Whitey Bulger trial
 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(July 2019) |
In June 2013, Martorano testified as a prosecution witness in Whitey Bulger's trial in Boston, Massachusetts. [9]
Johnny Martorano | |
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| Born | December 13, 1940 Somerville, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Other names | Vincent Joseph Rancourt, Richard Aucoin, Nick, The Cook, The Executioner, The Basin Street Butcher |
| Occupation | Gangster |
| Years active | 1964–1999 |
| Criminal status | Paroled/Released in 2007 |
| Children | 5 |
| Parent(s) | Angelo Martorano Elizabeth Mary Hunt |
| Relatives | James Martorano (brother) |
| Allegiance | Winter Hill Gang |
| Criminal penalty | Sentenced to 12 years in prison |
John Vincent Martorano (born December 13, 1940; also known as "Vincent Joseph Rancourt", "Richard Aucoin", "Nick", "The Cook", "The Executioner", "The Basin Street Butcher") is an American former gangster and former hitman for the Winter Hill Gang in Boston, Massachusetts, who has admitted to 20 mob-related killings.
John Martorano was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1940. He is the older brother of James "Jimmie" Martorano by eleven months. His father, Angelo "Andy" Martorano was an immigrant from Riesi, Sicily, and with his family he emigrated to the United States around 1915, to East Boston. His mother, Elizabeth Mary "Bess" Hunt, was of Irish descent, who lived in Somerville. [1] Martorano was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy.
The Martorano family moved to the Irish enclave of East Milton. Martorano and his brother attended St Agatha's parochial grammar school in Milton through grade 8, where Martorano was a classmate of future congressman Bill Delahunt. Martorano attended Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, Rhode Island as a freshman while his brother remained in Milton, enrolling in Cunningham Junior High School. Later, in his freshman year, Martorano dropped out of Mount Saint Charles and joined Jimmie at Cunningham. During high school, he and Jimmie were standout football players, and were elected co-captains of the team for their senior season in 1958. Although recruited by several college teams, Martorano did not continue his education beyond his graduation from Milton High. [1]
In a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft, Martorano claimed that when he was young his father told him, "You're the oldest son and this is your heritage" (referring to his father's connections to organized crime). "You've got to take care of your family and be a man." [2]
After graduating from high school, Martorano turned down seven football scholarships and instead stayed in Boston. Hanging out in the Combat Zone, Martorano fell under the guidance of Stephen Flemmi, and by the age of 25 was an active mobster. He committed his first murder at 24, when he allegedly killed Patriarca crime family made man Robert S. Palladino, who was going to testify in a case involving the murder of prostitute Barbara Sylvester in his father's restaurant. [3]
Ralph DeMasi, a Boston mobster incarcerated in White Deer Township, Pennsylvania, would later write to the courts that when he was driving down Morrissey Boulevard with fellow Irish mobster William (Billy) O'Brien in 1964, Martorano pulled up in a car alongside them and gunned down O'Brien, shooting him seventeen times with a machine gun and wounding DeMasi. In his letter about the events that almost led to his death he wrote, "I thought someone was taking target practice at us. It was my good friend John Martorano."
