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Thread: James "Whitey" Bulger

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    James "Whitey" Bulger




    Expert: ‘Nature’ only one likely to give Bulger death sentence

    By Erin Smith
    The Boston Herald

    Accused serial killer James “Whitey” Bulger, whose federal trial is slated to begin with jury selection Thursday, will likely escape the death penalty if he is convicted on murder charges, according to a capital punishment expert.

    Bulger faces federal charges for the murders of 19 men and women, but prosecutors say those homicides occurred between 1973 and 1985 — well before federal prosecutors were given the option of seeking death for criminals, according to David Hoose, a Northampton-based attorney and expert on federal death penalty cases.

    “All of the murders that Mr. Bulger is accused of committing precedes the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994,” Hoose said. “But it seems likely if the government gets a conviction on anything, it’s likely to be a de facto death sentence given his age.”

    The federal trial against Bulger, 83, is expected to start June 10 with opening arguments, and testimony may last into the fall.

    Bulger could face the death penalty if he is tried and convicted for two murders in out-of-state courts, where capital punishment could be on the table.

    “Officially we have not changed our position on the ultimate plan to prosecute Whitey Bulger,” said Ed Griffith, spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

    Authorities say Bulger had a hand in the 1982 murder of John Callahan, who’s body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport. He also allegedly played a role in the murder of Roger Wheeler, who was shot in the face as he left a Tulsa, Okla., country club in 1981.

    Tulsa District Attorney Tim Harris said he is waiting until Bulger’s federal trial wraps up before making any decisions on prosecuting him in Oklahoma.

    Hoose said he’s not convinced the aging Bulger will face trial in Oklahoma or Florida — especially if the feds get a conviction.

    He said, “I don’t know that the district attorney in Tulsa or the state’s attorney in Miami is really going to want to spend the money to bring him there and seek the death penalty when nature is likely to take care of that 
very soon.”

    http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion...death_sentence

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    Former hitman takes witness stand at Bulger trial

    BOSTON (AP) -- A former hitman who admitted killing 20 people has taken the witness stand at the racketeering trial of James "Whitey" Bulger.

    John Martorano served 12 years in prison after striking a cooperation deal with prosecutors. He was released in 2007.

    Bulger, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, is charged in a 32-count indictment that accuses him of participating in 19 murders in the 1970s and `80s. He is also charged with extorting bookmakers, drug dealers and others running illegal businesses.

    Martorano is one of three former Bulger loyalists who struck deals with prosecutors and agreed to testify against him.

    Bulger's former partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, and former Bulger lieutenant Kevin Weeks also are expected to be key prosecution witnesses.

    THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

    A former hitman who admitted killing 20 people is expected to take the stand at the trial of James "Whitey" Bulger to testify against the reputed gangster.

    John Martorano served a little over 12 years in prison after striking a cooperation deal with prosecutors. He was released in 2007.

    Bulger, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, is charged in a 32-count racketeering indictment that accuses him of participating in 19 murders in the 1970s and `80s. He is also charged with extorting bookmakers, drug dealers and others running illegal businesses.

    Martorano is one of three former Bulger loyalists who struck deals with prosecutors and agreed to testify against him. Bulger's former partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, and former Bulger lieutenant Kevin Weeks also are expected to be key prosecution witnesses.

    Martorano, 72, is expected to testify Monday.

    During his opening statement to the jury, Bulger's lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., raised questions about the credibility of Martorano, Weeks and Flemmi, citing the "extraordinary" plea deals they struck with prosecutors.

    "The federal government was so desperate to have John Martorano testify ... they basically put their hands up in the air and said take anything you want," Carney said.

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    The rats are abandoning the sinking ship!

    Former 'Whitey' Bulger associate tells of drive-by killings

    (Reuters) - A former criminal associate of James "Whitey" Bulger told jurors hearing the accused mob boss's murder and racketeering trial on Monday about killing rivals in drive-by shootings as his friend rose to power in Boston organized crime circles.

    John Martorano, 72, is the first of Bulger's former associates to take the stand in Boston federal court, where Bulger is being tried on charges including racketeering and 19 murders he committed or ordered while running Boston's "Winter Hill" crime gang in the 1970s and 80s.

    Bulger, 83, has pleaded not guilty to all charges and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

    Martorano, who spent 12 years in prison for 20 murders he confessed to, recounted several execution-style killings of Bulger rivals and people mistaken for them, in which he served as gunman while Bulger drove a backup car.

