From: 60 Minutes, 1/6/08
John Martorano: The Executioner
Steve Kroft Interviews Triggerman Of Boston’s Notorious Winter Hill Gang
(CBS) There are few men alive today with the underworld credentials of John Martorano, and even fewer who are out of prison and walking the streets. For more than a decade, Martorano was the chief executioner for Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, a loose confederation of Irish and Italian-American gangsters run by James “Whitey” Bulger. …
“You seem cold,” Kroft says. “You killed 20 people and that’s all you have to say about it?” …
“You still a Catholic?” Kroft asks.
“Sure,” Martorano says.
“I mean, you can burn in hell for killing one person,” Kroft points out.
“I don’t believe that,” Martorano says. “At one point, maybe a couple years ago, I sent for a priest and gave him a confession. It was maybe 30 years since my last confession. But I went through the whole scenario with him, and went through my whole life with him, and confessed. And at the end of it, he says, ‘Well, what do you think I should give you for penance?’ I says, ‘Father, you can justifiably crucify me.’ He laughed and says, ‘Nope. Ten Hail Marys, ten Our Fathers, and don’t do it again.’ So I listened to him.”