The Ice Man Page 33

  “Sure, be happy to,” he said.

  On July 28, Richard met with a few other men, one of whom was Gene Gotti. They drove in a van to where Favara worked and grabbed him as he made his way to his car—the same car he’d run the young Frank Gotti over with. They drove to a junkyard in East New York. There, Gene Gotti and the others beat Favara to a bloody pulp, broke his bones, knocked out his teeth, knocked out an eye. Richard then went to work on him, bound him and tore off his clothes and used emergency flares to torture him, to burn off his genitals. He then stuffed the burning flare up Favara’s anus. They all stood about and watched what was left of him suffer terribly, though not die. Gene Gotti then used a pipe to mercilessly beat Favara and finally kill him. Favara was then stuffed into a fifty-five-gallon drum.

  PART IV

  THE MANHATTAN PROJECT

  The Lone Ranger

  Among the many criminal enterprises Richard had become involved with, he also ran a breaking-and-entering crew. It consisted of Al Rinke, Gary Smith, Danny Deppner, and Percy House. Richard had met each of them, over a period of years, at Phil Solimene’s store. They broke into homes all over New Jersey and stole anything of value they could carry, much of which Phil Solimene sold, splitting the proceeds with the gang. They even stole cars from people’s garages. Richard was both the muscle and the brains behind the operation; and he was the discipline of the operation: he made sure none of them talked or did anything that would compromise the gang—and more important, compromise him.

  Percy House was the foreman. He was a short, squat, gruff man that always looked dirty and in need of a shave—a nasty piece of work indeed. Gary Smith was tall and lanky and wore thick black plastic glasses and an Abe Lincoln–type beard, had a hare lip. Danny Deppner was also tall and thin, broad shouldered and strong, had a mop of unruly black hair that always looked windblown. Al Rinke was small and frail and looked like a mouse. None of them had so much as a high school education, and they were not too swift, but they took orders relatively well and, for the most part, did what Richard told them. They were all deathly afraid of Richard. By now Richard had garnered a very well-deserved reputation as a dangerous man, a stone-cold killer, and was the indisputable alpha predator in the criminal food chain. What he said went. He was the boss. The final arbitrator. God.

  In this world might was always right.

  Richard had always wanted his own gang, styled after a Mafia family. He, too, pined to be inducted into a Mafia family. But he knew that could never happen, because he was not Italian, so he was kind of developing his own crime empire, in his own way. Problem was, these guys were all undisciplined and dumb. They would ultimately become the chink in Richard’s armor of invisibility, breaking his incredible run of luck.

  Louis Masgay had a variety store in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania. He bought a lot of swag from Phil Solimene, which he sold out of his shop. He also played cards in the weekend games in Solimene’s store. Masgay had bought hijacked blank videos from Solimene and Richard. He wanted more of them and kept badgering Richard: “When will you have more; I’ll take all you can get; I got cash money, no questions asked.”

  This went on for months. Masgay was beginning to annoy Richard, and Richard began ducking him. Still, Masgay kept showing up at Solimene’s store, looking for a big load of blank tapes, saying he had “cash money.”

  Finally, on July 1, 1981, Masgay came into Solimene’s store late in the day. Solimene told him a new load of hijacked tapes had come in. Masgay was excited. Solimene asked if he had the money. Trusting Solimene, Louis Masgay told him he did, that it was hidden inside the door panel of his van. With that Solimene picked up the phone and called Richard (he was one of the few people who had Richard’s home phone number) and told him what was up. Richard said he’d be there in one hour. Masgay was excited.

  Richard walked in the store an hour later. He had a .22 pistol with a silencer in his pocket. By now the store was closed.

  “Where is he?” Richard asked.

  “In the john,” Solimene said.

  Richard calmly walked to the bathroom, taking out the .22 as he went. Without a word he quickly opened the bathroom door. A surprised Masgay was sitting on the toilet. Richard raised the .22 and shot him in the forehead, above his left eye, then shot him a second time square in the center of his head, instantly killing him.

