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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. Episode 116. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. This is part 5, the final part of my Iceman saga. So if you haven't listened to part 1, 2, 3 and 4...
Do so now, before listening to this one. The tale of the Iceman has been twisted in every sense of the word. Tonight, I bring you, dear listener, in for the conclusion here on TSK. I've tried to cover as much as I can of Richard Kuklinski's life and crimes in this series. Naturally, covering a whole life is not possible.
So I've chosen to feature the most prominent moments. Also, during this saga, I have paid attention to not paint Richard Kuklinski in a light as some kind of anti-hero. There is a film based on his life called The Iceman that went in that direction and I can't say I approve of it.
He was a sadistic serial killer, a man who murdered for money, and although he treated his family seemingly okay, that does not weigh up for the innumerable evil acts he loved to perform. This finale episode will focus on how Kuklinski was caught, and his subsequent trial, incarceration, and ultimate fate. Enjoy.
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What you just heard was a snippet of the HBO special documentary featuring long interviews with Richard Kuklinski.
In this clip, he talked about his downfall. I have previously mentioned one of Kuklinski's friends, nicknamed Mr. Softy, in this series. But tonight I'll delve a little deeper and give you all the details that led up to the Iceman's downfall.
Robert Prungay sold ice cream out of his truck to kids in New Bergen, and while doing so, he daydreamed about inventive new methods of murder. He was an army-trained demolitions expert who was highly versed in the art of destruction. He teamed up with Kuklinski for several deals in the pornography trade, and also doing contract murders for Roy DeMeo when needed.
Kuklinski learned a lot from Mr. Softy. You might almost say he was a role model of sorts. One thing that Prongay was good at was using various types of drugs and chemicals to take a life, though he preferred cyanide. He taught Kuklinski how to put cyanide into a spray bottle, which could be used quickly and easily to take someone out.
Once the poison got into them through their nose, their fate was sealed. He even demonstrated the technique. And in less than 15 seconds, Kuklinski watched a man fall down dead in the street. Somehow, Prangay managed to get cyanide quite easily, and Kuklinski never learned his source.
Prongay also experimented with other things. He wanted to know, for example, if a body kept frozen could foil the medical examiner's reading for the time of death. If so, then a killer did not have to worry about an alibi. A dream scenario for a contract killer. Richard Kuklinski chose Louis Mazgay as a guinea pig to test if Prongay's method of freezing victims would work.
Mazgay wants to bring a rather large amount of cash to Kuklinski for a shipment of blank videotapes. He'd already attempted this exchange several times before, and each time Kuklinski had stood him up. Mazgay didn't realize that this was part of Kuklinski's M.O. Get his targets all worked up over some non-existent deal, increasing both the anticipation and the price each time.
On the 1st of July, 1981, Mazgay left his home in Pennsylvania with around $95,000, expecting a huge profit. But he never returned. The only sign that something had happened to him was his abandoned van, found on Route 17 in Bergen County, New Jersey. The secret panel in which he'd kept the cash had been ripped out, and the money was gone.
From different stories pieced together, it's apparent that Mr. Softee helped Kuklinski hide the body. One witness later claimed to have seen it hanging in a large industrial freezer in a warehouse rented by Kuklinski. But there was reason to believe that corpse had lain, for at least part of the time, in the freezer in Mr. Softee's ice cream truck, the one out of which he served ice cream to children.
No other freezer was found in the garages of either Kuklinski or Prungay, large enough to store a body. It was two years before Mazgay's body was actually found, just over the New Jersey border with Rockland County, New York.
He'd been shot and wrapped in plastic garbage bags. Oddly, he had on the same clothing he'd worn the day he vanished. But the medical examiner thought the body looked fresh. Yet during the autopsy, ice crystals inside the tissues gave away what had happened. Had Kuklinski only waited until the corpse had thoroughly thawed, he'd had gotten away with his attempt to foil the reading of the post-mortem interval.
When Mazgay was identified through his fingerprints, Kuklinski became a chief suspect. The cops started calling him the Iceman. Kuklinski had no idea Mazgay's body had been found, and no idea that the police had connected Mazgay to him. It was, after all, two years ago he had killed Mazgay, and he had killed several people in the interim.
One of them was a pharmacist, Paul Hoffman, 51 years old, in the spring of 1982. Hoffman had been pestering him endlessly to get a shipment of Tajamet, a prescription ulcer medication for a cut-rate price. Kuklinski had nothing for him, but led him to believe a shipment was in. Hoffman was to bring $25,000.
