The Winter Hill gang’s chief executioner confessed in court to murdering 20 people. For those crimes, he served a mere 12 years in prison and he now walks freely.

Becoming a government witness enabled John Martorano to get off with this wildly disproportionate sentence. Of this arrangement, Donald Stern, the former U.S. Attorney in Boston, says: “The only thing worse than this deal was not doing this deal.”

As a result of his sharing of information, Martorano is credited with having helped to expose the most corrupt law enforcement ever found in Boston. For years, a trusted FBI agent kept members against them.

All of this grisly news I learned from an interview with Mortorano this summer on Sixty Minutes, the CBS television program that has retained its popularity for decades. Had I been alert, I could have seen the same program last January when it was first broadcast.

If you have any desire to witness what evil can look and sound like, I recommend watching this interview. It continues to amaze me how this one man managed to talk about his multiple murders as if he were discussing his golf scores.

Dressed in business suit and tie, the now 67-year-old Martorano comes across as almost respectable. His mien, however, suggests deadly seriousness as he looks back over a lifetime spent in mortal crime. Only once does he show a slight smile. “You seem cold,” says interviewer Steve Kroft toward the end.

He talks with Kroft while displaying perfect sang-froid, this cool composure preserved throughout. Describing how he dispatched his victims, he tells of shooting them between the eyes “or around them.” However, he was not entirely consistent, since his very first victim he took care of with a knife rather than his preferred firearm.

“I always thought I was doing the right thing,” he says as if in tribute to some code of ethics, however perverted. Martorano actually prides himself in not having killed for money or having betrayed his fellow criminals by ratting on them.

The only reason he turned government witness was that gang leaders were giving information about him to the authorities. He regards this action as the basest form of dishonesty.

Thus he feels chagrin at Whitey Bulger, the leader of the gang, who has managed to elude his stalkers across continents. Asked if he would murder again, Martorano says no, but the thought of getting at Whitey would clearly put that resolution to the test.

What Martorano said on television about himself as a Catholic drew my special attention. He told of going to confession for the first time in some 30 years.

On this occasion, he confessed to a priest the murders he had committed. When this recital finished, the priest asked him what penance he thought appropriate.

After Martorano had nothing to suggest, the priest assigned him ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers, adding “and don’t do it again.”

This penance will undoubtedly trouble both Catholics and others. It will perhaps remind them of the U.S. Attorney’s secular deal recommending a 12-year prison sentence for 20 confessed murders.

My fascination with this whole Martorano saga may strike you as weird. Is it not prurient to take an interest in such a thug, responsible for unspeakable crimes against human beings?

Well, yes, but the mystery of evil holds for me an abiding attraction. I am especially focused on how, in later life, those guilty of horrendous crimes manage to live with the memory of what they have done.

The question has arisen lately with the FBI’s claim that the anthrax killer was Bruce Ivins, a microbiologist employed by the federal government.

Committing suicide was apparently the way he dealt with the accusation that he was responsible for the deaths of five people, and the punishment that would have awaited him had he lived. Evidence shows him to have been a person with some serious mental health problems.

Others involved in the killing of multiple victims may resort to what one scholar calls “psychic numbing.” This inner refusal to face the fact of what they did can be seen as allowing them to go on living lives that, on the surface, may look altogether ordinary.

My religious tradition inclines me to believe in the availability of divine forgiveness no matter how horrible the crime. Hitler and Stalin presumably qualified (if they were interested.)

But that belief does not imply freedom from earthly effects flowing from crime. Killers can incur punishment down below, whether at the hands of civil authority or from guilt gnawing at them inside.

Where this leaves John Martorano I do not pretend to know. His religious reconciliation would certainly have more public credibility were he now engaged in some form of community service. On the other hand, what agency would ever accept him?

Richard Griffin