The Philadelphia Daily News
Dec.5, 1995
by Kitty Caparella
The life of a jailed mob writer has its drawbacks.
George Martorano has had to barter cookies for typing paper, cigarettes for ballpoint pens and ice cream bars for an artist's sketch for his manuscripts.
Probably the worst problem has been finding a typist. That is, next to having a typewriter that doesn't type commas and a few capital letters.
But after four novels and six screenplays, he's about to get his first novel, the semi-autobiographical "Pain Grows a Platinum Rose," published. And an independent producer is considering turning his third novel into a movie.
All this has been going on behind bars for the past 30 months. Martorano hopes to show the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and, most importantly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, that he has changed his life while in prison.
Today, his attorney, Creed C. Black, Jr., was to argue before a three-judge panel in Circuit Court that Martorano deserves a new trial, because of conflicts of interest by his ex-attorney Robert F. Simone.
Louis Pichini, who is chief of the U.S. attorney's criminal division and who prosecuted Martorano, is expected to oppose a new trial.
Simone was under FBI investigation for racketeering and income-tax evasion when he advised Martorano to plead guilty to operating a $75 million-a-year drug-trafficking network.
Acquitted of tax evasion, Simone later was convicted of racketeering and other charges for becoming an "unofficial consigliere" to then-mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo through the 1980s--when Simone was representing Martorano.
Martorano was advised he would get a 10-year sentence on the drug charges, but received life without parole. He won an earlier appeal, but was resentenced to the same term.
"I'm not the person I was. I worked hard to change. If they would give me a chance, they would see that. As far as the streets are concerned, it's over with," said Martorano, son of jailed mobster Raymond "LongJohn" Martorano.
(His father and mob associate Albert Daidone are awaiting a new trial in the 1980 murder of roofers Union Leader John McCullough.)
So passionate has the 45-year-old South Philadelphia native become about his writing that he taped a handwritten manuscript--his fourth novel--to his body while his prison was on alert to be evacuated during Hurricane Opal in early October.
"I couldn't bear to part with it," said Martorano.
Cornelius Van Dyke agreed to publish Martorano's "Platinum Rose" novel for Commonwealth Publications, a small Alberta, Canada, publishing house that will issue 85 books this year.
Van Dyke says the book is "overwhelmingly honest." "...It's almost eerie the way he uses the tools. He knows how to create suspense and tender moments. He seems to be able to go from one extreme to the other with little effort. I consider his work extremely professional," he said. "He's quite prolific, banging out two, three books a year."
Martorano had a lawyer in prison read over his contract. The attorney's fee: five packs of cigarettes. (He also asked a New Jersey attorney to review it.)
Van Dyke said Martorano received no advance money and would get only royalties based on a percentage of sales. The book is due to be published in March.
His third novel, "Muddy Angels," is under consideration for a movie by Open Eye Productions, a Philadelphia independent production company. Said Open Eye producer Nathan Solomon: "We're eagerly awaiting the screenplay," which Martorano just adapted from the novel.
His characters are uniquely his own, drawn from his imagination and real-life experiences of legendary mobsters he's researched.
Many come from his days growing up in the Bella Vista neighborhood in South Philadelphia.
His fourth novel features the infamous gangsters, the Lanzetti brothers, a landlady who poisoned her boarders and "gangster nuns" who shook down the mob for money.
As for hiring typists in prison: it costs one Dove bar a day.
"If they're drunks, if they gamble, if they spend all their money on smut books, I don't want them," says Martorano. "I gotta check them out.
"My first book, the typist got drunk and started running around naked and they locked him up...threw him in the hole."
Martorano couldn't figure out a temperamental artist. "He acted like he wasn't into it anymore," he said.
The problem: the commissary stopped stocking the nutrient bars the guy liked. "I had to argue with the commissary to get them back in so I can keep him happy.
"Seems like when people get to prison, they become children again," he said.
"I had to buy this other guy cigarettes to get 50-60 sheets at a time. We get this lined paper, but it's too thin. I don't like the texture," he said. He recently traded cookies for paper.
"I work on a desk top that is only a foot-and-a-half wide and use an iron chair with a piece of foam rubber to sit on in my cell."
Due to prison overcrowding, the noise became so loud he told prison officials: " 'I want to go to the hole to do the first write for six weeks' They wanted to send me to a psychiatrist. They told me, 'You're cracking up with this writing.'
" 'You don't understand,'  " I told them, ' I can't write with all this noise.' "

From Prison Life Magazine, June 1994
Georgie Martorano tells us he grew up in a middle-class home in South Philly: Dad owned a vending business; mom ran a dinner theater. Together they had three daughters and a son.
At age 15, Georgie dropped out of school to follow in his father's footsteps. After a decade of dealing in silver, Georgie grew restless and thought he'd go for the gold. He turned his entrepreneurial skills towards the high-risk venture of drug smuggling.
Suffice it to say that a three-year ride in the fast lane ended abruptly in a high-profile case, the result being life without parole.
