by Philip Carlo
That was, she recently confided, the worst day of my life. Now that I think of it I should have thrown myself in the ocean and drowned rather than marry Richard. But I did, and the die was cast.
When, one evening after dinner, Richard saw his new wife smoking a cigarette, he became disproportionately angry: he ripped the cigarette from her hand and stomped on it.
“I’ll smoke if I want to,” Barbara said, annoyed.
Richard’s answer was to step on her right foot with all his weight—and turn it, fracturing her large toe.
“Are you crazy!” she asked, grimacing with pain. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You aren’t smoking,” he said. “You will do what I say!” And that night Richard would not allow Barbara to even come to bed. He made her sit on a gray metal stool on the screened-in patio the whole night.
“You move, I’ll kill your father in front of you,” he said, dead serious, and left Barbara there like that.
Convinced that Richard would truly kill her dad, Barbara sat on that hard metal stool the whole friggin’ night, as she put it. The temperature dropped suddenly, as it always did, and she was so cold she began shivering. Certainly Barbara should have hurried to the police, told them what Richard had done, what he was making her do; but she was so frightened for her father that she sat there shivering and freezing all night long, silently cursing heaven and hell, and her mother for telling Richard where she was.
Barbara lost the baby the next day. She was sure what Richard had made her do was the reason. Whatever affection Barbara once had for Richard was inexorably being replaced by another emotion entirely—and that emotion was hate.
Love and Marriage and a Baby Carriage
October 15, 1962, Barbara and Richard Kuklinski returned to New Jersey. It was a bitterly cold night. Uncle Armond met them at the airport, all smiles, hugs, and kisses. Barbara was overjoyed to see her uncle and be back home. When Barbara saw Nana Carmella they both cried, they were so happy, and hugged each other for the longest time. Now that Barbara and Richard were married, the family readily accepted him, for better or for worse. Richard’s dream of making Barbara’s family his family came true. That’s what he’d wanted, and that’s what he’d gotten. Seeing that the newlyweds had little money and nowhere to live, Genevieve graciously invited them to stay with her and Nana until they “got on their feet.” Richard was quite serious about his marriage with Barbara working. He swore off drinking hard liquor and gambling, and he stuck to his word…for the most part. Barbara still had no true idea about Richard’s involvement in crime, in murder, and Richard knew that if he was serious about the marriage and having a family with Barbara, he had to give up all that. He had to go straight. Become a working stiff, a civilian, he says.
Because he had no education and no skills as such, Richard’s opportunities for employment were inherently limited. Barbara’s uncle Tony, however, managed to get him a job at the 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab off Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Richard didn’t like having to go to the city every day, but he dutifully took the bus, carrying his lunch, prepared by Barbara, in a brown paper bag. The job consisted of lugging and shelving boxes and large reels of film, getting things for people, cleaning up discarded pieces of film. He was beginning at the bottom of the totem pole. The 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab made prints from masters to be distributed to movie theaters across the country. Richard, being a quick study, always looking for angles, wanting to move up within the company, began to watch carefully how the printers made copies on the machines. There was a carrot redheaded printer named Tommy Thomas, who patiently showed Richard how to make prints, step by step. After a few months Richard did, in fact, begin working as a printer. He received a raise and was making ninety dollars a week. He had grown to like the job; and it didn’t take long for Richard to find a way to make some extra cash; by bootlegging masters and selling them on the black market. The lab printed all of the Disney Company’s masters on the East Coast, and Richard began running pirated prints of Cinderella, Bambi, and Pinocchio, for which there was a ready market. It was now already the spring and Richard made pirating Disney cartoons a business.
Richard and Barbara’s mother didn’t get along. She didn’t like how he treated Barbara. Richard did, however, like Carmella—it was hard not to; she was gracious and kind and exceedingly giving.
Time seemed to fly by. Soon the holidays were upon them, and Richard very much enjoyed being at the joyously decorated Christmas dinner table with Barbara’s family, now as Barbara’s husband. Proud and content, he ate and drank and laughed and even sang along with the family. He was one of them.
Romantically, Richard couldn’t get enough of Barbara. The couple did not subscribe to any kind of birth control, and it didn’t take long for Barbara to become pregnant again. But she lost this child too, a miscarriage through natural causes. Doctors told her she had weak muscles along the vaginal canal and her muscles weren’t giving the proper support to the fetus, a condition none of the other females in her family had. But both Barbara and Richard wanted children, a family of their own, and quickly set out to make that happen.
Richard had no reservations about hitting Barbara in front of Nana or Genevieve. He viewed a man striking his wife, physically dominating her at will, as the normal order of things. That’s all he’d ever known growing up; and he slapped and pushed Barbara right in front of her mother.
“Richard, don’t do that!” Genevieve would admonish him, but he couldn’t care less. He once even threw a pillow at Genevieve and told her to mind her own business.
