

And then all of a sudden, when they wake up, it's too late.

One of the dynamics we look at is how did Richard get into this business of

being a killer?

What was the template upon which this mass murderer was formed?

Well, basically, Richard was a severely abused child.

Richard Kuklinski was born April 11, 1935, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Kuklinski had three siblings. They were Florian, Roberta, and Joseph.

His family was not well off.

Richard had a very difficult upbringing.

His father, according to Richard, was physically abusive, beat him, beat other

members of the family.

He wrapped a garrison belt around his fist and he hit them in the head and

knocked them out.

And his mother was verbally abusive, very strict, and at times would

also beat him with a broom.

There's a lack of love in that family and quite a bit of what I would call

brutality.

So that's really not a very good environment, I would say.

Richard's brother, Florian, died at approximately age eight.

Initially, it was believed that he had fallen down the stairs and sustained

injuries from that fall.

Richard has said that actually what happened was that Florian was beaten to

death by his father.

The impact, I think, stayed with him his whole life.

I asked him, do you have any regrets, Richard?

And he said, yeah, I regret not killing my father. He hated his father.

The question is often raised, is killing genetic, particularly if an individual

comes from a violent home?

If the child is genetically at risk, if that child is raised in a violent home,

it's likely the combination of both.

And in Richard's case, from what we know, it was likely both.

What's particularly odd in this case is that Richard was not the only killer in

the family.

Richard Kuklinski had a brother by the name of Joseph.

In 1970, he was charged.

in the rape and killing of a 12 -year -old girl.

He had lured her onto the roof of a building where he sexually assaulted

and afterwards he threw her body off the building and killed her. He was

convicted of murder.

When you have violence in the home, it can create the dynamics that can lead to

violent behavior, and in a very small percentage of cases, It can also lead

to killing. In this case, clearly that rage could propel someone to kill

or to explode under certain circumstances.

We had acquired a lot of information through various law enforcement sources

which pointed to Richard Kukwinski.

The problem with it was there wasn't enough information to arrest him.

The idea that was suggested was maybe, just maybe, we could have an undercover

pose as another criminal to build evidence that would support a

When the investigation of Richard Kuklinski needed an undercover

went and got Dom Polifrone.

If there was a Mount Rushmore for undercover agent, Dom's face would

be carved in the granite.

Dominic Polifrone was a decorated federal agent that has successfully

infiltrated major mob families in New York.

I worked all organized crime, five families in New York before I came over

New Jersey. I had a lot of experience. I spent 15 years in the streets.

You could talk the talk, walk the walk.

I didn't play a different part. I was myself.

That's who I am, and that's who I'm going to die as, okay?

He had the look. He had the dialect.

He was the person, if anyone, that could get close to Richard Kuklinski.

So I read the information about Kuklinski. They had a huge folder on

he lived, his family, his associates.

And they alleged that he committed five murders.

There was this poison that was involved.

And it cut into your skin there. There's no way an antidote would work

there.

Headquarters called me and says, are you sure you want to do this?

This is a case that is totally, totally like a Twilight Zone case.

So I said, yeah, I want to do it.

I used the name of Dominic Michael Provenzano.

So to make this false persona character real, Michael Dominic

Provenzano had fake IDs, fake criminal histories, mugshots on file.

a fake apartment, all which were available and accessible and verifiable

solidify his credibility if anybody was trying to look at him from the outside

in. The main function of this investigation was get the information

Kuklinski murdered them people. Bottom line, we have to meet Richard Kuklinski.

He was very unpredictable.

He was very cunning.

He was very...

wary of outside people.

And we knew it would be very difficult to get an undercover into him.

The way Dominic sort of integrated himself into this world was there was a

store.

This is a place where guys like Kukinski used to hang out.

I guess you could describe the store as a combination of a social club and a

location where different criminal elements would meet to discuss and to

stolen property and other criminal activities.

Dom's generic persona, cover story, was that he was a guy that could

obtain contraband.

Dom was a black market guy.

that knew all the people in all the dark alleys and all the hidden corners, and

he could go find what you needed, regardless of how exotic it was.

So I started hanging out at the store, and I'm developing my rapport with these

bad guys.

Dominic had to dedicate himself for a long time to do things that would

establish his credibility.

