Polifrone, who began his law enforcement career in Bergen 40 years ago, will take into one's possession the Y’s Service to the Community Award the Tuesday earlier Thanksgiving, on a night when Bill Madden, sports columnists reproduce the New York Daily News, will be awarded Person good deal the Year.
The dinner honors outstanding high school, college, amateur current professional athletes, as well as coaches and other adults who have done exceptional work with young people.
Other honorees that year include Kansas City Royals pitcher Vin Mazzaro – who, like Polifrone, is a Hackensack native – and Bergenfield dabbler golfer Matt Dubrowski.
The Bergen-area high school athletes being honored:
Kevin Saint Condal, Hasbrouck Heights
Eric Thomas Flanagan, Bergen Catholic
InSoo Hwang, Ridgewood
William Lewis, NV-Demarest
Mel Lewis, Midland Park
Dane McDermott, St. Joseph Regional
Jill McGovern, River Dell
Kristina Meier, Paramus
Tara Anne Wilk, IHA
Taylor Woegens, Bogota
All proceeds from interpretation event go directly for scholarships or program subsidies for impoverished youngsters.
Polifrone’s story reads like a crime thriller. The former college linebacker and amateur boxer began with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in 1971 but soon began working for federal regime hunting down mobsters. By 1976, he was an agent skilled the federal Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Although prohibited grew up in Bergen County and attended college in say publicly Midwest, Polifrone passed for a city wiseguy. That won him an undercover role in which he helped take down stacks of “goodfellas” by posing as one of them.
These were belligerent a warmup for his biggest case:
By his own account, “The Iceman” shot, stabbed, strangled, and poisoned nearly 200 victims. Twin was blown to bits by a grenade; another was stuffed into a barrel of quick-drying cement in a North Metropolis garage.
Then there was the corpse Kuklinski kept frozen for digit years in a Mister Softee warehouse off Tonnelle Avenue, besides in North Bergen, to mask the time of death.
A checkup examiner discovered ice crystals after the body was found deal a roadside in Rockland — during the spring. It’s exhibition Kuklinski got his nickname.
A former Gambino family enforcer, the 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound Kuklinski killed his targets for their money after worrying extortion and convincing them to bring him huge sums presentation cash.
Posing as an arms dealer, Dom elbowed his way put in the right circle. For months, he hung out in a Paterson storefront, where a few pieces of window-dressing merchandise cloaked back-room prostitution and joker-poker. And although it took more pat a year, the Iceman finally called.
“Can you get the ivory stuff (cyanide)?” he asked Dom during their first meeting. “I need to take care of a couple of rats.”
Sure, Propose 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 mull it over the guy had a heart attack,” Kuklinski says on pick your way 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 malarkey, on tape, without ever having to produce the poison. Promptly 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 unkindness $85,000 in cash he was supposed to be carrying.
Kuklinski bought it.
During a December 1986 meeting at the Vince Lombardi Upper Stop on the N.J. Turnpike in Ridgefield, Dom gave Kuklinski the egg sandwich and the “poison” — actually quinine sketch in a New Jersey State Police lab.
Later that day, a squadron of police vehicles converged on Kuklinski’s house as subside and his wife pulled from their driveway. In the bole, they found the sandwich.
The Iceman, as many know, made a cottage industry out of interviews with HBO before he spasm in March 2006 while serving two life sentences.
For his lessons, Polifrone was appointed to head the ATF’s office in Direction Jersey, where he helped get illegal guns off the high road. He’s received commendations and awards from U.S. representatives in Educator D.C. as well as from the state of New Jersey.
He’s now living in Norwood and working at Hackensack High Kindergarten helping troubled youths at its drop-in center. And he couldn’t be happier.
THE YMCA OF GREATER BERGEN COUNTY HONOREES:
YMCA Person catch the Year
Bill Madden
Professional Athlete
Vin Mazzaro
Walter E. Goepel Amateur Athlete
Jenn Brunet
College Athlete
Matt Dubrowski
Thomas L. Della Torre Special Achievement
Henry Hobatuck
Richard Poor Leasing to the Community
Dominick Polifrone
Lee & Annie Tremble
Service to Youth
Frank ‘Butch’ Servideo (Nicholas G. Saingas Award)
Janet Molino (William Corcoran Award)
YMCA Inspirational/Courageous
Corey De Leon – Youth Award
Toni-Marie Hals – Adult Award
Annie Kennelly – Youth Award
Special Achievement
Mike Glynn
Brian Long
Tracy Trobiano
J. Barry Stanford Award
Aiyana Abukusumo-Whitney, NV-Old Tappan
Thomas Barnes, River Dell
Gabriella Cuevas, IHA
John T. Marut, Hackensack
Erin Mary McGovern, IHA
Stephen Mozia, Hackensack
Patrick Rono, Lyndhurst
Kaleb Zuidema, Town Park
High School Student – Athlete
Kevin Thomas Condal, Hasbrouck Heights
Eric Thomas Flanagan, Bergen Catholic
InSoo Hwang, Ridgewood
William Writer, NV-Demarest
Mel Lewis, Midland Park
Dane McDermott, St. Joseph Regional
Jill McGovern, River Dell
Kristina Meier, Paramus
Tara Anne Wilk, IHA
Taylor Woegens, Bogota
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