The couple finally rented a small apartment in West New York. What little money the couple had saved up was quickly exhausted. Richard hated being broke, wanting for things—furniture, clothes, a new car, a larger TV, a stereo player. It reminded him of the suffocating poverty and sacrifice of his youth. He became depressed, mean, short-tempered, and vented on Barbara, who had grown to view his abuse as a twisted though intrinsic part of her marriage, and she stoically learned to accept it. But Barbara grew further and further away from Richard. At times she felt she was a prisoner, not his wife, and surprisingly she often stood up to him, answered him back, disagreed with him, lashed him with her sharp, acerbic wit, which only fueled his anger. Barbara had always been an outspoken, independent person with an edge to her personality, and her overgrown husband wasn’t about to take that away from her. He broke her nose for smoking; he fractured ribs when she didn’t spread peanut butter on his sandwich the way he liked; he gave her black eyes; yet, she stood up to him, had shocking courage given Richard’s size and near-superhuman strength. Barbara was constantly amazed by his strength, how he could carry a refrigerator, a stove, a porcelain sink up to the second landing of their apartment all by himself, easily.
Barbara’s third pregnancy occurred, and under doctor’s orders, she took it easy, did exercises to strengthen her weak muscles. Richard was attentive, would not let her carry anything heavy. But he still struck her, abused her, if she angered him or gave him lip.
“Big man, tough guy, you’re nothing but a bully,” she’d say.
Often when Richard came home from work he talked about the film lab and his gay colleague Tommy Thomas. Though Barbara had never met him, she knew what he looked like because Richard had described him; he had a freckled hatchet face and carrot red hair.
One evening, when the couple was in bed watching The Milton Berle Show on TV, a funny-looking man with bright red hair appeared. Barbara offhandedly commented how odd he looked, that she imagined that’s how Tommy looked. Without warning Richard threw Barbara a beating, broke her nose, beat her so violently that she began bleeding from her vagina. He called her mother. Genevieve hurried over, took one look at her daughter, and called an ambulance. Barbara was now five months pregnant. The baby was coming out prematurely; its leg was actually sticking out of Barbara when the emergency doctors examined her. They helped the baby out; it was a boy. It was dead.
Barbara was distraught
. She hated Richard. She so wanted to have a child, a boy; she was inconsolable. She thought about telling the authorities what had happened, but was deathly afraid of what Richard would do to her family, to her mother, to her cousin Carl, whom Barbara was very fond of, Richard knew; so she kept her mouth shut about the beating and how she had really lost the child.
In the afternoon, Richard showed up at the hospital as if nothing had happened, carrying beautiful fresh red roses and a big box of expensive chocolates. He didn’t say anything about what had occurred other than that it was Barbara’s fault, to which she said, “Yeah, sure, I beat myself up, I’m responsible for losing the child. Bullshit!” He ignored her. She came home two days later. She was quiet and sullen and wondered about her life with Richard, how she could deal with this violent madman she had married. The thought of suicide played in her head. She wondered if he’d physically abuse children they might have.
When Richard wanted to have sex with Barbara, she flat-out refused for the longest time, but he was not about to take no for an answer, and Barbara became pregnant still again, the fourth time. Richard promised he wouldn’t hit her, but if he came home in a bad mood, and something she did didn’t please him, he’d slap her. As Barbara’s stomach began to grow again, she summoned up the courage to tell him, “Richard, listen to me carefully…real carefully—if God blesses us with a child, and you hurt that child, hit that child, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll cut your throat while you’re sleeping. I’ll poison your food…. I’ll kill you. Hitting me, abusing me, is one thing. You ever so much as lift a finger to my child, you’re dead.”
Strangely enough, Richard readily accepted this; he didn’t even answer her.
Barbara and Richard moved again, to a cute little garden apartment in Cliffside Park. The fourth pregnancy was very difficult for Barbara. For the last several months she was bedridden. She saw a pediatrician every week. Between doctor visits and everything else, money was short. To help make ends meet and have a little nest egg for the baby’s arrival, Richard took a second job driving a delivery truck. He worked all day at the lab, took the bus home, had a quick dinner, went and drove the delivery truck most of the night; then he would sleep a few hours before he had to go back to the lab. He was always tired, in a bad mood, his body aching, and still he was coming up short. Having a child was an expensive proposition. The harder I worked, it seemed, the less we had. I felt like I was…I was drowning, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay afloat, Richard explained.
Against his better judgment and the solemn promise he’d made to himself, Richard decided to become a player again; now, however, he would be much more careful and judicious, not take any undue chances, he vowed.
And he soon turned to his old friend—crime.
Richard contacted a couple of fellows he knew back in Jersey City, two hard-boiled Irishmen who were quiet and stand-up, discreet and tough, professional hijack artists. One was John Hamil, the other Sean O’Keefe. They had contacts with guys who worked in different trucking companies and sometimes got tips about good loads. They knew that Richard was reliable and tough, that he kept his mouth shut—and that he was deadly. The three of them, tipped off by a loader, staked out a trucking company in Union.
They saw how truckers just pulled into the yard, hooked up to a rig, and drove away, waving to the security guard as they went. This, they decided, would be an easy way to get their hands on valuable loads without so much as a how-do-you-do. Richard even went to a truck-driving school to learn the intricacies of handling an eighteen-wheeler. He was the only one who had the balls to just drive onto the lot and hook up to a rig as if he had every right, so outright bold no one even thought of questioning him.
