Richard Kuklinski, a Jersey City native who became notoriously famous for his string of hired killings throughout New Jersey, including three more prominent murders in North Bergen during the 1980s, died last Monday in the locked-down prison wing of a Trenton hospital.
Kuklinski, who earned the nickname as “The Iceman” for keeping some of his murder victims inside a freezer in his garage on Tonnelle Avenue, was 70.
State corrections officials confirmed that Kuklinski died Monday in the secured wing of St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, where he was being treated for a number of ailments. Kuklinski was apparently in failing health for the last four months, developing heart, lung and kidney problems.
According to published reports, Kuklinski was apparently also suffering from dementia in his final days and could not remember the names of his wife Barbara and three children.
Kuklinski was moved last month to the hospital from the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where he had been incarcerated since his conviction on several murder charges in 1988.
Lucky for Sammy the Bull
Kuklinski was also expected to be the star witness in a murder charge against famed Gambino family underboss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, whom Kuklinski claimed hired him 26 years ago to kill a New York City detective in Upper Saddle River. That murder charge against Gravano dies along with Kuklinski.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli confirmed that his office was not going to proceed with the case against the famed mobster Gravano, who gained recognition for his testimony that helped to convict late mob boss John Gotti a decade ago.
“I cannot proceed with this particular matter at this juncture and will be requesting that the court dismiss the case,” Molinelli said. “I regret that a jury is not going to have an opportunity to determine who killed this police officer. We do have evidence to corroborate Kuklinski’s testimony, but it’s not enough.”
Kuklinski, who in his heyday stood an imposing 6-foot-5 and weighed 275 pounds, became almost a cult figure five years ago when two television documentaries were aired on HBO, called “The Iceman Confesses: Secrets of a Mafia Hit Man.” Kuklinski calmly admitted on camera that he had killed as many as 100 people during his lifetime, perhaps more.
Kuklinski detailed in gruesome fashion some of the killings that he was either paid to pull off or just did because of a personal disagreement or vendetta.
Because of these two television shows, Kuklinski became a popular figure, with at least four books written about him and another, set to be published later this year, expected to be an authorized biography written by New York author Philip Carlo.
Hoboken author profiled him
Vincent Bruno, a famed author and former Hoboken resident who has written several crime-related books over the years, was given access to Kuklinski in Trenton State Prison in 1992 in order to write “Iceman: The True Story of a Cold Blooded Killer.”
Bruno has said that when he finally met Kuklinski, after several failed attempts to interview him, Kuklinski told him, “I’m not the Iceman. I’m a nice man.”
In later years, Kuklinski was known by his wife and children as a family man, with the Kuklinski family living in virtual obscurity in Dumont in Bergen County, after moving from North Bergen in the mid-1980s. No one there knew of Kuklinski’s secret life as an assassin for the Mafia.
However, because of the HBO specials and the books, like the one written by Bruno, Kuklinski’s status almost grew to that of a horror-movie cult demon, much like Hannibal Lecter of “Silence of the Lambs” fame.
Mr. Softee man hanged in North Bergen
His chilling accounts of some of the murders he carried out were beyond shocking – including the three that either took place in North Bergen or involved the township.
Kuklinski said in those shows that killing was a way to cover up robberies and thefts. He claimed to have shot, stabbed, strangled and poisoned many of his victims. As one of the main enforcers for the Gambino crime family, Kuklinski earned a reputation of killing with such ease that even the biggest Mafia bosses were uneasy around him.
Among the victims Kuklinski claimed to have calculatedly murdered was Robert Prongay, a North Bergen businessman who owned a Mister Softee ice cream truck. Prongay’s bullet-riddled body was found hanging in a garage on Tonnelle Avenue, near where the truck regularly parked.
It was believed that Prongay was the person who sold Kuklinski the cyanide that he had used for several killings. Kuklinski would later say that cyanide was one of his most popular way of pulling off hired hits.
“Why be messy?” Kuklinski said while being interviewed for the HBO documentaries. “You do it nice and neat with cyanide.”
Kuklinski claimed to put cyanide into a nasal spray bottle and while walking down the street, he would pretend to sneeze into a handkerchief. While doing so, Kuklinski would spray the cyanide into the face of a passerby, killing them almost instantly.
Kuklinski said that Prongay was the person who would provide the cyanide.
When Kuklinski believed Prongay was going to tell the police about the association between the two men, Kuklinski killed him.
