Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Life for the Kuklinskis that Christmas was good, filled with a lot of nice presents, warm feelings, much love.

That Christmas evening Pat Kane dipped a somewhat stale cinnamon doughnut into a plastic container of lukewarm coffee. He was in his car, watching Danny Deppner’s apartment, hoping he’d show up.

Pat missed his wife and children dearly—it was the first Christmas away from them—but he was a man with a mission. He was sure he was onto something big here, yet still wasn’t sure what the hell it was. The chilled late-December wind blew hard. The bare arthritic branches of trees shook violently. Deppner didn’t show up the whole night. Over the next several days, Kane looked for him in all his haunts but couldn’t find even a trace of him.

On January 3, at 9:00 A.M., Pat Kane was in his office going over a burglary report when the phone rang. Kane had let all surrounding police jurisdictions know that he was looking for Smith and Deppner. A cop from nearby Franklin was calling.

“Pat,” he said, “I got Danny Deppner’s wife sitting here and she’s all bent out of shape—kind of hysterical.”

“Why?”

“Pat, I think we got a homicide here. Can you come over?”

“Homicide… sure, I’m on my way,” Kane said, and got in his car and sped over to Franklin, one town away. Not anticipating the violent storm he was walking into, Kane entered the barracklike structure.

Barbara Deppner was a small, frail woman with dirty blond hair. She might have been attractive once, but now she looked worn-out, beat up, haggard—as if she hadn’t slept for a long time, hadn’t eaten well for longer. All of life’s cruelties, it seemed, had manifested on her face. She had deep lines around her narrow lips, dark circles under puffy eyes, bad teeth; she seemed dirty. She had had eight children with a series of different men, one of whom was Danny Deppner. Pat soon learned she was the girlfriend of Percy House, who was still in jail, still refusing to talk. Barbara was, in fact, pregnant with House’s child.

Kane, as was his way, politely introduced himself and sat down, and Barbara Deppner began to pull open the curtain on one of the most horrific, sensational crime stories Pat Kane, indeed anyone in law enforcement, had ever heard. This was only the beginning; the first act in a violent Shakespearean tragedy that would span forty-seven years—since the murder of Florian Kuklinski; the murder of Charley Lane.

Barbara Deppner said, “I heard from Danny. He’s hiding from the police. After Percy was arrested they took off. They had to. They are deathly afraid of him. He’s the devil!”

“Who?” Kane asked, curiosity arching his wide brow.

“Richard Kuklinski. He’s a killer; I mean that’s what he does: he kills people!” she said.

“Is he a big man? Do they call him Big Rich?” Kane asked.

“Yeah, that’s him. First Kuklinski helped them, I mean hid them. He didn’t want the police, you know, you guys to find them. He put them in this hotel and told them to stay put. But Gary disobeyed! Gary went to see his little daughter, hitchhiked. Kuklinski found out and he killed him; he murdered Gary for seeing his kid.”

“Killed him… I don’t understand, why?”

“’Cause he disobeyed Kuklinski. I’m telling you, he’s a real killer, he’s the devil,” she said. Kane noticed that her hands were trembling as she spoke. He didn’t know if she was telling him the truth or not, but she certainly seemed to believe it was the truth. She was, it was obvious, “scared stiff,” Kane would later explain.

It was this fear that prompted Barbara to flee her home and go stay with her sister, which ultimately brought her to the attention of the police. When Barbara’s sister heard why Barbara was scared, she demanded that Barbara leave, fearing she would get killed too. They argued. A neighbor called the police. Barbara told her story to them, and she was brought in for further questioning. Barbara continued: “So Kuklinski found out. He came to the room that night. He had three hamburgers with him. Two of them had pickles; one didn’t. Gary ate this one. In minutes he began choking, got all blue, and fell on the floor.”

“Danny told you this?” Kane asked, incredulous.

“Yeah. Kuklinski poisoned the hamburger, see. That’s what I’m sayin’. He’s a killer. A professional killer… do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kane said, though he was having trouble wrapping his mind around all this. Why would someone kill because of a series of burglaries? What was that about? How could it be?

“But Gary was still alive, and Kuklinski made Danny choke Gary to death with a wire, a wire from a lamp there in the room. He told me, Danny told me.”

“What hotel?”

“The York Motel just outside the Lincoln Tunnel. Room thirty-one,” she said with certainty. “So Danny did it, did what Kuklinski said; he choked Gary to death with the wire.”

“Really?” Kane said, beginning to believe her, sensing she was telling the truth, but still wary.

“Yeah, really,” she said.

This was a hard pill to swallow. Why, Kane wondered, would this Kuklinski guy kill Gary Smith, risk a murder charge, when all that was going on here was burglary? It didn’t make sense. Though one look at Barbara, her trembling hands, her worried face, told Kane what she said was true.

“Where… where’s Gary Smith now?” he asked.

“They left him there, in room thirty-one, under the freaking bed. He was found there, by the police. Check if you don’t believe me. Go ahead,” she said. “Check.”

Kane immediately took her up on this, picked up the phone and called the North Bergen Police.

When Percy House was first arrested and Danny and Gary were indicted, Richard knew he had to take fast, decisive action. Already he regretted ever getting involved with Percy House and this motley crew, but House was Phil Solimene’s brother-in-law, Phil had vouched for him seven ways from Sunday, and little by little, over a period of several years, Richard had become more and more involved with them—and now it was all coming back to haunt him.

At first Richard tried to help Gary and Danny, to hide them from the police. He did in fact put them up in the York Hotel, paid for them to stay there, warned them in no uncertain terms to stay put. But Gary went to see his five-year-old daughter. Richard knew he could have been spotted by the police and picked up, so Gary had to go. As far as Richard was concerned, Gary killed himself by disobeying him. Richard went to a diner near the hotel, bought three hamburgers, sprinkled cyanide on Gary’s, went to the hotel, acting all warm and friendly, served up the burgers, and sat down to eat with Danny and Gary as if he were a good friend, when in truth he was the grim reaper. Richard had become quite the actor. He could fool the stripes off a zebra if he put his mind to it. Almost immediately, Gary succumbed to the poison, fell over, had spasms, turned blue, but didn’t die, and Richard had Danny strangle him, so Danny would, by extension, be guilty of the murder, part of it, and so keep quiet about it.

Then, after the deed was done, Richard made another mistake, as he had with George Malliband: he didn’t permanently dispose of Gary’s body. He foolishly had Danny stash it under the bed. Though he carefully wiped the place clear of prints, they left Gary there like that, dead, as blue as a rotting violet. When recently asked why he didn’t dispose of Gary’s corpse he said, There was a security guy at the hotel and people about; but Richard could have dumped Gary in a steamer trunk and gotten him out of the room, not just leave him there to be found.

The room had been rented twelve times, couples had lustful hotel sex on the bed with Gary there, rotting away, and it was ultimately the stink of his corpse that caused him to be found and the cops summoned. Also, had he not been stashed under the bed, the incident might have been written up as a heart attack.