In the 1992 HBO Undercover documentary, The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer, Richard Kuklinski said on camera that he had killed about 100 people in his life. In 2001 he was interviewed again for HBO's The Iceman: Secrets of a Mafia Hitman and claimed that he had killed about 200 people. By 2003 he told forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz in the documentary The Iceman and the Psychiatrist that his kill count was well over 200. If he is to be believed, his kill count had more than doubled in 17 years—years that he had been incarcerated at a maximum-security prison.
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| DVD cover: The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer |
When Kuklinski wasn't bragging about his career as a killer, he would sometimes contradict himself and say that he was really the "nice man, not the Iceman." But his claim was tongue-in-cheek because he clearly enjoyed his growing reputation as one of the worst multiple murderers the world had ever seen. The low-key, matter-of-fact manner in which he described sensationally gruesome murders had a way of seducing his audience into believing whatever he said.
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| Richard Kuklinski with his daughters |
One high-profile killing that he did not tell me about but years later related to author Philip Carlo is the mob rub-out of Bonanno Family boss, Carmine "Lilo" Galante. Galante, who was also know as "the Cigar" because he was rarely seen without one, had ordered the murders of eight made men from the Genovese Family in a ruthless power grab to control the lion's share of the mob's drug business. Galante took over the leadership of his own family by force and announced that Gambino boss, Carlo Gambino, was in his crosshairs. The Mafia Commission convened to decide on how they should handle Galante. They took a vote and decreed that he had to go.
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| Carmine "Lilo" Galante |
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