North Bergen murders
Another Kuklinski victim, Gary Smith, was killed when Kuklinski apparently fed Smith a poison-filled hamburger. After Smith was dead, Kuklinski apparently jammed Smith under a bed inside a North Bergen hotel room. Smith’s body went unnoticed in the hotel room for more than three weeks, before the smell of decomposition drew attention to the room.
Another Kuklinski case that involved North Bergen was the murder of local pharmacist Louis Masgay, whose body was allegedly kept in a North Bergen freezer for more than two years – thus Kuklinski’s nickname of “The Iceman.”
Kuklinski apparently kept an industrial-sized freezer in a warehouse space that Kuklinski rented on Tonnelle Avenue. Witnesses had seen Masgay near the warehouse before Masgay’s disappearance.
Kuklinski later said that he shot Masgay and kept him in the freezer to try to disguise the time of death. Masgay’s body was later found in Rockland County in New York, wrapped in plastic bags and wearing the same clothes he had on when last seen.
When the medical examiner did the autopsy, it was determined that although Masgay’s body appeared fresh, like a day or two, there was ice in the tissues, which proved that the fatal wounds had occurred a long time prior to Masgay’s body being spotted.
If Masgay’s body was found a little later, after the ice had melted, then no one could have determined the time of death.
Following Kuklinski’s eventual arrest in 1986, North Bergen police and FBI agents combed the area in search of a freezer that would have been big enough to store a human body. A freezer was never found – although it is believed that Prongay’s ice cream truck could have also been storage for victims such as Masgay.
Kuklinski also confessed to have murdered another unidentified North Bergen man while he “conducted business” in the rented warehouse. Once the unidentified man was dead, Kuklinski apparently stuffed the body into a 55-gallon drum, filled the drum with cement and left the drum outside the victim’s favorite hotdog stand on Bergenline Avenue. Kuklinski said that he took “great thrill” going by the hotdog stand and seeing the drum just sitting there, day after day.
“I found great amusement seeing that drum there for so long,” Kuklinski said on the HBO special.
Eventually, the drum was removed and was believed to be taken to local landfills with regular trash. The victim’s body was never recovered.
Family shocked by arrest
In the 1980s, Kuklinski had become one of the leaders of a robbery and theft ring. At first, he was not connected with any of the murders, just believed to be involved with the theft.
So a task force of state, local and federal agents was set up to investigate Kuklinski and a group of others he was associated with.
Dominic Polifrone, who was an agent for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, posed as a mobster looking for drugs and just happened to secretly record Kuklinski admitting to several murders. That was enough evidence to arrest Kuklinski.
In 1986, Kuklinski was arrested outside of his Dumont home, much to the shock and dismay of his family, who was convinced he was a reputable businessman and family man.
At the time, Kuklinski was only charged with five murders, including the murder of Gary Smith, who was found in the North Bergen hotel room four years prior. In 1988, Kuklinski was convicted and sentenced to consecutive life terms for the murders of Smith and colleague Daniel Dessper. Later that year, he pleaded guilty to the murder of Masgay. But he was never charged with any of the murders that he claimed to have carried out during the HBO series.
Set to testify
Kuklinski was set to testify that famed mob rat Gravano hired him in 1980 to kill New York City detective Peter Calabro on a snowy night in Upper Saddle River. Kuklinski said that he kept in constant contact with Gravano that night and that Gravano was nearby at the time of the killing, as Kuklinski shot Calabro while Calabro was sitting in his car.
Kuklinski pleaded guilty to the murder of Calabro in 2003, two years after the HBO show first aired. Murder charges were filed against Gravano, who is currently serving a 20-year term in federal prison for a drug conviction after turning state’s evidence against the mob.
Kuklinski said in Bruno’s book that he was born in Jersey City in 1935 to dirt-poor Polish immigrants and that he started his life in crime by bludgeoning a neighborhood bully to death in downtown Jersey City when Kuklinski was only 14.
While Kuklinski said that he was always fearful of getting charged with the crime, he never was – and that enabled him to gain confidence to enter a life of crime, a life that ended last Monday.
Bruno said that he didn’t feel sorry about Kuklinski’s passing.
“He wasn’t a nice man, and he wasn’t an asset to society,” Bruno said. “I can’t say I’m saddened by his death, but I can say that one of my main writing subjects is no longer around.”