Smoothly written bio of a lone-wolf executioner for the mob. In his first nonfiction book, mystery author Bruno (Bad Moon, 1992, etc.) puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings except toward his wife and three sons. Kuklinski—who'd used derringers, shotguns, baseball bats, tire irons, knives, ice picks, and his bare hands to kill—had been dubbed ``The Ice Man'' by the New Jersey Police after it was discovered that the body of one of his victims had been stashed for two years in an ice-cream truck owned by a friend of the killer's known as ``Mr. Softee.'' A genius at assassination when he wasn't serving kids popsicles, Mr. Softee had schooled the Ice Man in the use of cyanide, a car- bomb invention called the ``seat of death,'' and other exotic methods of murder. Cyanide proved to be Kuklinski's first love: It was quiet and discreet—you could walk by your victim, spray his face with the poison while pretending to sneeze, and he'd be dying even as he crumpled to the sidewalk. Bruno details how Dominick Polifrone, a cop who grew up with the wiseguys in Hackensack, goes undercover and gets in with the cagey Kuklinski. The hit man wants cyanide and a rich Jewish kid to sell coke to, and Polifrone wants to record Kuklinski proposing murders. As cop and killer play cat and mouse, and the bartering goes bad, the danger of Polifrone being shot at any moment is torqued tighter and tighter by Bruno. Finally, Kuklinski is caught and tried: It's determined that he's committed approximately one hundred murders, including that of Roy DeMeo, a killer so dangerous that he intimidated even John Gotti. A fast-paced, suspenseful re-creation of how a vicious killer was run to ground.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-30778-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
A gripping account of the serendipitous investigation that uncovers two miscarriages of justice that branded innocent boys as killers. While doing some unrelated research in 1989, criminology professor (Edinboro Univ.) and former FBI agent Fisher came across the case of 11-year-old Charlie Zubryd, who confessed to the hatchet murder of his mother Helen 28 months after its occurrence in 1956 in Sewickley Township, Penn. Inconsistencies in evidence reports, the delay in gaining a confession, and Fisher's doubt that an eight-year old could drive a hatchet five inches into a skull led Fisher to investigate. Eventually, he found that the boy had been coerced into his confession by an overzealous homicide detective—the same man who would oversee the false confession of a second minor, 13-year-old Jerry Pacek, in another woman's murder. Unsatisfied with demonstrating that the two boys were innocent, Fisher began hunting for the true killers; his findings comprise the last part of the book. As in his previous book (The Lindbergh Case, 1987), Fisher is deliberate in unraveling evidence: Conversations are recounted at length, evidence is carefully gathered and described. Zubryd and Pacek are victims of a manipulative, fame-seeking detective, but they are not presented as Victims of Society. Except for one transforming event that stole their childhood, they are men who would likely have lived out their lives without incident. Fisher's precise reporting also lends an effective sense of place: Descriptions of a funeral home, of houses, courts, and street corners, all conjure up mid-century Pittsburgh and the mill towns that surrounded it. While today's legal process often seems lost in loopholes and deals, this tale reminds readers that there really are miscarriages of justice. Fisher's righting of two terrible wrongs is a remarkable act of generosity; and his narrative of those events is haunting and worthwhile. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-8093-2069-X
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
A real-life tale of the kind of crime every picked-on kid dreamed of in high school. Houston Chronicle reporter Schutze (By Two and Two, 1996, etc.) always has impeccable taste in choosing true-crime cases to cover. Here he details the short life and hideous death of Bobby Kent, a high-school bully in an upscale Fort Lauderdale, Fla., community. Though Iranian by birth, Bobby quickly adapted to life in America, developing a taste for bikini-clad blondes, his car stereo, and a heavily muscled torso—he popped steroids like aspirin. Bobby's best friend and neighbor, Marty Puccio, was his accomplice in many of his misdeeds (their specialty was tormenting retarded students), and the two developed a fascination with homosexual pornography and gay men (a tidbit Schutze opts not to explore). Bobby forces Marty to date overweight girls, and when plump, lovesick Lisa Connelly comes to the Publix deli counter where the boys work, Marty gains a new girlfriend. Bobby spends much of his time mocking Lisa and occasionally beats her girlfriends and Marty, as well. When Lisa becomes pregnant and Marty is unsupportive, she decides that Bobby is the problem. She convinces Marty and her cousin to kill Bobby, and in a series of unintentionally hilarious scenes, she includes an ever-widening group of drug-addled teens. Seven kids take Bobby out one night to the Everglades, stab and bludgeon him, and dump him into the swamp for the alligators. Freakishly compelling and highly readable until this point, the book breaks down after the abbreviated court scenes. Schutze quickly assesses the results of the seven trials (the defense attorneys briefly consider using an ``urban psychosis'' plea, Marty gets the death penalty) but concludes weakly in a self-righteous blast at their parents, without examining the effects of the teens' copious drug use, their undeniable stupidity despite good schooling, and he apparently hasn't spoken to any of the seven after sentencing. A gripping story that deserves the hand of a master.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-688-13517-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
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