THE ICEMAN Ep. 2 | “Killer Instincts”

By Richard Kuklinski's accounts, before he turned 25, he had killed nearly 100 people some he tortured, some he shot, some he stabbed. His estimates could easily be exaggerations, because he also said most of his early victims were the lost or wayward of society. The homeless victims who could disappear. And no one would know or go looking. But even if the numbers he threw around later in life were highly embellished, it was clear that he was the type of person who could have done it. But his days of aimless, random killing were now done.

He had formed his own small gang that committed all kinds of crimes, and he successfully executed two contract murders. For a made man in a mob family, those murders opened the door for Richard to work with all the other mob families on the East Coast. He was about to begin the life of a professional killer. Because of his Polish roots, he could never be a made man and join a family. Which allowed him the freedom to work with everyone as an independent contractor, but he also learned that his freedom was limited.

The more he worked with the mob, the more he had to adhere to their rules, even if he was still technically independent. Nothing illustrated that idea as much as an elevator ride on a hot August day in Manhattan in 1973. Richard had been working with and for a mobster named Roy Demeo. Demeo was a true psychopath. Even when compared to a cold-blooded killer like Richard Kuklinski. That day, in August 1973, Roy felt Richard disrespected him.

It didn't matter if it was true, Demeo was part of the Gambino crime family, and whatever he said was automatically and unequivocally fact. They were in an office building that was the home of a film processing lab, which will become clear later. Demeo had a few of his goons with him, and he found Richard at the elevator. Demeo yelled at Richard to never disrespect him again, and then he smashed Richard in the head with the butt of his gun.

Richard had a.

38 Derringer in his pocket, but he realized he was helpless to stripe back. Demeo hit him again and again, and again. Richard, a giant of a man who didn't take grief from anyone, went down in a heap. Then Demeo's three henchmen joined in, kicking and punching Richard as he lay motionless on the ground. Richard had never taken a beating like that.

It was rare since adulthood that he took a beating of any kind. When Demeo was convinced Richard had learned his lesson, he and his thugs left Richard there by the elevator, practically drowning in pools of blood. The pistol-whipping wounds were so extensive. Richard went to St. Vincent's Hospital. With black eyes, swollen lips and dozens of stitches, Richard struggled on to the ferry to New Jersey.

He told his family he had been mugged by four men, which technically wasn't a lie. They just didn't take anything from him except his pride. And that was how Roy Demeo ended up on Richard Kuklinski's bucket list of people to torture and kill.

From black barrel media, this is infamous America. I'm your host Chris Wimmer. And this season we're telling the story of one of the most prolific, notorious and terrifying mafia hitmen of all time the Iceman. This is episode 2 Killer Instincts.

As the 1960s progressed into the 1970s, Richard Kuklinski was a successful criminal in a variety of ways. But he was still looking for steady employment. Soon. He wouldn't need a day job because he would be a high-paid killer. But for now, he still needed to provide for his wife, Barbara, and their young daughter, Barbara's uncle Tony, offered to help. He got the job at the 20th century Deluxe Film Lab in Manhattan. Commuting into the city wasn't appealing, but Richard took the bus every day.

At first, Richard moved and shelved boxes and large reels of film, but he was always angling for more. After hours, another employee showed Richard how to make prints of film reels, and soon Richard graduated into that new role, but he still wanted more. The lab printed all of Walt Disney's films, and, before long, Richard was selling pirated prints of Cinderella and Pinocchio. As a lucrative side hustle. Richard soon parlayed that into running a production company that made pornographic movies. The man who put up the money for production was Richard's new partner, Roy Demeo.

Richard's wife introduced the two men, and Richard quickly determined that Roy DeMeo was the meanest gangster he'd ever met. Demeo was a bully from the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, whose temper rivaled Richard's. Roy had a singular goal to be a made man in the Gambino crime family. As such, he was willing to do anything, no matter how bloody or gory. He was a former butcher, and he used his skills to devastating effect.

