enjoy killing, but it wasn’t a psychosexual compulsion with him. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t a serial killer. Still, were his deadly impulses beyond his control? Or was it something he did because, as he told me, “I found out murder was a way to solve my problems”?
The Iceman died in prison in 2006 at the age of seventy. To say the least, he was a complex individual—abused son, abusive husband, doting father, con man, killer. What you will read here are the facts of his life.
Anthony Bruno
February 2012
ONE
JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY—1949
The boy stood in the shadows, leaning against the brick wall, listening to the night. The distant clack of diesel engines from the Hoboken train yards filled the sky over the Sixteenth Street projects. Tugboats on the Hudson sounded their horns as they pushed garbage scows downriver, heading out to sea. The rumble of the incinerator on the other side of the brick wall vibrated the boy’s back. It seemed like they burned garbage all the time around here. He looked up at the stars shining dully through the drifting smoke from the incinerator. For fourteen-year-old Richard Kuklinski, life was
all
garbage, and he just couldn’t take any more. He’d had it.
The warm bricks heated his back as his breath turned to vapor on the cold air. Down by his side, he held the wooden closet pole. His hand was sweaty as his eyes darted into the darkness and he listened for the footsteps, for that voice. Johnny’s voice.
He glanced up at the projects, the lights in the windows. His apartment was up there somewhere, but he wasn’t sure which window was his. It didn’t matter really. The apartments were all the same here, and they all stunk. The heavy wooden pole came from the hallwaycloset, the only closet in the whole apartment. It was stupid having a closet pole up there, the way he figured. There were hardly any clothes to move when he took it down. Just about the only clothes he and his little brother and sister owned were the ones they wore. Whenever something wore out and his mother could afford it, they’d just go downtown and replace it, wear it home stiff, sometimes with the tags still on. He felt his frayed shirtfront, ashamed of the way he had to go around. The other kids in the projects teased him all the time, but the most stinging remarks always came from Johnny. “Richie the rag boy.” “Hobo Richie.” “The skinny Polack.”
His mother never listened to him. She always bought his clothes big so he wouldn’t outgrow them too fast, she said. But he was a skinny kid, and he never grew into them. They just flapped around him as if he were some kind of a … hobo.
Might as well be a hobo
, he thought. He spent all his time wandering the streets as it was, staying to himself. He didn’t hang out in gangs the way other kids did. He didn’t get along with those kids. He preferred his own company, walking around, seeing what there was to see, watching the sailors getting drunk and picking up whores over in Hoboken, watching the tired factory workers dragging themselves in and out of the Maxwell House factory just to make a buck, watching people arguing with shopkeepers up in Journal Square, going crazy to save a few pennies on a pound of potatoes.
It was all garbage. People going nuts just so they could grab a little piece of something for themselves. But it was all garbage. Couldn’t they see that?
One time he was over on Henderson Street, just walking around, when he spotted this truck parked in front of the Manischewitz factory. The back of the truck was open, and it was stacked high with wooden crates. As he got closer, he could see that there were bottles in the crates, bottles of wine. There was writing stenciled on the crates, but it was all in that Jewish writing,just like in the window of that butcher shop over on Newark Avenue. There was only one word in English: “Kosher.” Richie didn’t know what that meant, but he’d heard that Jews used a lot of
The Iceman died in prison in 2006 at the age of seventy. To say the least, he was a complex individual—abused son, abusive husband, doting father, con man, killer. What you will read here are the facts of his life.
Anthony Bruno
February 2012
ONE
JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY—1949
The boy stood in the shadows, leaning against the brick wall, listening to the night. The distant clack of diesel engines from the Hoboken train yards filled the sky over the Sixteenth Street projects. Tugboats on the Hudson sounded their horns as they pushed garbage scows downriver, heading out to sea. The rumble of the incinerator on the other side of the brick wall vibrated the boy’s back. It seemed like they burned garbage all the time around here. He looked up at the stars shining dully through the drifting smoke from the incinerator. For fourteen-year-old Richard Kuklinski, life was
all
garbage, and he just couldn’t take any more. He’d had it.
The warm bricks heated his back as his breath turned to vapor on the cold air. Down by his side, he held the wooden closet pole. His hand was sweaty as his eyes darted into the darkness and he listened for the footsteps, for that voice. Johnny’s voice.
He glanced up at the projects, the lights in the windows. His apartment was up there somewhere, but he wasn’t sure which window was his. It didn’t matter really. The apartments were all the same here, and they all stunk. The heavy wooden pole came from the hallwaycloset, the only closet in the whole apartment. It was stupid having a closet pole up there, the way he figured. There were hardly any clothes to move when he took it down. Just about the only clothes he and his little brother and sister owned were the ones they wore. Whenever something wore out and his mother could afford it, they’d just go downtown and replace it, wear it home stiff, sometimes with the tags still on. He felt his frayed shirtfront, ashamed of the way he had to go around. The other kids in the projects teased him all the time, but the most stinging remarks always came from Johnny. “Richie the rag boy.” “Hobo Richie.” “The skinny Polack.”
His mother never listened to him. She always bought his clothes big so he wouldn’t outgrow them too fast, she said. But he was a skinny kid, and he never grew into them. They just flapped around him as if he were some kind of a … hobo.
Might as well be a hobo
, he thought. He spent all his time wandering the streets as it was, staying to himself. He didn’t hang out in gangs the way other kids did. He didn’t get along with those kids. He preferred his own company, walking around, seeing what there was to see, watching the sailors getting drunk and picking up whores over in Hoboken, watching the tired factory workers dragging themselves in and out of the Maxwell House factory just to make a buck, watching people arguing with shopkeepers up in Journal Square, going crazy to save a few pennies on a pound of potatoes.
It was all garbage. People going nuts just so they could grab a little piece of something for themselves. But it was all garbage. Couldn’t they see that?
One time he was over on Henderson Street, just walking around, when he spotted this truck parked in front of the Manischewitz factory. The back of the truck was open, and it was stacked high with wooden crates. As he got closer, he could see that there were bottles in the crates, bottles of wine. There was writing stenciled on the crates, but it was all in that Jewish writing,just like in the window of that butcher shop over on Newark Avenue. There was only one word in English: “Kosher.” Richie didn’t know what that meant, but he’d heard that Jews used a lot of
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