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Hi, Conspiracy Theories listeners. Because we're covering one of the most infamous serial killers of all time today, I'll be co-hosting this episode with my friend Vanessa Richardson, host of Serial Killers. This is a fascinating story, so I won't make you wait any longer to get into it. Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.
This episode includes discussions of domestic violence, child abuse, murder, assault, and animal cruelty. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on domestic violence, visit spotify.com/resources. It should have been a quick, easy kill. The man was staring down the barrel of Richard's gun, praying and pleading,
"Please God, help me over and over again." Richard could barely think. It was so annoying. "Please God, please." He should have just shot him to shut him up. But instead, he lowered the gun and told him, "You have half an hour to pray. If God can come down and change the circumstances, you have that time."
Richard sat down and waited. A half hour passed. God didn't show up. Richard had never felt guilty after a murder. He'd never felt anything at all. But this time, for the first time in his life, he found himself regretting what he'd done. He shouldn't have let it go down like that. By the time he got back home, his wife and kids were already asleep.
He changed his clothes, made himself a turkey sandwich, and sat down to watch some TV. He wondered why he was so cold and cruel. He didn't think he could change, but he wished he could understand it. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday.
I'm here with my friend Vanessa Richardson, who just so happens to be the host of another Spotify podcast, Serial Killers. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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- Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of "Director's Commentary." "Director's Commentary" is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic "Director's Commentary" track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers for people who love film.
and filmmakers. Richard Kuklinski was a man of many talents: hijacking, burglary, piracy, arms dealing, money laundering, and most notably, contract killing. To the police, he was known as "The Iceman" because one of his victims' bodies was found frozen. To his associates, he was simply known as "Big Rich," "The Polack," or "The Devil Himself."
Between 1949 and 1986, by his own estimate, Richard killed somewhere between 100 and 250 people, both for fun and profit. After decades of operating with impunity, he was finally arrested in 1986 and convicted of six counts of murder.
During the two decades he spent in prison before his death in 2006, Richard gave a series of interviews detailing his criminal career. Although many of his claims check out, some are impossible to either verify or disprove. For the sake of this story, we'll err on the side of taking Richard's recollections at face value, but we'll note anything that seems unlikely based on the facts available.
We do know that while carrying on a career as a killer and crime ringleader, Richard led a double life as a friendly, respectable family man in suburban New Jersey. As his wife Barbara put it, "There are two Richards. He could be generous to a fault or the meanest man on earth." It was a hot, sticky morning in June 1979.
44-year-old Richard Kuklinski emerged from his white Cadillac outside a diner at the edge of the Hudson River. This was where he would always meet up with Roy DeMayo.
DiMeo led a crew of executioners for the Gambino crime family, a branch of the Mafia based in New York City. The Mafia was divided into multiple smaller gangs, or families, each in control of their own designated territory. The Gambino family was, at the time, one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the nation.
Richard had been working for various mafia families for decades, but he was Polish, not Italian, and therefore barred from actually joining the organization. In fact, Richard tried to stay away from wise guys as much as possible. He was easy to recognize, at 6'5" and nearly 300 pounds, so the less people saw him, the better.
Richard's anonymity was the exact reason why Roy DeMeo had called him to the diner that morning. The Mafia Commission had just met and they'd come to a unanimous agreement. Carmine Galante had to go. Galante ran a heroin distribution business for New York's Bonanno crime family, and his violent power grabs had gotten out of control.
The Gambino family had offered up their best and brightest assassin to help out: Big Rich.
Richard was honored. This was the biggest assignment he'd ever been given. The hit would go down at Galante's regular lunch spot, Joe and Mary's Italian-American restaurant in Brooklyn. Galante and his bodyguards didn't know Richard's face, so Richard would have a prime position near his quarry, hiding in plain sight. It was risky, but Richard loved a challenge. He was all in.
Today, however, he had other matters to tend to. In his civilian life, Richard was famous for something else: his barbecues. The whole neighborhood was invited to the Kuklinski home for their weekly summer cookouts. In this part of his life, Richard was friendly, polite, even sweet. He was, as far as the neighbors and the IRS knew, a film distributor.
Which was technically true. He'd been distributing pornography for over a decade. Even his wife Barbara had no idea what he really did for a living. She'd never asked, because she figured, correctly, that the only answer she would get was terrible violence from Richard. Barbara had learned that firsthand. But she had no idea how deep his cruelty ran.
