I. Summary
This is a story about Richard Kuklinski, a psychopath who killed people for a living without remorse or compunction. And as he had told the book author, he liked what he did.
A hit man for the Mafia, he did jobs for the crime syndicate for two decades --murdering maybe more than a hundred people in New York and other states and in a career that spanned more than two decades.
But more than a hit man, Kuklinski, who was Polish, also killed people sometimes out of rage as he had a violent temper. He would kill people simply for disrespecting him or for trying to pull a fast one on him. Indeed, there were occasions when he would shoot people to death for bullying him on the road.
Before his career as a mob hit man, he would kill people to practice his trade, making him at one point a serial killer that New York police couldn't pin down because of the different ways he used in silencing his victims.
And his violent ways apparently could be traced from his upbringing. His childhood years were difficult for he suffered under the hands of an abusive father, Stanley. Kuklinski grew up in a home where his father would beat him black and blue, while his mother Anna, a staunch Catholic, was indifferent to him. An older brother, Florian, was beaten to death by his father. He had two other siblings Roberta and Joseph –who like his brother, would eventually land in jail for being a psychopath as well, this time for raping and murdering a child in a very infamous case that rocked New York in 1970.
His early years saw him struggling with poverty and he ended up being a thief. From stealing food and other goods, he later branched out to doing bigger crimes like hijacking cargoes, robbing people's homes and eventually, murder.
Kuklinski got the notice of the Mafia after he led a gang that robbed people's homes and the way they dealt violently with those who cross their paths. It was Mafia hit man Roy DeMeo who gave him murder contracts and illegal money-making deals. Aside from murdering people, he also sold pornographic movies as a living.
Much of the book detailed and described the manner by which Kuklinski would kill his victims, mostly murder contracts he did for the Mafia for several years. And it was his violent ways of killing people that earned him the moniker the ``Ice Man.''
He would stalk them and wait for the opportune time to move against his victims. Kuklinski would use knives, guns, hammer and even poison, including cyanide, to kill them.
But he would also torture his victims, if the contract called for him to make them ``suffer.'' One of the horrifying methods he used included letting rats feast on his victims whom he left inside a cave. Another incident included him freezing the body of another ``mark'' and then eventually putting it out
And all throughout his murderous frenzy to which he had admitted to have enjoyed, he lived a double life, going home to a family who did not know he was a ``stone-cold killer.'' While he made money for the kind of work he had, he gambled his money every time and lost a lot of it.
But like his father, he was also a drunkard and abusive and would beat his wife Barbara. He did not lift any finger though on any of these three children –Merrick, Christin and Dwayne.
His family did not know until he was arrested in 1986 the life of crime he led.
He was tried and eventually convicted for the murder of four men, mostly Mob members, after his friend Phil Solimene (his co-conspirator in many robberies and murders) cooperated with authorities.
This became possible through the meticulous investigation by police detective Pat Kane who took several years trying to pin down Kuklinski. Federal investigators entrapped the Mafia hit man with the help of Solimene.
After Kuklinski's conviction, he gained fame after he gave several interviews with HBO network, and in one interview he was able to link a Mafia crime lord Samuel ``The Bull'' Gravano to the killing of a New York cop, Peter Calabro. At that time, Gravano was the star witness of authorities who wanted to bring to jail top Mafia leader John Gotti.
In the end, Kuklinski died in prison under mysterious circumstances. He suddenly became ill while in prison and had even told his family he was going to be murdered.
A day after he died in prison, Gravano was let off the hook by authorities for the murder of Gravano.
II. Opinion
Kuklinski's story is definitely riveting and very revealing. The author was able to get inside the mind of a killer –the way he planned his murders and how the life of a person did not just mean anything to him.
It's shocking the way Kuklinski viewed murder; especially, the way he compared it at one point to being like an ``aspirin'' to a headache. That is really scary for someone to think that taking one's life was a cure for an ailment.
What was equally scary was how the Mafia hit men told his favorite daughter Merrick (the only one he showed so much compassion) that he would have to kill her and her siblings in the event he had to kill their mother.
Then again as the book had revealed, Kuklinski was bipolar – a medical condition that would see him having violent mood swings that would lead at most times in murder.
But more than having a bad gene, his troubling childhood likewise contributed to the way he viewed life onwards.
Much as he had abhorred the way his father treated him and his family, he had become his father by drinking too much and being abusive to his wife. The way he killed people was disturbing. To think he got some of his ``murder'' ideas from cartoons and movies he watched. A classic example was the way he fired at the peephole in the door to be opened by his ``mark'' –which he had seen in a scene from a movie.
It was not surprising then that he died under mysterious circumstances –probably ordered killed by the crime syndicate he had served well. Given that he had squealed on the workings of the Mafia, a no-no in the crime syndicate. But then again he was not Italian, and his non-compunction ways of he did things, that is, his disregard of the ways of the Mafia – probably caused his death.
REFERENCES:
Carlo, P. (2006). The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer. New York: St. Martin's Press.
