punching his sons with it. It was like being struck by a two-by-four. He was fond of hitting them in the head with his belted fist, and often knocked both Florian and Richard out cold. Richard became so utterly terrified of his father that he wet his pants just at the sight of him or the sound of his voice, which caused Stanley to become angry and beat the boy for wetting himself. Little by little Stanley was, in effect, beating the very necessary human elements of compassion and empathy out of his second-born, clearly delineating the path Richard’s life would ultimately take.
Finally, Stanley Kuklinski did the unspeakable—he murdered his son Florian with one of his beatings. He hit the frail boy on the back of the head one too many times, knocking the hapless boy to the floor, and Florian never got back up. Stanley made Anna tell family and friends and the authorities that Florian died by falling down the stairs and striking his head. No one questioned their story, and Florian was laid out in the Kuklinski living room, just down the block from St. Mary’s Church, where this ill-matched couple had been wed.
Richard was just five when his brother was killed by Stanley. Anna told Richard that Florian was hit by a car “and died.” Richard had no conception of what death really was. He just knew that Florian was in a cheap wooden coffin that smelled of pine in the living room as if he were asleep, but he would not wake up. His mother and other relatives were there crying, praying, lighting candles, holding shiny black rosary beads, but no matter what, Florian would not wake up. Five-year-old Richard stared at his ghostly pale dead brother, the only friend he had ever known, wondering why he wouldn’t get up. He had always gotten up before….
Florian never woke up.
2
Mean Streets
After Florian’s murder, Stanley let up on Richard for a while, but it didn’t take long before he went back to his old ways. Now the beatings became even more brutal and frequent. Stanley seemed to blame Richard for everything unjust that ever happened to him, for all the curveballs that life threw him, and he regularly and indiscriminately beat his son. Anna’s answer was still going to church and silently asking God for help—even after Stanley had murdered Florian. She took to facing a wall and praying fervently as Stanley beat the young Richard. Richard often went to sleep with bruises, aches, and pains; sometimes he was so bruised and covered with eggplant-colored welts that he couldn’t go outside or to school.
Richard grew, not surprisingly, into a painfully shy, awkward child with little confidence in himself. He viewed the world as a brutal, violent place filled with pain and turmoil. He often wondered where his brother Florian was but could never find out. His mother told him “in heaven,” but he had no idea how to get to this place. Richard had been very close to Florian, held him tight when his father beat their mother and smashed the meager possessions the family had, and now Florian was gone and Richard had to face his father alone. He was a thin, frail boy, and it didn’t take long for neighborhood toughs to start picking on him, which only compounded Richard’s feelings of isolation and resentment; his anxieties mounted.
Two Irish brothers that lived on the block regularly accosted Richard. One Saturday morning they gave him a particularly severe beating. Richard managed to get away from them by running. Stanley was home that day and saw what happened from the front window. When Richard arrived upstairs, Stanley took off his belt and beat the boy, demanding that he go back downstairs and fight the brothers. “No kid’a mine’s gonna be a chicken shit!” he bellowed, and struck Richard across the face with his belt.
Confused, his face burning, a red welt forming, Richard hurried back downstairs. “Go get ’em,” Stanley ordered from the window, and Richard did exactly what he was told. With newfound ferocity and pent-up hostility, he laid into the brothers, caught them off guard, and gave them both a terrific beating. Their father, a tall, gangly Irishman named O’Brian, then came out of the house and roughly pushed Richard away.
Amazed, Richard watched Stanley actually leap out of the second-story window, land squarely on his feet, storm across Third Street, and slap O’Brian, saying, “When your kids beat up my kid, you watched and did nothing. When my kid fought back, you stopped it.” Stanley then hit O’Brian so hard that he knocked him out right there on the sidewalk in front of everyone, just down the block from St. Mary’s Church.