When the newly formed gang learned that there was a load of valuable jeans, they stole a cab. Richard dressed up as a truck driver, even donned a truckers-union cap, and drove the cab onto the lot, hooked up to the jean rig, and pulled away, making a point to wave to the security guard, who smiled and waved back. It all went like clockwork. Now all they had to do was get the rig to a buyer in Teaneck and get paid, and the job was done. Richard was pleased with how well the heist had gone. But he was still nervous: now, for the first time in his life, he had something to lose—a wife he loved and a child he would love, unconditionally. The plan was for John and Sean to follow Richard to the Teaneck warehouse, but to keep up with Richard they went through a light and were pulled over by a New Jersey state trooper. Richard drove on, apprehensive and unsure of this huge rig on the open road. He calmed himself, reminded himself to drive slowly, to not do anything to get pulled over. The rig and cab were stolen and he had a gun on him, a .38 revolver with a two-inch barrel. If a cop did pull him over for some reason, he’d kill him and continue on. He would not, he vowed, go to prison, be taken away from the only person he’d ever cared for…and his unborn child. This child he would love and cherish, make sure it wanted for nothing.
As Richard thought about the future, hoping no cops came along, he inadvertently cut off a red Chevy. There were young men in it. They pulled up alongside and began cursing him, calling him names, then pulled ahead of him and slowed, forcing him to jam on the heavy air brakes. Richard made a fist at them. They gave him the finger, a thing that always enraged Richard. They kept it up. He figured they were drunk and hoped they would leave him alone. But they continued forcing him to slow up and slam on the brakes. This went on for miles. Richard was concerned now that a state trooper would see him driving erratically and pull him over, and he’d have real trouble. He decided to pull over himself and stop, let the two jerks go on their way, which is what he did. But the car also stopped and backed up. Oh shit, Richard thought. All I’m trying to do is avoid trouble, but trouble won’t leave me alone.
Shaking his head, Richard got out of the cab, hoping his huge size would calm the situation, but the two guys got out of their car, cursing Richard. One had a cut-down bat.
“Look, fellas,” Richard said. “I don’t want no trouble here. Go on your way. I’m just trying to do a job here.”
“Fuck you, fuckin’ asshole!” said the guy with the bat, who kept coming at Richard.
“Fuck me, no, fuck you,” Richard said, and he pulled out the .38 and shot them both down. He walked up to them and put a bullet in each of their heads, wanting to be sure they were dead, could tell no tales. With that he calmly got back into the cab and pulled away. Without further incident he made it to the warehouse, received his end of the money, and went home.
Always tight-lipped, he said nothing to Sean and John about what had happened.
With the proceeds of the job, twelve thousand dollars, Richard bought a nicer car, a large color TV, and some things they needed for the house, and put a little something on the side. Barbara didn’t ask him where he got the money; she knew better than to question him…about anything. If he had something to say, he’d tell her.
Richard was pleased. He had put it on the line, made a score; he was a man, a good provider. He’d prevail.
He didn’t even think about the two men he’d killed. They were, for him, like two insects who had smashed up against the windshield; they were roadkill, nothing more. But he did get rid of the gun he’d used to do the job.
These two murders were never linked to Richard—no witnesses, no clues, just two men shot to death on the road.
As Barbara’s stomach grew, Richard tried to control his temper. He didn’t want to hurt her, cause her to lose another child. He didn’t want to become, he recently explained, what his father had been. When I get mad, I just see red and go off like a bomb. I didn’t like that about myself. Still don’t. I didn’t want to hurt Barbara. I loved Barbara. Problem was, I guess I was obsessed with her. After I…after I struck her or became abusive, I was always mad at myself. Real mad. I’d look in the mirror and I really didn’t like what I saw.
Richard still had the gambling bug inside him.
Wanting to parlay the money he had made in the hijacking into more, he
went to a high-stakes card game in Paterson. When Richard arrived he had six thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his pocket. He had a golden winning streak for a few hours, but wound up losing the whole six grand. Mad at himself, he went back home. Barbara had no idea about the money he’d had and lost. In a foul, dark mood, he walked in the door. It was just getting light out, but Barbara knew better than to question her erratic husband. She made him some eggs. He said they were overcooked, threw them on the floor, and went to bed. Good riddance, thought Barbara.
Barbara’s aunt Sadie passed away. Her bad heart finally failed and she died peacefully in her sleep. Barbara was devastated. She’d been very close to Sadie. Richard had liked Sadie—he didn’t care for many people—and he attended the funeral with Barbara, dutifully sat there with the appropriate demeanor. When Barbara cried, he consoled her. He had never seen the way Italians openly express their grief, and he was taken aback by it. For Richard, death was just a natural process of nature—nothing to fall apart about. He seemed oddly removed and detached from the normal grief people experience after a loved one’s passing. It was a classic symptom of his psychotic personality: no empathy. Stanley Kuklinski had, very successfully, beaten that out of Richard. Richard had never seen Barbara so upset, not even when she had lost the baby the year before.
