The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

knew what hit him, who killed him, or even why.

After Pronge was discovered, Richard decided to get rid of the warehouse, to finally get rid of Masgay’s body. Richard now broke open the cement on top of the well head, retrieved Masgay’s body, took it to a little-used area in upstate New York, and left it there, wrapped in black leaf bags.

Again, by pure happenstance, the body was found within several days and the police were summoned. Interestingly, the frigid well water had completely preserved the corpse. Masgay had now been dead for two years but he looked as if he had just died—been murdered—only the day before. The clothes he was wearing were matched with missing-persons reports, and thus the authorities realized it was Louis Masgay, reported missing so long ago.

On the day Masgay disappeared, the police knew, he’d gone to see Richard Kuklinski with ninety thousand dollars cash money on him. When word of this discovery reached Detective Kane, he hurried and told Lieutenant Leck. The lieutenant said: “Pat…Pat, you’ve made a believer out of me,” and he shook Kane’s hand. This murder finally vindicated Kane, and he felt ten feet tall.

Now with Leck’s permission and encouragement, Kane dug deeper and quickly learned that Louis Masgay was last seen on his way to have dinner with Kuklinski the day he vanished. Kane also learned that Masgay had been buying porn and blank tapes from Kuklinski. Kane now turned his attention back to the murder of George Malliband, spoke to his brother Gene, and heard how Malliband was a heavy gambler, deep in debt to loan sharks and “Mafia characters.”

Kane went for a long jog, thinking this out, trying to fit the jagged pieces of this bloody puzzle together. He had many good ideas while running, managed to see things in a new light—from different angles, as he says. While jogging he had the idea to contact the NYPD organized-crime unit and see if he could learn something more about Richard Kuklinski from them. He needed help, he knew. He was only a lowly detective in the small state police barracks at Newton, New Jersey, which had an absolute minimum of resources —a serious disadvantage, and Pat Kane had the good sense to know it. Kane’s query to the NYPD proved to be fruitful. He not only asked about Kuklinski, but he provided the OC Unit with Kuklinski’s mug shot; it was shown to a Mafia informant—Freddie DiNome—and Kane soon learned that the photo was of “the Polack,” a proficient hit man who had worked with Roy DeMeo, who himself had recently been killed. “He is supposed to be,” an NYPD detective told Kane, “a specialist at getting rid of bodies.”

This confirmed what Kane had all along suspected, but to hear it from the NYPD OC Unit was very sobering. It sent shivers up his spine.

How many people has he killed? Kane wondered, and his mind played over the long list of Mafia hits that occurred all over New Jersey. With this new information, Kane became even more concerned for both his and his family’s safety. If Kuklinski was a contract killer, what was to prevent him from coming after Kane, or his wife, or for that matter his children? Kane made sure to find out the license-plate numbers of not only all of Richard’s cars, but his family’s cars as well. With the information he took Terry aside and explained how he was on the trail of a dangerous killer, a contract murderer, who lived nearby, a ten-minute drive away, and he “might,” he said, come around looking to hurt him. This both troubled and confused Terry.

“Why,” she asked, “would he come after you, Patrick, and not one of the other guys?”

“Because I’ve been pursuing him for a while, and I think…well, I think it’s possible he found out about me.”

“You, I mean just you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Terry, it’s long and involved. Just suffice it to say that I’m…I’m concerned, and I want you to be…”

“To be what, Patrick?”

“On guard—alert,” he said. “Keep your eyes open.”

“What about the children, Patrick? Would he…you know, hurt them?” she asked.

“Terry, I just want you to keep your eyes open, that’s all. No. No, he won’t hurt the children,” Kane said, but in truth he didn’t know what Richard would do, what Richard was capable of.

Merrick Kuklinski’s boyfriend, Richie Peterson, was becoming abusive. He first took to pushing Merrick around, then striking her and breaking things. As much as Merrick loved Peterson, she was not, she vowed, going to enter into an abusive relationship the way her mother had. So she unapologetically, irrevocably ended all romantic relations and ties with Peterson. He was heartbroken, crestfallen, pursued Merrick, begged her to reconsider, promised he’d change, but she didn’t want to hear it.

If Merrick had told her father that Richie Peterson abused her, Richard would have killed him and fed him to the rats. But Merrick kept silent about the abuse, and Richard still treated Peterson well. It was out of character for Richard to trust Peterson—or anyone—so much. Peterson was young, not an outlaw, and he had been involved with Merrick for a long time now. Richard thought of Peterson as a surrogate son. This familiarity, however, would come back to haunt Richard.

Chris Kuklinski was still asserting her individuality by having a lot of male friends. She would sometimes be fooling around in vans parked right outside the house with Richard home; she would sometimes cavort with boys in her basement bedroom with Richard home—just upstairs, watching TV.

Chris, of course, knew all about her father’s bad temper, but she knew nothing about the second life he led; she had no idea what a truly thin, dangerous line she was crossing by doing these things. If Richard had caught her in these acts he would have gone berserk and sent any male she was with to the hospital, or worse—a grave. This was a tragedy waiting to happen.

Several times, Pat Kane tried following Richard, but that proved to be very difficult. Richard’s doubling back, making sudden turns, pulling over on the side of the road and just sitting there waiting, made tailing him nearly impossible. Kane also thought about going into Phil Solimene’s store in Paterson to see what he could find out, but Solimene knew Pat Kane through an odd quirk of circumstances, and knew Kane was a cop, so he’d be made the second he entered the store.

Kane came to view Solimene as a possible weak link, a way to get something on Richard, but the question was how? In truth Solimene was a genuine black-hearted outlaw and knew very well just how dangerous Richard was, and he’d be hard-pressed to do anything to undermine Richard or help the cops in any way.

Though, with time, that would change.

Kane now turned his stubborn nature to Kuklinski’s phone records, and soon learned he had four different phone lines and ran up huge bills…several thousand dollars every month.

Upon closer scrutiny of Richard’s phone calls, Kane realized that Richard had been making phone calls to Louis Masgay’s number, which abruptly stopped the day Masgay disappeared.

“Interesting,” Lieutenant Leck observed when Kane brought this to his attention. “Especially considering that Kuklinski denied even knowing Masgay.” As provocative as this was, it didn’t in any way prove that Kuklinski had killed Louis Masgay, though it certainly pointed in that direction. Kane went back to checking the hundreds of numbers called from the Kuklinski home. This was grueling, tedious work, comparing all these seemingly unrelated numbers, but suddenly, one of the numbers seemed to jump off the page and slam Pat Kane right in the face. “Bingo!” he shouted, and hurried into Lieutenant Leck’s office. “We got ’im,” he announced.

“What’s up?” Leck asked.

Richard went about business as usual. He accepted murder contracts across the country. He bought and sold hijacked merchandise, drugs and guns, distributed pornography from one end of America to the other. He rented an office in Emerson now and started a new corporation he called Sunset Inc. He used the company to buy and sell lots of damaged goods and to sell counterfeit knockoff items, jeans and sweaters, handbags, even perfumes. Richard had bogus labels sewn into the clothing and sold it as the real McCoy. Wholesalers from flea markets across the country gobbled them up. Richard never brought home any of the pornography he dealt in. Barbara would never stand for such a thing. Once in a while, however, he kept loads of X-rated movies in the garage, wrapped in plastic, overnight. Richard’s son, Dwayne, happened upon one such load and became all wide-eyed at the sight of the blatant porn all over the boxes—an exciting thing for any healthy teenage boy to see.