Philip Carlo was a journalist and best selling biographer of Thomas Pitera

Thomas Pitera

Thomas "Tommy Karate" E. Pitera is a former Mafia hitman in the Bonanno crime family. Pitera earned a reputation as a vicious and sadistic killer who enjoyed murdering people. He was suspected by law enforcement of as many as 60 murders. He was well known for his use of karate and other martial...

, Richard Kuklinski

Richard Kuklinski

Richard Leonard "The Iceman" Kuklinski was an American contract killer. The 6'5" , 300 pound Kuklinski worked for Newark's DeCavalcante crime family and New York City's Five Families. He claimed to have murdered over 250 men between 1948 and 1986...

, Anthony Casso

Anthony Casso

Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso is a former New York City mobster who served as underboss and acting boss of the Lucchese crime family until he was arrested in 1993, becoming a cooperating witness for the Federal Government...

, and Richard Ramirez

Richard Ramirez

Ricardo "Richard" Muñoz Ramírez is a convicted serial killer awaiting execution on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison...

.

Life

Philip Carlo was born in Bensonhurst

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Bensonhurst is a neighborhood located in the southwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn.-Geography:Sometimes erroneously thought to include all or parts of such neighborhoods as Bath Beach, Dyker Heights, and Borough Park, or to be defined by the streets where the concentration of...

, Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. From an early age, he was involved in gang activity. He was shot and wounded in a gang war.

Carlo suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...

, and was bound to a wheelchair and respirator, but retained his ability to speak normally during his lifetime.

Despite his illness, in early November 2009, Carlo was able to appear on Shovio's Talk Back TV, to take questions about his research.

He died of Lou Gehrig's disease on November 8, 2010 at age 61.

His last book, The Killer Within: In the Company of Monsters (which deals with his battle against ALS), was released posthumously in January 2011.

Works

Non-fiction:

• The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez (1996) ISBN 1-57566-030-X
• The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer (2006) ISBN 0-312-34928-9
• Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss William Morrow (2008) ISBN 978-0061429842
• The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath William Morrow (2009) ISBN 978-0-06-174465-5
• The Killer Within: In the Company of Monsters Overlook Press (2011) ISBN 978-1-59-020431-3

Novels:

• Stolen Flower. (1988) ISBN 0-525-24484-0
• Predators and Prayers. (2005) ISBN 0-8439-5576-7
• Smiling Wolf. (2006) ISBN 0-8439-5678-X

External links

• Book Review of The Ice Man at Letters On Pages
• Shovio.com Philip Carlo interview on Talk Back TV
• Sphinx Radio Philip Carlo Tribute Show
• Philip Carlo interview about The Ice Man (Failure magazine)