  “Hope you don’t mind I did it here,” Richard said.

  “If I did it wouldn’t matter now,” Solimene said. Richard trusted Phil Solimene; they had done many illegal things together over the years and there was never a problem. Richard considered Solimene a friend…perhaps the only friend he ever had.

  They put Louis Masgay into a large black plastic lawn bag, went out to Mas-gay’s van, pried open the door panel, and found a neat stack of money held together with two rubber bands. Back in the store they counted the money; there was ninety thousand dollars. Richard and Solimene split it down the middle. Richard proceeded to put Masgay in his van and took his body over to his warehouse in North Bergen. In the back of the place there was a hole in the ground, an old well, and ice-cold spring water ran in it.

  Robert Pronge and Richard had frozen a man Pronge had killed and stored the body in a meat freezer. The man’s wife had gone to Pronge and asked him to kill her husband so she could collect the insurance money. To pull this off successfully it had to seem that the man had died later than the actual murder, to give her time to get the policy in place. Richard watched Pronge kill the man with his cyanide spray, and then they deep-froze him for several months, then put him where he’d be found. The wife did, in fact, collect the insurance money, which she ultimately split with Richard and Pronge.

  Now Richard was wondering if the ice water in the well would slow the decomposition of a body. Solimene had told him that Richard Masgay’s family knew he was coming to meet them, and Richard was thinking he’d freeze Masgay, then months later put him out somewhere he could be found. Richard carried Masgay to the well and dumped him inside, put a tire on top of him, then a piece of plywood, then poured some cement on top of the wood, mostly covering the hole up. Now he went back to Solimene’s place, and Solimene followed Richard as he drove Masgay’s van onto the turnpike and left it on the side of the road right there out in the open. Then Richard got into Solimene’s car, and they returned to the store.

  Another job well done, it seemed. Solimene and Richard hugged and shook hands and Richard went back to Dumont, forty-five thousand dollars richer, carefully making sure he wasn’t being followed as he went, listening to country music.

  But Phil Solimene had a big mouth. Several weeks after the Masgay murder, he told Percy House what they’d done to Masgay, and how Richard had killed George Malliband too. House was giving Solimene a hard time about money he owed House, and Solimene offhandedly threatened him with Richard.

  Percy House wound up telling other members of the gang what he’d heard, and they in turn told people—wives and friends—and soon a dozen individuals knew about Malliband’s and Masgay’s murders.

  Thus, for the first time, the cat was let out of the proverbial bag.

  The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

  Pat Kane, the young air force veteran whose brother Ed had convinced him to become a state trooper, was now a detective, the youngest in the Newton, New Jersey, outpost, where he was stationed.

  Pat was a religious man who went to church every Sunday and loved his job. He thought he was the luckiest guy in the world, getting paid for what he wanted to do more than anything: putting bad guys behind bars where they belonged. He often worked outdoors and had a chance to make the world a better place. What could be sweeter? For Pat, being a cop was not just a job, it was a calling, his passion in life. He was, in a very real sense, on a mission, and that mission was protecting women and children from the fang-toothed predators that so readily moved about in a free society. Pat did everything by the book. He was a genuinely honest man, would never take a free meal or drink from anyone,
not even a cup of coffee. He had come to believe that the police were the last and final line of defense society had against chaos. Though he was highly religious, Pat Kane wouldn’t have a second thought about killing a bad guy if it came to that. Detective Kane was a diligent, proactive investigator—the type of man who will not let go of something once he gets his teeth into it. Stubborn and tenacious, he was like a bulldog.