Hoffman put the cash together and went eagerly to see Kuklinski at his rented garage in North Bergen, New Jersey. That was the last his family ever saw of him. After Kuklinski's arrest and conviction, he eventually admitted to shooting and beating Hoffman with a tire iron and then cementing the pharmacist into another steel drum.
He left the drum outside a motel, next to a hot dog stand in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Occasionally he'd go have a hot dog and see if the barrel had been discovered. Eventually it was just gone. Apparently someone had moved it. And to this day, Hoffman's body has never been found. Then, in 1984, it was Mr. Softee starting to die.
He argued over something with Kuklinski and threatened his family. That was sufficient for Kuklinski to get rid of him. Robert Prongay was found shot to death in his Mr. Softee truck in his garage in North Bergen, just across the street from Kuklinski's garage. Unfortunately for Kuklinski, he'd now lost his source of cyanide, which would prove regretful in the near future.
Having collected what information they could on Richard Kuklinski, a task force was formed to try to stop him. At that point, they had no idea that Kuklinski would use almost any weapon — a bomb, a gun, a knife, strangulation, poison — to accomplish his lethal goals. Once he'd even decided to try out a crossbow. He opened his car window as if to ask directions,
and when a man approached, he released the arrow. It went through the man's head, killing him. Kuklinski was happy to know that it worked. Another time, he just shot a man at a traffic light. He was on a motorcycle and had gotten into a traffic argument with another car. He pulled up to the driver window and signaled for him to roll it down. The man inside started to berate Kuklinski, saying, ''Fuck you, man!''
Kuklinski answered simply, no, fuck you, and shot the man in the face with a sawed-off shotgun. At any rate, several agencies joined together to nab Kuklinski. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, and the New Jersey State Police Organized Crime Task Force.
Special Agent Dominic Polyphrone, who had extensive experience undercover with the mob, was hired to lure Kuklinski into a deal, specifically to get him either to admit to something on tape, or to actually engage in the initial stages of a premeditated act of murder. He took on the name Michael Dominic Provenzano, or just Dom.
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The first thing that falls to the bottom of the list tends to be taking care of yourself. "I don't have time or money for that" people tend to say. Many people think therapy is just about analyzing dreams or digging into painful memories and that can be powerful. But therapy is also a great tool for developing coping skills, dealing with stress and getting the accountability you need to achieve your goals.
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A warm breeze blew through the long black Lincoln's open window as Dominic Polyphrone cruised across the old steel girder bridge and crossed the river. The sun was peeking through grey clouds and the sky was blue on the horizon as the rain tapered off. The hiss of tires on the wet blacktop came in through the open window, but Dominic was oblivious to the sound.
He was thinking about Richard Kuklinski, focusing on his mark, trying not to out-psych himself for the meat, just trying to be himself. That was the key to good undercover work, just be yourself. Dominic had learned from experience that elaborate cover stories and aliases just get you into trouble on an undercover basis.
You can't hesitate when you're in with bad guys. If it takes you a second to answer to your cover name, they may get suspicious. And bad guys seldom sit on their suspicions. You slip up once, you can get hurt. You slip up with the wrong people, it could mean your life. That's why Dominic Polifrone wasn't that different from his cover, Michael Dominic Provenzano.
He told the guys he'd met at the store that some of his wiseguy connections in the city knew him as Sonny, but he told everyone just to call him Dom. Michael Dominic Provenzano was a tough kid from a lower-middle-class section of Hackensack, New Jersey. So was Dominic Polyfrome. Michael Dominic Provenzano ran numbers when he was a kid. So had Dominic Polyfrome.
Dominic Polyfrone might have ended up being just like Michael Dominic Provenzano if he hadn't gotten a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska. And that was what made him so outstanding as an undercover agent. He could talk like a bad guy, look like a bad guy, and act like a bad guy because that was all a part of him. But deep down, he knew he was one of the good guys.
That's why Dominic wasn't concerned with his undercover image as he drove across that bridge heading for the Dunkin' Donuts. He knew he was convincing. What he was concerned about was meeting Richard Kuklinski by himself without any backups. The situation had come down too fast to call in for help. Kuklinski was supposedly waiting for him. It was a five-minute drive to the donut shop from the store.
