As the murder stories went on, Martorano gradually got into the ways that Whitey and Flemmi pulled Connolly into their schemes, or he pulled them into his. For some of it, Martorano simply wasn’t in a position to know, since he hadn’t been aware of Connolly’s role. Later on, he would have a clearer idea. But for the Castucci murder, only we could see the full story of what went down.
Joe McDonald had been a Winter Hill pal who’d helped Martorano out on a number of his murders—including Indian Al’s—as a spotter or a driver or, once or twice, a killer. But he had his own activities, and when he realized he’d been indicted for some of them, he skipped town and hid out in New York City. Since he had helped Martorano plenty, Martorano gave him the name of a hustler up in Revere who maybe could help him find a crash pad in the city.
Richard Castucci owned a few nightclubs in Revere, and he gambled and did some booking on the side. When Bulger and Flemmi heard about the Castucci connection, they freaked. They screamed at Martorano to get McDonald out of there right away, because Castucci was an FBI snitch. They never said how they knew, of course, and Martorano didn’t ask. He assumed that it was just another piece of information that Flemmi and Bulger had access to because of their connections.
Once Bulger and Flemmi had acknowledged that they knew Castucci was talking to the feds, they had to make clear that they weren’t in league with him, and they did it in a very dramatic way. When Castucci came around to collect some gambling debts from the Winter Hill group, Flemmi and Bulger asked to meet him in an apartment down the street. There, Whitey asked Castucci to take a seat at a card table. He’d piled up a good stack of money there.
“Go on, count it,” Whitey told him. Castucci did as he was told; Whitey pulled up a chair across from him. Castucci was still counting when Martorano came up behind him with a thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver. When Castucci wheeled around, Martorano shot him in the back of the head, behind the ear. They shoved the body into Castucci’s car, drove it to a mall in Revere, and left it there in the parking lot.
Martorano did that one. But the FBI had a hand in it, too. For we learned later that the feds had lured Castucci into informing by lying to him. Through his nightclubs, Castucci was a low-level wannabe who developed some celebrity connections, such as Sammy Davis Jr. That made him someone the FBI would like to know better. When the feds had nothing on him that they could use to turn him, they made something up. They whispered to him that his wife was having an affair with a major drug dealer, Michael Caruana. Castucci was never the most stable guy, and the FBI figured the news would throw him. Maybe he’d kill Caruana; maybe he’d shoot his wife. Either way, the FBI could make use of the results. Or the feds could simply make themselves seem like Castucci’s friends, telling him important facts he wouldn’t have known otherwise. Whichever, they’d get some information from him in return. And they did, and they let Bulger and Flemmi know, and Castucci paid for it with his life.
With the Martorano debriefing, the killing went on and on. There was the murder of Jimmy O’Toole in 1973, after he’d said he wanted to kill Steve Flemmi and Howie Winter for their role in the gang wars. Flemmi took him out with a carbine, Martorano followed with a spurt of machine-gun fire, and Joe McDonald finished him off with a bullet in his brain. Edward Connors talked too much about the O’Toole hit, so Bulger tracked him to a pay phone where Connors was waiting for a call, and opened fire.