For the next six years Georgie was bounced around, doing hard time in such gardens of paradise as the maximum wing at Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York (where he shared a cell with John Gotti in 1986), a two-year stint at Marion followed by a layover at Leavenworth, which brings us to his current place of residence, the FCI Marianna, a "soft-time joint," as Georgie calls it.
He's been at Marianna since 1989 and has made good use of the relaxed rules and a less hectic travel schedule. Actually, that's an understatement. Since he arrived at Marianna, Georgie's accomplishments include earning his G.E.D. (as well as a new lease on life) and mastering the craft of writing. In fact, he's written volumes.
It started with a few poems. Then a couple of short stories. With encouragement from family and friends, supplemented by creative writing classes with prison buddy Dennis Lehman, a former college professor, novelist and screenwriter, Georgie immersed himself in his new-found trade. Suddenly life had meaning. When the classes ended, Georgie managed to enlist Lehman as his personal tutor. "Our classroom was a corner of the prison yard with our backs against the wall," he says.
His first completed work was a 246-page screenplay called "Pie." Over the next few years he went on to write three more scripts, a comedy, "the Schoolin' Years," and two prison dramas, "Yellowing Kodaks" and "Hidden Sentence." Now he's working on his fifth screenplay, "Talladega," about a prison riot.
As any writer would attest, this is not ordinary or even above-average output. We're talking Stephen King pace. And given the hugely time-consuming way in which he's forced to work (writing the first in long hand, mailing it to a friend for typing and editing, followed by the return mail rigmarole, and then at last a final edit), It's a miracle he's completed a single piece of work. Funny how the unthinkable is actually doable when there's fire in the belly and a commitment to fuel it.
Though bars and razor wire still separate Georgie Martorano from the free world, he's managed to create a world that's worth getting up for. He's motivated by a desire to have his work produced on the silver screen. "It's not impossible. If other have done it, why can't I? So what if I do it in a prison cell rather than the free world."
That's right, Georgie. Keep on writing.

Even a tough guy can't resist a tender story
Friday, December 13, 2002
The Staten Island Advance
by Jill Gardiner
Little Santo Clemente rarely leaves his home in Huguenot. When he does, it is usually to go to the doctor.
Santo is severely allergic to sunlight, dust, grass, trees, mold, soap, and almost all foods.
The 4-year-old suffers from a rare "unknown "allergic  disorder , which makes his immune system hypersensitive and prevents him from doing almost everything.
But last night, during a star studded gathering at American Park, a restaurant in Lower Manhattan, actor James Gandolfini---aka Tony Soprano of the hit HBO TV series--presented Santo with a special suit designed to protect him from ultraviolet light, which means he'll be able to go outside and be around other people for the first time.
"I came down because I have a son the same age," said Gandolfini, who had a scruffy beard and was recovering from the flu. "When I heard that he couldn't go outside and play with other kids, I came."
"Can you imagine being a 4-year-old boy and not being able to do the normal things that you and I take for granted?" asked Kimberly Urguhart, president of the Sara Moody Foundation, the non-profit organization that arranged for Santo to get the suit. "This will change his life. It will help him go from the house to the car without breaking out in blisters and hives."
The $2,000 suit was paid for by two New Jersey high school groups and a New Jersey Rotary Club.
The suit, which resembles a jogging outfit, was designed by NASA to regulate body temperature for astronauts under space suits. It blocks out almost all ultraviolet light and comes with a cooling vest, gloves, a hood and goggles, all of which will help Santo lead a more normal life.
So far, life for Santo has been a series of doctor's appointments and medical obstacles. His mother, Angela Clemente, quit her job as a forensic evidence analyst and stays home with her son around the clock, making sure the house is scrubbed clean with lemon juice and baking soda.
Her son has his own refrigerator, his own utensils and special pots and pans to ensure that nothing he eats or touches is contaminated with something that would set off his allergies.
In addition to his primary diagnosis, he suffers from developmental delays, severe asthma and hundreds of deadly allergies that cause him to break out in painful hives and blisters.
Last night he was playful, zooming around in a silver toy car, but the bright light from the television cameras on hand was making him visibly uncomfortable and the invitation warned guests not to wear perfume and cologne.
"Every part of his life has to be controlled," Ms. Clemente said, ticking off the only seven foods he can tolerate and explaining how he gets the nutrients he needs from a dietary supplement. "He'll go into a semi-coma if he's in the sun too long. Now at least, we'll be able to go outside."
Ms. Clemente, a single mom who also has two teenage daughters, moved the family to Staten Island in July after finding an apartment that had its own heating and air-conditioning system (even an aroma wafting in through the ventilation can trigger a deadly allergic reaction). Her primary pediatrician is at Staten Island University Hospital, but she has dozens of specialists throughout the region.
Although her son's symptoms are similar to those of so-called "bubble-babies" who have weakened immune systems, his system is actually in overdrive. And while there are thousands of children who suffer from severe allergies and a fair number who cannot tolerate sunlight, Santo's condition remains "unknown"
His mother, who is co-writing a book about her son, said the first thing she is going to do once she gets Santo into his new suit is take him to the beach, a place he has visited only in the evening.