As a hitman, he chopped up his victims, usually into six convenient pieces arms, legs, head and torso. He called it disassembling, after which he dumped the pieces in different places. And because the basement of Demeo's bar, the Gemini Lounge, was the site of much of the gruesome work, the disassembling process became known to some as the Gemini method. And the bar earned the horror movie nickname The Slaughterhouse.

Demeo became the premier assassin for the Gambino family. His reputation as a brutal killer was universal, and he was now Richard's business partner. Soon afterward, in August of 1973, Roy Demeo and his goons beat the hell out of Richard near the elevator in the film lab building. And Roy was powerless to stop it. He also couldn't back out of the partnership, so for the time being, he just had to accept it and do whatever Roy wanted.

And at that moment, Roy needed help. A porn distributor named Paul Rothenberg was causing trouble. Rothenberg was a stalky, belligerent man with a nose that resembled a badminton birdie. Although the distribution of pornography wasn't illegal, Rothenberg liked to branch out into films that, let's say, pushed the envelope. Those types of films were grounds for his arrest.

The police raided a film lab and confiscated truckloads of film. According to Rothenberg's lawyer, the haul was valued at a quarter of a million dollars. The authorities were sure the Gambino family was involved, but they needed proof They found it in Rothenberg's business account books. Several checks were made out to Roy Demeo, who was a known member of the Gambino family.

Rothenberg once claimed he knew too much for anyone to hurt him, but Roy Demeo was about to prove him wrong. Demeo told Richard to kill Rothenberg. Richard trailed Rothenberg's car to a shopping mall, and Rothenberg had no idea he was being followed. The only trouble was that Richard was also being followed. Roy Demeo and his cronies insisted on being there when Rothenberg was offed.

That didn't go over well with Richard mob or No mob. He didn't want any witnesses to his crime, but again, he had no choice. In the shopping mall parking lot, Rothenberg got out of his car and Richard followed on foot. Rothenberg spotted the 6'5 Richard Kuklinski and headed toward an alley, looking over his shoulder, terrified of what was about to happen.

He was running and drenched in sweat. Richard followed him into the alley, fired twice with a .38, and that was that he disposed of the gun and headed back to his van. Roy DeMeo saw the whole thing and was impressed. Richard didn't expect any payment for the hit.

Technically, it was a favor, but it's not like Richard was in a position to say no to Roy Demeo. Even still, Roy repaid the favor by forgiving the $50,000 Richard owed him for their porn distribution partnership. Richard proved he was reliable, silent and efficient. And with that he became a top hitman for the Gambino family. And they sent him all over the country to eliminate problems.

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch, your online shop stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage? Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system, so wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout 36 better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers.

Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts and mugs to fans of our shows. Without taking up too much time from all the other work, we do to bring you even more great content, and it's not just us. Shopify powers 10 of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothies and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow grow with Shopify.

Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.

Com Slash realm all lowercase Go to Shopify.com Slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in Shopify.com Slash realm.

Richard didn't want to leave any trace of an airline ticket, so he drove from New Jersey to Florida the next day. He didn't stop to sleep just to get food and gas, which he always paid for in cash. He wanted no record of this trip. Richard made sure he never drove above the speed limit. He had a loaded .38 and a hunting knife with a curved blade.

The hardwood handle of the blade had four notches on it, one for each person who'd been killed with it. Some of Richard's knives had 10 or 15 notches in them before he tossed them, so this one was relatively fresh. Because Richard especially hated rapists. He had extra rage boiling inside him, that's why he wanted to do this job with a knife. It was more personal.

The Castaways was a three-story, nautical-themed hotel near the ocean. Richard checked into a hotel nearby and drove to the Castaways parking lot. There was no photo of the Cuban man, but Richard knew the make and license plate number of his car. Richard was told it would be parked in the area designated for employees, but the car wasn't there. Richard discovered that there were two shifts for employees the day shift and the night shift.

The turnover between the shifts happened at 4 p.

M.

So Richard returned to the parking lot at 3.

30.

