I was startled out of my misgivings when he suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor, a guard on either side of him.  I just stared at him, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.  I had been expecting Satan and King Kong rolled into one, but somehow in the flesh he didn’t look so fearsome.  He was wearing a black and white glen plaid shirt and jeans, and he’d apparently lost a little weight in prison.  He didn’t seem as imposing as the photographs I’d seen of him.  As he stepped closer, I tried to read his face, but he was wearing large window-pane sunglasses with amber-colored lenses.  When he was within arm’s reach, he nodded and said hello.  I returned the greeting.  He wasn’t the monster I’d imagined, and I was somehow a little disappointed.  But then he extended his hand and instinctively I shook it.  It was in this moment that it hit me like a jolt of electricity.   I was holding a hand that had killed over 100 people.

The Iceman greeted me with a handshake and a joke

We were shown into the room and told that a guard would be just outside the door.  He took a seat at the table with his back to the door.  I sat down opposite him, facing the door.  The guards left, closing the door behind them.  Before I could say anything, he broke the ice (no pun intended) by telling me a joke.  I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember that it was pretty funny and I laughed.  But this didn’t seem right.  A joke told by a multiple murderer shouldn’t be funny, should it?

The remarkable thing about Richard Kuklinski is that his speaking manner is the direct opposite of his physical demeanor.  He’s soft-spoken and congenial when he speaks.  He doesn’t speak carelessly and often pauses to assemble his thoughts before expressing them.  As we talked, I started paying more attention to how he was speaking than what he was saying.  I’d heard from his wife that he had a ferocious temper, but on first meeting he seemed like a pretty nice guy.  I’m sure many of his victims felt the same way.

We made small talk as I unpacked my briefcase for the interview, taking out a pad, a pen, tape recorder, extra blank tapes, and a file full of notes, letters, and newspaper clippings that he’d sent me.  During the time that I had been doing my research and then writing the first draft, he would periodically send me letters.  On one occasion he mailed me some newspapers articles with names underlined and Post-its attached with other names, places, and sometimes gun calibers jotted down.  His letters were usually written in the same cryptic style, in which he’d allude to murders, giving the place, maybe a name, and perhaps the way the person was killed.  It was as if he were tossing me random jigsaw pieces, challenging me to put the puzzle together.  But he would almost always give me the reason for the murder.  One victim was “causing problems.”   Another one was “dragging his heels paying.”  Most “owed some money.”  One was simply a “weasel.”   Kuklinski would seldom admit to his own involvement, but the implication was clear enough.  My assumption was that these were murders he had committed after August 6, 1982 when New Jersey reinstated the death penalty.  If convicted, Kuklinski could face execution.  Though he’d shown little regard for human life in committing the crimes that put him in prison, the Iceman still sought to protect his own hide.

But I was reluctant to take his word for all of these crimes.  In one letter he described at great length the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, implying that he was part of the team that had abducted and murdered the labor leader.  When I first read this, I thought I had struck journalistic gold, but after checking his version of events against the known facts in the case, it was clear that Kuklinski had fabricated the whole thing.  I suspect that he tried to peddle this story on me because it would raise his criminal stock astronomically if I put it in the book.  I had a feeling he’d eventually tell me he was the second gunman on the grassy knoll at Dealy Plaza in November 1963.

At our meeting I asked him if he would mind if I recorded our interview and he said that would be fine, so I switched on the machine and opened the folder containing his letters, intending to ask him about some of his mysterious messages.  But as soon as I started recording him, he became noticeably less communicative.  It was as if he feared that he might say something that would incriminate him.  (In my experience cops react the same way to tape recorders.  They don’t like being taped, probably because they know how damaging a taped admission can be in court.)  I couldn’t see Kuklinski’s eyes behind the dark glasses, but I sensed that he was keeping an eye on the rotating reels of the recorder.

Richard Kuklinski, profile mugshot

I also sensed that he was watching my eyes to see how often I looked over at the window in the door.  I forced myself not to look as often as I wanted to, but I became hyper-aware of the door because the guard wasn’t always at the window when I looked.  Was he simply out of view? I wondered.   Or had he gone off for coffee?  I had no way of knowing, but I didn’t dare show my concern.  The Iceman was watching for signs of fear and weakness.  But was he doing this out of habit, or did he have something specific in mind?  I tried not to dwell on that.