Was "The Iceman" based on a true story? What happened to Richard Kuklinski? | A former mobsters POV

as a young teenager he beat one of his classmates that he claimed was bullying him just beat him to death with his fists and after he was done he pulled out his teeth he cut off his fingertips because he didn't want the body to be identified he had seen that on a crime show earlier in his life they asked him about it later on in life and he said i didn't feel anything didn't bother me one bit as a matter of fact i felt powerful who could do something like that the iceman [Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well and today is another mob movie review i'm going to do a movie that i'm reluctantly reviewing and that is the iceman and i'll get to the reasons why it's reluctantly that i'm doing it but before we do that i just want to thank everybody subscribers it's going up remember we have a big giveaway at 500 000. we're getting very close we're up over 270 000. you got to subscribe and there's going to be a giveaway you're going to have to do a couple of things but first prize you're going to love i'm telling you you're gonna love this one last time it was great we did we gave away so many things gonna do the same for a half a million subscribers so jump on subscribe pay attention in the next couple of weeks we're gonna be telling you what the giveaway is you're gonna love it michaelfrancis.com we're over 14 000 people in the community now part of my crew getting a lot of good content doing zoom calls with me encouraging one another we need it coming out of this pandemic a lot of good information is coming in so jump on and my books are back in stock at least blood covenant is i know a lot of you have been asking about that my life story tv series based upon the book coming out fairly soon my new book mafia democracy is going to be out over the summer we're just about finished polishing it up cleaning it doing all the things that we do you're going to hear a lot about that so we got a lot of great stuff going on so let's get to the iceman you know people i just did not like this film i mean it was dark whenever i do something or see somebody you try to find a redeeming quality in that person and i know in the movie the iceman they talk about his love for his family but for me does that outweigh or does that make up in any way for the damage that this man did so i'm gonna get to the movie and he did a lot of damage i'm gonna get to the movie but i really think that this guy's life is more interesting it's gruesome it's nothing pretty at all it's actually horrible it really is this guy just lit a horrible life and i would rather talk about him because i got to tell you a couple of things i don't believe the movie at all it was very loosely based upon his life but i can tell you that in the movie he was supposed to have this you know real relationship with roy demaio you know roy demaio he was a gambino guy you know you know what he was known for a lot of people comment about him ask me about him want me to do an entire video on him i think sammy gravano spoke about roy he was a rough guy too he absolutely was he was a contract killer basically for the family and for his own self his own reasons for killing people kaklinsky claimed to be a very close associate of roy demayo and that he did a lot of killings for demayo he claimed to do killings for all five families i spent 25 years in that life on the street i never heard his name mentioned once not one time certainly wasn't involved with the columbos i don't think he was involved with roy demaio as a matter of fact when you've seen his interviews and you hear about law enforcement they can't corroborate anything he said about his relationship with roy demaio they can't corroborate anything that he said about his relationship with any of the five family because i don't believe he had one i think the guy is a pathological liar he was a sociopath no doubt he was a psychopath no doubt and i think he was a pathological liar no doubt about it he did two hbo documentaries after that and spoke about thing you got to watch him you got to see how he reacted how he talked he himself while he was in prison never getting out he did these two documentaries the guy wanted a lot of attention on him at the time you could certainly tell but pathological liar because like i said they couldn't corroborate law enforcement couldn't corroborate things he claimed he had killed maybe a hundred people maybe as many as 200 people you know the attorney general i believe in new jersey did a very thorough investigation and couldn't corroborate any of those killings he said maybe the guy did 15. now that's bad enough he said but he couldn't corroborate any of the others that he talked about and the same from law enforcement all over the country the guy made a lot of things up who knows why who knows what makes a sociopath and a psychopath become a pathological liar and do the things that he did but i'm going to just review a couple of scenes in the movie again very dark i'm not even going to recommend that you watch it but many of you have because i've been asked so often you know review the iceman but i really rather want to talk about kuklinski's life because it was horrible you always try to find a reason why somebody did what they did horrible things that this guy did you got to go back to his childhood this guy lived a brutal childhood his father was just a bad guy his father beat his younger brother i mean he beat kaklinsky's younger brother to death beat him to death in front of kaklinsky and the rest of the family beat him to death and then made up some story that he fell down the stairs and the whole family went along with it because they were afraid of him and he got away with the murder and he used to beat kaklinsky all the time he would beat the mother all the time he beat all of the kids all of the time kuklinski hated him hated his father and you wonder you know what kind