Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

Man: What did you want them to think as they died?

Richard: Just see my pretty face.

I'll 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 gonna 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-blooded killer.

Richard Kuklinski was a part-time hitman

and a full-time psychopath.

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,

the 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".

♪♪

♪♪

[ Weed trimmer whirring ]

Carroll: 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.

[ Footsteps ]

He went over and 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 Masgay.

Smith: Louis Masgay disappeared in July 1981.

Two years before the body was found.

But he had the same clothes on

that he disappeared in two years prior.

They knew that this was pretty strange.

Smith: 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.

Carroll: Later, we were able to establish that Mr. Masgay

had been taken to a garage

in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Carroll: That garage, we believed, was a killing ground.

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

Smith: Then, took his body, placed it in the freezer,

where it remained for approximately two years.

Until it was dumped.

Carroll: 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.

♪♪

Richard: One part of my life, I killed people for nothing.

Just for somebody to look at me wrong, I would kill them.

♪♪

Smith: 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,

and he also segued into making copies of pornographic films.

Schumacher: He met a man named Roy DeMeo

through the underground pornography industry.

Roy DeMeo was a soldier within the Gambino crime family,

and best 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 Sopranos",

where they put them in the bathtubs,

they chopped them up, and then they get rid of the bodies.

DeMeo 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 even more 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."

Kane: And it was a guy walking his dog.

Didn't know the man.

Could've been me walking down the street.

Could've been anybody.

Heide: Richard got out...

♪♪

[ Dog barks ] ...and shot this man,

and at that point,

Roy DeMeo knew that Richard had essentially what it takes...

[ Gunshot ] ...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.

♪♪

♪♪

Carroll: It's interesting 'cause a person like Kuklinski,

the one area of knowledge,

his 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 strangled.

♪♪

He said that he'd killed an individual

that was involved in a pornography business.

[ Doorbell rings ] He said that he went there

and he rang the doorbell,

and the person asked who was there,

and when that person looked through the peephole...

He squeezed the trigger 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...

[ Rats squeaking ] ...to eat a person alive.

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

Kuklinski was a different breed,

a different breed.

Heide: 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 murderers.

We have another type who kills for profit

and a serial killer who kills for power and control,

and those two seem to be fused for him in most cases.

He did it 'cause he liked it.

Polifrone: He had no remorse whatsoever.

He loves that stuff.

He's into it.

Carroll: He was a killing machine.

He could do it on a moment's notice,

with no hesitation, no conscience.

Carlo: This guy, I thought, made Richard Ramirez,

the Night Stalker, seem like a quiet boy lost in the woods.

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

He kept his work life very separate from his family.

Smith: Richard Kuklinski 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.

Sanderson: 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.

Carlo: 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 you want to live next door,

and the next minute, he could be slowly torturing somebody.

Sanderson: 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.

♪♪

Heide: He liked that the victims were looking directly at him.

Pleasure from seeing someone terrified

in the sense of power and control.

Richard: Shot a guy one time in his Adam's apple,

see how long it would take him to die.

Man: How long did it take?

Richard: A few minutes.

He drowned, actually.

Man: Drowned on his blood?

Richard: Mm-hmm.

I was with somebody else.

We had a $50 bet.

I lost.

Kane: 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.

Smith: After making contact with somebody,

he would lure them into thinking that he was 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.

Smith: He didn't just rob them.

He would kill them so they could never come back

and say anything about him.

Kane: 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 Malliband.

♪♪

Carroll: Malliband's brother had indicated

he was supposed to meet somebody.

The purpose was to buy videotapes,

and he had to bring cash.

Richard: I was sitting in the van.

I'm in the driver's seat.

Georgie boy was over here in the next seat,

which was, you know, just like that.

[ Gunshots ]

And I went pop-pop-pop.

And then I went pop-pop.

Smith: He was shot by Kuklinski.

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

Kuklinski couldn't get his body into the drum

'cause Malliband was a large male,

and he cut his legs, the ligaments,

so he could bend his legs and stuff him into the drum.

Sanderson: And then he tossed it from a cliff.

♪♪

Smith: His body was found on February 5th

in a Jersey City industrial area.

Carroll: As the state police and the local authorities

investigated that murder, they had 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.

♪♪

♪♪

Roberts: You have said of Richard,

"There are two Richards.

I never knew who would be walking in the door.

He could be generous to a fault, or the meanest man on Earth."

Tell us more about that. Barbara: 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, at two o'clock in the morning

with a pillow over my face,

and he would tell me that he'd decided that was the day I die.

So, the idea that he may have killed you

was not outside of the realm of possibilities?

Absolutely not.

Merrick, he talked to you about that.

What did he say? Merrick: 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 get rid of all of us

because he could leave no witnesses,

and that it would be hardest.

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 gonna have to kill you, too?"

Mm-hmm. But that could have happened at any time

during the rages, that he could have slipped

and killed any of us, all of us.

You expected that. Yeah.

And you accepted that?

A lot of times, 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.

Right. 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 and -- 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 life was all about.

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

Carlo: 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.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Schumacher: 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.

Holstege: 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 a guy,

he's got cyanide in the drink.

