The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

cocaine the following month.

George Malliband was a large, boisterous man, a two-bit hustler, a degenerate gambler that happened to weigh three hundred pounds. Richard first met Malliband at Phil Solimene’s store; they did a little business together, developed a relationship of sorts. George lived on a farm in Pennsylvania and Richard went hunting there with him once in a while. When Malliband overextended himself and borrowed money from loan sharks because of gambling debts, he painted himself into a corner—a particularly dangerous corner. Like many other people, Malliband heard stories about how dangerous Richard could be, and he turned to Richard for help. Richard, in his own way, had taken a shine to Malliband, or Georgie-Boy, as he called him, and he reluctantly came to his assistance: he arranged for the loan sharks to wait a few days for their money, and introduced Malliband to DeMeo, who wound up loaning Malliband thirty-five thousand dollars, at “a friend’s rate.”

Malliband paid off the Jersey sharks and people he owed money in Vegas. He had promised up and down he’d pay DeMeo back in a timely fashion, sworn on his mother and father and everyone else, but he soon stopped making payments to DeMeo, and Roy put the squeeze on him. Malliband again ran to Richard for help.

“Look,” Richard said, “I can’t help you. You swore on your word of honor, on all your relatives, you’d do the right thing here, and now you’re obligated. DeMeo…you can’t fuck around with this guy, see. He’s fuckin’ dangerous.”

“Yeah, well, you can fix it for me, Rich. I know you can,” Malliband said. “I just need a little more time here, that’s all.”

“How much more?”

“A week, let’s say a week.”

Again, Richard extended himself, went to see DeMeo and got Malliband a week.

Again, though, George Malliband had a song and dance instead of the money, and again, Richard had a heart-to-heart talk with him, explained that DeMeo was hot, that DeMeo was talking about hurting him. They were now in Richard’s van, driving along.

Malliband said, “Big Guy…I know too much about what you do; I don’t think you’d ever let DeMeo hurt me. Fact is I know you won’t. Remember, Big Guy, I know where you live; where your family lives. You won’t let anything happen to me,” he said, thinking himself sly.

This incensed Richard. His face paled. His lips twisted off to the left. That soft clicking came from him. A threat to his family, by Jesus Christ himself, was something he could not tolerate. He was nearly blind with red-hot rage.

“You know, Georgie-Boy, you’re wrong,” Richard said, pulling over to the curb, and without another word he whipped out a .38 and shot Malliband five times, killing him.

I could see, he’d later say, the bullets tearing into his clothes.

Richard proceeded to take Malliband to the large North Bergen garage he used as a warehouse and a place to kill people, near where Pronge kept his Mister Softee truck. Richard stuffed Malliband’s huge body into a fifty- five-gallon drum. But Malliband was too big for Richard to properly fit him into the drum, no matter how hard he pushed and squeezed, all the while talking to Malliband, saying: “See, Georgie, see what you made me do? I didn’t want to do this. See what you made me do?”

In the end Richard had to get a saw and cut one of Malliband’s legs so he could bend it into the black metal drum, which he sealed and put into his van. It was over three hundred pounds, yet Richard picked it up easily. He now drove to Jersey City, his old stomping ground. There was a big chemical plant on Hope Street called Chemtex. Out back was a kind of dumping ground. It was February now, a bitterly cold day, snowing lightly. Everything was frozen and brittle. Frigid winds ripped off the Atlantic. Richard backed his van to this impromptu dumping area, pulled the drum out of the van, rolled it down a steep embankment that abutted an old railroad yard, got back in the van, and left. For years people had been using this area as a convenient dumping site, and Richard believed Malliband wouldn’t be found for a long time, maybe never.

He was wrong. When the barrel hit a rock at the bottom of the ravine, the top popped off.

The man who owned the plant opened the rear door of the place and was standing there having a smoke when he noticed something odd—what looked like a man’s leg sticking out of a big drum. He investigated and nearly fell down when he saw what was in the barrel, a very large dead man, his leg all cut up, his femur bone visible. The man ran to call the police.

The identity of the dead man was soon established. His family was contacted. Malliband’s brother said George had been going to meet Richard Kuklinski of Dumont the day he disappeared. The police questioned Richard. He, of course, said he knew nothing about the murder. But this was the first time he’d ever been connected to a homicide he’d done, though it didn’t go any further. It stopped, for now, right there.

Richard was mad at himself. He should have buried Malliband, dumped him down one of the bottomless holes in the caves, fed him to the rats. I must, he told himself, be more careful.

As much as Richard loved his home life, being a “family man,” he came to believe that being married, having children, was making him…soft, he explained, taking away the razor-sharp edge a professional killer must have. He vowed to be more careful. He would get his razor edge back. In a bad mood now, he had a temper tantrum in the house and began breaking things.

The cocaine from Brazil arrived and was delivered to a warehouse Gaggi and DeMeo had found in south Brooklyn, down by the waterfront, near the old armory.

Richard, seriously armed, was there to receive it. It was a lot more than he thought. The cocaine was on wooden skids, two of them, all neatly wrapped in plastic. Richard set up a cot for himself, put broken glass all over the floor, even installed two electronically activated beams at the entrance so no one could sneak in. He had to stay with the coke until it was picked up. Those were his orders. That night a few of DeMeo’s guys did show up and took the load away. Richard’s job was done. He soon received a big bag of money from DeMeo, minus what Malliband had owed, of course. But DeMeo didn’t charge any vig at all.

For months this went on flawlessly. The loads came in; Richard received and guarded them until they were picked up; a short while later he was given a bag filled with hundred-dollar bills. Richard was pleased. It was all working out well. Everyone was making money. There were no problems.

That soon changed.

DeMeo beeped Richard; they met near the Tappan Zee Bridge.

“We’ve got problems,” DeMeo said, “with the Brazilians.”

“What happened?” Richard asked, concerned.

DeMeo explained that he and Gaggi had found a better coke contact, Colombians out of Medellin, that sold coke for far less than the Mediro brothers, and DeMeo had not paid the Brazilians for the last load; furthermore, he wasn’t going to pay them, he said.

“How much is involved?” Richard asked, thinking this was a stupid thing for DeMeo and Gaggi to be doing. Why, he wondered, were these Italians always so greedy?

“Little more than half a million. And they…well, they threatened us.”

“Of course. Roy, these are serious guys. I wouldn’t fuck with them. Give them—”

“We ain’t,” he interrupted.

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Go there with a few of the guys and kill the cocksuckers,” DeMeo said.

“In Brazil?”

“Yeah.”

“Roy, Rio is a big place; I don’t know my way around.”

“I’ll send you with three of the guys.”

Richard thought about this. It was a risky proposition, he knew…but he liked the challenge, even the danger, of it. “If I go I want to do this by myself,” he said.

“Any way you think is best. There’s sixty large in it for you.”

“Okay,” Richard said, intrigued by the challenge, how the odds were stacked against him; his death wish was again coming into play.