of an impact and an influence did his father have on this kid for the rest of his life he called his mother a cancer hated his mother too called her a cancer because i guess she never did anything to stop the father from the beatings that they had to go through obviously people you're a product of your environment in many ways now you can lay the blame on his parents for the things that he did later on the killings that he did that he said he felt no remorse he felt nothing nothing whatsoever after he killed people he claimed that he would kill homeless people for sport afterwards and this is after you heard in the opening you know he beat a young classmate to death classmate was bullying him he beat him to death and then pulled out his teeth and then cut off his fingertips so there wouldn't be any identification he was 13 or 14 years old when he did it okay and then when they asked him about it he said i didn't feel any remorse at all as a matter of fact it was the first time my life i felt powerful a couple of years later again as a teenager he killed someone else didn't feel anything he didn't feel a thing in any one of the murders that he claimed he committed nothing nothing whatsoever is he really a product of his environment now i got to tell you this i know people athletes especially that grew up in some tough situations but whatever was inside of them you know the person that they were caused them to go in a right direction cause them to say i never want to go through this i never want to put my family through this i want to be a better person as a result of what i experienced in my life some people just you know they're so impacted and they're so hurt by what they experienced as a child from their parents that they go on to be a richard kaklinsky and it's sad it's a shame so who do you blame for this do you take all the blame away for kinklinski and say well he's a product of his environment we can't do that obviously we live in a society that's civil we have laws you can't kill people no matter what the reason is okay but you got to say it really impacted him so as parents we are responsible for the way our children grow up in life not always i mean they're always not going to follow our path sometimes they're going to do things in spite of the good that we try to teach them sometimes they're going to do things in spite of the bad that they grew up with it all depends on who you are inside and i really believe that and this klinsky deal kind of seals the deal for me i mean this guy even though he had a rough childhood he was just a bad guy i mean you got to say that he was a bad guy for whatever the reason was that's what he was he was a bad guy another thing that makes me really question the credibility many things that really make me question the credibility of kuklinski is that he claimed to kill a cop but in him a calabro and that it was a contract killing by the gambino family and he claimed that sammy gravano was involved with him in this that sammy gave him the orders or whatever sammy was involved with this and the authorities went to sammy at the time and they said look we're not going to give you any extra time just take a plea to this and sammy refused he said i didn't do this i don't know what this kolinsky is talking about now remember demayo was a gambino gravano was a gambino gramanos i don't know what this guy is talking about and he refused to take the plea even though it would be time served he wouldn't get any additional time for it and kuklinski was set to testify against sammy but kuklinski died and the case was dropped so i believe sammy in this regard just another instance that this guy klinsky was lying and again pathological liar in all of his interviews in all of the investigations they never really connected him to roy demayo now in the movie you know the movie plays a big connection between him and demeo but why you always got to bring the mafia the closeness to the organized crime into the film to make it more interesting because otherwise this guy just killed everybody period just killed killed killed killed another thing in the movie they claimed that he was a loving father and a loving husband and that was the one redeeming quality that he had i do believe he loved his family i'm not saying that he didn't it's just so hard for me to wrap my head around somebody like this having any amount of love in him but his wife barbara in a book later on claimed that he used to beat her claimed that he tried to smother her with a pillow claimed that he tried to run her over with his car claimed that he hit her so many times in the nose he broke her nose a couple of times so how loving is that that's not love to me this guy he's one of those guys that might have been better off if he fell asleep early on in his life and just never woke up i don't know what else to say about it let me tell you a couple other things about him that just horrifying and startling to you again just showing you how bad this kid's childhood was his younger brother later on actually raped a young girl and threw the girl off of a building along with the girl's dog went to jail for it was imprisoned for it for a long time and kaklinski actually this is one scene in the movie kuklinski actually meets with his brother and refuses to help him for any reason he couldn't even find love for his brother who went through the same stuff that he went through you know terrible from what i'm hearing barbara his wife was probably the only person that he beat and let live for some reason he didn't kill her he also okay and this is a fact he told their kids that if he ever beat their mother to death that he would have to kill them too this is what he instilled in his kids but yet in the movie they show him as being a loving father and a loving husband how does that add up does it add up to you doesn't add up for me in real life he used to kill homeless people for sport he wanted to find different ways to kill people and some