The Whitey Bulger Trial: We Were Up To Our Neck In Murders, Says Former Hitman John Martorano

Laurel J. Sweet at the Boston Herald is covering the Whitey Bulger trial in Boston.

Admitted mass murderer John Martorano testified today that the last favor he ever did for James “Whitey” Bulger — the 1982 hit in Florida on Martorano’s close friend John Callahan — was also the last time he took a human life.

“Very bad, very bad. That was the last thing I did. Just stopped there,” Martorano, 72, said when assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr asked how the killing made him feel.

Martorano had been on the lam from race-fixing charges for four years when, he told the court today, Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi secretly met with him at a hotel in New York and told him Callahan had to die because he could implicate them all for the murder in Tulsa, Okla., of Roger Wheeler, the president of World Jai Alai, who was investigating Callahan for missing money.

Martorano said he balked at first, but, “They were my partners, and we were up to our necks in murder already.”

You can read the rest of the story and watch a local TV news clip via the below link:

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/06/hitman_martorano_we_were_up_to_our_necks_in_murder

Note: John Martorano was the subject of a true crime book by Herald columnist Howie Carr.