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There was a man, he was begging and pleading and I told him

he could have a half hour.

To pray to God.

That God could come down and change the circumstances.

He'd have that time.

But God never showed up.

And that was that.

Welcome to Very Scary People.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Mafia hitman and serial killer Richard Kuklinski got away with murder for

He used guns, cyanide, even tire irons to execute his victims, then skillfully

covered his trail.

But after he took out two of his crime ring cronies, he was on investigators'

radar. Now, Kuklinski and an undercover agent were about to face off.

Could the investigator manipulate the notoriously secretive killer to talk

his crimes?

Here is part two of The Iceman.

I beat a guy to death one time. I had blood in my shoes.

His blood in my shoes.

It just goes on that way.

Had to draw my clothes away.

His name was Richard Kuklinski, also known as the Iceman.

Richard Kuklinski allegedly killed for profit, coldly and without remorse.

Should have got one time in his Adam's apple.

See how long it would take him to die.

Richard Kuklinski was a mafia contract killer, but he was also a freelance

killer. After making contact with somebody, he would lure them into

that he was able to provide a quantity of something that that person was

for.

And he was not going to just rob them. He was going to kill them.

In 1983, the authorities found a body wrapped up in Orangetown, New York.

This turned out to be Louis Mazgay.

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

He had the same clothes on that he disappeared in two years prior.

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.

That particular crime was the genesis of the name Iceman.

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

Kuklinski was also working with the small crime ring.

Kuklinski knew that they posed a real threat to him, and he got rid of them

by one.

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

At least five killings between 1980 and 1983 with handguns and cyanide.

Richard Kukwinski was a very low -key individual. He was secretive. He looked

be living a normal suburban life.

He married Barbara, and they had three children, two girls and a boy.

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

You have said of Richard, there were 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.

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

be hard.

He'd have to kill you.

They planned to poison him, Barbara and Chris, but they realized that if they

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

This guy was a walking time bomb.

You don't listen to him.

you die.

He feels you betrayed him, you die.

You say anything bad about the family, you die.

That's his world.

Richard Kukwinski claimed to have killed 100, 200 people. We simply have no

idea. He wasn't the toughest guy on the block. He was the most dangerous animal

in the jungle.

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 we could have an undercover pose as another

criminal. I used the name of Dominic Michael Provenzano.

After 18 months in there, I first met Kuklinski.

He goes, I heard you have a lot of connections.

Can you get pure cyanide?

Everybody's sitting at this long table, and my pager goes off.

This untouchable serial murderer was now seeking Dominic out.

Dom was no longer hunting Kuklinski.

Kuklinski was hunting Dom.

Everyone is excited for Dom to call back.

One guy says, get a tape. I want it recorded. I want this done now. And I

I'm not doing that. I'm going to tell you why.

Everybody that he dealt with jumped.

I'm not jumping for him. He came to me. He reached out to me.

Gangsters are not prompt.

One of the simplest ways to identify an undercover cop, if he's always prompt,

if he's always on time.

You know who does that? Cops do that.

I waited a day to give him a call back.

So what happened is, the following day, We started talking.

You know, I got the coke, but the cyanide, I mean, you know, you got to

You know, I don't know how you want to use it, but it's your business, you

They began talking about doing crimes together and they began talking about

different things.

I don't intend to resell it to anybody. I intend to use it myself.

Yeah, well, don't you take it.

No, I don't.

You know, I just have a few bottles I want to dispose of. I have some rats I

want to get rid of.

So during this conversation when Dom references his use of iron, he opens

the door for Kuklinski to brag on his technique.

Yeah, you put that stuff in a mist, you spray it in somebody's face, and they go

to sleep.

Fast, or how long does it take?

About that fast.

I mean, I'm not as versed to Little Leg, I'm not as versed to Steel, I'm not as

versed to... You know, whatever.

As long as he's dead, that's the bottom line. So that's the thing, isn't it?

Your way sounds like a James Bond movie, but if it's realistic that way... I

mean, I've done it all ways, as far as you've known or heard.

There isn't too many things I haven't tried.

It sounds interesting.

We've got to go off and break bread over this thing. It sounds good. It sounds

much easier.

There's more than one way to skin something.

Yeah, I hear you.

It all depends on how determined you are to get it done.

Dominic Polifrone told Kukwinski that he was interested in purchasing weapons,

and in fact he was looking for a hit kit.

A hit kit is a .22 with a silencer on it.

Kukwinski told him, yes, I can deliver that to you, but I'm looking for a

cyanide. They said, you're going to give me an assassination kit and I'm going

to pay you $1 ,100.

