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For gang hangout, a divine rebirth

E-mail|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Michael Paulson October 2, 2008 03:40 PM

In today's Globe, Shelley Murphy, the paper's longtime chronicler of organized crime, reports that the onetime auto body shop that had functioned as the headquarters for a murderous gambling and loan-sharking gang is now going to be converted into a Pentecostal church:

"The infamous hangout of gun-toting gangsters in the 1970s will be born again - as a Pentecostal church. A preacher who bought the Marshall Street garage earlier this year from former gang leader Howie Winter said he plans to transform the building into the new home of the Somerville Church of God, which will open its doors in January. The planned transformation was greeted yesterday with amusement by several of the gang's former members as they reminisced about the old days. 'Hallelujah!' said John Martorano (right), a 67-year-old hitman-turned-government witness who confessed to killing 20 people - including one victim that he shot to death in the garage in 1974. 'I think it's great. I'm all for religion.'"

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Michael Paulson covers religion for The Boston Globe. He shared in the Pulitzer Prize in 2003, won the Mike Berger, Templeton and Supple awards in 2008, and is a four-time winner of the Wilbur Award.
E-mail mpaulson@globe.com.

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Harvey Cox, the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard University, marks his retirement by asserting a little-used right of his professorship -- to graze a cow in Harvard Yard. Photo, by Barry Chin of the Globe staff, taken on Sept. 10, 2009 in Cambridge, Mass.