Warning. This series contains scenes of graphic violence and is intended for mature audiences

only. Listener discretion is advised.

While I Richard Kuklinski's accounts, before he turned 25, he had killed nearly 100

people. Some he tortured, some he shot, some he stabbed. His estimates could easily be

exaggerations because he also said most of his early victims were the lost or wavered

of society, the homeless. Victims who could disappear and no one would know or go looking.

But even if the numbers he threw around later in life were highly embellished, it was clear

that he was the type of person who could have done it. But his days of aimless random killing

were now done. He had formed his own small gang that committed all kinds of crimes, and

he successfully executed two contract murders for a made man in a mob family. Those murders

opened the door for Richard to work with all the other mob families on the east coast.

He was about to begin the life of a professional killer. Because of his Polish roots, he could

never be a made man in join a family, which allowed him the freedom to work with everyone

as an independent contractor. But he also learned that his freedom was limited. The more

he worked with the mob, the more he had to adhere to their rules, even if he was still technically

independent. Nothing illustrated that idea as much as an elevator ride on a hot August

day in Manhattan in 1973. Richard had been working with and for a mobster named Roy

DeMail. DeMail was a true psychopath, even when compared to a cold-blooded killer like Richard

Kacklinski. That day in August 1973, Roy felt Richard disrespected him. It didn't matter

if it was true. DeMail was part of the Gambino crime family, and whatever he said was automatically

and unequivocally fact. They were in an office building that was the home of a film processing

lab, which will become clear later. DeMail had a few of his goons with him, and he found

...