Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Ice Man, Confessions Of A Mafia Contract Killer, Philip Carlo

Richard Kulinski was born in April 1935 to Polish parents in Northern New Jersey and it was all downhill from there. Kulinski's father Stanley raised his family, if that's the word, by beating everyone in it including his wife and children. His oldest brother Florianwas beaten to death in front of Richard while his Mother did nothing about it. The beatings didn't stop with just his father, they included his mother, nuns, priest, and bullies. With his father out of the picture Kulinski reached his teenage years and by then resorted to stealing for food and then anything that didn't move. It was also the time that he had had enough of the beatings from local bullies that he decided he wasn't going to take it anymore. One night Kulinski waited for the ring leadero of the group and beat him with a stick inadvertently killing him. Kulinski at the time was reading comic books that dealt with crime and murder and learned to dispose of the body chopping off the finger tips and hammering out the victims teeth so as to hide identification then he dumped the body in a pond miles away in southern New Jersey. A hideous and prolific life of murder was born.

Philip Caro takes us through the life of Kulinski in his book The Ice Man, Confessions Of A Mafia Contract Killer (St Martin's Griffin $14.95) also into the life of Mafia inner workings especially murder. Richard Kulinski eventually became a professional contract killer for the Mafia and since he wasn't a member of just one group he became an independent contractor working for several families in New York and New Jersey. In contract murder there are four major categories one being a standard rub out where the person is shot or stabbed and just left where they died, the other making the "mark" disappear which includes burial in far away places sometimes dismemberment is necessary, the other more atrocious category is making the mark suffer. Kulinski's favorite method for this job is bounding up the victim and feeding him to rats while recording the deed for a happy customer. Another specialty which Kulinski excelled at was murder that looked like death by heart attack, for this he used a clever combination of poisons he learned while incredibly bumbing into another contract killer staking out a mark.

Kulinskis would become a star in his hit man career being tagged for very special rub-outs, the more famous were the killings of two Mafia bosses Carmine Galante and Paul Castellano. Killing a mob boss isn't something that is easy to do. All the bosses would first have to agree to it and then captains and under bosses of the boss would have to know about it. Galante's crime was heading his family full blown into the drug business, too much heat apparently, a big no no for mobdum although each were involved in the drug trade "off the record", Galante wanted the buisness "above ground" and for that he was gunned down. Paul Castellano on the other hand allowed his home in Staten Island be bugged by federal investigators without his knowledge where it was discovered that he was having an affair with the maid for all the public to see. Somehow this was an affront to mob culture, not just the carelessness of allowing listening devises be planted but the affair being conducted under the same roof where his family resided. His other offences were demanding to see each captain of his family once a week at a specific location. A danger and a nuisance because investigators could see all who worked for the organization. The process of taking Castellano out was made, arrangements were put in place and Kulinski along with two others were sprung for the job. Castellano was gunned down in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan thereby launching the career of the the mastermind of it all John Gotti.

As hit men go Richard Kulinski was unique. Kulinski was a mass murderer before he turned a profit. At first Kulinski would travel into the west side of Manhattan, a place with a high concentration of vagabonds. Carlo explains this is where he would earn his "doctorate" in murder killing his victims, honing different techniques and getting away with it. If he met trouble in a bar, he would murder. Give him the finger out of road rage, you were done for. After a contract Kulinski was driving home when he cut off a driver who got out of his car to confront Kulinski and his death. The same thing happened when driving through Georgia Kulinski ran across three local red necks through some driving offense, Kulinski drove into a parking lot with the three following. All three came out and approached Kulinski and were all gunned down. In all Kulinski killed over two hundred.

In the backdrop to all this was Kulinski's private life. He met his wife Barbara while working a normal job. After dating her for sometime Barbara wanted to break away. This would end up in their marriage. How so? Kulinski made an offer she couldn't refuse stating if she left him he would kill everyone in her family. Faithfully married from 1961 till his imprisonment in 1987 Kulinski fathered three children and never laid a hand on either. The same could not be said for his wife whom he beat throughout their marriage. His family never knew of his criminal life and described him as a Jekyll and Hyde character being the warmest and caring father and husband and the other of being a sheer terror who would beat his wife and destroy furniture and everything else he could get his hands on.