    The night of December 1, 1973, when the crew set off to kill rival James O'Toole, was different, Martorano said.

    "This night here, Whitey wanted to do the driving, so he came with me," Martorano recalled. Bulger, who served as lookout while Martorano got out of the car and gunned O'Toole down with a machine gun, had to wave off a passerby who came walking down the street.

    "He chased him off with his hand, and he said, 'I'm never going to be in the car without a gun again,'" Martorano said.

    That night the gang members gunned down their intended victim. But, Martorano said, they also shot dead at least two other people unintentionally in efforts to murder rival gang boss Al Notarangeli, whom they shot dead in February 1974.

    Normally, Martorano said, he rode in a stolen "boiler car" with another gunman, a driver and pair of machine guns, with Bulger driving another legally owned car, which could be used to crash into other vehicles if needed to stop police.

    Earlier, Martorano told the jury that it "broke my heart" to learn that Bulger had served as an FBI informant. Martorano said he had named his youngest son "James Stephen" in honor of Bulger and another associate, Stephen Flemmi.

    The FBI has extensive files of information it says Bulger provided during the years when agency investigators who shared Bulger's Irish background cooperated with him as they worked to take down the Italian mafia in the United States.

    Bulger, through his lawyers, denies being an informant.

    In opening statements last week, Bulger's lawyer described the accused as a mild-mannered criminal who engaged in illegal gambling, loan-sharking and drug dealing but not murder. Prosecutors portrayed him as a "hands-on" killer.

    Martorano is the first of three key Bulger associates due to testify in the trial, which is expected to last three to four months, with Kevin Weeks and Flemmi also due to testify.

    FOCUS ON BOOKIES

    The court also heard from former bookmakers who paid "rent," or tribute money, to Bulger's gang to be allowed to continue to run their illegal gambling operations.

    Richard O'Brien, 84, testified that he began working with Bulger's gang in the early 1970s, and that the arrangement was helpful to enforce collections on debts he was owed.

    "When we had a problem, the best thing I had was to say, ‘Do you want to speak with someone from Winter Hill?'" O'Brien testified.

    Under cross-examination by defense attorneys, O'Brien said he had lied during grand jury testimony in 1995, when he denied that he paid "rent" to Bulger out of fear of what would happen to him if he testified against Bulger and his associates.

    "I wouldn't testify against those people because of the repercussions you could have," he said.

    Bulger's lead attorney, J.W. Carney of Boston law firm Carney & Bassil, has repeatedly focused on witnesses' past false statements. He argued in opening statements that witnesses including Martorano testified against Bulger only to get their own prison sentences reduced.

    Bulger, who as a young man spent time locked up in the Alcatraz prison island off San Francisco and lived in hiding for 16 years before his 2011 arrest, has intrigued Boston for decades. His story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2006 Academy Award-winning movie "The Departed."

    Bulger fled Boston after a 1994 tip from a corrupt FBI agent that his arrest was imminent. On the run, he was on the FBI's "most wanted" list of criminals.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95G0PR20130617

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    Mobster recounts murder for hire in ‘Whitey' Bulger trial

    The plan called for John Martorano, a mobster who has confessed to 20 murders, to lure associate Tommy King into a waiting car with a contrived story that he was needed for a hit. King was handed a gun loaded with blanks.

    "Pretty much after we pulled out, I shot Tommy," Martorano, 72, told a Boston jury on Tuesday. "Where did I shoot him? In the head."

    James "Whitey" Bulger hatched the plot, according to Martorano, who took the stand as a key prosecution witness in the federal trial of Bulger on charges he committed or ordered 19 murders while running Boston's Winter Hill Gang in the 1970s and '80s.

    King was targeted in 1975 because Bulger feared he was talking too much. His was one of a dozen murders Martorano calmly recalled to the jury, implicating his former boss, including one in which Bulger allegedly pulled the trigger.

    Bulger, now 83, killed many rivals as he rose from small-time crook in a gritty Boston neighborhood to one of the most feared criminals in the city's history, prosecutors charge, but then disappeared and spent 16 years in hiding before his arrest in California 2011. His story has captivated the city for years.

    He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

    Martorano, who spent 12 years in prison for the 20 murders to which he confessed, told the jury that he, Bulger and their partner Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi regularly teamed up to murder rivals, sometimes accidentally gunning down bystanders.