  Pat Kane’s boss was Lieutenant John Leck, a tall, stocky individual with a bald head who looked like Telly Savalas. Toward the end of 1981, Leck called Detective Kane into his office. There had been an inordinate number of burglaries all over northern New Jersey, and Lieutenant Leck was concerned: a band of professional burglars, he explained, was breaking into homes with arrogant impunity and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. They mostly chose nice homes in secluded areas and robbed them at will, as though they had a license from the powers above to steal whatever the hell they pleased. A man representing himself as one of the gang had gotten caught robbing a house by the owner, and he was now in Lieutenant Leck’s office, trying to make a deal. The lieutenant didn’t know at this point whether the guy was for real or pulling his chain. On a map on the lieutenant’s desk were dozens of red pen marks where, Lieutenant Leck said, there had been unsolved burglaries. The lieutenant told Kane to take out this burglar and see if he, Kane, could match up what the burglar said with actual burglaries. Kane knew that Lieutenant Leck wasn’t sure if this rodent-faced guy was real or if he was bogus, another cornered rat trying to weasel out of a tight situation. What else is new? he thought.

  Outside, as they approached Kane’s unmarked police car, the rodent said, “I’m going to help you and all, you know, show you all the jobs…but if they get wind a what I’m doing here, I’m dead. These are badass people; you understand that there?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Kane said, thinking he was surely being melodramatic. Little did Kane know how truly dangerous this gang was; Kane himself would end up a target of them, tracked and stalked and set up for murder.

  Kane proceeded to follow the informant’s directions, and they slowly made their way across three rural counties of northern New Jersey, going up and down back roads filled with potholes, raising dust, bumping along, and as they went, the informant indicated houses the gang had robbed. Kane copied down all the addresses—some of the houses didn’t even have addresses, they were so secluded. He would have to check every single one against Leck’s map to see if there had been a burglary. The informant did seem to know the inside of these homes, even what had been stolen.

  Over a two-day period, the informant pointed out forty-three houses. This wound up presenting a monumental task for the young detective. Now, working alone, he had to verify all these burglaries and cross-index them with what the informant had said. Meanwhile, the informant also named his accomplices: Danny Deppner, Gary Smith, Percy House, and the leader of the gang—a guy known only as “Big Rich.”

  Who, Kane wondered, is Big Rich?

  Kane rolled up his sleeves and went to work, carefully investigating each of these robberies. It ended up taking him months to verify all the burglaries and present what he found to a New Jersey prosecutor, who in turn presented the case to a grand jury. By October of 1982, Detective Kane had single-handedly secured a 153-count indictment against the gang members. He managed to find and arrest Percy House, but the others were nowhere to be located. It seemed they had vanished into thin air. Intent upon locating the rest of the gang, Kane searched high and low for them. He staked out both Gary Smith’s and Danny Deppner’s apartments. Nothing. The Christmas holidays arrived. Terry Kane wanted Pat home with the family, their two children. This new case was obsessing her husband, she knew, and she didn’t like it. He assured her he’d be home for Christmas—Lieutenant Leck had promised he’d give him time off. But it didn’t work out that way. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Pat was on stakeouts, looking for Deppner and Smith. True, they had the gang foreman, Percy House, in jail, but he refused to say one word about anything. He wouldn’t even give them his name. He hated cops and had no qualms about expressing his animus.

  Wondering where the hell Deppner and Smith had disappeared to, Kane continued to hunt for them, sensing something bigger was involved here, but not knowing what. One of the larger questions that loomed before him was where all the stolen goods had gone—televisions and VCRs, phone machines, all kinds of jewelry, guns, cars, and stereos. When Kane pressed the informant about this, he said all he knew was that Big Rich was in charge of that, that Big Rich sometimes hung around a shop in Paterson called “the store.”

  “What store—what’s the name?” Kane asked.

  “I don’t know,” the rodent-faced informant said. “Just ‘the store.’”

  During the months that Pat Kane was trying to piece together the work of the B and E gang, Richard was particularly busy killing people. During those months alone, he filled fifteen murder contracts, all Mafia-sanctioned hits. Richard took all these victims to his garage-warehouse in North Bergen. It was an absolutely desolate area at night, perfect for Richard’s requirements, and Richard beat to death the fifteen men. He could have shot them or cut their throats, but he opted to kill them with his hands, beat them with a crowbar, a long screwdriver, hammers, and pipes. He also used the screwdriver, fifteen inches long and quite thick, to stab them and destroy their spines so they were paralyzed but still alive, and he beat them further still while they couldn’t move.

