Did Iceman accept mob contract on union boss? (original) (raw)

When Richard Kuklinski died in a prison hospital wing in New Jersey last month there were few mourners. But the hitman and serial killer left behind a mystery: did Kuklinski really kill the union leader Jimmy Hoffa?

That is the claim in a new book based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the notorious killer, who was nicknamed 'The Iceman' for both the cold-blooded nature of his crimes and because he once froze the corpse of a victim to disguise the time of death. Author Philip Carlo visited Kuklinski in his New Jersey prison cell repeatedly for his book The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer. During those jail chats Kuklinski described murdering Hoffa and dumping his body in a scrapyard.

The 1975 killing of Hoffa, head of the then notoriously corrupt but powerful Teamsters union, is one of the enduring mysteries of American criminal history. According to Kuklinski, the murder was carried out for the Mafia and he was paid $40,000 to do it. Kuklinski describes driving to Detroit with four other gangsters and meeting Hoffa in a suburban restaurant. They hustled him away in their car and Kuklinski knocked him unconscious and stabbed him in the head with a hunting knife. Kuklinski then drove the body back to New Jersey in the boot of the car, which was crushed and sold as scrap metal. 'He's part of a car somewhere in Japan right now,' Kuklinski tells Carlo in the book, which will be published in July.

Kuklinski's claims have sparked controversy both among those involved in the Hoffa case and among the police who arrested and jailed Kuklinski. Patrick Kane, a cop who helped bring Kuklinski to justice, has gone public with his belief that the Iceman is telling the truth about killing Hoffa. 'I believe it ... who is a more likely candidate to do this than him?' he said. But others have dismissed the claims, saying that Kuklinski was a fantasist. Former FBI agent and crime expert Robert Garrity is among those who believe the claims are ridiculous. 'That's the most embarrassing one to date,' he said.

Carlo's book - which includes excerpts from more than 240 hours of interviews with Kuklinski - paints a picture of a man who seems to have been a Zelig-like figure at the centre of some of America's most infamous mob crimes. In addition to Hoffa, Kuklinski claims to have shot dead Mafia boss Carmine Galante in 1979 and to have tortured a neighbour of John Gotti who accidentally ran over and killed the mobster's son.

The Iceman reads like a bloody confessional of a life of constant murder, totalling well over 100 killings. But if much of the book reads like exaggeration, there is little doubt that Kuklinski, who was 6ft 5in and weighed over 21 stone, was a mob killer. He admits to have 'practised' new ways of killing people by picking off the homeless on the streets of New York and claims to have committed his first murder at the age of 14. In 1998 he was found guilty of five murders and given a hefty sentence which would have seen him ineligible for parole before the age of 111.

Now the mystery surrounding his crimes and the real fate of Hoffa will never be cleared up. Was Kuklinski exaggerating or was he telling the truth about his life of murder? His death has assured that he now cannot be interrogated by police about his latest claims. The Iceman has taken the chance of finding the truth to the grave.