In a recently published book, The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, the late Richard "the Iceman" Kuklinski reveals to author Philip Carlo that he is the man who murdered former Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa at the behest of the Mafia.  Kuklinski "first knocked the mark [Hoffa] unconscious with a jawbreaker," Carlo writes.  "Richard pulled out the hunting knife... positioned the knife just at the base of the skull, slanted it upward and with his unusual strength, he thrust the knife directly into the mark's brain."  Carlo says that his book is based on "240 hours" of interviews with Kuklinski.  Unfortunately it's not based on much else. 

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In 1992 I interviewed Kuklinski for my own book on his life and crimes, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-blooded Killer.  At the time he tried to convince me that he was part of the hit team that did away with Hoffa.  He even detailed his version of the Hoffa killing in a long, hand-written letter.  My first impulse was to take his word for it.  After all, this would be a very big story, and naturally I wanted to be the one to break it.  But like any responsible journalist, I had to check the facts before I could put it in a book.  After consulting several people in law enforcement who were familiar with the Hoffa case, I ultimately had to reject Kuklinski's claim. 

In the version that Kuklinski gave me, four men from New Jersey drive from Hoboken to Detroit.  "Tommy is driving brother Steve and Sally along with a fourth big man," Kuklinski wrote, referring to himself.  (In his prime, Kuklinski stood 6 feet 4 inches and weighed 265 pounds.)  Hoffa—the "big mouth guy" in Kuklinski's telling—gets into a car with three other men in the parking lot of a restaurant.  The "Hoboken four" follow the car and force it to pull over two blocks from the restaurant.  They kidnap the "big mouth guy," forcing him into their car.  He's "soon quited [sic] down," knocked "unconscious." 

Kuklinski then "took out his knife and placed it on the back of big mouth's neck, right where the spine meets the skull."  He steadies Hoffa's head with his other hand and "presses forward with his right hand, [the blade] enters the neck to the throat, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle..."  The body is stashed in the trunk of the car and driven back to New Jersey where it was "put in a fifty gallon drum and buried in a junk yard under a skyway." 

Kuklinski loved telling me his grisly stories, but he was always sly about it, leaving out full names and crucial details that could conclusively link him to the murders he described.   He apparently did the same thing years later when he told his Hoffa story to author Philip Carlo.  The hit team described in Carlo's book is the same: "Tommy" and the "two brothers, Gabe and Sal."  Kuklinski is undoubtedly referring to Teamster business agent Thomas Andretta and Gabriel and Salvatore Briguglio.   In this telling there's a fifth passenger in the car, "Tony P," obviously Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, at the time a union boss in New Jersey and a captain in the Genovese family. 

In the Carlo version, these five men leave from Union City, not Hoboken.  When they get to Detroit, Provenzano lures Hoffa directly into the killers' car where Kuklinski plunges the hunting knife into his brain.  Kuklinski then drives the body to New Jersey by himself and disposes of the body in a steel drum, first pouring gasoline over it and setting it ablaze for "a half hour or so" before burying it.