The only one who had any idea what was going on was their 15-year-old daughter, Merrick. For some reason, she was the only one Richard ever trusted as a confidant. They often went down to the pond to feed the ducks, where Richard would unburden himself of all his traumas. His abusive parents, his first murder, the difficulty of hacking someone's legs off to fit their body into a steel barrel.
When Merrick was only a toddler, Richard told her that if he ever killed his wife by accident, he'd have to kill the whole family, so there wouldn't be witnesses. But you, Merrick, he said, you'd be the hardest to kill. You understand? Of course, Richard loved his other two children, Kristen, who was 14 years old, and Dwayne, just 10.
He always made sure they had the best clothes and toys, anything they wanted. When the Scalante assassination business was over, he was taking them to Disney World.
Family bonding time was a rarity these days. Richard was filling four or more contract kills a month, flying first class to LA or Chicago or Wisconsin or Brazil, anywhere a body needed to drop. Luckily, this next assignment was just a quick drive away in Brooklyn. On the morning of July 12th, Roy DeMeo picked up Richard for the drive down to Joe and Mary's diner. Richard was calm as ever.
There was a good chance he'd die that day, but they say it's better to die doing what you love. When they pulled up near the restaurant, DiMeo kissed Richard on both cheeks and wished him luck. Richard made him promise he wasn't going to ditch him there without a ride back. Richard's number one rule: don't trust anyone. By following that rule, he'd made it through over 30 years of killing without ever once being questioned by the police.
He walked into Joe and Mary's restaurant, sat down toward the back, and ordered a meatball sandwich. No utensils means no fingerprints left behind.
He cased the room. It was narrow and crowded. Not the ideal layout for a hit. He ran through the plan in his head. A team of masked mafia assassins would roll up outside. As soon as Richard saw them approaching, he would get up, walk over to Galante's table, and get the jump before Galante even had time to realize what was happening. The other assassins would be right behind him to make sure the job was finished.
Galante finally arrived with his two bodyguards and headed out into the back patio. Richard ate his sandwich slowly, keeping one eye to the patio, one on the windows out front. Then another man joined Galante, and yet another man wandered out onto the patio. Richard had no idea if all these people were armed, but for better or worse, he was about to find out.
Soon enough, a car pulled up in front of the restaurant and three men in ski masks stepped out. Richard got up and walked straight toward the patio, eyes locked on his target.
Galante was just finishing his meal, smoking a cigar, enjoying the warm summer day. He barely noticed the stranger approaching, until he saw the masked assassins coming in right behind him. Before he had time to put it together, Richard unloaded on him with two pistols at once. As soon as the other assassins started firing, Richard turned and walked right out the front door.
Carmine Galante was bleeding out on the concrete, the cigar still lodged between his lips. He was dead at the hands of the mafia, including members of his own crime family. Only one of the three masked shooters was ever identified, Anthony Indelicato, a member of Galante's own Bonanno family, who in 1986 was finally convicted and sentenced to over 40 years in prison.
Richard was never a suspect in Galante's slaying, and no eyewitnesses ever mentioned seeing a man more resembling a pro wrestler than a mafioso that day. Some take this as evidence that when Richard recounted this story long after he was incarcerated, he was lying. Others believe it's proof Richard was very good at his job. He was able to slip through the chaos without ever being detected.
Like many of Richard's alleged murders, in the absence of solid evidence, it's impossible to prove or disprove his involvement. Later in the summer of 1979, Richard took his family on that road trip to Florida. He was in an unusually good mood, singing along to the radio as they drove down the coast.
They spent the vacation fishing, dining at the nicest restaurants in town, and as Richard promised, experiencing the magic at Walt Disney World. It was everything Richard had ever wanted. A peaceful life, a beautiful family, and enough money to give them anything they asked for. The fact that he'd killed upwards of a hundred people to get there was inconsequential. Violence was all he had ever known.
Looking back at his childhood, it seemed preordained. Of course he was a monster. He was born into a literal hell.
At the height of his career in the early 1980s, Richard Kuklinski was one of the most notorious contract killers in the Northeast. But even Richard himself was never sure whether his remorselessness and cruelty were the result of nature or nurture. The fact is, when he entered the world on April 11th, 1935, it seemed every force in the universe was working against him.
