THE ICE MAN
Responsible for well over 200 murders, he was perhaps the most sadistic killer in American history. Nicknamed The Ice Man' because he sometimes froze his victims to baffle police, Richard Kuklinski first murdered when he was fourteen years old. He became a hitman for the top East Coast crime families, and for an extra fee he would make sure his victims really suffered.
THE BUTCHER
9 July 1990: the DEA makes the gruesome discovery of nine bodies, dismembered, stuffed into cheap suitcases and buried in a secluded bird sanctuary near Gravesend, Brooklyn. It was Tommy Pitera's personal cemetery.
When John Gotti put out a contract on informer Willie
Boy Johnson, Pitera took it - he shot him fourteen times in broad daylight outside his home. Pitera not only murdered for the mob, he took pleasure in killing and did so at whim - the slightest insult could provoke him and he killed friends, associates, anyone who got in his way. A cold-blooded, homicidal maniac with a fascination macabre, he had an autopsy table in his basement and regularly dismembered his victims expertly cutting them
into six pieces: the arms, legs, torso and head. Convicted for six murders, he is believed to be responsible for over sixty.
Philip Carlo, author of the bestseller The Iceman, reveals the horrendous crimes of drug kingpin and merciless mob killer Thomas Pitera, and the New York DEA's three-year battle to bring him to justice.