    Bulger played a variety of roles in their attacks, sometimes driving the car carrying the gunman or a support vehicle and sometimes helping to dispose of bodies.

    Martorano recalled passing a bridge south of Boston with Bulger, who alluded to King's murder.

    "Tip your hat, Tommy's over there," Martorano recalled Bulger as saying. King's body was discovered in the marsh beneath the bridge in 2000.

    GUNNED DOWN IN A PHONE BOOTH

    Bulger's story inspired the 2006 Academy Award-winning movie "The Departed," and the trial stirred memories of a darker time in Boston's history - some of the killings described occurred just blocks from the waterfront federal courthouse that is the scene of what is expected to be a three- to four-month trial.

    The gangster, who earned the nickname "Whitey" for the shock of light hair he sported in his youth, was quick to turn on associates he believed were talking too much about their criminal doings, Martorano said.

    Also in 1975, Martorano recalled Bulger and Flemmi gunned down Dorchester bar owner Edward Connors because he believed he was bragging too loudly about helping them with another killing.

    "They took him out in the phone booth," said Martorano, who appeared dressed in a dark suit with a red pocket handkerchief and spoke softly. "I heard the shots. They came back and said, 'He's gone.'"

    Bulger's willingness to kill associates he suspected of talking too much belied the fact that for years he traded information with a corrupt FBI agent, according to federal prosecutors. Bulger, through his attorneys, denies having been an informant.

    But Martorano said the news that his former boss worked with law enforcement "broke my heart" and prompted him to break the gang's code of silence and testify, a deal that allowed him to secure a lesser sentence for his many killings.

    J.W. Carney, Bulger's lead attorney, has worked to discredit the government's witnesses, saying they were ready to lie to reduce their time in prison. On Tuesday he called out Martorano's long history of deception in his criminal career.

    "I think anyone who has to kill anyone has to lie," Martorano said during cross-examination.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95H07A20130618

  5. #5
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    Whitey Bulger witnesses biting their tongues

    By Kevin Cullen
    The Boston Globe

    When Bobby Long and Tom Foley got off the witness stand Thursday, I half-expected someone from the prosecution team to give them gauze bandages to staunch the bleeding.

    I mean, a man can bite his tongue for only so long.

    Bobby Long and Tom Foley are retired from the Massachusetts State Police, and between them did more than the entire FBI to bring Whitey Bulger to justice.

    That’s almost damning them with faint praise, which I would never do because they were great cops. But hardly anyone in the FBI lifted a finger to bring Whitey Bulger to justice.

    To be fair, Rich Teahan, a conscientious FBI agent who supervised the task force that eventually found Whitey, did great work. So, too, did a fine agent named Phil Torsney, who, with a terrific deputy US marshal named Neil Sullivan, did yeoman’s work to track Whitey down in Santa Monica.

    But, let’s face it, the FBI is an unindicted coconspirator in the massive racketeering case against Whitey. And Whitey’s lawyers have made it clear they intend to put the FBI on trial, hoping the jury will forget that it was Whitey who put guns to the backs of people’s heads and pulled the trigger.

    Bobby Long, protege of the late, great Colonel Jack O’Donovan, a State Police legend, ran investigations out of Middlesex County for years and in 1980 led a bunch of state cops, including Jackie O’Malley and Rick Fraelick, in taking a swing at Whitey and Stevie Flemmi. Alas, their attempts to bug a garage on Lancaster Street near Boston Garden, which had replaced the Marshall Motors garage in Somerville as the Winter Hill Gang’s headquarters, were doomed by corrupt lawmen.

    Zach Hafer, a prosecutor, handled the direct examination of Bobby Long, and they mostly talked about some grainy State Police surveillance video that Long and his troopers took in 1980. It was like a trip down Wiseguy Memory Lane.

    Whitey and Stevie were wearing form-fitting shirts, strutting their stuff in front of the garage, while their hired gun, Nicky Femia, showed off a physique ruined by Big Macs. Whitey always said fast food would kill Nicky, but in the end he died of lead poisoning when he tried to rob a cocaine dealer who drew faster than Nicky.

    There was even some video of Nicky Giso, the late Mafioso, and his talkative girlfriend, Eva McDonough. The Mafia once tried to kill Eva, supposedly because she talked too much, but the Mensa member they sent to shoot her at a bar managed to murder only her cowboy hat.

    When Jay Carney, Whitey’s lead counsel, got Long on cross-examination, he asked Long if he had cleared the Lancaster Street investigation with Jerry O’Sullivan. That would be the same Jerry O’Sullivan who ran the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, who Whitey claims gave him a license to kill.

