Case Study #6 – Richard Kuklinski

Date: 1983

Location: Orangeburg, New York

Significance: Experts were sure that Kuklinski had poisoned several business partners. But how to prove it?

In September 1983, a man’s body was found, trussed with tape and wrapped in plastic bags, in a wooded area of Rockland County, New York, just three miles north of the New Jersey border. There was a single bullet wound to the head. First indications were that the man had met his death recently, but when county medical examiner Dr. Frederick Zugibe began the autopsy, he noticed two peculiarities: The organs were fresh, and decomposition had started from the outside, which is the reverse of the normal process. Checking the heart, he discovered ice crystals, which su0pported his immediate suspicion that the body had been frozen, probably by a killer whose intention was to disguise the time of death. (Had the body been thawed before it was dumped, this might never had been established.)

By soaking the hands in water and glycerine, it was possible to rehydrate the fingers and take prints. They were identified as belonging to Louis Masgay, a fifty-year-old Pennsylvania store owner who had disappeared on July 1, 1981. When found, he was still in the same clothes he had been wearing on the day he was last seen. This indicated that Masgay had been murdered that same day, then his body had been kept, literally, on ice for two years before being dumped. Such callousness horrified investigators; clearly, this was no ordinary killer.

They found out that on the day of his disappearance Masgay had arranged to meet a New Jersey businessman to buy a batch of blank videos. Masgay, a cautious man, had hidden the ninety-five thousand dollars needed to complete the transaction behind a secret door panel in his Ford van. The van was later found abandoned, the secret panel ripped out, the money gone. Through phone records it was learned that the name of Masgay’s erstwhile business partner was Richard Kukinski.

Richard Kuklinski, a bearded, hulking bear of a man in his late forties, like to portray himself as a currency speculator, but his true stock-in-trade was something altogether more sinister. Beneath in a thin veneer of sophisticated respectability lurked one of the worst killers in American’s history. He murdered for the mob, for himself, and always for money.

One Hundred Murders

Nobody knows how many people died at Kuklinski’s hands, except Kuklinski himself. Some put the figure at over a hundred. Although stories abound of him committing murder as early as high school, his first recorded victim was George Mallibrand, a three-hundred-pound wheeler-dealer from Pennsylvania. One February 1, 1980, Mallibrand made the mistake of arguing with Kuklinski over debts totaling fifty thousand dollars. Four days later, his bullet-riddled corpse was found stuffed into a fifty-five gallon drum in Jersey City.

Anyone who dealt with Kuklinski was dicing with death. In 1982, he tempted Paul Hoffman, a New Jersey pharmacist, with an offer of some cut-rate hijacked ulcer medication. A shrewd judge of character, Kuklinski kept Hoffman dangling until the latter was practically begging him to finalize the deal. When the two men finally met on April 29, 1982, Hoffman was carrying twenty-five thousand dollars in cash – Kuklinski was carrying a gun. Neither Hoffman nor the money has been seen since. Kuklinski has hinted that the pharmacist, too, wound up in a concrete-filled oil drum.

Although by instinct a loner, Kuklinski occasionally teamed up with other thugs to run auto-theft scams. In partnersDaniel Deppner and Gary Smith, he chose poorly. Neither was especially bright and both soon attracted the kind of police attention that Kuklinski went to great lengths to avoid. His reaction was typical . After sharing his concerns with the gullible Deppner, they agreed that Smith had to go. In a Bergen County motel where he had been holed up, Smith hungrily wolfed down the burger that Kuklinski had brought him. After a few mouthfuls the room began to spin. Kuklinski and Deppner roared with laughter as Smith choked on the cyanide burger. In the end, Kuklinski tired of waiting and strangled the hapless Smith, stuffing his body under the bed where it was found four days later, on December 27, 1982. During that time, the room had been rented each night. Guests had wrinkled their noses at the smell, but none thought to look under the bed.

The following May, a bicyclist riding along Clinton Road in West Milford, New Jersey, noticed a huge turkey buzzard perched high in a tree. He went closer and saw a plastic garbage bag with a human head sticking out of it. Dr. Geetha Natarajan, New Jersey medical examiner, performed the autopsy. A ligature mark around the neck revealed the apparent cause of death, although she did notice a pinkish lividity around the shoulder and chest that might have been caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. In the pocket of the man’s jeans Natarajan found a wallet containing motel receipts and family photographs. Through these photos it was possible to identify the body as that of Kuklinski’s other partner, Daniel Deppner.

As the body count mounted, the authorities were certain that Richard Kuklinski was a one-man killing machine, but they did not have a single scrap of evidence that would stand up in court. To remedy this deficiency, beginning in September 1986, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Dominick Polifrone, went under cover and contacted Kuklinski in a sting that became known as Operation Iceman. After some initial sparring, Polifrone convinced Kuklinski that he could provide him with ten kilos of cocaine at $31, 500 per kilo. At the same time he solicited suggestions on how to get rid of a “rich kid” who was proving troublesome. Unaware that every word was being taped, Kuklinski waxed lyrical on the merits of cyanide. “It’s quiet, it’s not messy, it’s not noisy… there are even spray mists around.. you spray it in somebody’s face and they go to sleep…” He even described a tert murder he had committed on the street, just walking along in a crowd with a handkerchief over his nose and spraying a man. The man collapsed and died, and everyone thought he’d had a heart attack. “The best way is to hit ‘em right in the nose with a spray so he inhales it, “ Kuklinski said. “Once he inhales it, he’s gone.”

The Sting

Because Kuklinski was unable to get his hands on any cyanide at the moment – his supply had dried up – Polifrone agreed to provide the deadly poison. On December 17, 1986, the two met at a truck stop off the New Jersey Turnpike. As arranged, Polifrone brought with him three scrambled-egg sandwiches and a jar of what was supposedly cyanide – actually quinine – to put on them. The plan was to meet the so-called rich kid at a motel and poison him.

Kuklinski took the sandwiches away to prepare them. The watching agents had not anticipated this, and fearful for Polifrone’s safety, decided to make the arrest early. Just minutes later, Kuklinski was taken into custody. Sure enough, the toxicology department at the New Jersey crime laboratory found “Cyanide” (quinine) applied to the sandwiches. Kuklinski was charged with five kurders. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is at present incarcerated at Trenton State Prison for life.