If he took too long getting there, Kuklinski wouldn't wait, so he was sure of that. The guy was cautious to a fault. If anything made Kuklinski suspicious about Dominic, he would disappear. And Dominic could forget about ever meeting him ever again. That's why this first meeting was important. Dominic would know in the first five minutes whether he could pull this off or not. The important thing was control.
He was a bad guy, and he wanted something. No matter how much he wanted to get close to Kuklinski, he could not kowtow to him. It would destroy his credibility as a player. And if Kuklinski thought he was bullshit, he'd have nothing to do with him. Dominic reached into his pocket and felt the butt of his gun, a Walter PPK 380 Automatic. Considering Kuklinski's reputation,
He planned to keep his hand in his pockets with his finger on the trigger. Kuklinski was by then... Millions of people have lost weight with personalized plans from Noom. Like Evan, who can't stand salads and still lost 50 pounds. Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right? For me, that wasn't an option. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. But Noom worked for me. Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com.
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were only a fraction of Kuklinski's total body count. From all indications, he was just too proficient at killing. Sometimes Kuklinski killed alone, and sometimes he brought help. Sometimes he worked as a killer for hire, sometimes the killings were his own doing. Sometimes it was business, sometimes it was apparently because Kuklinski simply wanted to kill someone.
After a short drive, Dom pulled into the Dunkin' Donuts. He cut the engine and looked to his right. A large, heavyset man was sitting behind the wheel of a Camaro, perusing the newspaper propped on the steering wheel. He was bald, except for the longish gray hair on the sides, which was carefully combed up and over his ears.
He wore a trim, full beard and moustache, mostly grey now, though his dirty blonde colouring was still in evidence. Oversized windowpane sunglasses covered his eyes. The man turned his head slowly and looked at Dominic. Dominic knew the face very well from the dozens of surveillance photographs he'd seen. It was him, the Iceman. Dom had to force himself from putting his hand in his pocket.
The Iceman was sizing him up, and Dom knew it. But he met Kuklinski's gaze with his own unconcerned stare. He had to establish control right off the bat, before they even exchanged a single word. You give a guy like Kuklinski the upper hand, and he'll eat you alive. Kuklinski closed his newspaper, folded it in half, and got out of the car. Dom opened his door and got out of the Lincoln,
And it was only then, looking over the roof of his car, that he realized just how big Kuklinski really was. At six feet even, Dominic had certainly never thought of himself as small or even medium. But compared with Richard Kuklinski, a horse would have looked small. The physical descriptions in the reports didn't do the man justice.
Six-four-two-hundred-and-seventy pounds didn't convey the whole truth of the matter. The man wasn't just big. He was huge. "'Richie?' Dominic asked. Kuklinski nodded, no expression. He put a newspaper under his arm. "'You want a coffee?' "'Sure.' Kuklinski walked around the back of the Lincoln and extended his hand to Dominic.
Dom shook his hand, deliberately keeping his face expressionless so his true feelings didn't show. He was shaking the hand of a killer. A hand that had taken many, many lives. He had been prepared for a bully's grip, but instead it was disarmingly gentle. "'I call you Dom?' The Iceman's voice matched his handshake, soft and low, almost lilting."
"'Yeah, Dom. I go by my middle name.' Kuklinski nodded, as if he were thinking something over. "'Call me Rich.' They moved into the diner, sat down and ordered coffee, and Richard ordered a huge cinnamon bun. Kuklinski nodded toward the plate-glass window behind them to Dom's car. "'How'd you like the Lincoln?' "'It's nice. I used to have an Eldorado, but I like this one better. Better ride with the Lincoln.'
Kuklinski bit into his cinnamon bun. You're right. Lincoln's a nice car. Nice and roomy up front. They talked cars for a while, comparing different models and reminiscing about good cars they'd had in the past. It was all very friendly, and it gave Dom a chance to ease into his undercover role with his targets. But they were just talking shit, still circling each other. Finally, Dom decided it was time to get down to business.
He saw an opportunity to steer the conversation into it. Before Dom could start his pitch, though, Kuklinski took off his sunglasses and looked Dom in the eye. Dom met his gaze. He couldn't come off as submissive in any way, or Kuklinski would pick up on it like a bloodhound. Dom already intended to grab the check when the waitress brought it. It would be his treat. "'I hear you got some connections, Dom,'
Koklinski was still staring at him. "Yeah, I got a few connections." Dom sipped his coffee, but his eyes never left Koklinski's. Koklinski lowered his voice. "Can you get the white stuff?" Dom paused, sizing him up for effect. "We, uh, talking about the cheap white stuff or the, uh, expensive kind?" "That's cocaine or heroin. The cheaper one." Dom shrugged. "Maybe."
