SHARE

Mickey Rourke as ‘The Iceman': Who stars as Bergen cop who caught the killer?

So now that Mickey Rourke has landed the big-screen role as cold-blooded killer Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski of Dumont, who gets to portray Dominick Polifrone, the North Jersey lawman who brought him down?


According to author Philip Carlo, Rourke will play Kuklinski in the film adaptation of his true-crime book, “The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer.”

Carlo isn’t talking about other roles just yet. But Polifrone’s is easily the next most important. I first suggested a former “Sopranos” star with great acting range to the now-retired Polifrone. “Not bad,” he said.

Rourke/Kuklinski

By his own account, “The Iceman” shot, stabbed, strangled, and poisoned nearly 200 victims. One was blown to bits by a grenade; another was stuffed into a barrel of quick-drying cement in a garage right next to my grandparents’ house in North Bergen.

Then there was the corpse Kuklinski kept frozen for two years in a Mister Softee warehouse off Tonnelle Avenue, also in North Bergen, to mask the time of death.

A medical examiner discovered ice crystals after the body was found on a roadside in Rockland — during the spring. It’s how Kuklinski got his nickname.

A former Gambino family enforcer, the 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound Kuklinski killed his targets for their money after threatening extortion and convincing them to bring him huge sums of cash.

It was the mid-Eighties, and the bodies were beginning to pile up. “It was clear only one person stood a chance of getting close to this guy,” said then-State Police Detective Paul Smith. “Kuklinski was smart enough that he didn’t trust anybody. But he looked at Dominick as someone on his par, someone comparable. That was the attraction to him.”

Dominick Polifrone


A Hackensack native who later retired after a prestigious career with the ATF, Polifrone at the time was a detective with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. With his chiseled Italianate features, bandido mustache, and speech peppered with spicy adjectives, he convinced countless made guys that he was one of them, while taping conversations that sent many of them to prison.

He has also been a dear, longtime dear friend of mine — one who had the one thing they don’t teach at the academy: a huge set o’ stones.

Posing as an arms dealer, Dom elbowed his way into the right circle. For months, he hung out in a Paterson storefront, where a few pieces of window-dressing merchandise masked back-room prostitution and joker-poker. And although it took more than a year, the Iceman finally called.

“Can you get the white stuff (cyanide)?” he asked Dom during their first meeting. “I need to take care of a couple of rats.”

Sure, Dom said, over coffee and danish at a Paterson Dunkin’ Donuts.

He was surprised when Kuklinski called the next day.

“That’s when I knew I was over the hump,” Dom said. “I could feel it in my bones. I told the guys, ‘I’m in.'”

“I’ve done it on a busy street where they thought the guy had a heart attack,” Kuklinski says on one recording. “I walked right up to him, made like I was sneezing into my handkerchief to protect myself, and sprayed him in the face.”

Somehow, Dom got The Iceman to talk, on tape, without ever having to produce the poison.
Once he produced enough to make a case, investigators devised a robbery-murder sting involving a “rich kid” drug buyer. Kuklinski would give the fictitious victim a cyanide-laced egg sandwich, then take $85,000 in cash he was supposed to be carrying.

Kuklinski bought it.

During a December 1986 meeting at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop on the N.J. Turnpike in Ridgefield, Dom gave Kuklinski the egg sandwich and the “poison” — actually quinine prepared in a New Jersey State Police lab.

Later that day, a squadron of police vehicles converged on Kuklinski’s house as he and his wife pulled from their driveway. In the trunk, they found the sandwich.

The Iceman, as many know, made a cottage industry out of interviews with HBO before he died in March 2006 while serving two life sentences.

“I hope he rots in hell,” Dom says.

Polifrone, meanwhile, can only wonder who could be cast to be play him in the movies. Harvey Keitel could work as Dominick now, if he were only a foot taller. The speech similarities are striking.

But they need someone younger, someone with range, someone who could bring the Dominick Polifrone — kind, good-hearted but tough as nails — to life on the screen. Think about it. I’d like to hear some suggestions.

Meantime, in case anyone’s wondering, I’m thinking: Michael “Christafuh” Imperioli.

to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates.

SCROLL TO NEXT ARTICLE