Johnny Martorano | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1940-12-13)December 13, 1940 (age 84) 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 formerhitman for theWinter Hill Gang inBoston, Massachusetts, who has admitted to 20 mob-related killings.
John Martorano was born inSomerville, Massachusetts, in 1940. He is the older brother ofJames "Jimmie" Martorano by eleven months. His father, Angelo "Andy" Martorano was an immigrant fromRiesi,Sicily, and with his family he emigrated to the United States around 1915, toEast Boston. His mother, Elizabeth Mary "Bess" Hunt, was of Irish descent, who lived in Somerville.[1] Martorano was raisedCatholic and served as analtar boy.
The Martorano family moved to the Irish enclave ofEast Milton. Martorano and his brother attended St Agatha's parochial grammar school in Milton through grade 8, where Martorano was a classmate of future congressmanBill Delahunt. Martorano attendedMount Saint Charles Academy inWoonsocket, 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 a60 Minutes interview withSteve 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 theCombat Zone, Martorano fell under the guidance ofStephen Flemmi, and by the age of 25 was an active mobster. He committed his first murder at 24, when he allegedly killedPatriarca crime familymade 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 inWhite Deer Township, Pennsylvania, would later write to the courts that when he was driving downMorrissey 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 prolificenforcers under the tenures ofHowie Winter andWhitey 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 inDorchester. 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]
On March 8, 1973, Martorano machine gunned 30-year-old bartender Michael Milano to death as he was driving in theBrighton neighborhood of Boston after mistaking Milano for a rival gang leader, Al Notarangeli. Milano drove aMercedes-Benz similar to Notarangeli's and wore a fur coat like the one Notarangeli wore.[5] Milano's friend, Louis Lapiana, and Lapiana's girlfriend, Dianne Sussman, were also wounded in the shooting.[6] Lapiana was left paralyzed until his death in 2001. The Winter Hill Gang held a fundraiser for Lapiana at Chandler's bar after the shooting without disclosing to him that it was them who had shot him.[7]
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 involvingFat 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 memberJoe McDonald, he was the triggerman for the hits onRoger Wheeler and John Callahan.[8]
Martorano was arrested inBoca Raton, Florida in January 1995.[9] Martorano was charged, along with Flemmi and two Boston mafiosi, on a massive racketeering indictment; however, he abruptly agreed to aplea 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 agentJohn 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.[8] 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.[10]
On January 15, 2008, Martorano was interviewed bySteve Kroft on the CBS News television program60 Minutes.[2] Initially, Martorano had agreed to be interviewed byEd Bradley, a former Mount Saint Charles Academy classmate, but Bradley died before this could occur. During the interview, Martorano expressedremorse for having killed Elizabeth Dickson, the woman in the car in Dorchester.
Although his friendsWhitey Bulger andStephen Flemmi are considered by manycriminologists and investigators to beserial 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 abiography of a living persondoes notinclude anyreferences or sources. Please help by addingreliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately. Find sources: "Johnny Martorano" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
In June 2013, Martorano testified as a prosecution witness inWhitey Bulger's trial inBoston, Massachusetts.[13]
Martorano was married to Carolyn Wood, an Irish-American, with whom he fathered five children,[14] including Vincent, John Jr. and Jeannie Martorano. Carolyn divorced him in 1975, after twelve years of marriage[15]
In the Whitey Bulger biopicBlack Mass (2015), Martorano is portrayed byW. Earl Brown.
{{cite news}}:|author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
