Boston Area News

BOSTON (WBZ) ― If John Martorano were to write an autobiography it might be titled something like this: "From Chief Executioner to Professional Witness".

For more than a decade Martorano was Boston Mob Boss, "Whitey" Bulger's chief executioner.

Today's he's a free man after cutting a deal with the Federal Government and exposing the web of corruption and collusion between the mob and the Boston office of the F.B.I.

Sunday on 60 Minutes, Martorano's interview with correspondent Steve Kroft aired. You can watch the entire story by clicking here.

Kroft says "For years, he was one of the most feared men in Boston, and this is why: Martorano says he never kept count of how many people he killed. 'Until in the end, I never realized it was that many,' he tells Kroft."

Asked how many, Martorano says, "A lot. Too many."

"Do you have a number?" Kroft asks.

"I confessed to 20 in court," Martorano replies.

"You sure you remembered 'em all?" Kroft asks.

"I hope so," Martorano says.

Martorano tells Kroft that he shot most of his victims to death, because using a gun was "the easiest", but says he thinks he also "stabbed one guy."

While Martorano was one of the most feared men in Boston back in the day, he told Kroft he never got any satisfaction out of it. "But everybody likes to be respected for one thing or another," he admitted.

It's also clear by the interview that Martorano doesn't much like labels, especially when they apply to him.

"The hit man is…that sounds to me like somebody that's getting paid to a paid contract. I mean, you could never pay me to kill anybody," he told Kroft.

"A lot of people would say you're a serial killer," Kroft replied, another label to which Martorano disagrees with.

"I might be a vigilante, but not a serial killer," Martorano says. "Serial killers, you have to stop them. They'll never stop. And they enjoy it. I never enjoyed it. I don't enjoy risking my life but if the cause was right I would."

As deranged as it must sound especially to the families of Martorano's victims, he says he thought he was in the right. Martorano says he "always" felt like he was doing the right thing. "Even if it was wrong, I always tried to do the right thing."

Kroft says Martorano "sees himself as a stand-up guy, a man of his word", which is why he decided to talk in the first place.

Kroft says Martorano's sense of self goes back decades to when he was a star running back on the Mount St. Charles Academy football team in Rhode Island. One of his blockers was the late 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley.

Martorano promised Bradley he would sit down with him and tell his story, but Ed died before Martorano got out of prison.

"I never thought I'd be sitting here with you," Martorano tells Kroft. "I thought I'd be here with Ed. But I'm sitting here because Ed wanted me to sit here and I'm honoring that," Martorano explains.

Kroft replied this way: "I know one of the questions that Ed wanted to ask you. In sort of the way that Ed asked those questions, I think he wanted to be sitting here and say, 'What happened Johnny?' Why was it do you think that you went in different directions?"

Martorano responds by putting the onus on his father. "Well, I think it was mainly the influence of my father and his principles and his values that he pushed onto me."

Kroft reports that Martorano's father owned an after hour's club called Luigi's in a rough Boston neighborhood known as the "Combat Zone." It was a hangout for hoodlums who would become Martorano's role models, and many of them shared his father's simple Sicilian values.

"He was the oldest son, and he taught me 'You're the oldest son and this is your heritage. You've got to take care of your family and be a man. I don't care what else you are, you've got to be a man,'" Martorano tells Kroft.

Martorano justifies the many people he killed in many different ways; including the first man he killed, ex-con Robert Palladino.

Martorano thought Palladino was going to implicate his brother Jimmy in a murder. So John Martorano took care of things and tells Kroft he didn't see anything wrong with it. "I saved my brother's life, somebody got hurt, that had to be," he says. He tells Kroft he felt it was his "obligation" to do so.

By the 1970's Martorano was an integral part of the Winter Hill Gang. He teamed with James "Whitey" Bulger and Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi on a bunch of illegal activities including gambling, loan sharking, extortion and murder.

Martorano told Kroft his specialty was "conflict resolution." "We had a lot of problems with people. And you know, you just killed them before they kill you. It's kill or get killed at times," says Martorano.

With each subsequent killing Martorano says it got a little easier. Often times he was even brash in doing so. Kroft asks him "On one occasion, you walked into a crowded bar…and shot somebody. In broad daylight…with the policeman across the street?"

"Correct," Martorano replies, before telling Kroft he felt confident because "You put a disguise on and you just get to feel invisible."
He tells the reporter that his disguise consisted of a "yellow hard hat, a white meat cutter's coat, full length and a beard and mustaches and sunglasses."

Bulger's Winter Hill Gang operated out of an old body shop. The shop is now abandoned, but Martorano says Bulger's chair and old office are both still there.

"I think that's the trapdoor for the cellar. Used to leave that open all the time. Just to intimidate people. Try to get the truth out of them," Martorano tells Kroft. "People would look down there and just wonder."

