Keep in mind the courtroom setting: the old guy with the beard sitting at counsel table; the prototypical Mafia gangster Martorano sitting in the witness stand. The jury has heard about all his murders long before he gets involved with Whitey. Carney has gone over each of these murders to show that the witness, who calls himself the “Hitman”, is really the cowardly “Murder Man,” a psychotic murderer who writes a book bragging abound his murderous life.
The first person Whitey is accused of murdering is a Michael Milarno who was killed on March 8, 1973, forty years before the trial date.
Here’s what Martorano told Howie Carr about how Milarno’s murder came about. Martorano and Howie Winter, who just got indicted for extortion, met with the Boston Mafia head Gerry Anguilo. Anguilo was having a problem with a guy named Indian Al Angeli who was moving in on some of his rackets and murdered one of his men, Paulie Folino
Anguilo needed to take revenge so he called upon Martorano and Winter. They met with Angiulo two or three times partnering with his Mafia group to murder Indian Al whose picture Angiulo gave them. He told them he drove a brown Mercedes.
Martorano got a submachine guns that Flemmi had hidden. Flemmi’s hiding out in Montreal. Once everything is in order, Martorano and associates waited for Indian Al to be spotted.
A lookout called them. He and said he saw Indian Al’s Mercedes outside a joint on Causeway Street in Boston. With Jimmy Simms driving and Martorano in the passenger seat and “another guy from Somerville” in back (When Martorano doesn’t identify a person in a murder that means he is still alive) they head out for the murder.
The lookout sees a man get in the Mercedes with two other people. The Murder Man and his gangster friends follow the car from the Boston Garden area out to Brighton. As the Mercedes approached Brighton Square, Simms pulled the car up next to it and Murder Man Martorano with his sub-machine gun and the “guy from Somerville” opened fire killing the driver and paralyzing the man in the back seat for life. Indian Al is nowhere around.
It was the wrong car. The driver, Milarno, was a local bartender and the kid in the back seat his friend. The young woman in the front seat wasn’t injured. (Murder Man didn’t care if this woman was killed or not.)
So where’s Whitey? Martorano to get his deal has to put him someplace. He says “he would follow in a crash car equipped with multiple police radios.” We don’t know whether he did or not. He lets it just hang out there.The guy with the sub-machine gun is blaming some other guy for the murder he commits.
Hardly is Whitey portrayed as a boss of Winter Hill. He neither meets with Angiulo nor does he do any shooting. The bottom line is Martorano and Howie Winter enter an agreement with Angiulo and end up murdering an innocent guy. Martorano has to include Whitey in all his murders to get a deal. I see little chance of Whitey being convicted on this murder.
The day after Milarno’s murder, Martorano and Winter (where’s Whitey?) go back and see Angiulo. Angiulo gave them the name of another guy he wanted murdered, Frank Capizzi. Martorano says Whitey went after him and the job was botched up. Capizzi was hit only in the leg. Maybe Whitey’s not a murderer and deliberately botched the job?
The second murder charge against Whitey is the murder of Al Plummer on March 19, 1973. Plummer another innocent guy is out with Indian Al and a couple of other guy eating dinner at the Aquarium restaurant. They left the restaurant and got into a 1972 Buick and drove off. The same three guys, Jimmy Simms, Martorano, and the mystery man from Somerville cut off the car as it travels down Commercial Street in Boston. Martorano and the other guy open fire killing Plummer. The others get away.
Where’s Whitey? You got it. He’s in the crash car. He “swerved to keep his car out of the line of fire.” Whitey who’s supposed to be the leader of the group always seems to be falling behind somewhere. I don’t think a jury’s going to swallow this tale either.
Carney will find out who the mystery man is. He should probably be asking that as part of his discovery. That person is an important witness. He’ll need to talk to him. I got an idea he’s not from Somerville and he’s very, very close to Johnny.
Here’s the sordid part in all this. Johnny get this wonderful deal six months for each murder when he only gives the feds half the story. He keeps from the feds the identity of the other shooter. The feds actually make a deal to let him pick and choose who he will incriminate. Martorano testified he wanted to protect his brother Jimmy, did the feds let him do that? The guy in the back seat has not been indicted by the Suffolk DA for these two murders. Howie Winter hasn’t been indicted by the Suffolk DA for these two murders. Why not? Seems like a much better case against them than against Whitey.
Look at it this way. Two innocent men sub-machined gun to death by Murder Man and the guy in the back seat. The plan to do this is made with Howie Winter. Of the three, only Murder Man is charged with the murder after he has a deal to do only six months in jail for each one. All three get off. Whitey, if he is there, doesn’t have a weapon (A crash car would never have a weapon in it.).
Neither of these cases pass the smell test. The jury will have a hard time not thinking something’s wrong.
I can understand how they got temporary custody of him, via some sort of federal court order as you noted. This is fairly common and goes both ways.
I don’t understand how he got released. Once the Feds were done with them they had to return him to the State to finish his sentence. They could not unilaterally mitigate his state sentence. Since your office was not involved my guess would be that the Mass AG signed off on something.
I wish I had the answer. Federal Bureau of Prisons reports he was released in 8-04-2005. He wouldn’t have been returned to Massachusetts. I thought life without parole meant that. The only way he could have gotten out as I can see would be through the parole board but that would have been a big ado which I think I would would have heard about. I agree with you that the feds shouldn’t have been able to do that but apparently they found a way.
On the feds getting Sperrazza out of Walpole into their custody, exactly how did they do that (ie what writ or order was used)? What were the terms of this transfer of custody if you know?
JHG:
That’s a good question. At that time both the FBI and Boston police were working to get Myles Connor. U.S. Attorney Harrington was in the middle of it. Perhaps because they were going to have him testify before the federal grand jury they had a habe issued to bring him there. They then made some arrangements with the Massachusetts corrections department to have him turned over to the U.S. Marshall. Obviously the Norfolk DA’s office that convicted him and had him incarcerated for life without parole had nothing to do with it nor were we privy to how it was done. It was all done in secret and it is something that I always wondered about and I can only speculate about it. At the time I didn’t think too much about it because I thought the FBI could do anything that it wanted to do and there was no way to question what it had done.
good points made here. i never really thought about it till you brought it up how many times guys in on a murder deal their way out of it with lies. these posts are good, however as a regular joe i feel it disheartening to see how these criminals can get away with so much. i mean for most people a speeding ticket or dui is the extent of criminal behavior and i would hope that people who engage in serios criminal behavior are brought to justice. thanks for these posts
Thanks for writing. Most people are like you assuming that everything is going along just fine. I’m like that in most things except I happened to have been involved in this area and when I started paying attention after I got away from it I saw that a lot of wrong information was being put out by so called experts. The guys that deal their ways out are the professional murderers, the guy who commits one murder usually ends up having nothing to bargain for so he does a ton of time. The worst case ever is the case of Sperrazza who used to write letters from Walpole signing his name as Manson. He murdered a cop, two young women, his partner and others. He was doing life without parole in Walpole and the feds made a deal with him to get him out for his testimony where he lied and the feds were stuck with him. I covered his story in my book on Connolly. It almost seems the worse you are the more you have to bargain with. Martorano, Weeks, Salemme, Sperrazza are all out on the street; many others who did one tenth what they did, come when drunk or because of warped passion, are locked up forever.
The thing I hope everyone who reads this comes away with is a questioning mind: not to accept the first thing that they are told and take a closer look at what is going on. The better informed we are the better we can make our country.