After you do that, you come and see me. Now we'll talk business for you, pure

cyanide. It was like the ultimate chess game. You got to make a move and hope

it's not the wrong move.

Did you ever murder anyone you liked?

All my friends did.

At one point in time, I'm sure I liked him.

In the 1980s, Richard Kuklinski met a fellow named Robert Prongay.

He was also a hitman, it appears, and so they had a lot in common.

Prongay was a self -taught chemist, and he had an adjacent garage to

Kuklinski's, where Richard Kuklinski killed several individuals.

Interestingly to me, Prange ran a Mr. Softee truck, and Kukwinski used to call

him Mr. Softee.

He sold ice cream to the kids in the neighborhood.

He'd go into these neighborhoods and sell ice cream to the kids and maybe

one of their fathers.

Robert Prange killed in different ways. I heard a story once where he liked

explosives, and he developed a method to put it in a remote -controlled car.

And he drove that under another car of a target.

And he exploded it.

Now, Robert taught Richard some sophisticated ways of killing,

including cyanide.

He showed him how he could put it in a liquid and put it in a drink.

He taught him how you could put it on gravy.

He could also put it in a spray mist.

and Mr. Softy helped him obtain some of the cyanide he needed for his homicides.

The relationship between Kuklinski and Prongay went swimmingly for a while, but

before long, they had a falling out.

Apparently, Kuklinski realized that this guy could be a liability, and I don't

need him anymore.

He's taught me everything he needed to. He's got to go.

And he killed him.

On August 8, 1984,

Robert Prange's body was found shot to death in his Mr. Softee truck.

Poor Bobby Prange, five in the chest.

But one negative side effect of Prange being dead is that Kuklinski no longer

has a source for his cyanide, which has become his new passion as a way to kill

people. So now he's looking for other ways of acquiring cyanide.

And so I was his man, I was his connection.

After they first met, Dominic Polifron and Richard Kuklinski had a bunch of

different meetups and discussions together about how to carry out their

Dominic wore something called a Nagra. It was a little bulkier than the

technology they use today, but a Nagra was state -of -the -art in the time.

reel -to -reel tape recorder about the size of a microwave

dinner. So imagine yourself going to meet an organized crime

serial killer with this duct taped into the small of your back.

The margin of error for Dom was zero.

If Richard Klinsky finds out that Dom is lying to him, deceiving him,

tricking him.

He's going to drag a straight razor across his throat.

In October, he calls, he says, I have your assassination kit for you.

We meet at the Vince Lombardi service station that he suggests.

Inside the trunk, a beautiful high -standard .22 caliber silencer affixed

weapon.

So I take the gun and I give him $1 ,100.

It was a clean criminal deal that just further enhanced

Dom's credibility in the eyes of Kuklinski.

And he goes, I can't stay that long, he says, but you have your source for the

pure cyanide.

I said, absolutely.

He says, okay, let's stay in touch.

As the investigation proceeded, we decided to come up with a plan to lure

Kukwinski in to kill somebody.

We knew he needed money and he needed cyanide. So it was our idea to join him

a murder plot.

And, of course, it wasn't really a murder plot.

Dominic proposed to Kukwinski that he had this rich kid that was wealthy and

always had a lot of money on him that he was dealing drugs with and he wanted to

get rid of.

I got this rich Jewish kid, all right? I buy him a lot of coke.

Get him off my back, but I want him gone. You think we can dupe up the coke?

I think it'd be a quick score if you want.

When Dom talks

to Kuklinski about the fake murder, what he's doing is opening the door for

Kuklinski to talk about his own assassinations and murders.

I want it to look like what the cyanide shit, whatever the fuck he's going to

do. Well, how are we going to do it? You tell me.

Over time, as he began to trust Dom, he then made some

very incriminating statements.

He told me how he killed people with firearms and with knives and sometimes

chainsaws. He had to cut the limbs to get them in the barrel.

I don't have a problem with that.

One of the conversations, Kuklinski went into detail on how you can throw

law enforcement off by killing somebody, freezing the body, and then

disposing of it a couple years later.

He told me that he murdered an individual, that he froze the body for

and he made the cops look like jerks. I said, what do you mean?

Yeah,

but wait a minute, what about the body?

Everything.

Kuklinski is now bragging on the murders he's done. He's letting his guard down.

He said, when you do something like this, use glad bags.

He says they last a couple of years.

This is his sense of humor.

He talked about slipping cyanide into someone's hamburgers.

Not only is he not shying away from it, he's bragging on it.

Richie's telling me, he says, we're laughing at him. Get one of the lamp

strangle him, and then we throw him under the bed.