of the methods that he used to use cyanide he liked that he used cyanide because cyanide didn't leave a trace he strangled people he shot him with a bow and arrow and then obviously he killed him he knifed them i mean he he killed in every different way that you can imagine again this is a psychopath how do you make a movie about this guy i don't get it and that's why it was very difficult for me to even get through the movie you know look people i spent 25 years on the street i've seen my share of stuff i don't want to look at stuff like this i really don't especially when a guy is claiming to be part of my life now look my life was brutal in some ways i have to admit that and i have to admit you know there were guys like roy demeo there were guys like greg scarpa for some reason were able to commit the act of murder and then just move on with their life like it was nothing and do it continuously and continuously roy demaio the gemini method of killing in the gemini lounge he would lure people in there and kill him there in the basement chop up the bodies i mean this is the story and it happens to be true that i know for a fact happens to be true and greg scarpa he was a guy that could kill people and go to dinner an hour later some people are made up that way i don't know what was happening in roy's younger life i don't know what was happening in scarpa's younger life but these were people that were capable of doing that but this guy kaklinsky is in a different league he's in a league all his own i don't even know why they'd make a movie about a guy like this that's hollywood you know they find stories and they think they're entertaining and go out and do it and by the way i keep saying it was a dark movie wasn't good but the acting was great ray liotta was terrific as roy dimeo and uh michael shannon was great as uh as richard kuklinski you know they did a good job and when owner ryder played kuklinski's wife she did a great job too so i mean the acting was great in the movie it's just that the story was 90 percent of fabrication i don't even know if i should go scene by scene with this movie i can tell you how it ended in real life for kuklinski he got convicted i believe of five murders and these were not mob related murders these were murders that he committed it was an investigation he got caught through his own misdeeds in the path that he took that's how he got caught there was no mob snitch and by the way you know there have been many many informants in my former life in the gambino family you know that none of them to my knowledge informed on kuklinski why not because it never happened because he claimed to be doing all these things with demayo and with the other five families that he never did not one informant that i'm aware of pointed a finger at kaklinsky for doing anything mob related and let me tell you another thing everybody is talking about these contract killings like the contract means you sign on a dotted line you get paid x amount of dollars for go out and killing somebody when you take that oath okay you agree to do what is whatever you are told before you take that off you have to prove yourself that you're capable of doing whatever you're told to do and you people know what i mean you know exactly what i mean you don't get paid for this that's your job that's the privilege of you becoming a made guy that you have to do what you're told to do no matter what it is you don't get paid for this in 25 years i can't point to one person that i know that got paid to do a hit not one not one has it happened yes is it rare absolutely rare sometimes certain guys in the life might have reached out to the westies say hey do us a favor we'll make it worth your while we'll throw a couple of bucks your way we'll give you a union contract we'll do something that's how it works in my family the columbo family we had 115 guys made guys during my time thereabouts somebody dies they replace them about 115 guys out of the 115 guys 20 of us were really earners 20 of us were making money the other 95 were hanging out who's got a no-show job who's got a union job maybe who's trying to gamble who's trying to do a little stuff on the street to grind it out why would those guys get paid if there had to be a hit they're told this is what you need to do go out and do it okay you want the privilege of becoming a made guy you do what you're told to do no matter what it is you've proved yourself already we know you can do it go out and do it you don't get paid for this stuff i mean i think he has sammy the same thing you don't get paid for this stuff so all of this you know he was a contract killer i think at one time he said you know in one of his interviews kaklinsky said that you know he wouldn't do anything for less than five six figures come on when do you know mob guys okay gonna pay six figures to somebody to go out and do a hit when they got 90 guys sitting around that are capable of doing it and have to do it or their life would be in jeopardy none of this makes sense people doesn't make sense kaklinsky pathological liar as far as i'm concerned what happens to him in the end in real life he gets convicted of five murders again from his own misdeeds investigations that were done on him by law enforcement he slips up and they catch him normal investigation on murder they catch him he goes to jail for life he was kind of a sickly guy i understand he contracted the kawasaki disease some kind of disease of your internal organs i don't know exactly what it is he was very sick in prison he had an order that if something were to happen to him he wanted to be resuscitated well his wife was able to overrule him she had left him i think his wife's name was barbara she left him and she said no resuscitation if this guy goes i want him dead and that's what happened he died in prison they didn't resuscitate him and that was the end of it again i can get into this whole movie i am telling you don't go watch it if you're into that