Although in all the hours Philp Carlo spent time working with Kulinski while in prison making this book, its a little hard to hear him say he found him "warm and considerate and very polite, in a word-a gentleman...truth is, he was a hell of a nice guy..." this was a little much. One particular incident in his career Kulinski had to prove his worth to murderous thugs and walked up to a man at random and shot him. He did the same to a person whom he asked for directions just to try out a hand held crossbow. Carlo's sentiments are not easy to take and could've spared us. He ends the book "Rest in peace Richard Leanard Kulinski". To the families of his victims there would be little agreement.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Robert Caro:Master Of The Senate The Johnson Years

Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1949 and served there until he became vice president under John F Kennedy in 1960. His tenure in the Senate was nothing short of political brilliance. In a relatively short time Johnson was able to gain immense power and weld it in a way that changed the political landscape and dynamics of American politics forever. Why African Americans are aligned with Democrats and not with the party of Lincoln mostly stems from Johnson time in the Senate.Johnson was driven by frantic ambition. In his third biographical installment of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro "Master of The Senate” the reader is in the position of knowing the outcome from history but as Caro sets the scene, at odds to imagine how it all can possibly be played out.

To demonstrate Johnson’s rise as Senate leader and "Master" Caro points out that there is no one leader of the Senate as such. There are leaders of majority and minority parties and the majority leader can be seen as a de-facto leader of the Senate, but unlike the House, one person does not preside with the kind of power needed to move legislation. Committee chairmen hold that power. Senate rules of seniority prevent new comers from attaining chairman positions or seats on important committees. Johnson’s clever maneuvers enabled him to become minority leader of his party in the senate and once democrats gained seats, become senate majority leader. But senate majority leader could only set the calendar for legislation coming out of committees, Johnson changed certain rules, that to senators seemed small and innocuous but in the end made Johnson in charge of all legislation coming in and out of the chamber as well as filling positions in committee seats and their leaderships regardless of seniority. The responsibilities of the Senate rested with Johnson. Johnson had the power but his ambitions were greater than that, he needed that power to become President and though he overcame great obstacles in first becoming senator by beating a very popular candidate in Texas (actually stole the election, a tale of great drama as told in Caro's second and arguably best installment "Means of Assent") Johnson had to use that power to catapult him to the White House however civil rights stood in his way.

With elections of only a third of the senate up every 6 years the senate had been designed by the nations founders as a check of not only the other branches of government but of democratic revolts that may enact hasty legislation without clear reflection. Most of the senate would not be vulnerable to elections and thus would be impervious to popular uprisings. The Senate could take its time and reflect. But time and reflection in the 1950's was not in the interest of America with incidences of lynching of African Americans in the south, Rosa Parks, the rise of Martin Luther King and the denial of voting rights, civil rights legislation had to be enacted. Johnson’s dilemma was that the south would block all civil rights legislation and if that was thwarted Johnson would lose southern support for President. If civil rights failed then Johnson would lose the rest of the country mainly northern liberals. Since Johnson was responsible for the senate he was accountable to civil rights, America’s social and political upheaval of the century rested on him and if he wanted to fulfill his ambitions he had to reconcile two intractable sides.Johnson was faced with a seemingly insurmountable hurdle. Johnson would meet the challenge and pass the civil rights act of 1957, without it none of the subsequent civil rights bills that were passed in the 60's would ever come to fruition. Johnson was not an ideologue. How he felt about civil rights depended on whom you spoke to. Johnson had blocked civil rights in the past when the time wasn't right. To southerners who wanted one of their own as president Johnson had to convince them to hold off filibuster and to allow a weak bill to pass otherwise a stronger bill may be forced on them, to liberals Johnson was to say that the south would never allow federal control over their states and to allow enforcement in the bill with trial by jury. To each he presented himself as one of them against the other. The Senate had the votes but not enough to end filibuster by the south, there was ample opportunity to change filibuster rules so that civil rights could come to a vote and Johnson had the ability to do it, but that would not suit Johnson because he would lose southern support for president. It is at this junction that we learn of Johnson’s legendary talent. Democrats of various regions of the country had different interests. Northwestern Democrats needed southern votes for Dam projects and Johnson was able to broker their support for a jury trial amendment in the civil rights bill in exchange for support. The civil rights act of 1957 would eventually pass, a bill neither side was particularly happy with, but Johnson averted what more then likely an end of his political ambitions.

Johnson is remembered as a liberal for his actions and he may not have been. Liberalism is what was needed at the time of Johnson and it is what he delivered but only because it got Johnson one step closer in his climb to power. This is not to say that he wasn’t a liberal, as congressmen he was closely associated to New Dealers and Roosevelt, but with such forward thinking he could not be otherwise. Certainly you couldn’t become president or attain popular support as a southern conservative in the 50 or 60’s.Only when we see the intricate details of this thoroughly research book do we understand the difficulties of Johnson’s time and his extraordinary ability as a politician to persevere. Caro's biography of Johnson is filled with high drama. It is necessary to learn not only the rules of the senate but the history of the chamber to understand where it was Johnson was heading when he got there, once there we can’t fathom how Johnson would ever become the power broker we know that he would become in such a short time span but he did and in writing about it Robert Caro shows us just how remarkable a politician Lyndon Johnson was.