    Was the State Police bug at the garage compromised? Carney asked.

    “Yes,” Bobby Long replied.

    Whitey’s other lawyer, Hank Brennan, was even more aggressive with Foley, getting him to admit that he believed the FBI was compromising State Police and DEA attempts to get Whitey at every turn.

    If you knew Tom Foley, you know he, like Bobby Long, would shout from the treetops how corrupt the FBI was. But the prosecution wants to keep the focus on Whitey, not the FBI.

    Whatever the FBI did to enable Whitey to murder and make money, the reality is that it was Whitey who pulled the triggers. It was Whitey who held guns and knives to the throats of bookies and drug dealers, demanding tribute.

    Brennan tried to get Foley to admit he let Johnny Martorano get away without testifying against his friends Pat Nee and Howie Winter because investigators were obsessed with Whitey.

    Foley shook his head and said he was forced to make deals he didn’t want to make, because the FBI protected Whitey.

    This will be a recurring theme, and the Staties will keep biting their tongues.

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...OcM/story.html

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    Survivor recalls night of terror in 'Whitey' Bulger trial

    When she heard a machine gun blast outside the brand-new brown Mercedes she was riding in with her boyfriend and a friend one night in March 1973, Dianne Sussman ducked reflexively.

    "That's probably the only reason I'm here," Sussman, 63, told the jury at the federal murder and racketeering trial of accused Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger on Thursday.

    When the shooting ended, Sussman turned to the driver of the car, Michael Milano, and found him unresponsive. She asked her boyfriend, Louis Lapiana, if he was OK and all he could muster was a weak "no."

    Milano, a Boston bartender, is one of 19 people Bulger is accused of killing, either directly or by order, in the 1970s and '80s while running Boston's brutal "Winter Hill" crime gang.

    He was not the man the gang intended to kill that night, according to former associate John "The Executioner" Martorano. He testified earlier in the week that he pulled the trigger that night thinking he was shooting at gang rival Al Notarangeli.

    Milano knew Notarangeli, admired his sense of style and had bought the Mercedes because it was similar to the car Notarangeli drove, witnesses said Thursday.

    "He was very proud of it," said Milano's brother, Donald.

    After three days of chillingly subdued testimony by Martorano, who dully recounted a dozen murders he committed that he said involved Bulger, the trial took a more emotional turn on Thursday as the survivors of those named by prosecutors as Bulger's victims appeared tearfully on the stand.

    Bulger, portrayed by his attorneys as a mild-mannered loan shark, extortionist and drug dealer but not a murderer, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Now 83, he faces life in prison if convicted.

    Long on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, he evaded the law for 16 years before being caught in June 2011, hiding in a seaside apartment in California. His story inspired Martin Scorsese's 2006 Academy Award-winning film "The Departed."

    Bulger's trial, which is expected to last three to four months, is one of the most anticipated in Boston history. The most feared criminal in the city fled after a 1994 tip from a corrupt federal agent that his arrest was imminent.

    SURVIVORS TESTIFY

    Sussman recalled the machine gun fire that pierced the car on that late night in March 1973.

    "We were at a stoplight and all of a sudden there was this noise, a continuous stream of noise of gunfire. ... It was just nonstop ... I ducked," she said.

    Sussman said she screamed at a passing taxi driver for help and fought with police to be allowed to ride in the ambulance with Lapiana, she recalled. It took some time for her to realize that she, too, had been wounded in the attack, taking a bullet to the arm.

    Several days passed before hospital staff allowed her to visit her badly wounded boyfriend, barely recognizable under the bandages - only his mustache looked like the man she knew.

    Unlike Milano, Lapiana survived the attack, though he never fully recovered from his injuries and spent his remaining years in hospitals, eventually moving to a Veteran's Administration facility in California, near where Sussman had moved and lived with a husband and children. They were friends until Lapiana's death in 2001, she recalled through tears.

    The survivor of another shooting that same month, Ralph DeMasi, was released this year from federal prison after serving 21-1/2 years on charges related to a plot to rob an armed car.

    After being ordered by the court to testify, DeMasi recalled being attacked after a meeting with Tommy King, another rival of Bulger's who prosecutors say was among the murder victims. DeMasi said he got a bad feeling after seeing King leave their meeting and get into a car with three men he did not recognize.