His parents, Stanley and Anna Kuklinski, lived in poverty in Jersey City. Stanley worked at the railroad, but he spent most of his earnings on alcohol. He routinely beat and raped his wife, but as Anna was a devout Catholic, divorce was out of the question.
Stanley also beat both Richard and his older brother, Florian, from the time they were infants. Richard was so terrified of his father that he sometimes wet his pants at the sight of him. Stanley would then beat the boy as punishment for wetting himself. There was no possible reprieve. When Stanley beat them, Anna faced the wall and prayed for God to protect them.
She spent her evenings at church, lighting candles and praying the rosary, pleading for mercy. That mercy never came. When Florian was seven, Stanley struck him in the head one too many times and killed him. Stanley and Anna told everyone the boy had fallen down the stairs, and no one questioned it.
Richard, at only five years old, didn't fully understand what happened to his brother. All he knew was that now he received twice as many beatings. When Richard turned five, he was sent to Catholic school at Anna's behest. Richard had severe dyslexia, and his reading difficulties earned him regular beatings, this time from the school's nuns and priests. Needless to say, Richard was never a big fan of religion.
The young boy often sat alone in the empty church, staring up at the crucifix, wondering why the world was so cruel. He didn't understand why a merciful God would allow so much violence. As Richard reached middle school, he grew into a shy, lanky boy, an easy target for bullies. He was teased for his tattered clothes, his Polish heritage, and his protruding ears. He had no friends to speak of,
His favorite hobby was killing and torturing stray animals. He once tossed a live cat into his building's incinerator and watched it die. Richard reportedly didn't derive any pleasure or excitement from torturing animals. He did these things mostly out of curiosity. He knew he was supposed to feel bad, or to feel something, but killing a living creature didn't make him feel anything at all.
He killed every stray animal in the neighborhood in increasingly cruel ways, thinking maybe eventually he'd understand what was wrong with him, but that never happened. At some point in Richard's childhood, Stanley abandoned the family. Anna barely made enough at her menial jobs to pay the rent, and Richard started stealing food from delivery trucks to feed himself and his two younger siblings, Joe and Roberta.
His stealing quickly progressed. By the time he was 12 or 13, he was robbing train boxcars, stealing cars, and sometimes lifting true crime magazines from the local bookshop.
Richard was fascinated by the criminal underworld that existed right below the surface of his New Jersey community. Organized crime was rampant in his area at the time. He began to see it as a way for people like him, the outsiders and castoffs, to find power and glory and bring their own form of justice into an unjust world. As Richard reached his teenage years, the bullying he faced became increasingly violent.
In January 1949, when Richard was 13, a gang of neighborhood boys, led by one Charlie Lane, beat him so badly he was bedridden for a week. Richard's mother wanted to press charges, but Richard had read enough true crime to learn the cardinal rule, never talk to the cops. He would settle this on his own terms. A few weeks later, when his injuries had healed...
He grabbed a long wooden dowel from the closet and waited behind Charlie's building next door, ready to exact his revenge. Richard had spent the past week observing Charlie's comings and goings from his window. He knew it wouldn't be long until he came home.
When Richard heard Charlie coming, he stepped out from behind the building and stared him down, silent and still. He raised his wooden pole and struck Charlie over the head, and again, over and over, taking out all the aggression he'd built up in his young life. When he stopped, he realized Charlie wasn't moving. He felt for a pulse. Charlie Lane was dead.
Richard had wanted to make Charlie suffer, but he didn't plan on actually killing him. After the initial shock past, Richard looked down at the boy's lifeless body and felt satisfied. For better or worse, Charlie would never hit him again. As Richard later said, "...it was then that I learned it was better to give than to receive."
Richard was never a suspect in the boys' murder. There were no witnesses, and the shy, lanky kid from the building next door was hardly the prime suspect. But Richard's brutality was only beginning.
Over the next few years, Richard gained a reputation as a young man who was not to be messed with. He dropped out of school after eighth grade and took to hanging out around shady pool halls where criminals were known to congregate. He carried a hunting knife at all times, quick to draw it if anyone got in his face or reneged on a bet. He felt at home there in the seedy underbelly of Jersey City,
Beneath his quiet exterior, he was coolly confident, charming and funny, and the other rough-and-tumble kids seemed to gravitate towards him. For the first time in his life, he had friends. Sometime in his early teen years, he organized four of his friends into a gang he called the Coming Up Roses, both because they saw good things ahead and because anyone who messed with them would end up fertilizing plants.
