Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Richard made the West Side of Manhattan a kind of lab for murder, a school, he says. He learned the finer points and intricacies of where to put a knife for the maximum effect: in the back of the head and up into the brain; an inverted slice across the throat, at the same time cutting the carotid arteries and windpipe. Directly into the heart was also very effective.

But in the back of the head and into the brain, he realized, was the quickest way and much less bloody. That, blood, became a constant concern, for Richard did not want to get blood on himself or his clothes. With respect to a gun: a bullet to the head, just above the ear, under the jaw, proved to be the most efficient. He hung a man one time, looped a piece of hemp across the man’s neck, hoisted the man off the ground, holding him with the rope over his shoulder. I became the tree, he explained. He also used an ice pick, which proved to be a good killing tool—easy to conceal—when stuck in the right place: directly into the ear, or directly into the eyeball, it was quite lethal.

Even back then the darkened cobble streets of Manhattan’s far West Side were a gathering place for gay men. There were numerous dark bars that discreetly accommodated a homosexual clientele. One such place was Scottish Annie’s, a safe haven for men who liked to wear skirts and dress as women. The dark bars on these dark, out-of-the-way streets were the perfect place for men to lead what often amounted to a second, hidden life.

Richard had nothing against homosexuals, he says, and didn’t seek them out, though his steely-eyed Jimmy Stewart good looks invariably drew gay men to him, and if they were too pushy he hurt them; indeed, he killed them. These murders had, he says, nothing to do with sex; they only had to do with someone being too pushy.

One evening, Richard was drinking in a bar near Grove Street and a man kept coming on to him….

“Look,” Richard finally said, “I ain’t into that, okay; go somewhere else, okay?”

But the guy, a tall gentleman with a military crew cut, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was so insistent that Richard was forced to leave the bar. The guy followed him outside and propositioned him, saying, “I know you want to. Come on, come on, big guy.” Finally, after two blocks of this, Richard saw a loose cobblestone, picked it up, and struck the fellow in the head so hard that brain matter hit a store window.

“I fuckin’ told you to leave me alone,” Richard told the dead man, and walked on.

Richard came to realize that when he drank he became outright mean, and during most of these homicide forays into Manhattan he was drinking—certainly not drunk, but definitely buzzed. He told himself that he should drink less, and beer instead of whiskey. Richard also traveled to other places to kill people: Newark, Rhode Island, and Hoboken too. But those areas were less populated, people seemed more on the lookout, nosy, so Richard kept going back to Manhattan, enjoying the hubbub of his own private killing field.

Because, for the most part, Richard was murdering “throwaway people,” bums and hobos (and occasional gay men), the New York police did little, if anything, to solve these many sudden, impromptu killings.

No one cared.

“Let ’em kill each other,” a police captain told his detectives in the Tenth Precinct. There were no stakeouts set up, no curious detectives asking questions with a notebook in hand, and Richard quickly picked up on this, for he saw no extra police anywhere.

He didn’t kill someone every time he went to New York. There were times he just walked around, had a drink, thought over different schemes he had in his head. With the Coming Up Roses a thing of the past, and Carmine Genovese in jail on gambling charges, Richard was making far less money and was forced to take a menial job unloading trucks, a thing he didn’t like; but he always had his eye out for a score—something he could steal and turn into cash. He had a friend in the Teamsters union named Tony Pro who always made sure Richard had a job if he wanted to work. Richard still shot a lot of pool. The problem now was that most everyone knew how good a pool shark he was, so he was hard-pressed to find anyone willing to play him for money.

Then Linda became pregnant. Richard had no feelings about the pending birth. He did not love Linda, didn’t think she was a good homemaker. She was just a warm body in the bed on cold Jersey City nights, a convenient way to get his rocks off. He wanted her to get an abortion. She wouldn’t. She didn’t believe in abortion. He threatened her. She still wouldn’t get one. Richard had no qualms about hitting Linda. He had been brought up in a household where the beating of women was the norm, and he struck Linda without a second thought if she annoyed him, which she did more and more often: she wanted to get married, he didn’t; she wanted him to get a straight job and hold it, he didn’t; she wanted him to stay home nights, he wanted to go out. Most of their disagreements were settled when Richard slapped her, said “Shut up!” out of the side of his thin-lipped mouth. He even tried to make her lose the baby by punching her in the stomach; that didn’t work. Her stomach became larger and larger still every week.

As cruel as Richard often was to Linda, he could be sweet and gentle—considerate to a fault. He brought her cute stuffed toys, freshly cut flowers, fancy candies and clothing. But the truth was Linda never knew what he would be like when he walked in the door, kind or mean, with a present or a slap. In the end, Richard wound up marrying Linda at city hall. He didn’t tell anyone he was getting married. He was doing it, he said, “for the kid’s sake.”

Richard had grown into a particularly moody young man, had extreme highs and lows. When he was in a bad mood—most of the time—he was outright dangerous to be around, for man or beast. By now most everyone in Jersey City and Hoboken knew all about Richard Kuklinski, how dangerous he was, and gladly gave him a wide berth, but he still got into altercations with men, which most often ended with Richard killing them.

For Richard, murder had become an integral part of everyday life… just as night followed day, and the tides moved in and out of the nearby Hudson River. Richard seemed to have the perfect disposition to kill people without reservation or remorse, indeed, without a second thought. Richard was always careful: if he got it into his head to kill someone, or hurt him, as he says, he tried to pick the time and place. Oddly enough, Richard was most dangerous when he was quiet. If someone did something to offend him and he stayed quiet, it was a good time to run for the hills. When he got angry, when murder filled his eyes, he always made this kind of slight clicking sound out of the left side of his mouth, a trait that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

If I was going to hurt someone, I’d never tell him. Why let him know what your intention is? he recently asked.

It was the middle of February 1956. Horrific cold winds came barreling down the Hudson River from upstate New York and whipping off the Atlantic. The water in the river was choppy and rough, filled with large, sharp-edged pieces of ice the color of nicotine-stained fingers. Richard was in a bar called Rosie’s Place in Hoboken, playing eight ball with a large square-shouldered truck driver with a glistening bald head and hands as big as ham hocks. There were a few pool tables, a long slat bar, some wobbly tables and chairs. It was a Friday night. Considering the weather, the place was crowded, cigarette smoke hanging in the air like a thick, fallen cloud. There was a jukebox, and country music came from it. Richard kept winning. He seemed to make every shot. The bald-headed truck driver became more and more angry and started making nasty comments to his two friends at the bar, who were trying to pick up girls.