And then we leave him there, and off we go.

Each time he offers a detail, it's back -checked against the real murder, and

all of them dovetail.

At a certain point in time, it was believed that Richard Kuklowski could

Dominic just about anything he wanted because he had plans to kill him and

all the money.

He'll hesitate his loss, my friend.

You're right.

I always kept that in my mind. He who hesitates, lost.

I got it right at the top of my head.

Did you think of yourself as an assassin?

Assassin?

Sounds so exotic.

I was just a murderer.

Dominic Polifrone was undercover for months.

Four months that I was able to extract the information, all those conversations

then on tape.

So after Polifrone had established with these audio recordings that showed that

Kuklinski had been admitting to committing murders, he helped set up the

hit. And this would be the final proof that was needed to put Kuklinski behind

bars.

They were fully engaged in Dom's plan to murder the rich kid.

under the ruse of a cocaine deal.

A rich kid comes with cash, and I give him cocaine.

We were going to get him into the van, and Rich was going to give him the egg

sandwiches.

They were going to put cyanide on the one sandwich that the kid was supposed

eat.

And he's going to chop the body and put it into the barrel, and he would dump it

somewhere. And we each make $40 ,000 apiece.

Dom certainly didn't want to give Kuklinski cyanide as an ATF agent who's

undercover.

We had assimilated cyanide that smelled like cyanide, that looked like cyanide,

that was made up from the lab.

Dom, instead of cyanide, gave quinide. Now, the reason to do that... quinine,

that's administered to somebody, you can then detect that, which would then show

that it was given, and they intend to murder somebody.

So it was really quite brilliant.

Kuklinski and Dominic met up on December 17, 1986, at the Vince Lombardi rest

area.

Dom gives Kuklinski the egg sandwiches and what is allegedly

a vial of cyanide.

He brought tape with him and rubber gloves that he had, so he was ready for

this.

Kuklinski then says, listen, my wife wasn't feeling that good, but I'm going

head home, but I'll be back.

Now, what happened was Kuklinski didn't come back right away.

Surveillance indicated he was at his house, and a decision was made down by

upper echelon, just take him down.

And they did.

He was extremely animated, screaming, cursing.

I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill your families. He was off the wall.

This is unwarranted, unnecessary.

These guys watch too many movies.

Never showed a badge, never had me my rights, nothing.

They think they're gangbusters, 37 guys to pick up one little guy.

It's ridiculous.

Kuklinski was charged with five murders, Paul Hoffman, Louis Mazgay, Daniel

Deppner, Gary Smith, and George Malabant.

At the time of the arrest, the car was searched for any evidence, and in the

trunk was found the egg sandwiches. And on the egg sandwiches, two of them had

the fake cyanide on them.

So, in fact, not only was the rich kid going to die, but Dominic was going to

die.

rich in your spirit. He who hesitates is lost.

Welcome back to Very Scary People.

When investigators finally arrested Richard Kuklinski in 1986, it seemed

the end of the road.

But the twists and turns of Iceman's evil legacy were far from over.

The search of the home turned up shocking information about one of his

and the late -in -life confession uncovers what could yet be another.

Law enforcement authorities have arrested one of the most notorious

killers in state history. A self -employed Bergen County man is behind

charged with five murders, and prosecutors are investigating his

dozens more.

On the day of his arrest, his home was searched.

And they found a knife, and it had eight notches carved into the handle on one

side, and I believe three on the other side, indicating that he killed 11

people with that knife.

We also talked to an individual by the name of Richard Patterson.

Patterson was engaged to one of Richard's daughters, Merrick.

Richard Patterson opened up another whole door for us in regards to what

Kuklinski had done.

One day, Patterson had been sleeping over and Kuklinski got him up early in

morning and said, listen, I need you to help me move this package, this thing.

And they get in the car and they go.

And he says to Richard, jump behind the wheel.

He gets out of the car and he goes around the back, he opens the trunk.

And Richard looks in the mirror, and he sees him taking a body out of the trunk,

walking into the woods.

And he dumps the body, and he gets in. And he tells Richard, what you saw here,

you'll never repeat to anyone.

It was ultimately determined that the body was Danny Deppner, who was in

Richard's circle of criminal friends.

Kukwinski decided Deppner would possibly talk and give him up.

He had brought Deppner.

baked beans and some other food.

And Danny Deppner ate the baked beans and they were loaded with cyanide.

It was wrapped in plastic garbage bags and he was taken up to West Milford

the body was dumped in the woods.

His body was not found until approximately five months later.

An autopsy showed that he had an undigested amount of baked beans in his

stomach. They found these baked beans that were so intact they could tell they

were even burned a little bit.

