"MY FRIEND, THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO DO IT...THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN SOMETHING."
-Richard 'Iceman' Kuklinski, about methods of murder.
Born in 1935 to a dirt-poor Polish mother, Richard Kuklinski grew up to be a wealthy husband, father, professional hitman, car thief, and got involved in every type of organized crime imaginable.
Look up the phrase 'Evil Bastard' in the dictionary, and Kuklinski's picture will be there.
I'm not sure if he qualifies for the label of serial killer, but he is noteworthy for sheer brutality and cunning. He is a completely sane man, and all the more frightening because of that.
It all started when he bludgeoned a neighborhood bully to death at fourteen. For months afterward he was terrified and oftentimes physically ill, sure he would be arrested for the crime. That day never came, though, and Richard gained confidence in himself, creating the inflated ego that would stay with him throughout his 'career'. A man possessed of a brilliant mind, Richard soon sank himself into the world of organized crime. He was a hitman at times, and after his arrest said that he only killed to support his family. Gee, what a swell guy.
This statement was as far from the truth as one could get. While driving on the highway one night, he was cut off by a young man. Experiencing a hellacious case of Road Rage, Kuklinski ran the boy off the road, beat him, ran over the body several times, and left him lying in the ditch.
That incident was one of many. If anything good can be said of this man, who was referred to by his business parteners as the 'one man army' and the 'devil himself', he was very protective of his family. A colleague (ao to speak,) showed up at his home during a barbecue, which was a BIG mistake, and weeks later turned up dead.
Linked to around one hundred killings, Richard was into poisons, especially cyanide. For fun he would fill a nasal spray bottle with cyanide, and, while walking down the street, sneeze into a handkerchief. While doing so, he would spray the cyanide into the face of a passerby, killing them almost instantly.
Richard earned the name 'Iceman' for his clever disposal of one body. Kuklinski murdered a pharmacist and kept his body frzozen for two years. After those two years passed, the victim's body was found alongside the highway, still partially frozen. The coroner said that if the body had been thawed completely before dumping it, it would have been impossible to determine when the man died.
Following his arrest, police searched for a deep freeze or some other freezer large enough to store the body of a grown man for two years. No deep freeze was found in either his home or the secret garage space he rented for 'business transactions'.
The source he bought cyanide from was, ironically, an ice-cream truck driver. The freezer inside the truck was the only place large enough to fit a human body. For two full years, Richard's poison purveyor/ice cream truck-driving buddy may have had to reach around a body to find the popsicles. When asked if the ice cream freezer held the pharmacist's remains, Kuklinski only smiles.
He also murdered a man he was doing business with in the rented garage space. Once the man had died, Richard stuffed him into a 55-gallon drum, filled the drum with cement, and left it outside the victim's favorite hotdog stand. Every day thereafter Richard would visit the hotdog stand, and while he ate would find amusement by looking at the metal drum on the sidewalk, pleased with his cleverness. Eventually the owners of the hotdog stand had the drum removed from their property, and police assume it was taken to a land fill with all the other garbage. To this day, the body has never been recovered.
In 1986 the police caught up with Kuklinski by employing an undercover cop to pose as a 'customer' needing a hitman, some cocaine, etc.