In 1978 Martorano had fled to Florida, where he was hiding from authorities under an alias.

But he couldn't escape his past. Bulger and Flemmi called on him to carry out the murder of wealthy corporate executive, Roger Wheeler; a murder that would make national headlines.

Wheeler was found dead in the parking lot of the exclusive Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.

He was the CEO of Telex Corporation and owner of World Jai Alai, a profitable sports betting business that Bulger was apparently trying to muscle in on.

Martorano says all the logistics for the murder were provided by former Boston F.B.I. agent, Paul Rico.

Martorano was given a description of what Wheeler looked like and his tee time at the country club. He drove in, waited for Wheeler to finish playing golf and then killed him.

Martorano says that was just one of many instances in which he would get useful information from someone associated with the F.B.I.

Martorano told Kroft that corrupt Boston F.B.I. agent, John Connolly warned him that a man named John Callahan was about to finger him and others in the Wheeler murder.

Callahan later became Martorano's 20th victim; a murder Martorano says Connolly knew and was coming and even expected.

"He said it, 'We're all going to go to jail the rest of our life if this guy doesn't get killed,'" says Martorano. "This is an FBI agent telling it to Whitey, telling it to me."

Connolly is already serving 10 years behind bars for obstruction of justice. He's the man who warned Whitey that the authorities were coming to get him, allowing the Boston Mob Boss to escape. Bulger is still on the run today, and listed as one of the F.B.I.'s 10 most wanted.

This spring, Connolly is expected to go on trial in Florida for his connection to Wheeler's murder.

Labels again come to play when Martorano explains to Kroft how he became a "government witness".

You see Martorano had long known that Bulger and Flemmi had been getting information from the FBI. What he didn't know was that they had been also been giving it to them, on many people including Martorano himself.

Something he tells Kroft violated his "code of loyalty, especially Whitey Bulger".

"I'll go along with a lot of things, but not -- no Judas, not no informant," Martorano says. "I never informed or ratted on nobody. And if I could've killed him, I would've killed him. But he wasn't there and that's what I think he deserves."

"I gave him back what he gave everybody else," Martorano explains to Kroft. The reporter then asks him if that's why he became an "informant"; a label Martorano again takes exception with.

"Nope, I became a government witness," Martorano says. "Not an informant or a rat. I became a government witness."

Asked what the difference is, Martorano tells Kroft, "One's got the courage to stand on the stand, the other ones' are doin' it behind your back, and droppin' dimes. And how can I be rattin' on a guy who's the rat for 30 years? I'm tryin' to stop him from rattin' anymore."

Martorano's testimony is credited for solving 40 murders and putting Flemmi in prison for life. If Bulger is ever caught, he'll face 19 murder charges thanks to testimony for his old executioner.

20 of those murders are ones Martorano confessed to. His information also led authorities to secret mob graves. In return he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Donald Stern, the U.S. attorney who signed off on the agreement, tells Kroft that Martorano's testimony changed the landscape of organized crime in Boston, even if "In some ways, he (Martorano) did get away with murder."

Stern says the alternative was much worse. "The only thing worse than this deal was not doing this deal. 'Cause if we didn't do this deal, no one would receive any punishment for these murders. Corrupt law enforcement arrangements would not have been uncovered and prosecuted. And the cancer in law enforcement that existed in Boston for a number of years would have remained there."

Martorano was released from prison last spring, and decided to return to Boston. He told Kroft he feels safe here now, because most of his enemies are dead, in jail, or on the lam.

When Kroft presses him about being awfully cold when reflecting on the 20 lives he's responsible for taking, Martorano blames his personality. He says like anyone else, he has his regrets but can't live in the past.

"I wish it wasn't that way. I mean, I wish there was none. You know, you can't change the past. I'm trying to do the best I can with the future and explain it as best I can. I regret it all, I can't change it," Martorano says.

He also admits to still being a Catholic and says several years ago he sought forgiveness for his many crimes.

"At one point, maybe a couple years ago, I sent for a priest and gave him a confession. It was maybe 30 years since my last confession. But I went through the whole scenario with him, and went through my whole life with him, and confessed. And at the end of it, he says, 'Well, what do you think I should give you for penance?' I says, 'Father, you can justifiably crucify me.' He laughed and says, 'Nope. Ten Hail Marys, ten Our Fathers, and don't do it again.' So I listened to him."

The interview comes to an interesting close with this exchange between the reporter and one time executioner, when Kroft asks him if he plans to follow the Priest's advice and not kill again.

"Anything that could get you to kill again?" Kroft asks.

"Not that I can think of," Martorano says.

Not even Whitey Bulger?

Says Martorano, "Well, there's a bounty out on him."

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