kind of stuff and you want to watch a good performance by ray liotta a good performance by michael shannon a good performance by winona ryder well then just for the sake of seeing a movie of that genre then go and watch it it's not a mob movie they play up the mob rolling there but watch it as almost a purely fictional movie based very loosely on the life of a killer like richard kochlinski and you know what he wasn't a serial killer he didn't fit the identity of a serial killer he was just a predator that's the word i would use he was a predator he just preyed on people he had no remorse for anything that he did he was just a bad seed and unfortunately those people do exist in our life now i want to tell you this as a christian now some of it i'm going to catch a lot of heat for this but i'm going to tell you this as a christian i can't judge what happened to him on his deathbed as a christian we believe and this is so hard for people to accept unless you're really into your faith and you understand god and you understand jesus christ and you understand that he carried the sins of the world to the cross and he died for the forgiveness of all sins as a christian i can't judge what happened to richard kuklinski on his deathbed i don't know if he ever read the bible i don't know if anybody ever shared faith with him when he was in prison i don't know same way i don't know that about john gotti i was told certain things but i don't know but as a christian we solemnly believe that if you repent your sins and you sincerely sincerely accept jesus christ as your savior well then you're saved and you're going to heaven and i know that's a very hard concept for non-christians to believe i'll get some heat for this i get it michael how can you say this this guy destroyed lives he will i don't understand it you know we have a loving and forgiving god that doesn't want to see anybody in hell and as a result okay this is what he did he sent his only begotten son down on earth for us for the forgiveness of all sins and yes that's what i do believe i do believe that so i'm not judging kaklinsky as far as where he is right now where he ended up or if he was really silently or personally sorry for what he did but just didn't want to tell the world about it i don't know that i don't know but i can tell you that you know he led a very destructive very horrible life and all i can say is parents you know watch this film and if your young parents if you choose to have a child in your life if you're going to have a child one day just remember that our children are very much impacted by the way we treat them in our lives and that's why i say you know i'm going to say this one of the problems we have in america right now in my opinion is the destruction of the family and i can say this with authority because i went to prison with a lot of young men coming into that system at 21 22 23 years old a lot of young men and you can write the same script for every one of them broken home no father figure in the house mom trying to do her best maybe not maybe she was 15 16 when he was born a kid themselves couldn't get out of her own way maybe had a drug problem what happens when these kids grow up they go to the street because they didn't get any kind of teaching any kind of counseling any kind of love in their household so they go to the street they meet up with the local drug dealer gangbanger they got to earn a few bucks and what happens they end up in prison god forbid something worse so they had no upbringing and i always say this all the time i got seven kids i went to prison my wife did a tremendous job with them okay they had everything they could have had except the father at home but they knew i loved them they would come and visit me and we still had issues with our children even the best of it you know fortunately we have god in our lives and so do they and they've been able to turn out okay but it's not easy it's not easy if you're going to be a parent in this world you better do the right thing with your kids because remember you're turning that life over to society at some point in time are they going to be a benefit or they're going to be a destructive person like richard kuklinski god forbid no that's how i'm going to leave it and you know people i'm not getting preachy man but this movie brought this out of me this guy brought this out in me and again i'm not recommending so many of you have saw the movie you asked me about it you asked me to comment on it i'm giving you my gut feeling on it you know watch it but what i'm telling you about this guy is more interesting if you want to go watch the hbo documentaries on him there were two of them there's books written about him there's the whole bit but read up about him again pathological sociopath psychopath just a guy that might have been better off not living so that's it you got my review coming up in store a lot of good things michaelfrancis.com jump on subscribe to the channel and people we appreciate that that's why we're doing the big giveaway big giveaway you're gonna the first prize is gonna blow you away i guarantee and there'll be a lot of other prizes so subscribe and that's because we are grateful that you're tuning in to watch our content so that's it for today how do i always leave you be safe be healthy god bless and i will see you next time

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 1,247,007

Keywords: michael, franzese, michael franzese, mafia, mob, mobster, mob boss, mafia boss, caporegime, colombo family, colombo mafia, gambino, bonanno, lucchese, genovese, mob movie mondays, mob movies, mob monday, mob movie monday michael franzese, sit down with michael franzese, mafia movies, richard kuklinski, kuklinski family now, kuklinski documentary, mafia five families, the iceman, iceman movie, iceman scenes, iceman interview, kuklinski interview, michael shannon, ray liotta, colombo

Id: rUxO52GpjcA

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021