Under Richard's command, the gang robbed liquor stores, broke into and looted warehouses, and burglarized homes on the nice side of town. The coming-up roses became a fixture of the nightlife in Jersey City and nearby Hoboken, and by 1951, when Richard was around 16, they were notorious.
It isn't that uncommon for teens to join criminal gangs. What is a bit unusual is that the coming-up roses soon caught the attention of a much more powerful criminal: Carmine Genovese, a member of the De Cavalcante crime family. They were one of two branches of the American Mafia based in New Jersey.
Four of the five members of the Coming Up Roses were not Italian and could never officially become a part of the Mafia, but still, Carmine admired their ambition.
He recruited the ragtag gang of Jersey kids for a number of odd jobs, from breaking into warehouses to hijacking semi-trucks. Now this story is based on Richard's recollection and can't be substantiated with outside evidence, but based on his later involvement with the Mafia, we'll accept the possibility that he may have worked for the De Cavalcantes as a teenager. But his time running around with the criminal big leagues would end as quickly as it began.
Around 1954, two of the coming-up Roses, John Wheeler and Jack Dabrowski, decided to stick up a card game run by members of the DeCavalcante family.
One of the gamblers there, a man named Albert Parenti, recognized the young hoodlums as members of Richard's crew. Parenti found Richard, sat him down, and explained to him what happens when you try to rob the mafia. Parenti believed Richard wasn't involved in the stick-up, but nonetheless, Richard's gang members were his responsibility. They had to go. Richard tried to bargain with him,
John and Jack were two of the only friends he'd ever had. But it was clear, if he didn't kill them, Parenti would. The least he could do is take care of it himself, make it quick and painless. He found Jack, shot him in the head, and left him where he dropped. He did the same with John. And just like that, the coming up roses were over.
Not long after, Carmine Genovese was arrested, and the work he'd been giving Richard and his gang dried up. Without his work, and without his friends, Richard was lost. He had a thirst for violence, but now he had nowhere to channel it. Bored, purposeless, and only in his early twenties, he took to wandering around Manhattan, drinking and gambling away the small bit of money he had left.
Just like his father, drinking made his temper even worse. One day, an unhoused man came up to him, begging for change a bit too aggressively. Annoyed, Richard pulled out his hunting knife and stabbed the man in the chest. There were no witnesses, so he just left the dead body lying there in the middle of the street. This kind of incident soon became routine. Richard beat, shot, or stabbed anyone who triggered his temper.
Unhoused men who badgered him for change, or men in bars who insulted him. Throughout the next few years, Richard killed, by his own estimate, upwards of 50 men on the streets of New York, leaving most of them where they fell. It's impossible to verify that figure, because not only was this wave of homicides never tied to Richard, it was never even investigated.
In the 50s, there was little communication between different police precincts. Because Richard killed in so many different parts of the city, and because the causes of death varied so wildly, the police never put together that all of these homicides could have been committed by the same man.
And because most of the victims were unhoused, the police had little incentive to investigate. The best theory the NYPD bothered to put together was that the unhoused population was going mad and attacking each other. Eventually, Richard's money ran out, and he knew it was time to get a real job.
In 1961, now 26 years old, he took a job at a trucking company, loading shipments and keeping a close eye out for any trucks worth hijacking. It was here that he met the woman he would spend the rest of his unincarcerated life with, the company's 18-year-old accountant, Barbara Pedricci. Richard was immediately smitten. She was everything he wasn't, sophisticated, self-assured, and innocent.
He courted her like a true romantic, picking her up from work bearing flowers, taking her out to nice restaurants, joining her family for dinner. But Barbara wasn't particularly interested in him. Despite this, he was a perfect gentleman. And he was relentless. He kept showing up unannounced, and she didn't have the heart to tell him to leave. After a few months, Barbara finally worked up the nerve to tell Richard how she really felt.
He was driving her home from work, and she calmly told him that she needed space. They might even think about seeing other people. While she was talking, she didn't notice Richard pulling out the hunting knife he kept strapped to his calf. He reached behind her and stabbed her in the back, right below the shoulder. He told her, "'You're mine, understand? You aren't seeing anyone else.'"