Richard: Spill the drink on him and leave.

Everybody just looks around, thinks you're a drunk

or that you just had an accident or something,

and meanwhile, it's soaking through their clothes

into their pores

and into their system, and eventually, they'll die.

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

You can put it into a spray bottle.

Guy takes five, no more than 10 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 gonna kill you.

As a murderer, I can see where Kuklinski thought

this was a good method.

'Cause there's always the problem of the body.

He wants to take somebody out.

They suddenly look like

they're having a heart 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. And?

I begged her. I said, "Please, let's get out of here.

Let's leave. Let's go someplace."

There wasn't anywhere to go.

Carlo: They planned to poison him, Barbara and Chris.

They actually were planning to kill him,

but they realized that if they tried to do it

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

♪♪

♪♪

Heide: Paul Hoffman was a pharmacist in New Jersey.

At the time, the drug Tagamet was very popular

and was being ordered in large quantities

by a lot of the populace.

It was a very expensive drug.

Kane: 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 going price for the medicine was $5,

he was gonna buy it for under a dollar.

You can make a ton of money.

Smith: Richard Kuklinski told Hoffman

that somebody was gonna deliver

a van filled with Tagamet for him,

and Hoffman emptied out his bank account.

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

Smith: Kuklinski had Paul Hoffman come to his garage

on new Kirk Avenue...

♪♪

...and he closed the door.

♪♪

And he says, "How am I gonna get this merchandise?"

I put the gun under his chin, and I said,

"There is no merchandise."

And I shot him.

Heide: Paul Hoffman did not die.

He was struggling and gurgling,

and Richard tried to shoot him again,

and the gun malfunctioned.

Kane: So, Kuklinski took a tire iron out...

[ Tire iron thudding ]

...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.

♪♪

Kane: And that's how Paul Hoffman met his demise.

The murder seems pretty cruel, calloused,

no feeling, no remorse at all.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome back to "Very Scary People".

By 1982, police said Richard Kuklinski had killed

three men in New Jersey --

George Malliband, Louis Masgay, 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.

Carroll: 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 one day, "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 onto 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 you're running for the hills."

I said, "Give me his name. I want his name."

He gave me the name Richard Kuklinski.

Smith: 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.

Carroll: 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.

Carroll: Kuklinski took Gary and Danny off the street

and moved them to a series of motels.

♪♪

Eventually, they were put into The York Motel.

Richie would visit them, bring them food,

tell them not to leave the room under any circumstances.

Smith: On December 23rd, Kuklinski decided

that he was gonna kill Gary Smith.

[ Door knob clicks ]

Sanderson: Kuklinski got together

with Deppner and Smith for a meal.

They ordered hamburgers.

Kuklinski decided that he would kill Smith

by poisoning him with cyanide.

Cyanide looks like just salt, table salt.

So, Kuklinski had mixed cyanide in the ketchup

that was then brought on a hamburger to Gary Smith.

Smith: Gary Smith started to eat the hamburger.

Carroll: Gary got about halfway through.

His eyes went goofy and rolled back in his head,

and he just 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.

Smith: And he then ordered Danny Deppner to finish him off

with the cord, which Danny Deppner did.

Carroll: He got behind him, put the cord around his neck,

and choked off his air stream.

Gary Smith's body was then

placed under the mattress in the bedroom of the hotel,

and it remained there for a number of days.

Sanderson: The room was rented out

to several guests several times.

They had no idea that this guy's corpse was underneath it

before the owner finally got the hotel staff

to find it and call the cops.

There was decay that had occurred,

and so the body had actually turned the skin dark in color,

to the point where they thought it was

an African-American male initially.

Sanderson: Kuklinski knows that there's someone else

who has to be eliminated from the case,

and that's Mr. Deppner.

Kane: In may of 1983, Danny Deppner's body

was found up 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, I'm gonna get you now.

Come hell or high water, I'm gonna get you."

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

We found three reports that were sitting in,

like, a dead file going nowhere.

Hoffman, Masgay, and Malliband.

Heide: The police made the connection

that Richard Kuklinski appeared

to be the last person who had been seen by these three men

who subsequently were murdered.

When I discovered that, I go, "Oh [Chuckles] 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, he knew how to cover his tracks.

He was very careful about making sure

nobody would ever find out what he'd done.

They had a lot of disparate crimes,

and because Kuklinski

was actively working to eliminate evidence,

they were still lacking with proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

They needed to find a way to link Kuklinski

to all these different murders.

Polifrone: They needed direct evidence.

They needed to hear from Kuklinski himself

how he murdered these individuals.

♪♪

I am what you call a person's nightmare.

Because of the way I project myself,

people think they ain't getting by,

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

♪♪

Heide: One of the dynamics we look at

is how did Richard get into the business of being a killer?

What was the template upon which

this mass murderer was formed?

Carlo: Well, basically, Richard was a severely abused child.

Richard Kuklinski was born April 11th, 1935

in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Sanderson: 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.

Carlo: He wrapped a Garrison belt around his fist,

and he hit them in the head and knocked them out.

Heide: 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 8.

Initially, what 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.