"'How much do you want?' Kuklinski stuck out his bottom lip and tilted his head. "'Ten, maybe more later.' "'Yeah, sure, I can do that.' "'How much per?' Dom stroked his moustache and thought about it. "'Thirty-one-five.' "'Thirty-one thousand five hundred dollars a kilo.' Kuklinski nodded and sipped his coffee as he thought about it. "'Kinda steep, Dom. I know a guy I think I can get it for between twenty-five and thirty.'
So get it from him and don't waste my time. Dom snapped back. Kuklinski tore off a piece of his cinnamon bun and put it in his mouth. He seemed completely unperturbed by Dominic's attitude. How about cyanide? He asked. What? Dominic's heart stopped. He wished to hell he was wearing a wire. Cyanide. Can you get any?
What are you, funny? You need cyanide? Go to a hardware store, get some rat poison. They got all the fucking cyanide you want. Koklinski shook his head. Not that stuff. I need pure cyanide. Lab quality. The kind of stuff they make you sign for when you try to buy it. What do you need that for? Something personal. Gotta take care of. So, can you get it for me, Dom? Yeah, sure. I know a guy. I'm pretty sure I can get it.
"How much you need?" "Not much. You don't need a whole lot of that stuff." "A little dab will do you, huh?" "Yup." Koklinski tore off another piece of his cinnamon bun. "Tell you what, dog. You see if you can get me that stuff. And in the meantime, I'll take ten of the white stuff off your hands." "At what price?" "What you told me. Thirty-one five." "I thought you could get it for twenty-five."
Yeah, I could maybe. But that guy is a jerk off. He's not that careful about his business. I don't like people who aren't careful. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Guys like that you don't need. They're fucking liabilities. Exactly. And that, dear listener, was the beginning of the downfall of the Iceman.
What followed was several meetings between Michael Dominic Provenzano and Richard Kuklinski. And Kuklinski never suspected Dom was anyone but a common criminal, certainly not a federal agent. To everyone's surprise, Kuklinski revealed quite a bit to this man he barely knew, which meant that either he was not as careful as his reputation indicated, or he was planning to kill Dom.
He bragged about his cyanide methods and even talked about the man he'd frozen. He didn't name names, but the details he gave out matched those of the victims attributed to him. His confessions, captured on tape, were a goldmine. They also made it clear that he needed cyanide as soon as he could get it to take care of another problem, which indicated that he was planning another murder.
Eventually, Dom asked Kuklinski for help killing a quote-unquote rich Jewish kid who would bring a lot of cash for several packages of cocaine. The plan was to poison his egg sandwich with the cyanide. In actuality, the cyanide was quinine, totally harmless, that Dom brought, and they would split the money.
The day in question, the 17th of December 1986, arrived, and Koklinski claimed he had a van all prepared for the hit. He took the sandwiches that Dom had brought and said that he'd be back. However, he did not return, and another officer soon spotted him back at his house. The task force believed that Dom's life was now in danger, so they moved quickly to make an arrest.
Kuklinski's wife, Barbara, was ill that morning, so he urged her to get into the car with him so he could take her to get checked out. In many ways, that proved to be a lucky break for the feds, because she became a point of leverage. Although Kuklinski had beaten her up and threatened her life on several occasions, his family was sacred to him.
Even the idea that the police had Barbara in custody and intended to charge her with possession of a gun, because a handgun was found in the car, he was enraged. He demanded they let her go and insisted that she knew nothing of his deals, yet he'd had to give them something in return, which he ended up doing after his trial.
Because Kuklinski had actually applied the quinine to the sandwiches, it would be easy to use that to show, at trial, his intent to commit murder. He was charged with five murder charges, and for these he faced two separate trials. On the 25th of January 1988, Kuklinski's trial for the murders of Daniel Deppner and Gary Smith began.