  I was on a tear, he recently explained. I was beating them to death and enjoying it. It was…more personal, you know, intimate, and I…I needed the exercise. I was also doing it, I mean beating them to death, to get out my frustrations, my anger—my hatred, I guess you could say, at the world.

  Richard taped the mouths of most of these victims so they couldn’t scream while he smashed and beat and destroyed their bodies. He had brought a truckload of fifty-five-gallon metal drums, which he stored in the garage. This space was wide enough to hold three cars. There was a hose hookup, and Richard used it to wash away the blood on the floor, though there were bloodstains all over the walls, and the ceiling too.

  Richard got rid of these fifteen victims in two ways: inspired by DeMeo, he was now bleeding the bodies dry, then dismembering them, severing arms and legs at the joints, so he didn’t have to cut through bones. It’s easier that way. Some of these victims he wrapped up in plastic lawn bags, and he deposited different pieces in various Dumpsters he came upon. Most of them, however, he placed into the fifty-five-gallon drums in several pieces; then he cut grapefruit-sized round holes in the drums and sealed them tight by welding the metal top on. He had learned to do this because George Malliband had been discovered behind the factory in Jersey City when the top of the drum had popped off; that would not happen again. Richard then placed the drum into his van, drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, and returned to his old hunting ground, Manhattan’s West Side. Here there were miles of rotting piers where he could back up right to the water, open the rear of the van, and throw the barrels directly into the Hudson River. Because of the holes in the drums they sank right away, and in no time crabs—exceedingly efficient scavengers—began to feast on the flesh of the bodies inside the drums, easily able to get in and out, ultimately taking every bit of flesh. Because the barrels were metal, Richard knew, the salt water quickly corroded them, and the bones would be taken away with the currents of the river. Richard got this idea by watching people go crabbing along the river, and from a pirate movie in which people were fed to crabs. Thus, Richard developed another unique way of disposing of bodies. He chose to come to Manhattan’s West Side because there was so much traffic, he explained, so many vans and trucks; here, he knew, he could blend in. The piers and docks along Jersey City and Hoboken were abandoned at night, but he was more likely to get stopped by a nosy cop. On the West Side he became one with the constant hurly-burly of the city.

  Interesting how Richard kept returning to the West Side, his original
killing field, as though it were his alma mater, the place where he’d gone to homicide school and graduated with honors, with a doctorate in murder.

  That Christmas was a joyous time in the Kuklinski home. This was Barbara’s favorite holiday. She went all out to decorate a beautiful tree and surround it with a lot of expensive gifts, all carefully wrapped, adorned with bows and fancy paper. Barbara painted Christmas scenes on the front windows, a waving Santa, reindeer, snowy hills with smiling children. Barbara and the children put up lights outside the house. Richard didn’t help with any of this. He gladly bought whatever Barbara wanted, but he didn’t pitch in. He seemed to both love and loathe Christmas. When it was time to pick out the tree, Barbara and Richard went to a tree farm, and he held up different trees so she could decide which one was best. About this Barbara was the boss. About all things relevant to the holidays, she was the boss. She chose a huge tree, as usual, and Richard dutifully carried it to the car, then into the house, where he put it into an oversized stand. Barbara and the kids had carefully, lovingly, decorated the tree, as Richard watched, seeming to enjoy it, but not participating. Barbara would have preferred if he weren’t there, because with him present there was tension. One never knew, she says, when he could go off. Barbara had Christmas carols playing on the stereo, Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand singing the Christmas classics.

  Daughter Merrick now had a steady boyfriend, Richie Peterson, and he too helped decorate the tree. Richie Peterson was six foot six, had blond hair and blue eyes. Richard seemed to like him, though in the near future Peterson would finger Richard and talk up a storm.