I go in one day, and I walk in with this suitcase, and they go, what's that? I

said, it's for people in New York who don't want to know about it.

And I knew they were going to ask, Tom, what's in there? So I go in the back

room, I open the attaché case, and inside I have 10 blocks of plastic

explosives from the military. I have 10 high -standard .22 caliber silencers

with no manufacturer's serial number.

They went berserk. They said, man, listen, we can use this. I said, look,

another time, but these are for people from New York.

I knew word was going to get out that I can get anything.

One day, in September of 86, the phone rings at the store in Patterson. And

say the big guy wants to see you.

It was Big Richie.

And he wanted to meet Dominic at a local donut shop.

Richie Kikonski claimed to have killed 100, 200 people. We simply have no idea.

It's been very difficult for investigators and journalists and

down the actual evidence to support a lot of those claims.

Did you ever let anyone go for whatever reason? Did you ever decide to let

someone go?

Yes. But then I thought better of the idea and shot him anyway.

After 18 months undercover, it was September 2nd, 1986, when the call came

at the store.

And that's when I first met Kuklinski at the Dunkin' Donuts in Patterson, New

Jersey.

If you were going to put this on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most

dangerous, it was an 11.

Dom's going to meet a serial killer.

We didn't know what was going to happen. We don't know if Kuklinski has already

figured out that we're onto him. If Dominic said something wrong, it could

him off. And he had the capability of killing very quickly.

Dominic had a lot of pressure. The entire investigation hinged on whether

could at least entice Kuklinski to participate in something with him.

And... Just the added subliminal hidden pressure of knowing that the public's

safety rests in your hands. What Dom did was going to depend on if innocent

civilians lived or died.

He pulls up.

This son of a bitch.

He was like the Jolly Green Giant.

He was a big guy. He was about 6 '4".

maybe 260, 265, and he wore these orange -tinged glasses.

We go into Dunkin' Donuts, and we sit down, and we're just talking

Dom knew what the reputation of Kuklinski was.

Kuklinski believed he knew.

what Dom's reputation was. There was no purpose in Dom creating an intimidating

presence for Kuklinski.

He's trying to warm the guy up, not drive him away.

But how do you do that and still maintain your credibility and not be a

for this guy?

Richard was trying to likely size Dominic up and to see if he was someone

could be trusted,

He says, you do coke.

I said, no, I don't do coke.

He says, no, no.

What do you get a kilo for?

I said, probably at that time it was about $30 ,000 a kilo.

He says, well, I can get it for $28 ,000.

I said, well, then you should go with your guy.

He goes, you know, he says, I know it's a good price, but I don't know if I can

trust him.

I look at him. I said, you're an idiot.

You don't trust somebody. You don't deal with somebody you don't trust.

Dom makes a pretty bold move in challenging Kuklinski. He's calling out

the most dangerous men on the planet. And he's basically saying, you're a

You're crazy.

You're doing narcotics deals with someone you don't trust?

Well, let me tell you something for five seconds.

He looked at me like he was grabbing my soul and say, I'm going to rip your

heart out.

Nobody talks to me that way. And he's looking at me and I'm looking at him.

It was the longest five seconds you can imagine.

He could send fear through somebody's body without saying a word. Just looking

at him.

I said, this is the devil. I'm telling you, I'm sitting down with the devil.

Points his finger and he goes, you're right.

I said, you're damn right I'm right.

You don't deal with people you don't trust.

Then he goes, I hear you have a lot of connections.

I said, yeah.

He said, can you get pure cyanide?

I could have fell off the chair.

There is a sense of urgency.

I just have a few problems I want to dispose of.

I have some rats I want to get rid of.

The scale of danger is off the charts.

It was like the ultimate chess game.

You've got to make a move and hope it's not the wrong move during this

investigation.

When

they

heard their husband and father's voice explaining how to kill people and how

cold and calculated he was, their whole demeanor changed.

Through all of that time, all of these murders, Barbara, you didn't know that

anything was up.

You lived with this man for 25 years, you knew nothing.

The multi -agency task force launched to make a case against Richard Kuklinski

was dubbed Operation Iceman.

The goal was to get Kuklinski comfortable enough with an undercover

that he would talk about his crimes.

The agent, Dominic Polifrone, would be wearing a wire, a dangerous cat and

game that could prove fatal in part two of The Iceman.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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