In the 2001 HBO documentary, The Iceman: Secrets of a Mafia Hit Man, Kuklinski confessed that he was responsible for the shotgun murder of a New York City police officer in Saddle River, New Jersey. The victim, Peter Calabro, was a dirty cop in deep with the Gambino family. According to Kuklinski, Gambino underboss Sammy Gravano had given him the assignment.
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| Peter Calabro |
In Philip Carlo's book, Kuklinski repeats that claim and details how he positioned his van on the road that led to Calabro's suburban New Jersey home and waited for the detective to pass. Snow was falling heavily. Gravano had given Kuklinski a walkie-talkie, a photo of Calabro, and a shotgun to do the job. As Calabro slowed his Honda Civic to get by Kuklinski's van, the Iceman "cut loose with both barrels of the blue-black twelve-gauge, shooting Calabro in the side of the head with double-ought buckshot rounds." In the book Kuklinski claims that Gravano didn't tell him that the target was a cop, but Carlo writes that it wouldn't have made any difference to Kuklinski.
Here again Kuklinski, the outsider, takes credit for a major mob hit. Calabro had been working with the Gambino family for some time, but they apparently decided that he had to be silenced. But killing a cop, even a dirty cop, is very serious business, and a violation of the Mafia code. This is not a job that Gravano would have given to just anyone, particularly someone who didn't have mob credentials.
Mafia expert and Gangland News columnist Jerry Capeci in an article entitled "The Iceman Throws the Bull," quotes several law enforcement sources who believe that neither Kuklinski nor Gravano were involved in Detective Calabro's slaying. "I'm 100 per cent sure that Gravano had nothing to do with it and I'm 99 per cent sure that Kuklinski didn't do it," one investigator told Capeci. Calabro was involved in a stolen-car ring headed by mobster Roy DeMeo out of his headquarters in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Gravano was based in Bensonhurst and had never done business with Calabro.
Furthermore, investigators on the New York side of the Hudson River feel that Calabro's murder wasn't a mob hit at all. It was a family affair. In 1977 Calabro's first wife, Carmela, had drowned "under suspicious circumstances." Two of her brothers are considered "key suspects" in Calabro's murder. The motive? Revenge for the death of their sister.
But on the other side of the Hudson, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office rejected the revenge theory and chose to believe Kuklinski's version instead.
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| Seal: Bergen County Prosecutor's Office |
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