Sure enough, the man pulled into the lot to begin work on the nighttime shift, and that was the last shift he ever worked. The man was tall and thin, and as he stepped out of his beat-up red chevy, Richard smiled at him. But the man was safe for the moment. There was too much activity in the parking lot for Richard to do anything.

At 11.

30 p.

M.

Half an hour before the night shift ended, Richard was back in the Castaways parking lot. He parked his van as close to the Cuban man's car as possible, then walked to the red Chevy and punctured one of its tires.

He returned to his van and waited near midnight. The man walked out to his car and saw the flat tire. He cursed his bad luck and opened his trunk to get the jack and the spare with the spare tire out. Richard appeared out of the darkness and jammed the .38 into the man's lower back. He said My friend, I need you to come with me.

Richard marched the man to the van and shoved him inside. He quickly handcuffed the man, jammed a sock in his mouth and taped it shut with duct tape. In less than two minutes, Richard drove out of the parking lot. He drove to a desolate part of Miami Beach, where it was silent, except for an occasional ocean wave. Richard, put on blue plastic gloves, yanked the rapist out of the van and tied him to a palm tree with some rope.

Richard announced, Let's get started, and he went to work with the knife. We'll spare you the gory details. But the man lost the offending piece of his anatomy. Richard made more cuts and used kosher salt to make the wounds hurt as much as possible. Then, with the man screaming, Richard dragged him down to the edge of the water. He put the man in a life vest and hauled him into the ocean.

The life vest, Richard explained, was because he did not want the man to drown. He wanted the man to be alive long enough for the Tiger Sharks to get him. With the work done, Richard went back to his hotel room, ate a turkey sandwich and slept like a baby.

Richard owned a small spiral notebook and wrote down new ways to torture and kill. A lot of his inspirations came from TV. The idea of using salt on the man's wounds in Miami came from a pirate movie. Pouring hot water into people's noses came from another film. Oddly, his main inspiration may have been cartoons.

Throwing people out windows, planting booby traps and using fire all came from watching the roadrunner in the Looney Tunes cartoons. As Richard's murder business expanded, contracts rolled in from all over the country, and then started to trickle in from South America and Europe. But it was one close to home that led to Richard's first experiment with what became his most notorious trademark. A made man in New Jersey had a beautiful 19-year-old daughter who had started seeing an older man.

The guy was an obvious player, and one day, the girl's father took the guy aside and asked his intentions. The guy could not have answered in a worse way. He said he was just interested in quote, having some fun and fooling around those six words would be his downfall.

The girl's father was introduced to Richard, and the father said he wanted the boyfriend to disappear again. The victim had to suffer first. Two days later, Richard abducted the boyfriend. It was a mild day in September, perfect weather for a drive to the caves in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Richard hadn't been there in a while, and today he wanted to experiment with something he'd recently jotted down in his notebook.

At the caves, Richard stripped the boyfriend of his clothes. Richard pulled out a bunch of rawhide strips, dunked them in water and wrapped them around the man's arms, head and other parts. That would be especially painful. When the sun dried out the rawhide, the strips tightened and squeezed the man's body.

As the boyfriend screamed, Richard sat there, amused, and explained to the man why this was happening. The guy begged for his life and said he'd never disrespect anyone again. He'd break up with the girl immediately, but Richard just laughed. Eventually, the rats arrived, and Richard treated the ordeal like a scientific experiment.

He noted how tight the rawhide strips needed to be to cut into the man's skin to draw the blood that would attract the rats. He noted the speed at which the rats congregated and then the speed at which they worked on the man. But then even Richard reached his breaking point there were so many rats that he couldn't watch anymore. Before he left, he took a bunch of polaroids of the gruesome demise of the boyfriend.

Richard returned a couple days later, and all that was left of the guy was his skeleton. Richard gathered up the dead man's bones and dumped them down a nearby mine shaft. When the father saw the polaroids of the boyfriend, he was so impressed. He gave Richard an extra $10,000. And for a moment, Richard was actually troubled by his behavior. How could he be so indifferent to all the suffering?