Barbara screamed at him, threatening to tell her family what he'd done. But Richard just said, "How about this? How about I'll kill your whole family? Your mother and your cousins and your Uncle Armand?" She kept screaming until Richard calmly reached out with one hand, grabbed her neck, and choked her until she passed out. When she came to, Richard was still cool as ever, as if nothing had happened.
She finally understood who she was dealing with. Without another word about the bleeding wound in her back, he dropped her off at home, kissed her goodbye, and told her that if she ever again suggested they see other people, he would, quote, kill anyone who meant anything to you. Barbara took him at his word. A few months later, Richard and Barbara were married.
Richard was 27 years old, and he was ready to make a go at being a family man. He told himself it was time for a fresh start. No more crime, no more murder, no more drinking or gambling. He got a real job at a film processing lab, printing copies of movies for distribution. It was low pay, but it was legitimate work.
Two years later, he and Barbara welcomed their first baby girl, Merrick, into the world. She was born with a serious kidney condition, and she spent most of her first few years in the hospital. Richard was working overtime to make ends meet, but as the hospital bills piled up, it became clear that his salary wouldn't be enough to keep them afloat. There was only one solution.
Richard started pirating copies of the film lab's movies, mostly cartoons. He loved cartoons. After everyone else had gone home, he stayed at the lab for hours, copying reel after reel of film. He snuck the pirated reels home and sold them to a man named Phil Solimene, who ran a store in nearby Patterson known simply as The Store.
Anything that was stolen, he'd sell it. Porn, jewelry, appliances, canned goods. Solomene was a crook through and through, but so was Richard. They became instant friends. In 1965, the second Kuklinski daughter, Kristen, entered the world. With two kids to support and with their older daughter, Merrick, still in and out of the hospital, Richard needed more money and fast.
He'd started out pirating family movies, regular cinematic fare, but the lab also printed pornography, which sold for a hefty premium on the black market, so Richard decided to switch his focus.
Richard soon found another distributor, too: Tony Agriela, an associate of the Mafia's Gambino family. Agriela and his partner, Paul Rothenberg, ran a nationwide porn distribution ring, and they would buy anything Richard was selling.
But pirating films reel by reel was a slow, arduous process. Richard and Barbara's third child, Duane, was born in 1969, and now with three kids, he needed to multiply his profits. Why didn't he cut out the middleman and start producing his own films?
Pornography was, after all, perfectly legal. It was, in that sense, far less risky than pirating. So he called up a few directors he'd met at a film lab, borrowed some money from Agriola, and opened his own porn production studio. Eventually, Agriola came around asking for his money. Richard brushed him off, thinking he could stall him until his new enterprise turned a profit.
But by August 1973, after at least half a year with no repayment, Tony Agriola was tired of excuses. Richard was going to pay him back or face the music. In August 1973, Richard Kuklinski was well on his way to becoming a successful porn producer. He thought he would stay in the business for a few more years, save up some money for his family, and then retire.
But Roy DeMeo had other plans for him. DeMeo was an associate of the Gambino family, who'd become a partner in Agrila and Rothenberg's porn distribution business a few years earlier. DeMeo had done just about nothing for the company, except take a good cut of their money. But today he was called upon to deal with one debtor named Richard Kuklinski.
When Richard arrived at his office, Roy DeMeo was there and asked him, rather aggressively, where Tony Agriola's money was. Richard didn't know DeMeo any more than DeMeo knew him, and he didn't appreciate being strong-armed on his own turf.
Richard told him as much, then turned and left. Richard was waiting for the elevator from out of nowhere. DeMeo and three other guys surrounded him, guns drawn. DeMeo beat Richard mercilessly with the butt of his pistol. The other men joined in, pommeling Richard until he was nearly unconscious. As the elevator arrived, DeMeo gave him one parting warning. You come up with the money or you're dead.
Richard got up, cleaned his wounds, and vowed to himself that one day he would kill Roy DeMeo. But not now. He'd be the first suspect. He had to repair his reputation first. No, even better, he had to become DeMeo's friend. Richard tracked down Roy DeMeo at his main haunt, the Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn...
Richard apologized for his behavior a few days earlier. If he'd known who he was, he wouldn't have been so disrespectful. And then came the business proposal. Richard wanted to partner with DeMeo. They both had their own porn studios and their own distribution connections. And if they combined their efforts, they could make serious money together. DeMeo had to hand it to him. This guy was confident.