    DeMasi advised the friend who was driving him that day, William O'Brien, to be wary.

    "I said, 'Billy keep your eye on the side mirror. If a car comes up fast, hit the gas.' ... He laughed," DeMasi said. "All of a sudden, a car pulls up, people start shooting at us. When it was over, Billy O'Brien was dead, I got eight bullets in me."

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95J08W20130620

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    The hit man of Country Club Lane

    He parks his silver Mercedes-Benz sedan behind his condo, below a deck decorated with white and pink flowers, where a couple of small dogs bark at the few passers-by.

    It's inside this wooded golf course community where neighbors of John Martorano learned this week that the 72-year-old they know only as a cordial fellow resident of a block called Country Club Lane is a former mob hit man.

    "Well, it means I won't get into any arguments with him," one Milford resident said. "Whatever he says, he's right."

    That resident and his wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear for their safety if they are identified, were shocked to recognize their neighbor Monday while watching television coverage of the racketeering trial of James "Whitey" Bulger in Boston.

    They said they'd had no clues that the pleasant, quiet man they know only as John, whose companion brings them cookies at Christmastime, had a past as a prolific killer.

    "There has been nothing to indicate anything like that," the woman said Monday. "I hope no one is looking for him and comes here."

    Martorano has admitted to 20 killings but served only 12 years in prison as part of a deal he made with authorities to testify against former cohorts.

    The resident of Milford, about 30 miles southwest of Boston, got out of prison in 2007 and testified this week for the prosecution as the government tries Bulger, the reputed former Winter Hill Gang ringleader, for crimes that include his alleged participation in 19 slayings. Bulger, 83, fled Boston in 1994 and was a fugitive until his capture in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2011.

    In the past, Martorano's cooperation with authorities bolstered a corruption case against a former FBI agent and helped them locate the bodies of six mob victims.

    Before his 2004 sentencing, he apologized to the families of the people he killed, a sentiment that some didn't receive well. Martorano has said he decided to cooperate with authorities after learning Bulger and his other former partner, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, were FBI informants.

    On the witness stand, Martorano talked Monday and Tuesday about a series of killings he carried out while a gang member in the 1970s. His cross-examination by Bulger's defense team continued Wednesday.

    In Milford, Martorano's neighbor John Ferreira said he was surprised Monday to find out about his neighbor's past, but said it didn't bother him. The 60-year-old said he sometimes sees Martorano taking the trash out, and that he's always been nice.

    "We just wave hi to each other. We don't talk to each other," he said.

    At a shopping center near Martorano's condo, a convenience store clerk recognized a picture of him. She called him a nice gentleman she knew nothing about except that he bought $15 to $20 in lottery tickets about once a month.

    Asked at the trial how he makes a living, Martorano answered, "Social Security." Later, he testified that he has made about $70,000 from Howie Carr's book "Hitman" and another $250,000 from a film company. He said he'll get another $250,000 if the movie is made.

    Milford Police Chief Thomas O'Loughlin said Monday that Martorano isn't on parole and can live wherever he wants, including in this town of 27,000 people. He said the former hit man's only brush with the law in Milford was a minor fender bender in April 2012 that ended with police writing him a warning for failure to use caution in slowing.

    "He's been here a couple years," O'Loughlin said. "I've seen him about the town like anybody else. We've had no difficulties with him."

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...BULGER_HIT_MAN

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    'Whitey' Bulger jury to hear from more survivors of gang attacks

    Jurors hearing the trial of accused mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger could be in for another emotionally charged day on Friday as a survivor of his gang's attacks takes the witness stand, along with family members of those who weren't so lucky.

    Relatives of some of the 19 people Bulger is charged with murdering or ordering killed are expected to identify photos of their dead loved ones. Frank Capizzi, who survived multiple shootings by the Winter Hill gang, was also due after U.S. District Judge Denise Casper granted him immunity from prosecution for anything said on the witness stand.

    The trial took a tearful turn on Thursday with family members testifying about the intended and accidental victims Bulger's gang is accused of gunning down. Among them was Nancy Ferrier, who described the call to her house when she was 14 reporting that her father, Al Plummer had been shot in the face.

    "I was home alone with my sister, my mother wasn't at home," Ferrier said, adding that the family was first told her father had survived the attack but later learned he had been pronounced dead on arrival at Massachusetts General Hospital.

    Prosecutors are also preparing to submit as evidence the 700-page file that the FBI developed on Bulger in the years when the agency claims he served as an informant.