That indicated that the person was eating when they had died.

The path that led...

to Koglinski becoming a killer likely began in his childhood.

Richard had a very difficult upbringing.

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

other members of the family.

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

violent behavior.

By the time he was 10 years old, he had a host of personality problems.

He turned his rage on animals early on, started beating dogs to death, setting

cats on fire.

Richard Kuklinski was raised in the hardscrabble section of Jersey City.

He was of mixed ethnic descent. He was part Polish, part Irish, and because of

that, he later said that he was often picked on and taken advantage of.

Ultimately, he says, leading to the murder of a neighborhood bully when he

teenager.

Richard was about 13 years of age, and he got sick and tired of being bullied.

He picked out the big bully. His name was Charlie Lane.

Finally, he's not taking shit no more from the guy, and did what he had to do.

And he went into one of the closets in his apartment, and he took all the

clothes off the rod.

And he said he waited outside for the boy to come by.

And then he beat him to death with that rod.

After he killed Charlie Lane, Richard was worried that he would get caught.

When he didn't... He learned that he might be able to get away with

other acts of violence.

After that, if he was humiliated, he would respond with savage violence.

He learned clearly then that violence was the solution to his problem.

I was no longer taking the beating.

I was giving it.

And that's when I learned that it was better.

to give than to receive.

Rip me apart like I'm some sort of fool.

Never resisted. The first time that Kukwinski was brought into the

had an aura about him, a threatening aura.

He had them damn orange -tinged glasses on.

I'm saying, geez, how can they let this guy have these glasses? You know, get

him a different pair.

Kukinski's trial started on January 25th, 1988.

The prosecution began with the murders of Gary Smith and Danny Devner.

They were the two best cases we had. Out of all five, we had so much.

We tried the Smith and Devner cases over several weeks.

There was a lot of physical evidence, a lot of testimony from medical examiners

about how these people had died.

One of the witnesses was Gary Smith's wife. She testified that

her husband left the hotel where Richard was having them stay.

When Gary came home, she said, don't go back.

You know, don't go back. And he said, I have to. He'll kill the whole family if

I don't.

He goes back and Richie kills him.

In court, Kuklinski himself continued with his continence of intimidation,

yell out every now and then at people on the stand.

When witnesses testified against him, he would mouth, you're dead.

where he would go like this and scratch his head, and he'd go like this and make

it like a gun pointing at him.

I think that the key evidence was Dominic Polifrone's testimony.

It laid out who Kuklinski was.

It laid out what he did. It laid out the way he carried out his crimes.

The chief attorney's asking me questions, and then they played a tape.

You know, whatever.

You hear a pin drop, and then I can see some of the faces were like, like, this

is hard to believe. Is this reality?

The talk about cyanide and how to kill with cyanide must have sent chills

through some of the people on the jury.

The tapes killed him. The tapes were devastating.

Devastating.

It gave the jurors a very clear picture of what kind of guy he was.

There's even spray mints around, you know.

Yeah?

Yeah, you put that stuff in a mist, you spray it in somebody's face, and they go

to sleep.

Well, up until the time that Dominic took the stand, Kuklinski's wife and his

daughters were in court. You could see his wife and his daughters were

disbelieving. They just couldn't believe that he had done these type of things.

But when they heard their husband and father's voice explaining how to kill

people and how cold and calculated he was, I think that really hit home with

them and their whole demeanor changed.

We played one of the most explosive tapes early on, and we took a break

that. And I looked over, and Barbara and the daughters, and they were all

crying. And she said, we didn't know. We didn't know.

Through all of that time, all of these dozens and dozens, and maybe as many as

200 murders, Barbara, you didn't know that anything was up. You lived with

man for 25 years. You knew nothing.

First of all, you never questioned Richard.

You have said in the past that sometimes he would get up at 2 o 'clock in the

morning, leave the house. Or at the middle of dinner and leave the house,

you'd never ask him why.

Barbara was battered and beaten by him. She was not in a position to ever

question him about where he was going and where he was coming back, and he was

extremely macho.

So she was really put upon, actually, as were her children.

Barbara, do you think he could have killed 200 people?

I think he was capable of anything.

To the jury, it was overwhelming evidence.

And Richard Kuklinski was convicted of the murder of Gary T. Smith and Daniel

Deppner? This is what the judge said.

He said, words are inadequate to describe the depth of depravity reached

defendant. The lives of others have no meaning to this man.

No remorse, no conscience, no regrets.

Cold, calculated.

premeditated murders.

After being convicted of two murders, he confessed to two others in court today.

