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that you didn’t know what he looked like, and by mistake you shot Mr. Michael Milano?”
    â€œSomebody else said that was him.”
    â€œAnd you took that person’s word?” Casabielle said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat was enough for you to kill somebody?”
    â€œAt the time, yeah.”
    *   *   *
    A COUPLE of murders later, Casabielle brought up a guy named William O’Brien. The Hill had been looking for a tough ex-con named Ralph DeMasi, and O’Brien was driving him on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. They had just left a meeting at which they’d been trying to buy guns for the gang war in which the bartender had been killed a couple of weeks earlier. They were headed for South Boston to pick up O’Brien’s ten-year-old daughter Marie. It was her birthday, and he had a cake for her in the backseat of the car. But O’Brien never made it back to South Boston. A Winter Hill hit car pulled up alongside his and Johnny Martorano opened fire with a machine gun, killing O’Brien and wounding DeMasi.
    Casabielle asked Martorano about William O’Brien.
    â€œI didn’t know him. I was looking for the other guy that was with him.”
    â€œSo William O’Brien, again, was a mistake?”
    â€œIt could have been.”
    â€œWe are talking about somebody that was possibly innocent.”
    â€œHe was possibly guilty, too. They both showed up looking to buy guns to kill someone.”
    The O’Brien hit was one of at least five murders committed by the Winter Hill Gang in 1973–74, when they were settling a score for the Mafia with a rogue organized-crime crew. Martorano explained how the other gang, which the Hill completely destroyed, had started the war by killing an LCN bookie—“his name was Paulie,” Martorano said, “I forget his last name.”
    After the gang was wiped out, Johnny Martorano and Howie Winter went to the North End, and Jerry Angiulo, the Mafia underboss of Boston, gave them $25,000. But Johnny Martorano steadfastly maintained he never took money for killing people, not even from the Mafia and Jerry Angiulo.
    â€œThat was like a donation from him,” Martorano said of the $25,000, “for our help.”
    Then Casabielle mentioned a 1981 murder he did in Oklahoma for John Callahan, whom Johnny would murder in Florida a year later. Callahan gave Martorano $50,000 after he traveled to Oklahoma to murder the owner of Callahan’s former company, who had to die because he suspected Callahan had been skimming money from his jai-alai frontons.
    When he got the money, Johnny gave half of it—$25,000—to his driver on the hit, fellow Winter Hill fugitive Joe McDonald. Then he split the remaining $25,000 with Stevie and Whitey back in Boston. So Johnny Martorano had banked a little over $8,000 for his nineteenth murder.
    â€œWas that also a donation?” Casabielle asked.
    â€œPositively.”
    â€œWhat charity were they donating to?”
    â€œTo Winter Hill.”
    â€œAre you seriously telling this group of people that the money … was a contribution to Winter Hill, the Winter Hill charity? Is that your testimony?”
    â€œIt was a gift from him [Callahan]. He was so happy he didn’t get indicted. Better than giving it to a lawyer, I guess.”
    At that point Casabielle didn’t even bother to point out that a year after accepting the $50,000, Martorano killed the guy who had given it to him. Later Johnny would tell the jury he “felt lousy” about having to “kill a guy who I had just killed a guy for.”
    â€œIt was very distasteful,” he elaborated.
    Instead, Casabielle stayed with the larger theme of the Winter Hill gang as a charity, returning to the money the Hill accepted for wiping out a small rival gang for the Mafia.
    â€œAnd what good deeds did Winter Hill do other than kill people and feel good about it?”
    â€œI