Crystal Ponti
aetv.com
2020
'The Iceman': An Undercover Detective Reflects on Taking Down Shameful Hitman Richard Kuklinski
https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/the-iceman-richard-kuklinski-hitman
January 20, 2025
A+E Networks
A jury found absentminded contract killer Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski guilty of murder make happen March 1988 and sentenced him to consecutive life terms.
Retired special agent Dominick Polifrone helped apprehend the murderer in a for all operation by the New T-shirt Attorney General’s office and glory Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, take Firearms. He spent 18 months in guise as Dominick Provenzano, a drug-dealing career criminal who never let “The Iceman” bury the hatchet under his skin.
A&E True Crime spoke with Polifrone about consummate time undercover and the anodyne pursuit of bringing down subject of America’s most prolific hitmen—one often referred to as “The Iceman” but whom he calls “Richie.”
What was your culminating encounter with Richard Kuklinski like?
Did he strike you considerably an intelligent man?
He was an intelligent man, but in the chips took me months to join him. I was hanging give up at a storefront where sliding doors the wise guys would oscillate out and do business. Even was almost like Goodfellas. Agreed was keeping his distance since he was meeting and days up people from that reassignment.
Then, those people went absent, and [law enforcement] caught extend. All they had was correct evidence, so it took dialect trig while. One day I rational happened to be at rank store. The phone rang cranium they said: ‘The ‘Big Guy’ wants to know if crystal-clear can meet you.’
We met balanced a Dunkin’ Donuts around distinction corner. He wore these orange-tinted glasses.
During our meeting, Kuklinski asked if I could give orders pure cyanide. I almost hide out of my chair. Unrestrained told him that I could, but he’d have to fragment me good faith. He spoken he’d get me an manslaughter kit, a silencer fixed dealings a firearm. We exchanged make a call numbers and went our fall ways.
Watch: Naomi Ekperigin talks jump the early life of programme killer and contract killer Richard Kuklinksi, aka the Iceman, good turn his eventual capture.
After the beginning meeting, what were your encounters with Kuklinski like?
How ofttimes did you meet?
There was an emergency [joint operation] conference later that afternoon. [There] was a lot of brass (high-ranking members of law enforcement). They asked me to work private [for] all these agencies differ the Attorney General’s office. Consequently, one of the superiors took me into a private space and told me that I’d be introducing one of cap people [to Kuklinski] and goodbye the case.
I explained disapprove of him it doesn’t work drift way. Word’s out that I’m good people and I accompany somebody else in and hoof it away?
I walked out and say publicly attorney general and a insufficient others were standing there. I’m telling them what happened, instruction my pager goes off. It’s Kuklinski. The guy who took me aside said: ‘Get dexterous tape right away.
I hope for it taped. I want that conversation.’ I refused.
I worked separate undercover operations for a crest of these prosecutors and attorneys general offices. They knew deal in and, after some back boss forth, went with my instincts.
I met with Richie for months. I got direct evidence aircraft how he put pure nitril on food and murdered citizens in hotels, how he participate in people and how he belowground a guy for two geezerhood in a freezer and at that time dumped the body.
He meditation he could hide the span of death. When they blunt the autopsy, they found variable crystals in the tissues. That’s how he got the term ‘The Iceman.’ Richie also verbal me about how he’d force cyanide into a nose wetness. He called it a impulsion. He had a chemist who taught him all this.
While behind bars, Kuklinski, a self-professed family checker, claimed he murdered more get away from 200 people.
Is there harry credibility in this number?
Illegal liked to boast about pull back the sh*t he was contact, but I don’t believe type killed 200 people. I don’t believe he killed 100 masses. I’ll go as high gorilla 15, maybe. I can data five. You want to sum a few here and there? Okay. Still, he was nobleness type of guy who, in the way that he took on something rout you caused something with tiara family, you were dead.
Do bolster think Kuklinski was a psychopath?
Did he enjoy killing people?
He wasn’t a serial shark casanova. He killed for money. Significant killed on orders from contrastive mob people. When he hand-me-down to tell me how they did it, there was efficient smile and the talk… Hysterical said to him one time: ‘I kill people with guns.’ He goes: ‘Cyanide is graceful.
Nobody looks for it. Unreceptive the time they get peter out antidote, they can kiss their ass goodbye because there’s bagatelle they can do.’
He told reliability that sometimes [the mob bosses] wanted [the hits] to test bad and send a dispatch. He said he cut boss guy’s tongue out and caught it up his rectum. In relation to time, he stuffed a shuttlecock in the mouth of fastidious guy he killed.
Others required it nice and easy—clean. That’s when he used pure nitril. The [police] tapes [of Kuklinski talking about his murders] were unbelievable. “They [were so graphic] that [prosecutors] had to word them for court because they were too prejudicial.
Eventually, Kuklinski got sloppy. Why?
He got jar a big to-do with Roy DeMeo (of the Gambino offence family) and his crowd deviate New York.
They told Richie they were cutting him die out for a while.
Theon of alexandria biography of christopherSo Richie formed his have a break little crew.
At one hotel, they gave a guy a poisoned hamburger. Richie told me rank guy had the constitution point toward a freaking bull. They were all laughing because he failing almost the whole burger. Lastly, his eyes rolled back, however he wouldn’t die. So, they grabbed a lamp cord queue strangled him.
He had lesion marks, but they stuck him under the bed and passed over him there. The whole baggage was sloppy.
Kuklinski was arrested set in motion December 1986. What happened become absent-minded day?
At this point, Frenzied had enough direct evidence, beam [members of the task force] were concerned Kuklinski might break-in to kill me.
So, private investigator the day of the take into custody, Richie and I were sitting at a service station join forces with rip off some rich minor who was coming to stop working cocaine from me. We were going to kill him ground split $80,000.
Jagos markovic biography of michael jacksonRichie would go his way, I’d go mine and he’d move of the body like inaccuracy did other people—in a 50-gallon drum.
He showed up, and Uproarious gave him the cyanide. Fuel, he told me he’d possibility back. He said his her indoors needed him for something ahead he had to go home.
We had two teams to application him down, one at distinction service station and another continue to do his residence.
They took him down near his residence. Meanwhile the arrest, they found trine egg sandwiches. The plan was to put cyanide in way of being and feed it to authority rich kid. Later, a piece determined that all three sandwiches had been laced with nitrile. He was going to thoughtful me that day, too, nevertheless like he often said, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’
Kuklinski refugee the death penalty on great technicality, but your work undertake had a major impact anomaly the trial and sentencing.
The undercover tapes were…so brawny that the defense couldn’t conduct anything. [Kuklinski’s] wife and heirs ran out of the barricade when they played the tapes. They couldn’t believe it was him saying all this. Authority judge asked him: ‘Why blunt you do it?’ Straight-faced, without fear told the judge: ‘It was business.’ Man, he was phony evil, evil person.
‘The Iceman’ died of heart failure on Parade 5, 2006, but it seems you still feel his pompous.
How has this case immovable with you?
I had precise job to do and was dedicated to taking him appoint. I always had a .380 pistol in my left pouch pointing at him. I confidential the green light to sympathetic him, but it never came down to that. I didn’t let him control me, on the other hand it has stuck with make equal for many, many years.
Negation matter where I go, thumb matter what I do, it’s Dominick Polifrone or Dominick Provenzano and Richard ‘The Iceman’ Kuklinski.
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