Meet Robert Palladino, DOB 1930. A hitman has to start somewhere, and this is the guy Johnny Martorano started with. Martorano, who eventually admitted to 20-plus slayings, killed this ex-con in November 1965 and dumped his body near North Station. According to some stories, he was  one of several potential witnesses to the slaying of a hooker in the Combat Zone barroom owned by Johnny Martorano’s father. John Jackson, a black bartender, was also rubbed out for the same reason. In his book My Life in the Mafia, Vinnie Teresa tells a different story.

 My Life In The Mafia

When Life magazine ran a piece about the Boston gang war in February 1967, including mugshots of all 40 of the victims up to that point, it used this photo of Robert Palladino’s corpse, under the Central Artery at North Station, as the first photo.