    Through his attorney, Bulger denied ever being an informant, insisting that he paid a corrupt FBI agent for information but never provided any of his own.

    Bulger, now 83, has pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison.

    The accused gangster became one of Boston's most feared men in the 1970s and '80s before fleeing the city after a 1994 tip from the corrupt FBI agent that arrest was imminent. He evaded arrest for 16 years before law enforcement caught up with him living in hiding in Santa Monica, California on June 22, 2011.

    His story inspired the Academy Award-winning 2006 film "The Departed."

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95K0C420130621

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    Bulger witness: Car hit was like a 'firing squad'

    A man who survived a wild shooting told jurors at James "Whitey" Bulger's racketeering trial that it felt like "a firing squad hit us" when a car he was in was struck by more than 100 bullets.

    Frank Capizzi said he was riding in the back seat behind Albert Plummer when the car was shot up in March 1973. Capizzi was shot multiple times. Plummer, a member of a rival gang, was killed.

    Capizzi said he soon left Boston out of fear.

    When Bulger's lawyer began to question him, Capizzi invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

    The 83-year-old Bulger is charged with playing a role in 19 murders during the 1970s and `80s while allegedly leading the mostly Irish-American Winter Hill Gang. He has pleaded not guilty.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...06-21-11-52-24

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    Whitey Bulger Hitman: "Family and friends comes first."

    Confessed hit man John Martorano proclaimed defiantly in a Boston courtroom Tuesday that he is "no serial killer," even though he has admitted to rubbing out 20 people, including innocent bystanders.

    The 72-year-old federal witness, known as "the Executioner," testified against his alleged former mob boss, James "Whitey" Bulger, 83, and claimed he was an FBI informant.

    Martorano insisted he was no "mass murderer" and preferred to be called a "vigilante" who nobly protected friends and family.

    Martorano rationalized the killings by saying the code he learned was, "family and friends comes first."

    But criminologists said that even though Martorano, by his own testimony, is "technically" a serial killer -- one who kills one at a time over weeks, years or decades -- his self-described motivation and execution doesn't fit the mold of a Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer.

    "A serial killer typically uses sex as a vehicle for tempting to gain a sense of power and dominance and control," said Jack Levin, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston and a co-author of the 2008 book, "Extreme Killing."

    "In most cases, it includes torture," he said. "Martorano was right in court when he suggested that a typical serial killer enjoys his work. The more he makes the victim feel inferior, the more superior he feels. And so he tortures and sodomizes and dismembers and eviscerates and strangles his victim, taking the last breath from his dying body. That's what makes them feel so good."

    Martorano, who has been a free man since 2007 after he cut a deal with the government to testify against Bulger, testified, "I didn't enjoy killing."

    Levin said criminologists might agree the term is misused when it comes to gangland killers.

    "Those who study serial murder are concerned about overusing the term and that it becomes diluted and loses its value," he said.

    He theorized that those in organized crime are more like "domestic terrorists."

    "What happens is a mobster terrorizes a community so that he gets shopkeepers and others to comply," said Levin. "He used terror in a way that is politically motivated."

    He compared Martorano and his partners in crime to the Washington, D.C., snipers who had the city in "the grip of terror" to make $10 million.

    "It's not an end -- it's a means or tactic used by some criminals for personal gain," he said.

    Bulger, one of Boston's most notorious alleged criminals in the 1970s and 1980s, purportedly head of the predominantly Irish-American so-called Winter Hill Gang that was portrayed in the Hollywood film, "The Departed," faces a 32-count indictment.

    Gangsters like Martorano, and perhaps Bulger, may rationalize murders as "honor among thieves," with a code of rules and behavior. For example, the code prohibits the killing of women, according to testimony in the Bulger trial.

    "Is there any honor or integrity in what you did?" Martorano was asked under cross-examination on Tuesday by Henry Brennan, a defense lawyer.

    "I thought so," he replied.

    Ethics are rarely a motivator, except on television. The serial killer "Dexter" has a lust for killing, according to Levin, but he has a code of ethics -- killing those who have wronged others.

    "He's an outlier," said Levin. "But I don't like him for a different reason. He is an antihero and that really bothers me -- someone who kills a large number of people and can easily justify it in an attempt to rid the world of evil."

    Some serial killers, like Ted Bundy, target prostitutes, believing they are "doing the world a service."

    http://abcnews.go.com/Health/whitey-...ry?id=19439411

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