Richard wanted to run to his father, hold him, and thank him for sticking up for him, for making everything right, but he knew he could never do such a thing. Showing outward affection to his father was forbidden. Richard learned that Saturday afternoon that might was right. Richard often wondered why his father and mother didn’t like him, what he had done to deserve their indifference and violence. He drew further and still further into himself, was always alone, couldn’t seem to make friends; and a seething, fiery rage slowly grew inside the small boy.
Because Stanley spent most of the money he earned on weekend drinking binges and whoring around Jersey City and Hoboken bars, the family had little, and there was never enough food or warm clothes. All of Richard’s clothes were tattered and dirty, and his schoolmates took to calling him names—dumb Polack, skinny, scarecrow— because of his gangly arms and legs. Richard quickly developed an inferiority complex he would carry with him for the rest of his life. There were running feuds among the Polish, Italian, and Irish kids, and Richard became a target for the Irish and Italian kids’ barbs, taunts, and put-downs. They made fun of the holes in his clothes, the ripped and tattered shoes he wore. Anna didn’t seem at all interested in Richard’s appearance; her only concern was the church, praying, lighting holy candles, and saying the rosary—none of which helped her son.
Anna soon became pregnant again and gave birth, prematurely, to a girl they named Roberta. She became pregnant still again, and the Kuklinskis soon had a fourth child, a boy they named Joseph, who, like his older brother Richard, would grow into a remorseless killer—a psychopath.
Having three small children to feed and clothe made Stanley meaner still. Stanley took to bringing home loose women he found in bars and openly fornicating with them as he pleased. When Anna complained, he beat her with his belt, fists, and feet. He was the king of the house and would do whatever the fuck he pleased. Once Richard tried to come to his mother’s rescue, and Stanley hit him in the head so hard he knocked the boy out for half the night. When Richard came to he had a lump on the side of his head the size of a lemon, and for hours he didn’t even remember who he was. Richard grew to hate his father and often fantasized about killing him.
Finally, Stanley took up with a Polish woman and, thankfully, came around less and less. Anna was now working two jobs: one at the Armond Meatpacking Company, the other cleaning floors at St. Mary’s Church in the evening.
Anna, who had become a flaming religious zealot, tried to force the fear of God on her children, particularly Richard—she insisted he attend Catholic school—but he had come to loathe the church and its restrictive, hypocritical teachings. Much of that had to do with how brutal the nuns and priests were at St. Mary’s, how quick they were to use corporal punishment; they seemed, he came to believe, even more wicked and mean than his father, no easy task, Richard explained. Richard was highly dyslexic, had a lot of difficulty reading, and when he tried to use his fingers to keep his eyes in the right place a nun would inevitably slap his hand with a metal ruler.
Richard took to fooling around in class. He enjoyed making others laugh, and this invariably earned him a slap. Sometimes the bitter-faced, austere nuns yanked his overly protrusive ears. Richard believed they actually enjoyed hitting and slapping their young charges.
At Anna’s insistent urging Richard became an altar boy. Every Sunday he got up early, went to St. Mary’s, and assisted the priest with mass. When taking the pulpit, the priests seemed nice enough, talked glowingly about giving and kindness and avoiding sin; they acted compassionate, as if they cared. But Richard believed that they were mean-spirited men who drank alcohol, were quick to condemn, and reprimanded, even slapped boys who didn’t do their assigned tasks around the altar to their liking. One priest made inappropriate overtures to Richard about sex, started talking about the virtues of masturbation, and Richard made sure he was never alone with this priest. Richard knew little about sex, but he knew what was in the priest’s eyes, behind his face, was wrong—
The nuns, too, were quick to use sudden, irrational violence against the children in their care. One nun liked to use the narrow edge of a metal ruler and would hit Richard so hard across his knuckles she caused him to bleed. After this happened several times, he became fed up and said, “You hit me again, you cunt, I’ll break your fucking head—bitch!”
The nun, stunned by Richard’s words, the sudden fire in his eyes, hurried from the classroom and soon