None of his barbaric acts bothered him in the least, He was unflinching, unfeeling and unrepentant. Was there something wrong with him, and, if so, was there anything he could do about it? The moment of self-reflection was a good thing, but it was fleeting.

Instead of changing, he embraced the caves and the rats, he took more and more victims out to the caves. And his method of proof evolved with the times, from polaroid cameras to film cameras to video cameras. Richard showed one of the rat movies to Roy Demeo, the psychopath who dismembered victims in a bar nicknamed the Slaughterhouse, and Demeo had to leave the room. Nonetheless, the sick creativity of Richard Kuklinski earned him bonus points.

With the mobster, Demeo was the one who bragged to his crew that Richard was Ice, the ultimate compliment for a hitman, and likely the beginning of Richard's unofficial nickname, The Iceman.

In the fall of 1975, there was another mafia contract for Richard Kuklinski. The Iceman might have been an unofficial nickname, but it would certainly be the one that was loved by the media when Richard's hitman career was done. But during Richard's heyday, he was known as the Polack mob. Nicknames were almost always painfully obvious and based on a simple physical characteristic.

If you remember the movie Goodfellas, when Ray Liotta's character introduces the audience to all the wise guys in the restaurant for the first time. One of the guys is nicknamed Jimmy two times because he says everything twice. That's exactly how it was. Richard hated his nickname, but it was better than anyone knowing his real name. Richard was ready to take on his new assignment, one that would take him deeper into the mafia world. But first, he had to do a job that was personal.

He flew to Los Angeles to collect $10,000 from an arrogant sleazebag who owned a porn shop downtown. The guy had stopped taking Richard's calls, and Richard was furious. For this job, he packed some extra special equipment, a pair of fragmentation grenades.

Richard walked into the man's porn shop with a grenade in each pocket. The owner, who considered himself the ultimate tough guy, sat on a stool behind the chest-high counter with a permanent scowl on his face. The owner immediately recognized Richard and wondered what he was doing. 3,000 miles from home. Richard asked for his money and the owner told him to come back in a month, Richard said. That wasn't our agreement.

The owner shot back with attitude and said, Yeah, well, it is now. Richard smiled. He took out a grenade and pulled the pin because of the high counter. The shop owner never saw it. Then Richard matter-of-factly handed the pin to the owner.

What's this? the man asked. A surprise. Richard answered as he walked toward the door before he exited. He tossed the grenade behind the counter and then bolted out of the store. The grenade blew the belligerent store owner to pieces.

Richard walked away as if an explosion in a porn shop happened. Every day, though, it's worth noting that it wasn't like the movies, where a single grenade would have destroyed an entire city block. The police never tied Richard to what had to be a rare hand-grenade-related murder. He obviously wasn't going to be able to collect his $10,000, but he had to maintain the principle. You couldn't steal from Richard Kuklinski and get away with it.

When Richard returned from L.A. he immediately went to work on the mafia contract. The job was to kill a man at a breakfast meeting at a Howard Johnson's hotel. The meeting was a setup, and Richard waited in the hotel parking lot. With a .22 caliber Ruger rifle that was fitted with a suppressor, the man arrived for his breakfast meeting with a mob. Lieutenant. Richard watched through the glass as the two of them ate breakfast, then shook hands and returned to their respective vehicles.

As the mark reached his car, Richard raised the weapon and shot him nine times in two seconds. The mark toppled to the ground dead, and Richard casually drove away. To any random observers, it appeared as if the newly deceased had had a heart attack. By using the small caliber rifle with a suppressor, there were no loud gunshots.

The dead man didn't scream and flail, blood wasn't splattered everywhere, it simply crumpled to the pavement. And it wasn't until you got up close and noticed the blood from all the bullet holes that you would have known the truth. And by then, Richard was long gone, with another satisfied customer on his resume. And another murder that police would never connect to him.

