Blood Relation is a commendable book, written in 2004, about a really bad guy, Harold “Kayo” Konigsberg, a rock killer, who was serving a life sentence at the time of the book’s writing. Blood Relation was written by Kayo’s great-nephew, Eric Konigsberg, over the objection of everyone in Eric’s family, with the possible exception of Kayo himself, who gave his great-nephew several interviews for the book, but was not very happy with the end result.
In Blood Relation, Eric recounts how Kayo threatened his life due to Kayo’s dissatisfaction with his performance in a New Yorker magazine article Eric wrote, and how the nephew took this threat seriously, as he should, as it was said that Kayo had killed as many as 20 people for the Italian mafia; and more just for fun. Sadism to Kayo was like candy to a child and some of Kayo’s murders were exceptionally brutal.
To show Kayo’s influence even when behind bars, she was able to pull enough strings to gain favors from the prison staff that other con men could only dream of.
In Blood Relation, Eric wrote: “He (Kayo) had a private apartment remodeled for himself in the jail library, complete with his own television, telephone, radio, refrigerator, hotplate, desk, and sofa.”
To add flavor to her dish, Kayo did the unimaginable in prison. She got herself a chippy and a knockout to boot.
The News York Daily News wrote: “A shapely young blonde, Marilyn Jane Fraser, was smuggled into her (Kayo’s) cell in 1965 to provide her with female companionship.”
Accompanying the News York Daily News was a seductive photo of Miss Fraser. I’ve seen less skin in Playboy magazine.
Retired NYPD detective and veteran mob aficionado Joe Coffey told the New York Daily News that it’s a scandal that Konigsberg is now behind bars.
“I knew him well and he was the worst of the worst,” Coffey said. “He enjoyed killing and he enjoyed being paid to do it. He was a disgusting bastard and he should have gotten the electric chair.”
Kayo’s sadism was also evident in the courtroom. Coffey said Kayo represented himself in a racketeering trial in Manhattan Supreme Court and told the court emphatically that he was crazy. Kayo then showed just how crazy.
“He sat in a wheelchair and defecated in his pants right in front of the judge,” Coffey said. “I was there and he grossed everyone out and cleared the courtroom, but he was convicted anyway. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
At the 2008 parole hearing, Kayo said that the only reason he was still in prison was because in 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy offered him an unbelievable deal in exchange for information about his friends and Kayo flatly rejected RFK.
“There was no way it could break me,” Kayo told the parole board. “The Nazis, the Germans, those people who weren’t hanged at Nuremberg didn’t turn 20.”
But alas, all good things must come to an end.
In August 2012, Kayo, at the age of 86, was inexplicably paroled from Mohawk Prison in Rome, New York, after being denied parole seven times. Kayo spent 49 years behind bars for various murders and is now living the good life in a $750,000 house in sunny Weston, Florida with his daughter Edie.
New York State Parole Commissioners Sally Thompson and Michael Hagler gave no reason for granting Konigsberg’s release, which is unsurprising, as they couldn’t be a sensible reason to let a killer like Kayo out. out of the can in something other than a pine box.
One of the men Kayo was convicted of killing was Anthony “Three Fingers” Castellito, who was beaten up by Kayo at the behest of Castellito’s union rival, Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. Jennie Castellito was only 13 years old when her father was killed and she was outraged that Kayo had been released from prison.
“When ‘Tony Pro’ died in prison, he had cancer, that was the best news I ever heard,” he told the New York Daily News. “My father is dead and he didn’t have the last 49 years to spend alive with his children and grandchildren. I don’t think he should have been released. I don’t understand.”
The question is: Does Eric Konigsberg have to fear for his life now that his great-uncle is a free man?
I wish I knew the answer, and I wish when I read Blood Relation I had known that Kayo would soon be out of the can and still a danger to anyone he thought had wronged him. He would have made reading the book even more compelling.
Unfortunately, if I were Eric Konigsberg, I’d be looking over my shoulder at Uncle Kayo or, more likely, someone hired by Uncle Kayo. A man is not born with spots and then dies with stripes.
Or is it the other way around?