The Iceman

In my fourth chapter, I will be writing about the American serial killer called Richard Leonard Kuklinski, also known as The Iceman, Big Rich or Big Richie.

Born in New Jersey, US on April 11, 1935 and died on March 5, 2006 at the age of 70. He was married twice and divorced twice. From the first marriage, he had two sons (Richard Jr. and David). While working for a trucking company, he met his second wife, who was working as a secretary at the same firm. After marrying in 1961, they had two daughters (Merrick and Christin) and a son, Dwayne.

Barbara described her husband’s behavior as “good Richie” and “bad Richie”. On one hand, “good Richie” was a hard-working, loving husband and affectionate father who appreciated the time spent with his family. She also remembered when one of their daughters, Merrick, became seriously ill soon after she was born, he would stay up late night after night to care for her.

On the other hand, “bad Richie”, who appeared at irregular intervals, was likely to throw unpredictable fits of rage. He was physically abusive towards his wife, once breaking her nose and giving her a black eye, and emotionally abuse towards his children. Merrick also recalled later on that he killed her dog right in front of her to penalize her for coming home late. On another occasion when Barbara expressed her desire to see other people as well, he responded by silently jabbing (thrusting) a hunting knife in her back, the knife was so sharp, she didn’t even feel thee blade go in. After that, he told her that she belonged to him and if she ever dared to try to leave him, he would her entire family. When she began screaming at him in anger, he throttled (choked) her until she was no longer conscious. Merrick also remembered several road rage incidents involving her father.

What is even more interesting is the fact that their neighbors were in the loop (not aware) about his actions and believed he was a successful businessperson. Even though his spouse (wife) described him as a “wholesale distributor” and said he employed an accountant, she did become doubtful of some of his earnings, as the amounts of cash he possessed were usually very large. She, however, never pointed out this concern. They divorced while Richard was in prison, in 1993. As you might have guessed, Barbara was the one bringing up the divorce, saying it was for “money reasons”. She did continue visiting him, even though it was only for a year.

On June 6, 1984, Leonard filed for personal bankruptcy registering debts of 160,697$ and assets (how much he actually had) of only 300$.

Getting back to his criminal life, he committed at least five murders between 1980 and 1984, 4 years.

You may wonder for his moniker (nickname), Iceman. The authorities gave the moniker after discovering that he had frozen the body of one of his victims in a failed attempt to hide the time of the death.

His mode of operating was to lure men to clandestine (secret) meetings promising lucrative business deals, then killing them and stealing their money.

For the ending, I am sorry for not updating for such a long while. In addition, it was so hard to not comment, as I wanted so much to put some jokes in between, but anyway. I did concentrate more on his personal life as I found it much more interesting than his criminal life. Next time I’ll try concentrating more on his criminal life.

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