A year after Richard sniped a guy in a Howard Johnson parking lot, Carlo Gambino died. And the effect was like a slow-moving earthquake that radiated through the mafia and shook the underworld. For the next ten years, Carlo Gambino was a small, frail man who dressed and acted like a simple peasant from Sicily. The reality was, he ran the biggest and most successful of the five New York crime families. The family was named after him because he was the boss in 1963 during what were known as the McClellan hearings.

Arkansas Senator John McClellan chaired a series of government hearings that brought the mafia into the public eye for the first time. The hearings eventually led to new laws that did serious damage to crime families and signaled that the good old days were clearly done. But the full effort of those laws was still several years away. In October of 1976, Carlo Gambino, boss of the Gambino family, died of natural causes, making him one of the few bosses who held that distinction. His death set up Richard Kuklinski's most infamous contract murder. And even though it wouldn't happen for nearly a decade, the foundation of the hit was laid right here. Behind the scenes of the biggest transition of power.

In hindsight, Carlo Gambino made two mistakes before he died. He allowed John Gotti to become a made man, and he passed the mantle of leadership to his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano.

Gotti's family was from Naples, Italy, and traditionally a guy who wanted to become a made man. A full official member of a crime family had to trace his roots to Sicily, but in Gotti's case, Carlo Gambino made an exception. Carlo's nephew, Sal, had been kidnapped, and then, after the ransom was paid, he was murdered anyway. John Gotti quickly stepped in and killed the kidnapper that endeared him to the entire Gambino family, and Carlo let him in. Despite his non-SIcilian roots, John Gotti's story would become one of the most infamous in mafia history. But much of it is many years down the road.

For now, few people had a problem with his inclusion, but the other mistake caused immediate problems. Paul Castellano was 61 years old, he was tall and thin, and he owned a butcher shop in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. If there was a town called Mafiaville, Bensonhurst would have been the capital. Soldiers, lieutenants, captains, underbosses and bosses from all five mafia families lived there.

The public schools were packed with their kids. Paul Castellano's butcher shop became a chicken and meat wholesale business and made him a rich man. And Castellano had the good fortune of marrying Carlo Gambino's sister, Kathy, and that catapulted him up the Gambino family ranks. But the Gambino captains all hated him. Castellano was greedy, abrasive and sloppy in his dealings.

He did three things that would have made moviegoers shake their heads in bewilderment if they saw them in a mafia film. First, Castellano demanded that all 20 captains in the Gambino family meet him in person once a week at the Veterans and Friends Social Club. The careless move allowed the FBI to take photos and videos of the weekly parade of gambino mobsters. That would have a predictably catastrophic effect on the family in the future. Second, Castellano was oblivious to all the listening devices the FBI had planted in his Staten Island home.

Not only was the FBI starting to identify and track all the members of the family because of the weekly meetings, now it was hearing details of all kinds of criminal activity. And third, Castellano was having an affair with his Colombian housekeeper.

He had a recording on Carlo Gambino's sister in their home, sometimes while Kathy Gambino was at the house. And of course, the FBI had recordings of all of it. So that was the situation with the Gambino crime family in late 1976. Though it was a slight exaggeration to say all the captains hated Paul Castellano. Nino Gaggi didn't hate him because Nino thought Castellano's elevation placed him one step closer to the throne.

And one of the best earners in Nino's crew was a psycho named Roy Demeo, who desperately wanted to be a made man. And Roy would continue to lean on Richard Kuklinski to help him earn his stripes.

Next time on Infamous America, Richard Kuklinski does more jobs for Roy Demeo. While still waiting for the chance to kill him. And Richard expands his methods beyond guns and knives and rats, he discovers the beauty of poisons but goes back to the old ways for one of the most infamous mafia assassinations of all time, that's next week on Infamous America.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website blackbarrelmedia.

Com memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Brian Frazier. original music by Rob Valliere. I'm Your host and producer Chris Wimmer.

Find us at our website blackbarrelmedia.

Com, or on our social media channels we're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram, and B Barrel Media on Twitter.

Just search for Infamous America podcast, Thanks for listening.