Carlo: And I asked him, "do you have any regrets, Richard?"

And he said, "Yeah, I regret not killing my father."

He hated his father.

Heide: 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.

Smith: 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.

Smith: He had lured her onto the roof of a building,

where he sexually assaulted her, and afterwards,

he threw her body off the building and killed her.

He was convicted of murder.

Heide: 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.

♪♪

Smith: We had acquired a lot of information

through various law enforcement sources,

which pointed to Richard Kuklinski.

The problem with it was there wasn't enough information

to arrest him.

Carroll: The idea that was suggested was maybe, just maybe,

we could have an uncover pose as another criminal.

To build evidence that would support a prosecution.

When the investigation of Richard Kuklinski

needed an undercover operative, they went and got Dom Polifrone.

If there was a Mount Rushmore for undercover agents,

Dom's face would be carved in the granite.

Dominick Polifrone was a decorated Federal Agent

that had successfully infiltrated major mob families

in New York.

I worked all organized crime, five families in New York

before I came over to New Jersey.

I had a lot of experience.

I spent 15 years in the streets.

He could talk the talk, walk the walk.

Polifrone: I didn't play a different part, I was myself.

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

He had the look, he had the dialect.

He was the person, if anyone,

that could get close to Richard Kuklinski.

Polifrone: So, I read the information about Kuklinski.

They had a huge folder on him.

Where he lived, his family, his associates.

And they alleged that he committed five murders.

There was this poison involved,

and if it got into your skin there,

there's no way an antidote would work there.

Headquarters called me.

They said, "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 to solidify his credibility

if anybody was trying to look at him from the outside in.

Polifrone: The main function of this investigation was

get the information on how Kuklinski murdered them people.

Bottom line, we have to meet Richard Kuklinski.

Smith: He was very unpredictable.

He was very cunning.

He was very wary of outside people.

And we knew it'd be very difficult

to get an undercover into him.

The way Dominick sort of integrated himself

into this world was there was a store.

This was a place where guys like Kuklinski 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 purchase stolen property

and other criminal activities.

Dobyns: 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 in 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.

Carroll: Dominick had to dedicate himself

for a long time,

to do things that would establish his credibility.

♪♪

Polifrone: 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.

You don't want to know about it."

And I knew they were gonna ask.

"Dom, what's in there?"

So, I go in the back room, I open the attache case,

and inside, I have ten blocks of plastic stolen explosives

from the military.

I have 10 high-standard .22 caliber silencers

with no manufacturer serial number.

They went berserk.

They said, "Man, listen, we could use this."

I said, "Look, at another time,

but these are for people from New York."

I knew word was gonna get out that I could get anything.

[ Telephone rings ]

Kane: One day, September of '86,

the phone rings at the store in Patterson.

And they say, "The big guy wants to see you."

It was big Richie, and he wanted to meet Dominick

at a local donut shop.

♪♪

Richard Kuklinski claimed to have killed 100, 200 people.

We simply have no idea.

Schumacher: It's been very difficult

for investigators and journalists

and experts to track down the actual evidence

to support a lot of those claims.

Woman: Did you ever let anyone go, for whatever reason?

Did you ever decide to let someone go?

Richard: Yes.

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

[ Telephone rings ]

Polifrone: After 18 months of undercover,

it was September 2nd, 1986,

when the call came in at the store,

and that's when I first met Kuklinski

at the Dunkin' Donuts in Patterson, New Jersey.

[ Sirens wail ]

If you were gonna put this on a scale of one to 10,

with 10 being the most dangerous, it was an 11.

Dom's going to meet a serial killer.

Carroll: We didn't know what was gonna happen.

We don't know if Kuklinski

has already figured out that we're onto him.

If Dominick said something wrong, it could set him off,

and he had the capability of killing very quickly.

Dominick had a lot of pressure.

The entire investigation hinged

on whether he could at least entice Kuklinski

to participate in something with him.

Dobyns: And just the added, subliminal, hidden pressure

of knowing that the public's safety rests in your hands.

What Dom did was gonna depend on

if innocent civilians lived or died.

Polifrone: 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 generalities.

Dobyns: 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 puppet for this guy?

Heide: Richard was trying to likely size Dominick up

and to see if he was someone that could be trusted,

someone who was skilled.

Polifrone: He says, "You do coke?"

I said, "No, I don't do coke."

He says, "No, no.

What do you get a kilo for?"

And so I said -- probably, at that time,

it was about $30,000 a ki.

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

And 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 a [Bleep] idiot.

You don't trust him?

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

Dobyns: Dom makes a pretty bold move in challenging Kuklinski.

He's calling out one of the most dangerous men on the planet,

and he's basically saying, "You're a fool.

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 saying,

"I'm gonna 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.

Polifrone: I said, "This is the devil."

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

He 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.

Heide: There is a sense of urgency.

The scale of danger is off the charts.

It was like the ultimate chess game.

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

during this investigation.

Smith: 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 operative

that he would talk about his crimes.

The agent, Dominick Polifrone, would be wearing a wire,

a dangerous cat-and-mouse game

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

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Goodnight.

♪♪