When one daughter was ill in hospital, Kuklinski even turned up as Santa Claus to cheer up the kids on the ward. On the surface he was a doting husband and father, regularly lavishing his wife and kids with expensive gifts, and whisking them away to holiday spots like Disney World. We also know that the adult Kuklinski led a double life. This was just the first of a staggeringly long litany of crimes he confessed to.) (Richard later claimed to have taken his first life when he was just a teenager, killing a local bully. His binge-drinking father was particularly vicious, actually murdering Richard’s seven-year-old brother Florian in a sustained, drunken assault. So what do we know about Kuklinski for certain? Well, he had an incredibly traumatic upbringing in New Jersey at the hands of his physically abusive parents. Did he really shoot a random passer-by in the head with a crossbow just to test it out? Were some of his victims really eaten alive by rats while he watched and filmed the carnage? As his own biographer once said to him, 'Richard, I have a feeling if I listen to you long enough, you'll tell me you shot President Lincoln.' The reason for all the hazy uncertainty is Kuklinski himself, and his habit of telling tall tales about his criminal career. While most true crime experts agree he was very likely a small-fry thug with a psychopathically murderous streak, much of his notoriety rests on an alleged career as a Mafia hitman connected to major figures in the New York underworld.

The extent of his criminality is also a matter of debate.

While he was officially convicted of 'only' five killings, Kuklinski claimed to actually have a body count in the triple digits. For one thing, we still don’t know just how many people he slaughtered. In the annals of American murderers, Richard Kuklinski – better known as the Iceman – ranks among the most mysterious.

Iceman killer richard kuklinski