And aside from the money he owed Agriola, Richard had a good reputation within the crime world. Perhaps they'd just gotten off on the wrong foot. So from that day forward, Richard and Roy DeMeo were in business together. In the 1970s, porn was an absurdly lucrative business, and the Gambino family had a lock on distribution all over the country. By the mid-70s, Richard and Roy's business was booming.
For the first time, Richard was making a good, steady living, more than enough to support his three kids. He was buying new furniture and appliances, flowers and jewelry for Barbara, even a big new ranch-style house in an upper-class suburb of Dumont, New Jersey.
Barbara had no idea where the money was coming from. She knew he'd been pirating cartoons, but she didn't know adult films were part of his enterprise. She noticed he was coming and going at strange hours, never offering an explanation. But she didn't question it. Anything might set him off into a rage. Richard's temper exploded from out of nowhere. He would be in a great mood one minute, then throwing furniture through the window the next.
He beat Barbara. She would taunt him as he hit her, almost egging him on. She later explained, "I was not about to let him make a doormat out of me and keep my mouth shut. Forget that."
Richard's brutality was causing problems in his work life as well. Roy had put him in charge of debt collection, thinking his imposing size and strength suited him well for the job. But Richard had a bad habit of killing customers right after they paid up, or even before if they annoyed him enough. Customer relations weren't Richard's strength, but there was another area where his violent nature might come in handy.
Richard, Roy, and Roy's cousin Joe were driving through Manhattan one day. Roy suddenly told Joe to pull over on a quiet street uptown. He handed Richard a .38 with a silencer attached, pointed out a man walking a dog down the block, and told Richard to kill him. Richard didn't know who the man was or why he needed to die, but he didn't think it was a good time to argue.
He calmly got out of the car, caught up with the man, and shot him. This was a test, and Richard passed with flying colors. When he got back in the car, Roy told him, "You're cold like ice. Well done." They went over to the Gemini lounge and passed through the bar into an apartment connected to the back of the building. DiMeo ran an execution crew for the Gambino family, and this was their headquarters.
The rest of the team was already there. They'd just finished stringing up a dead body to bleed out in the shower. DiMeo invited Richard to sit down with them for dinner.
They ate spaghetti, drank red wine, laughed and joked, and then brought the dead man out of the bathroom and methodically chopped him into pieces. Richard didn't help. He just watched in amazement. It was a precise, efficient routine. Everyone knew exactly what to do, and they didn't need another pair of hands on the job. From day one, DiMeo's crew didn't care for Richard. They thought he was awkward and unfriendly.
Richard never really liked them either. He thought they were a bunch of loudmouthed lunatics. But the way they worked together, with total trust and cooperation, was astounding to him. They were all a part of something. A team. A family.
But Richard was never going to be a part of DiMeo's crew. Since he wasn't Italian, he could never be officially inducted into the Mafia. His proper place was, as always, on the outside, in the shadows. DiMeo told Richard he would work alone on the "special assignments" he couldn't trust to his Mafia brothers.
The specific details of Richard's work can't be verified because, as a matter of course, he left no evidence or witnesses linking him to any contract murders. But as Richard tells it, he got a call any time DiMeo needed a body to drop. Most of them were routine orders: stake out the Marks house, whack him when he leaves for work, and dump the body in the Hudson River. Nothing too complicated.
Sometimes clients would pay double if the mark suffered. There were countless ways to make that happen. But Richard's favorite was to tie up the victim in the remote Bucks County woods and wait for rats to come and eat him alive. He'd set up a camera on a tripod to record proof that the job had been done and came back a few days later to dispose the bones.
But sometimes an assignment called for more covert methods. He started looking into poisons, which his friend Phil Soleimani, owner of the store, helped him procure. Phil introduced him to Paul Hoffman, a pharmacist from Union City who bought and sold all sorts of drugs and chemicals. Richard started out with a little glass vial of cyanide, which is both lethal and difficult to detect.
Unless a medical examiner was specifically looking for traces of poison, it would appear that the victim had just dropped dead from a sudden heart attack. Richard got a chance to test his new method when he was hired to kill a Bonanno family lieutenant named Tony Scavelli. Scavelli had spent 10 days dodging Richard, and the whole job was turning into a headache.
