Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Rather than get into trouble in here, Richard left and found his way to Manhattan’s West Side, where he murdered a man for asking him for a light with a belligerent tone.

After the incident in the gay bar, Richard and Joseph did not talk again for several years.

Richard had a long-running streak of bad luck; he lost most of the pool games he was in; he lost at all kinds of bets he made, on football or baseball, on what roach would climb up on the wall of Sylvia’s place first. And he kept drinking more and more.

Angry, Richard made more trips to New York, back to Manhattan’s West Side, where he expressed his rage, where he continued to kill people to vent his hatred for the world. When asked recently how many men he killed on Manhattan’s far West Side, Richard said, deadpan, All the fingers on both your hands five times.

I swear if someone just looked at me the wrong way, I killed ’im, he explained.

And still the NYPD did little to find out who was committing all these murders under the rusting, noisy, antiquated West Side Highway. Because Richard killed in dark shadows in so many different ways, with different-caliber guns, clubs, bricks and bats, knives and rope and ice picks, the NYPD never thought it was one man; that Richard Kuklinski of Jersey City had created his own personal hunting ground; that he was stalking and killing human beings as if the West Side were his private hunting reserve. Richard was, of course, killing purposely in many different ways, knowing that would confuse and misdirect the police, and he was right.

Dead right.

Spurred on by the inner demons that plagued him, the growing, raging psychosis inside him, Richard was hitting bottom. He kept hoping a nice score would come his way, a profitable murder contract, a lucrative hijacking, but business was slow.

Carmine Genovese had been murdered, shot in the head as he was cooking in his kitchen: another unsolved mob hit. Richard had nothing to do with it. He liked Carmine, as much as he could care for anyone. He did not go to Carmine’s funeral. He knew the cops would have it staked out, so he stayed away.

Life, for Richard, held little promise….

A friend of Richard’s, a guy known as Tony Pro who ran Local 560 of the Teamsters union, managed to get Richard a plum job at the Swiftline Trucking Company in North Bergen. The money was good, the work not that difficult. But still Richard didn’t like it. He hated it, in fact. It was a straight job, a thing he always wanted to avoid. He was a player, a hustler, an assassin. What the fuck was he doing here? He resigned himself, however, to keep the job and keep his eye out for a good load to steal—televisions, jeans, anything he could sell quickly and turn into cash, which, no doubt, he would only gamble away. His plan was to turn this straight job into a way he could make a score by setting up specific trucks to be hijacked.

It was the spring of 1961. Richard Kuklinski was twenty-six years old and going nowhere fast. He had, by his own account, killed more than sixty-five men.

It was now that Richard met Barbara Pedrici, and everything suddenly changed. The world he had known became a very different place.

Barbara Pedrici was a tall, curvaceous eighteen-year-old Italian American with black hair, intense hazel-colored eyes, and a perfectly formed aquiline nose. In her stocking feet she was five feet ten, comfortable in her own skin, a natural air of affluence and superiority about her.

Barbara’s father had come to New Jersey from the northern Italian city of Venice, her mother’s family hailed from the lovely port city of Naples. Barbara had recently graduated high school and was not quite sure what she wanted to do with herself. She toyed with the idea of going to college to pursue a career as an artist, but her mother thought that “a waste of time” and wanted Barbara to get a job, find a man, get married, and have children. She even offered to buy Barbara a car if she did not attend college. Barbara refused.

Barbara and her mother did not get along well. Barbara was an only child; her parents had divorced when she was two years old. She was brought up by Nana Carmella—her mother’s mother—and her mother’s sister Sadie, both of whom were always doting on Barbara, giving her what she wanted, when she wanted it. Thus Barbara had become a bit spoiled; early on in life she learned that if she wanted something, she got it. Nothing was ever denied her. All she had to do was ask, and keep asking until it was hers.

Barbara’s mother, Genevieve, was a cold, austere woman, a stick-in-the-mud, as Barbara recently put it. Genevieve rarely smiled, didn’t show much affection. She worked hard as a seamstress in a factory in North Bergen and never seemed to have time or a kind word for her only child. It was as if she had never really wanted children, that her daughter was an inconvenience life had dealt her.

Barbara, though, was extremely close to her grandmother and her aunt Sadie. Sadie had a bad heart condition and couldn’t work, and her life was all about pleasing Barbara, giving to Barbara, making sure Barbara had whatever she wanted. Both Carmella and Sadie were warm and effusive, whereas Genevieve was cold and distant… not quite there.

Barbara was popular and gregarious, had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor. She loved music, shopping, going to the movies with her girlfriends. She led a very sheltered life, had never been outside of New Jersey (except to visit her father in Florida), and knew absolutely nothing of the world that Richard Kuklinski came from.

Barbara went along with her friend Lucille when she responded to an ad for a secretary placed by the Swiftline Trucking Company that fall. As Barbara was waiting for her friend in the lobby, the owner of the company, Sol Goldfarb, saw Barbara and walked over to her.

“You look,” he said, “just like my daughter.”

“Really,” said Barbara, and they began talking; he explained that his daughter was deaf and mute.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Barbara said. He invited her into his office. Goldfarb was a tall, attractive man with dark hair and eyes, a sharp dresser. He worked hard, did well in business, made a lot of money. He was so taken by Barbara and how she resembled his daughter that he offered an accounting job there on the spot, which she accepted. Though she had absolutely no office experience, Barbara was a quick study; she had a high IQ and was readily able to master and perfect all that was required. She had always gotten good grades in school with little effort. This was her first real job. She enjoyed making her own money, enjoyed entering the workforce, having the responsibility of an adult and the independence that brought.

There was a soda machine at the trucking company and it was there that Barbara first encountered Richard Leonard Kuklinski. They said hello, smiled, and went back to work. They next ran into each other on the loading port, exchanged a few words about the weather; that was it. Mr. Goldfarb saw them talking and didn’t like it. Right away he went over to Barbara and, like a concerned parent, warned her to stay away from Richard. He said, “Look, I know you’re a nice girl, an innocent girl. Don’t have anything to do with that guy. He’s a lug; he’s married with kids.”

“Oh, I’m not,” she explained, taken aback. “We were just, you know, talking about the weather.”

“Okay, well, that’s good. Just stay away from him.”

“Certainly… of course, okay,” she said, caught a bit off guard. She’d had no designs on Richard; the thought of getting involved with him had never even entered her mind. The matter would surely have died right there had Goldfarb not pursued it further. He now called Richard into his office and said: “Look, Kuklinski, I don’t want you associating with the help, see.”