Martorano rapidly became one of the Winter Hill Gang's most prolific enforcers under the tenures of Howie Winter and Whitey Bulger. In January 1968, after Hubert "Smitty" Smith, an African-American man, helped mobsters Rocco Lammattina and John Cincotti beat up Flemmi in an after-hours saloon, Martorano confronted Smith at the saloon the night after the beating. Despite being ignorant of the circumstances behind Flemmi's beating, Martorano challenged Smith and questioned him about the altercation between Lammattina and Cincotti versus Flemmi. When recounting Smith's responses, Martorano said, "He (Smith) kept giving me the wrong answers. He didn't give me any respect. All he had to say was 'I didn't know he was your friend, I'm sorry.' That's all he needed to say." After Smith failed to answer Martorano's challenge satisfactorily, Martorano tracked Smith to a car on Normandy Street in Dorchester. Smith was accompanied by a 19-year-old woman, Elizabeth Frances "Liz" Dickson, and a 17-year-old boy, Douglas Barrett. Martorano walked up to the car and killed all three occupants with his .38-caliber snubnosed revolver. [4]
In 1979, Flemmi and Bulger learned that Martorano and several other Winter Hill members, including James "Gentleman Jim" Mulvey, 'Volkswagon' Dwight Taylor, and Victor 'The Vulture' Vitale, were about to be indicted for a horse race-fixing scheme involving Fat Tony Ciulla. They warned Martorano, who quickly fled to Florida. He spent the next 16 years as a fugitive, although he was frequently called on to take part in murders. Along with Winter Hill member Joe McDonald, he was the triggerman for the hits on Roger Wheeler and John Callahan. [5]
Arrested in 1995, Martorano was charged, along with Flemmi and two Boston mafiosi, on a massive racketeering indictment; however, he abruptly agreed to a plea bargain deal in 1999. He was angered that Bulger, Taylor, Vitale, and Flemmi hadn't made any effort to keep him out of the 1979 race-fixing indictment, but had persuaded FBI agent John Connolly to ensure they wouldn't be indicted. More seriously, Bulger and Flemmi had been the ones to tip off authorities about Martorano's whereabouts. [5] In return for confessing his murders, Martorano received a reduced prison sentence of 12 years. In 2007, he was released from prison and given $20,000 to start a new life. [6]
On January 15, 2008, Martorano was interviewed by Steve Kroft on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes . [2] Initially, Martorano had agreed to be interviewed by Ed Bradley, a former Mount Saint Charles Academy classmate, but Bradley died before this could occur. During the interview, Martorano expressed remorse for having killed Elizabeth Dickson, the woman in the car in Dorchester.
Although his friends Whitey Bulger and Stephen Flemmi are considered by many criminologists and investigators to be serial killers, Martorano told Kroft, "I might be a vigilante, but not a serial killer. Serial killers, you have to stop them. They'll never stop, they enjoy it. I never enjoyed it. I don't enjoy risking my life but if the cause was right, I would."
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(July 2019) |
In June 2013, Martorano testified as a prosecution witness in Whitey Bulger's trial in Boston, Massachusetts. [9]
Martorano was married to Carolyn Wood, an Irish-American, with whom he fathered five children, [10] including Vincent, John Jr. and Jeannie Martorano. Carolyn divorced him in 1975, after twelve years of marriage [11]
In the Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass (2015), Martorano is portrayed by W. Earl Brown.
James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. was an American organized crime boss who led the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish Mob group in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, a city directly northwest of Boston. On December 23, 1994, Bulger fled the Boston area and went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. Bulger remained at large for sixteen years. After his 2011 arrest, federal prosecutors tried Bulger for nineteen murders based on grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates.
Howard Louis Carr Jr. is an American conservative radio talk-show host, political author, news reporter and award-winning writer.
James P. Flynn was an American teamster and film actor. He was a reputed member of the famous Winter Hill Gang. He appeared in films including Good Will Hunting, The Cider House Rules and What's the Worst That Could Happen?.
The Winter Hill Gang was a loose confederation of organized crime figures in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. It was generally considered an Irish Mob organization, with most gang members and the leadership consisting predominantly of Irish-Americans, though some notable members, such as Johnny Martorano, are of Italian-American descent.
Stephen Joseph Flemmi is an American gangster and convicted murderer and was a close associate of Winter Hill Gang boss Whitey Bulger. Beginning in 1975, Flemmi was a top echelon informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Harold Paul Rico was an FBI agent, indicted for murder in 2003. He was accused of the 1968 framing of four men for murder but died before his trial would have taken place.
James "Spike" O'Toole was an Irish-American criminal from Dorchester, Massachusetts.
