Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

“This is the last time. You gotta stop this shit.”

“They cheated. That’s what this is all about—they set me up.”

“I don’t give a hoot. Joe, I can’t be doing this stuff. I got a wife and two kids. Merrick is sick. She needs me. I can’t be doing this anymore… okay?”

“Okay… I understand,” Joe said.

By now they were half a block away from the bar. They began to cross the street, when a car, the four guys in it, came barreling down on them. The driver tried to run the brothers over. Richard pulled out one of the derringers and fired two shots. One of the bullets hit the trunk lock, and the trunk popped open. Within seconds, it seemed, police sirens filled the air. Richard tossed both the derringers away. Police cars blocked off each end of the street. The driver of the car told how Richard had shot a gun at them. Richard, of course, denied it.

“What gun, where?” Richard said.

But the cops found the two bullet holes in the car and began looking for the gun, and they found one of the derringers. Everyone was cuffed and arrested. Richard was fit to be tied. He needed this like a hole in the head. At the police station, Richard denied having any gun, and he warned the four guys in the car to keep their mouths shut.

“You don’t say anything and we’ll all walk, got it?”

They nodded, but Joseph again began arguing with them, saying they had cheated him, they had set him up, they had called the cops.

“Shut up—all of you shut the fuck up,” Richard demanded. “The cops are listening.” They became quiet. Detectives interrogated them. Everyone kept his mouth shut, but the detectives knew what had happened and kept badgering Richard. He wouldn’t even talk to them. Richard didn’t like cops; they were corrupt bullies with guns and badges, and he had no reservations about letting his animus show.

Finally able to make a call, Richard phoned a criminal attorney in Jersey City and told him what had happened. The attorney came over to the jail and told Richard he needed money to “resolve the matter.” Jersey City was one of the most corrupt municipalities in America. Cops and judges could be bought and sold for little more than a song and dance. Richard quickly made another call, got John Hamil on the phone, told him what had happened, and asked him to get three grand to the lawyer.

“Done, brother,” John said.

Richard and the others stayed in jail overnight. Richard called Barbara to say he was working at the lab. Richard often stayed at the lab overnight, making overtime.

In the morning they were all taken to court for arraignment. In a foul mood, Richard made sure no one said anything. His lawyer found them in the holding pen, winked, and said, “Everything is taken care of.” They soon appeared before the judge—who had been given the three g’s by Richard’s lawyer. The judge said he didn’t see “reasonable cause” to hold over the case, levied a small fine, and dismissed it on the spot.

As Richard and the others were walking out of the courtroom, one of the detectives—not a happy camper—walked up to Richard. “Here’s your gun back,” he offered, holding out Richard’s derringer.

“That’s not my gun,” Richard said, and walked out of the courtroom.

Outside, he told his brother, “This is it. Get yourself in another jam, I am not going to help you. You understand?”

“Yeah,” said Joseph sheepishly. “I understand.”

The dog had a broken leg and was in shock, shaking and trembling and barking nonstop in the yard of a building on Jersey City’s Central Avenue, number 438. It was 12:30 A.M., September 16, 1970, and the dog was disturbing people trying to sleep. The dog belonged to Pamela Dial, a twelve-year-old girl, small for her age and thin. Pamela had black hair and large, round, dark eyes. She was a straight-A student at nearby St. Anne’s Parochial School. She lived at 9 Bleeker Street with her mother and father and brothers John and Robert, just around the corner from Central Avenue, the block on which lived Joseph and Anna Kuklinski.

Pamela loved her dog, Lady, a little black-and-white mutt. They were always together; wherever Pam went, the dog was with her, wagging its tail and unusually attentive to Pamela.

Earlier, near eleven o’clock that fateful Tuesday night, Pamela had left the house looking for her dog. She had not finished her homework yet; it was still spread out on her bed. Nor did she tell her family she was going out to find Lady. Her parents were watching the eleven o’clock news when she left and didn’t even know she’d gone.

Pamela did find her dog and was walking home when she ran into Joseph Kuklinski.

Joseph and Pam knew each other from the neighborhood. Joseph was tall and handsome, thin and muscular, had glistening long blond hair, a Fu Manchu mustache. He was now twenty-five years old. The two talked. Joseph asked Pamela if she’d like to be alone with him. Not knowing exactly what he had in mind, she innocently said okay and followed Joseph Kuklinski into a four-story building, 438 Central Avenue, and up to the roof. Joseph lived at 434 Central Avenue with his mother, just two buildings away. Joseph had used the roofs along Central Avenue for sexual liaisons many times over the years, with both girlfriends and boyfriends. Pamela had no idea of what Joseph was after. He was known in the neighborhood as Cowboy Joe, and she thought he was cute. She liked the idea that he paid attention to her, that he wanted to be alone with her. Unaware of the demons inside of Joseph Kuklinski’s head, Pamela willingly went up to the roof.

Joseph had been drinking, was buzzed, smelled of alcohol. On the roof he quickly came to the point and tried to have sex with Pam. She refused. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He forced himself on her, sodomized her, then choked her to death; all the while, little Lady was barking like mad. Joseph tried to catch the dog but couldn’t.

When Joseph was finished with Pamela, he picked up her lifeless body as if it were a rag doll and tossed her off the roof. She hit the cement backyard of 438 Central Avenue with a meaty, bone-breaking thud. Joseph then managed to catch the dog and tossed it off the roof too. The hapless animal landed near Pamela, and its legs and several ribs broke. Lady crawled to Pamela’s lifeless body and began to cry, then howl and bark nonstop. People called the police to complain about the insistent barking and howling. A squad car was dispatched. The police discovered Pamela Dial’s lifeless, broken body.

The murder of a child, even in rough-and-tumble Jersey City, was a rare event, an outrage. Early that morning every available detective and uniformed cop in Jersey City was looking for Pamela’s killer, canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, stopping people driving by. Detectives soon learned that Pamela had been seen talking to Joseph Kuklinski the night before. When detective Sergeant Ben Riccardi came knocking on the Kuklinskis’ door, Joseph was still sleeping and hung over. When he was taken to the police station and threatened by angry Jersey City detectives, he admitted what he’d done.

“I threw her off the roof,” he said. With that Joseph was roughly handcuffed and placed under arrest.

Later that day, Anna Kuklinski called Richard and told him how Joseph had been arrested for the killing of a twelve-year-old girl. This bowled Richard over. He couldn’t conceive of his brother doing such a thing. It had to be some kind of mistake. As much as Richard wanted nothing to do with his mother, he hurried to Jersey City. Just the day before, Richard had gone to see Joseph. He’d waited in a bar on Central Avenue for Joseph, but Joe hadn’t shown up. Richard had known that Joseph was home, out of work, but he hadn’t knocked on the door to get his brother, because he didn’t want to see his mother; he had grown to despise Anna to that degree. The few times she had come to his home, Anna always tried to instigate trouble with Barbara, who also grew to loathe Anna, but tolerated her. Barbara had no choice; she was Richard’s mother, after all.