Finally, one Saturday night, he tracked Scavelli and his girlfriend to a crowded nightclub where it would be easy to sneak by and poison him undetected. That is, it would be easy for the average person, but Richard was going to stand out no matter what. There was only one thing to do. Go big or go home.
He went to a nearby costume shop and bought a bright yellow vest, a tall red hat, and platform shoes that made him even taller than he already was. He would still draw attention, but at least no one would peg him as a hardened killer.
The club was packed with rich, coked-up partiers. Richard danced his way over to Scavelli, who was with his girlfriend at the edge of the dance floor. The ridiculous outfit worked. Even Scavelli didn't notice Richard as he shimmied past, stuck him with a lethal injection of cyanide, and made his way to the exit. Tony Scavelli's death was officially recorded as a heart attack.
Within a couple years, Richard had developed a reputation as one of the best in his field. He never failed to complete a contract, and he was never questioned by the police. His non-Italian heritage actually became an asset. Since he wasn't formally tied to any one family of the Mafia, he could do freelance work for all of them.
And contract killing paid well. Richard was typically earning $20,000 to $40,000 per hit. Richard lavished gifts upon Barbara and the kids. Expensive new clothes and jewelry, luxurious furniture, and a new white Cadillac for himself. Barbara told herself Richard's film distribution business must be doing extremely well. She didn't quite believe that, but she didn't really want to know the truth either.
At the same time, Richard worked to ensure his criminal associates didn't know anything about his family. They didn't know his full name or where he lived. They certainly would never see his family. This careful secrecy was how he stayed off the police's radar for years. The only person who would ever both see Richard kill and meet his family was Phil Solomene, owner of the store. They had become genuine friends.
Phil and his wife even came over to the Kuklinski home for drinks. It was the first real friendship Richard had since he murdered Jack and John two decades earlier. And then, in the late 70s, Richard would find another friend in a most unexpected place. Richard was staking out a hotel in Queens, working a job for the Decavalcante family. He was having trouble keeping track of his mark. There was someone else who distracted him.
From his shifty eyes, long and wild hair, and careful movements, Richard immediately recognized this man as a contract killer. The way he kept popping up, Richard's first thought was that he'd also been assigned to kill the same Mark, but then he started to wonder if this other man had actually been sent out to kill him.
After several days of staking out the hotel, Richard was sitting in his van, tranquilizer gun at the ready, when he heard the jingle of an ice cream truck approaching. It was a hot day and he was getting thirsty, so he flagged down the Mr. Softee truck as it drove by. Sure enough, there in the driver's seat was that guy. By that point, Richard and the Mr. Softee driver had both clocked each other as killers.
Richard asked him what he was doing, and the man told him he used the ice cream truck to do surveillance. The truck wasn't just a front. It was fully stocked and operational. The man gave Richard a soda and they got to talking. His name was Robert Prongay. He was former military, and his main interests, even after leaving the army, were explosives and murder. It was as if fate had brought them together.
Richard took a break from his stakeout and went back with Prange to check out his garage. Tucked in the back corner was a locker filled with guns, ammunition, poisons, and remote detonating grenades. He showed Richard his favorite weapon, a white spray bottle full of cyanide mixed
mixed with dimethyl sulfoxide. As Prange explained it, if the concoction was sprayed onto someone's skin, it would absorb and kill them within seconds. He demonstrated on a stray cat passing by. One spray in the face and the cat instantly keeled over. It was the quickest, cleanest murder method Richard had ever seen.
Richard and Prange became fast friends. They shared murder tips and tricks, and even started doing jobs together, splitting the payment. On one occasion, they needed to make it look like a man died much later than he actually did.
They brainstormed and came up with an idea: if you freeze a body, it won't decompose. They stored the body in a meat freezer, and when they took the body out months later, it appeared as if he'd only been dead a few days. The police never figured out the man had actually been dead for several months. By 1980, it seemed like Richard was just hitting his prime.
He had a wonderful family, his career was on the way up, and he'd even made a couple good friends. Or so he thought. Over the next few years, Richard would discover that the only good friend is a dead friend. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.
We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.
This episode was written by Kate Gallagher and sound designed by Kelly Geary. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. This episode was hosted by Vanessa Richardson and me, Carter Roy.