The Angiulo brothers, were the leading Italian-American crime group from Boston's North End, from the 1960s until the mid 1980s. Also, the street crew extended into East Boston, Roxbury, Waltham, Newton, Watertown, parts of Revere, and all other predominantly Italian American neighborhoods in Eastern Massachusetts. Their criminal organization was dubbed "In-Town", because one had to go in to town to visit the Angiulo Brothers.
Joseph Barboza Jr., nicknamed "the Animal", was an American mobster and notorious mob hitman for the Patriarca crime family of New England during the 1960s. A prominent enforcer and contract killer in Boston's underworld, Barboza became a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant in 1967 and later entered the Witness Protection Program. He was a star witness in the trial of six men convicted in the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan; four of the accused were sentenced to death and another two were sentenced to life imprisonment. It later emerged that Barboza had helped frame the six defendants in a case of wrongful conviction for the Deegan killing, which was allegedly actually committed by Barboza and Vincent Flemmi. He was shot dead in San Francisco in 1976 after his whereabouts became known to Patriarca underboss Gennaro Angiulo.
John Joseph Connolly Jr. is an American former FBI agent who was convicted of racketeering, obstruction of justice and murder charges stemming from his relationship with Boston mobsters James "Whitey" Bulger, Steve Flemmi and the Winter Hill Gang.
Roger Milton Wheeler Sr. was an American businessman from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the former chairman of Telex Corporation, and former owner of World Jai Alai. He was murdered by members of organized crime who discovered that Wheeler had uncovered their embezzlement scheme at World Jai Alai.
Kevin Weeks is an American former mobster and longtime friend and mob lieutenant to Whitey Bulger, the infamous boss of the Winter Hill Gang, a crime family based in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts.
Richard J. Castucci Sr. was an American member of the Patriarca crime family who owned several strip clubs and was involved in illegal gambling. Castucci eventually became a government informant.
James Martorano is an American organized crime figure with ties to the Winter Hill Gang of South Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of the Patriarca crime family as of 1995. Martorano is the younger brother of notorious "hitman" and later government witness, John Martorano.
Timothy A. Connolly III, aka "Timmy Connolly" and "TC", was an American former South Boston bar owner and mortgage broker, who wore a wire inside the infamous Winter Hill Gang and helped the federal government indict their two leaders, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. The public was led to believe that Tim Connolly was merely a businessman and an innocent victim of one of Jim Bulger's many extortions. But in truth, Tim Connolly was secretly a "made member" of the Winter Hill gang and a high ranking lieutenant in this Bulger crime family.
The 1978 Blackfriars Massacre, also known as the Blackfriars murders, is an unsolved Irish Mob and/or Italian-American Mafia massacre that occurred on June 28, 1978, in the Blackfriars Pub in Downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Four criminals known to the police and a former Channel 7 Boston television investigative news anchorman, Jack Kelly, were killed, allegedly over the sale of cocaine.
Michael S. Flemmi is an American retired Boston Police Department officer who was convicted of obstruction of justice charge stemming from his relationship with his brother Stephen Flemmi and the Winter Hill Gang.
Black Mass is a 2015 American biographical crime drama film about American mobster Whitey Bulger. Directed by Scott Cooper and written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, it is based on Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's 2000 book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob. The film features an ensemble cast led by Johnny Depp as Bulger, alongside Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson, and Corey Stoll.
Fotios "Freddy" Geas is an American criminal and an associate of the Genovese crime family, based in New York City. He is a former Mafia hitman operating out of Springfield, Massachusetts and often worked with his brother Ty Geas.
Jeremiah T. O'Sullivan was a Boston-based federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice at a time when FBI agents collaborated with Winter Hill Gang leader James "Whitey" Bulger. He was subsequently accused of participating in a scheme to grant immunity to Bulger to commit violent crimes in return for information about the Patriarca crime family.
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