Richard Kuklinski later pled guilty to the Malibu and Massgate murders.

The judge says to Kuklinski,

can you tell me why?

And he says, it's due to business.

When they got him on the other murders, that was it. They had effectively thrown

away the key.

He received four consecutive life sentences.

He was gone away for a long, long time.

He wasn't getting out.

And so it seemed to bring to an end the long pursuit of the so -called Iceman.

Richard had an unusual reaction to Dominic.

He, I think in his own thick way, respected Dominic because Dominic was

get over on him, just like he got over on so many other people.

Today in court, the Iceman greeted the agent with a smiling, hello, Dominic.

He seemed to be quite cheery about saying hello to you.

Well, I reciprocated. The only thing is, I'm going home, and he's going to a

different environment at the present time.

After Kuklinski was sentenced to New Jersey State Prison, we got a Christmas

card from him.

which was a very thick number of drawings with Jesus and the

devil and skulls. And it was just bizarre.

And that was Kukwinski sending us a message. Merry Christmas.

After Kuklinski was convicted and received life without parole sentences

of those murders, there was no chance he was ever getting out of prison. And he

agreed to sit down for a series of interviews with HBO.

He intended to shoot people up close and personal.

Definitely.

I wanted to tell them just before they left.

I wanted to say goodbye.

Did you like to look them in the eye? I wanted them looking straight at me. He

spoke about his wife. He talked about the murders that he committed. He talked

about his mindset when he committed these murders.

What did you want him to think as they died?

Just see my pretty face.

I take it to them.

But the last thing they ever saw was me.

And if they carried that glimpse...

To eternity, infinity, or whatever it is, they're going to be thinking of me

that time.

The career hitman's confessions are a stunner. The Iceman saying one of his

victims was a New York City police detective.

One of the killings that Kuklinski claimed to have committed was that of a

York City detective named Peter Calabro in 1980.

There was a snowstorm on that day.

Calabro was coming down a road in Saddle River, New Jersey.

And Kuklinski knew the route he was going to take. And he blocked the road

with a van.

So Calabro would have to slow down and go slowly around the van.

I go to the back of the van.

And I go out the back door.

I take the shotgun with me. And as he's going by the van, I

fire.

Kuklinski stepped out with a shotgun and shotgun him to death.

The so -called Iceman has nothing to lose. Today, more than 20 years after

crime, he pled guilty to the cold -blooded murder of a New York City

officer. Did you force his death?

Yes. And how did you do that?

I shot him with a shotgun.

Prosecutors are asking for another 30 -year prison sentence in the Calabro

The Iceman is 67 years old now.

He actually laughed out loud when the judge said there would be no need to set

bail.

When the police came to interview him about his statement that he was involved

in the killing of Peter Calabro, Richard said he was hired by Sammy the Bull

Gravano, who was associated with the Gambino family.

Now, it's not clear whether Sammy the Bull.

was involved. He has denied it. There are other theories about what exactly

happened there and who was responsible, but it led to Gravano being indicted.

And Kuklinski was ready to testify against him.

But then Kuklinski dies all of a sudden.

Amazing.

Richard Kuklinski died March 5th in 2006 of...

A heart attack.

Allegations are maybe he was poisoned.

We'll pay back some bitch if he was.

So without his testimony, the state does not have a good case against him, and

the charges against Sammy were dropped.

I don't believe that Richard Kukinski was involved in the killing of Peter

Calabro. Bullshit.

There might have been other agendas that Kuklinski was serving at the time

because the person he said he committed the crime with was then a major witness

in a federal case.

And if Kuklinski had been believed, then that would have affected his

credibility.

We know that for sure he killed five people.

We also assume that he was involved in numerous other homicides.

Was it possible it could have happened? Absolutely.

He's capable of doing things like that.

What a vicious, bloodthirsty, non -caring, apathetic person

he was.

Cold -blooded killer.

Richard Kuklinski was an evil person.

Evil to the core.

He did what he wanted, when he wanted, to whomever he wanted.

Period. End of story.

He met his maker. And I hope it's the devil.

Is that all you've got left is hate?

That's all I've got left.

Everything that I ever cared for is gone.

Everything I ever liked is gone. Everything that meant anything to me is

So hate.

That's all you started with too.

Then I've come full circle. It's time for me to die.

Richard Kuklinski made many dubious claims to famous mob -related killings,

including the death of Jimmy Hoffa.

But without definitive proof, we may never know.

Kuklinski's wife, Barbara, said that neither his imprisonment nor his death

relieved the ongoing terror she felt as a result of being married to him, saying

he still haunted her in her dreams.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching. Good night.

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