The prosecution team, Bob Carroll and Charles Walden, said they would seek the death penalty. Yet, the case was circumstantial, since no witnesses came forward to say they'd actually seen Kuklinski commit a murder. However, they did have a few aces up their sleeves. Rich Patterson, a man who had almost married one of the Iceman's daughters,
admitted that he'd once unknowingly helped Kuklinski transport a corpse to a place near where they all went horseback riding on occasion. The man had been killed in his apartment one weekend early in 1983 while he was away. The likely victim was Daniel Deppner. With this information, detectives searched beneath the cleaned carpet for blood and found it.
The witness also said that he'd seen Tupperware containers in the apartment after that weekend that were consistent with those he'd seen in Kuklinski's home, which could mean that Kuklinski had brought food there and that Kuklinski himself had scrubbed away the blood on the carpet. The prosecution also called Barbara Deppner to the stand to tell what she knew. She was clearly afraid of the defendant,
She knew about her two victims being hidden in hotels, and she recalled her ex-husband telling her that Kuklinski intended to kill Smith. Danny also described the events afterwards. Her live-in companion and the former foreman of the car theft ring, Percy House, testified that Kuklinski had admitted to both murders. Defense attorney Neil M. Frank
tried to discredit this witness, but Kuklinski used his finger to point an imaginary gun at the man. And that's all the jury needed to give the witness credibility. Then, Agent Polyphrone, a.k.a. Dom, took the stand and described his many encounters with Kuklinski. Parts of the tapes were played for the jury, particularly the description of how to use cyanide in food.
There was also a part in which he talked about how long it took one of his victims to die and how he needed more to take care of a couple of quote-unquote rats. Along with the testimony of pathologist Gita Natarajan, who indicated the ligature marks consistent with strangulation, the jury was convinced. It took them four hours to decide.
On the 25th of May, 1988, they found Richard Kuklinski guilty. However, he did not get the death penalty, due to the absence of eyewitness testimony that could definitely put the murders directly in his hands. As a bargaining tool for the sentencing and to save the expense of a second trial for the murders of Maz Gay, Hoffman and Maliband,
The DA said that they would drop charges against Barbara Kuklinski and a drug charge against one of their children if Kuklinski confessed. He did so, in the cases of Maliband and Masgay, and then agreed to show them where he'd last seen Hoffman. But while he indicated where he placed the drum containing the body, he couldn't take it any further. He claimed he had no idea who had removed it.
Kuklinski was thus sentenced to two life sentences, each of which required that he serve a minimum of 30 years. The same for the murders of Maliband and Maske. That meant that Kuklinski would be 111 years old before he could be considered for parole. In October of 2005, after nearly 18 years in Trenton State Prison,
Kuklinski was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, which is an inflammation of the blood vessels. He was transferred to a secure wing at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. Although he had asked doctors to make sure they revived him if he developed cardiopulmonary arrest, his former wife, Barbara, had signed a do-not-resuscitate order.
A week before his death, the hospital called Barbara to ask if she wished to rescind the instruction, but she declined. And so it was that Richard Kuklinski died at age 70 on the 5th of March 2006. At the request of Kuklinski's family, noted forensic pathologist Michael Baden reviewed his autopsy report.
Baden confirmed that Kuklinski died of cardiac arrest and had been suffering with heart disease and phlebitis. His body was cremated. And so ends the saga of Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman. I hope you enjoyed listening to me telling it.
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I survived because I convinced him that I was a person. I survived because I was a smarter person than my assailant. I survived because I believe God saved me. From the network that brought you the Cold Case Files podcast.
comes, I survived. He had his right hand held high up in the air and in that hand was a big knife. The classic stories you know. Pointed the gun at me and he said, if you don't smoke this, I'm going to kill you. And he forced me to smoke crack. And I said, it looks like dynamite. And he said, if you do not do every single thing we tell you to do, you will disintegrate.
with new interviews, updating each woman's story with everything that happens after survival. I was waking up in the middle of the night standing on top of our bed screaming, and I was positive he was in the room. I felt like a throwaway person. I didn't think anybody would ever love me again. We talk about the justice system. My testimony, I was not a tearful widow. And I think the jury saw me as someone who was not...
grieving appropriately. How they started to heal. I know in the black community, there's like this stigma that if you go get help, like there's something wrong with you. I really felt strongly that I needed to just basically give away everything we had and drive to Alaska. And so much more. I don't know. You just have to let people understand that every reaction is normal. And if you survived it, you did the right thing.
That which does not kill you will make you stronger. I am so much stronger than I was even before. And I've really enjoyed feeling that way. Surviving is just the beginning of their story. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
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