The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

Polifrone noted, as if he were discussing the weather.

Ice Man was the perfect nickname for him, Polifrone was thinking.

If, Richard said, they wanted to make the body “disappear,” they could throw the corpse down some abandoned mine shafts he knew about. “They are so deep,” he said, “you don’t even hear them bounce.”

Ice-fuckin’-Man indeed, Polifrone thought. “Good, sounds good. What about his car? Should we leave it or get rid of it?” the agent asked.

“Either or. We could sell it for parts. I know a place—bam, bam, they cut it up and sell it for parts the same day.”

Polifrone asked questions about being able to fool the coroner if, in fact, they poisoned the rich kid and left him in his car, and incredibly, Richard said the ME would be fooled and went on to tell Polifrone how he had once frozen a victim, which had confused the ME. Polifrone knew he was talking about Louis Masgay. Bingo. Polifrone prayed the tape was recording all this; it was far more than they had ever hoped for.

Richard went on to describe, again, the best ways to administer the cyanide, said that putting it in food was much better, easier, and safer to administer. He talked too about retiring, getting out of “this dirty business.” He even said he had set some money aside, “out of the country,” he volunteered.

Why Richard was telling Polifrone all this was strange indeed…perplexing. Even if he was planning to kill him eventually, it didn’t make sense. He barely knew Polifrone, who now wanted to shake Richard’s hand and thank him for being so helpful. After an hour of Richard digging his own grave, the meeting ended. The two men agreed to meet again soon. Polifrone promised Richard the cyanide and said that he’d call him when he had the rich Jewish kid set up and the kid had the money. They shook hands. Richard got back into his shiny white Caddie and took off. Polifrone soon checked the tape. It had been working.

We got him by the balls, he thought, and soon he handed the Nagra tape recorder to Detective Paul Smith.

PART V

  HOMICIDE SUPERSTAR

 52

 The Quiet Before the Storm

Christmas was in the air. Barbara Kuklinski had her shopping list prepared, was buying and wrapping gifts. Most homes on the Kuklinski block had Christmas decorations up already. Barbara was feeling a little under the weather, but the prospect of Christmas cheered and motivated her.

Richard was talking to Remi several times a day. He was most often using stolen phone cards to make these calls. He believed, correctly, that his phones were tapped—thanks to Kane—and was careful about what he said. Remi kept saying that another check was “forthcoming.” Richard said he’d leave when Remi had it, that he didn’t want to sit around in Zurich waiting for it just right now. Richard made several trips to Jersey City and Hoboken, his old stomping grounds, trying to find someone who had access to cyanide; he wasn’t having much luck. He now thought seriously about just making Kane disappear, but that, he decided, would be worse than killing him because the cops wouldn’t rest until they knew what had happened to him. He thought too about giving Kane a flat, killing him with a blow to the head, then putting his head under the wheel and kicking the jack out of place, crushing his head and making it impossible to discern that a blow to the head had done him in. But he knew that to do such a thing he would need more privacy than the bar parking lot would afford.

Barbara was concerned about her husband. He had become more and more distant. He was not the same man anymore. He hadn’t lost his temper or raised his voice once for many weeks. Strange.

It was, she decided, the quiet before the storm. Something was brewing; something was in the air; she just didn’t know what it was. Rather than worry, she focused her energy on preparing for Christmas, shopping, buying gifts—spending money, one of her favorite pastimes.

Again, at Bob Carroll’s insistence, Polifrone contacted Richard and told him he had the coke buyer all set up; everything was “a go,” and the cyanide was forthcoming. Another meeting at the Lombardi rest stop was set up.

Richard’s reservations about Polifrone were outweighed by two considerations: getting his hands on cyanide to properly kill Pat Kane, and taking off this rich Jewish kid, keeping all the money, and finally getting rid of Polifrone and his bad wig once and for all. It all fit together perfectly. To some degree the fact that Polifrone had been laid- back, hadn’t chased Richard, made him believe Polifrone might very well get the cyanide; have access to a rich kid looking to buy coke: after all, coke was the in drug. Almost everyone was doing it, even mob guys, and all the hip, fancy people.

This third meeting between Richard and Polifrone took place on December 12. It had snowed a few days earlier, and the rest stop was pocked with mounds of dirty snow. Richard showed up on time, at 11:00 A.M.

Polifrone said: “Listen to this. The Jewish kid asked me if I can get him three kilos. I said yeah, of course. Eighty-five thousand, cash. Wednesday morning he’s coming. He’ll be here around nine fuckin’ thirty. Now here’s the thing. I’ll pick up the cyanide that morning from my guy.”

“Doesn’t give me enough time. I need a couple of days to get it ready.” Richard went on to describe how he had to have a chemist mix a special liquid—the DSMO—with the cyanide. That would take a few days. Such a thing couldn’t be rushed.

Polifrone, wanting to move this thing forward and finally have Richard arrested, suggested they instead give the coke buyer “an egg sandwich” and kill him that way. He went on to say the Jewish kid loved egg sandwiches, was always ordering them.

“But will the kid eat?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Then that’ll work.”

“Guaranteed. It’ll be an egg sandwich. Every time I meet this kid, he orders an egg sandwich. We’ll get him an egg sandwich.”

“We can do that. Do they sell egg sandwiches here? I don’t even know if they do.”

Polifrone took care of this by saying he’d bring the egg sandwich, and the vial of cyanide.

This should have set off alarms in Richard’s head—giving the coke buyer an egg sandwich Polifrone would bring—but it didn’t. He seemed to accept what Polifrone was laying down. For him, none of this really mattered, though: in his mind both Polifrone and the coke buyer were going to die. Simple. He’d shoot them both in the head with a .22 equipped with a silencer, the same type of weapon he had sold to Polifrone weeks earlier.

That evening there was still another meeting in the war room at the attorney general’s office. The task force sat around the large table listening to the most recent tape and debating how to bring the case to a close. The final act of this drama was about to unfold, they all knew, one way or another. The question was what was the best way to finally arrest Richard. Bob Carroll suggested that they use an apartment and get Kuklinski on film actually giving the coke buyer—Detective Paul Smith—the cyanide-laced egg sandwich.

Smith didn’t like this idea at all. “What if he just decides to pull out a gun and shoot me—and Dom?”

He had a point.

It was decided, therefore, that the final act would play out at the Lombardi rest stop.

Polifrone contacted Richard the following day. The deal would go down, it was agreed, on Wednesday, December 17. He would bring the coke buyer to the Lombardi stop. Richard said he’d get a van so they could get the kid in the van. Polifrone said he’d meet with Richard earlier and give him three egg sandwiches and a vial of cyanide (actually harmless white powder), which Richard would use to poison the coke buyer’s sandwich as he saw fit.

For Richard the sandwich had become irrelevant nonsense; as soon as the coke buyer and Polifrone were in the van, Richard was going to kill them. End of story. He planned to borrow a van from Jimmy DiVita, a small-time hustler from New London, Connecticut. He would take the bodies to Pennsylvania and dump them in an abandoned mine shaft.