Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

In truth, Richard had become one of the most infamous killers of modern times, thanks to the HBO specials. HBO had aired the pieces they’d done on Richard several times every month, and more and more people were stunned, shocked, and horrified—yet always intrigued—by Richard’s chilling words and chilling demeanor. Now many millions of people across America saw and heard and knew about Richard Kuklinski. His crimes, what he said, were becoming legendary. People around the world were watching Richard, for HBO is aired all over Europe, and in parts of Asia and South America.

Richard Kuklinski, in a sense, became the Mick Jagger of murder.

When Richard first sat down with Anzalotti and Bennul, he was quiet and standoffish. But Rob Anzalotti had a very likable way about him. His boyish face and youth were disarming, and when Anzalotti told Richard that he had been a schoolmate of Dwayne’s, that they had been in the same class, Richard warmed up to him. Richard recently explained, I wasn’t going to tell them a fuckin’ thing, but when I found out Anzalotti went to school with my son, I kind of saw him like my son. I… I took a shine to him and I told him about the Calabro hit.

Stunned, the two detectives sat and listened to how Peter Calabro was murdered on that cold, snowy February night. Anzalotti already had the file on the case, and it was immediately obvious that Richard knew facts and details that only the killer could have known. When Anzalotti asked Richard who ordered the hit, Richard refused to tell him unless he was given some kind of immunity. He knew he could get a death sentence for killing a cop. As much as Richard hated prison, it was, he reasoned, better than death. Anzalotti went back to his boss, who agreed to let Richard plead guilty to the murder of Peter Calabro, for which he would get only another life sentence. Neal Frank became involved, a deal was agreed upon, and Richard again sat down with Anzalotti and Bennul, and for the first time told how Sammy Gravano had contracted the killing; how Gravano and he met in the parking lot and agreed upon a price, how Richard received the shotgun and photo of Calabro from Gravano. Richard felt no allegiance toward Gravano. He knew that Gravano had cut a deal with the feds to testify against John Gotti and many other Goodfellas. Richard viewed Gravano as a rat, a low-life scumbag, and had no qualms about telling cops how Gravano had hired him, thus opening the door for Gravano to be tried for the killing of a cop.

“I realize now,” Richard told Anzalotti and Bennul, “that the little fuck was using me. I mean, he never told me the guy was a cop. He came to me because he didn’t want to kill a cop, because he didn’t want any of his guys to kill a cop. I realize that now, but of course I didn’t back then. Sure, use the dumb Polack to kill a cop. Dumb Polack my ass…

“Truth is I would’ve done it anyway—even if he did tell me he was a cop. I’m not going to lie. But he didn’t and he should’ve.”

Armed with this information, the New Jersey attorney general’s office contemplated bringing charges against Gravano for ordering the killing of Peter Calabro. Calabro might have been a crooked cop, surely worked with the mob, but he was still a cop, and still murdered in Saddle River, New Jersey.

When Sammy Gravano decided to become a witness against John Gotti, the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were overjoyed, wanted to go do a jig in Times Square. They wanted John Gotti so badly that they were willing to cut a deal with Gravano that would enable him not only to serve just a few years, but to keep all the money he had earned from a lifetime of crime. The only problem was that Gravano had admitted to personally killing nineteen people. Gravano was clearly a very dangerous man, a clear and present danger, a true menace to society, a remorseless cold-blooded killer; yet the feds were still willing—it seems anxious—to give him his freedom, let him loose in society, if he helped them nail John Gotti.

For Gravano, this was a sweetheart deal to say the least. He should have had to spend the rest of his days in jail, or at the very least a minimum murder sentence—seven to ten years—but the federal government decided to give him his freedom, and all his ill-gotten gains, if he cooperated with them—an infamy. Surely, if any government anywhere ever made a pact with the devil this was certainly it, in living color, in broad daylight.

Gravano, dressed in a sharp dark blue suit, dutifully took the stand at Gotti’s trial and told the jury and the world in a strong, believable voice the crimes he had freely committed with Gotti—foremost of which was the carefully orchestrated killing of Paul Castellano and Tommy Bilotti in front of Sparks Steak House.

True, at this point Richard Kuklinski was already in prison, but somehow Gravano neglected to tell the government that Richard Kuklinski was part of the hit team, that Richard had killed Tommy Bilotti at the specific request of Gravano.

Gravano said nothing because Gravano would be accused of direct complicity in the murder of a cop, Peter Calabro. Gravano knew that if he fingered Kuklinski for the Bilotti hit, Richard would tell the authorities how he had murdered Calabro for twenty-five thousand dollars with a shotgun that Gravano had given him.

Gravano knew that if it became public knowledge that he had ordered the murder of a cop—even a dirty cop—there was no way in hell the government could cut him a deal.

It was rumored, however, that Gravano did in fact tell the feds about the Calabro hit, and they opted to keep it quiet, to sweep it under the rug, knowing they could never cut a deal with a cop killer. If they did such a thing there would be hell to pay, a hue and cry that would shake the very foundations of the Justice Department, from both the public and law-enforcement professionals.

“The truth,” Detective Anzalotti recently told an inquiring journalist, “will all soon come out in the wash.”

On September 27, 1998, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano appeared in Brooklyn before federal judge Leo Glasser for sentencing. By now Gravano had testified in scores of trials, causing the convictions of forty wiseguys, most prominent of whom was, of course, John Gotti.

Judge Glasser, approvingly quoting law enforcement officers, praised Gravano to high heaven, said, “You have done the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” and went on to pass a sentence that essentially amounted to time served—a mere five years all told. This for his admitted part in the killing of nineteen human beings. Many people in law enforcement and the public felt this was a genuine travesty of justice. The families of Gravano’s victims held an angry news conference and bitterly complained about what the government had done. The daughter of Eddie Garofalo said, “This guy took my father away from me, from us. He is a vicious brutal killer and yet the government is letting him walk. It’s outrageous. It’s heartbreaking. It’s a sin. How could they do such a despicable thing? Sammy Gravano is a monster! An animal. He should be kept in a cage like the dangerous beast he is. I can’t sleep at night thinking that Gravano will be free after killing my father and all those others. It’s an outrage!”

Several months later, Sammy Gravano did, in fact, walk out of a federal prison after having served five years. He was never charged for ordering the hit of Peter Calabro. He quickly disappeared into the wide expanses of the federal witness-protection program, where noted author Peter Maas found him and wrote a bestselling book about Gravano called Underboss. It should have been called, many said, The Luckiest Guy in the World.