In a soft voice that showed no emotion, an admitted captain in the Lucchese crime family testified yesterday that he carried out orders to murder several men, including a construction union official.

The witness, Peter Chiodo, appeared in the racketeering-murder trial of Vittorio Amuso, who is charged with heading the Lucchese family and authorizing nine murders. The trial began this week in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

Mr. Chiodo, known as Big Pete or Fat Pete, earned his nickname because of his 6-foot 5-inch frame and his massive weight, which has varied from about 450 to 550 pounds. It was third time in the last year that Mr. Chiodo has testified in an organized crime case.

Mr. Chiodo said yesterday that another Lucchese leader, Anthony Casso, told him to kill the union official, John (Sonny) Morrissey, while Mr. Amuso listened to the order being given in 1989.
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"Sonny Morrissey had to be taken care of and clipped," Mr. Chiodo quoted Mr. Casso as telling him. The reason, he added, was that Lucchese leaders suspected Mr. Morrissey of cooperating with the authorities.

Mr. Chiodo testified that he lured Mr. Morrissey to a construction site in Jefferson Township, N. J., supposedly for a meeting with Mr. Amuso. Instead, he said, two gunmen were waiting.

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"It was a very secluded, heavily wooded area," Mr. Chiodo said, adding that he took Mr. Morrissey into a small construction office and then went outside.

"The next thing that happened was I heard four shots," Mr. Chiodo continued. He said he and the gunmen wrapped the body in a carpet, dug a hole in the ground and buried the victim. He added that he later reported to Mr. Casso, "The Morrissey thing was done." Testimony from a Wheelchair

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Mr. Amuso is the only defendant in the trial, because Mr. Casso is a fugitive. Mr. Morrissey, who was described as a Lucchese associate in Local 580 of the Architectural and Ornamental Ironworkers Union, was a missing defendant in the so-called windows trial last year. His body was not found until Mr. Chiodo began cooperating with authorities last summer.
Besides the Morrissey murder, Mr. Chiodo said he helped arrange at least four others, one ordered by Mr. Amuso and three by Mr. Casso. He said Mr. Amuso had him kill a rival gambler to help a Lucchese associate, Spyredon (Spiros) Velentzas, who "ran an extensive gambling operation in Astoria."

Mr. Chiodo, still recovering from an attempt to kill him, testified from a wheelchair, with his left arm wrapped in a brace and his right leg encased in a cast. His testimony began on Tuesday.

With jury members'eyes riveted on him, Mr. Chiodo described how two gunmen fired 12 bullets into him at a Staten Island gas station last year. He was in gas station to fix his car, he said, when a black sedan suddenly pulled up with two men who shot him. He fired back with a pistol, he said, but the assailants sped away.

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"I was shot, we believe, 12 times," he told the jury, adding that he was hit in the arms, legs, stomach, chest and neck. He said he believed that Mr. Amuso and Mr. Casso ordered him killed because "I had become a liability" after being arrested.

When a prosecutor, Charles E. Rose, asked if Mr. Chiodo saw any other Lucchese figure in the courtroom, he identified Mr. Amuso and pointed at him, adding, "He was the boss."