John "Sonny" Franzese was a legendary figure in the American Mafia whose life spanned nearly the entire 20th century. Born in 1917 and dying in 2020, he became the oldest mobster in history. He kept ties with all the iconic members of La Cosa Nostra and became one of them himself.
Sonny was fully immersed in the life of a mobster and followed its rules without exception. He is rightly considered one of the most resilient criminals who never cooperated with the authorities, no matter how many years of imprisonment he was threatened with. He always stayed true to his choice, and he would pay for it with prison terms that eventually ran into several decades.
During his long life, he managed to do many things. He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. He helped introduce Bob Marley to the world. He sponsored the highest-grossing pornographic film ever made in the genre.
His story is not just a retelling of a gangster's life. It is a retrospective look at a major part of American Mafia history through the lens of one man. He saw how the older guys rose from bootlegging alcohol, participated in the transformation of La Cosa Nostra into the dominant crime organization of the 20th century, and finally watched the decline of his organization.
John was born in 1917 during a family trip back home to Naples. His parents almost immediately moved back to New York City, where he spent his childhood. His father, Carmine Franzese, was connected with crime, most likely belonging to the Brooklyn Camorra. In the legal sector, he was a successful businessman who owned 18 houses, a bar, and a bakery.
John's story is not from rags to riches. He was never in the dirt. But it is also not a story of a father sending his children to the best schools. John grew up in the usual environment of Brooklyn at that time, not the best place to become a law-abiding citizen.
John spent his entire adolescence in street fights. He even got into underground fist fights. If you believe his own words, he was an excellent fighter who very rarely lost. It was because of a fight that John was expelled from high school at the age of 14.
In its place, he was apparently sucked into crime. If you believe the legend, it was around the same time that he committed his first murder. Carmine tried to get him a legal job at his bakery, but Sonny found a better job when he turned 18, managing one of the floating dice games in Brooklyn. They were called floating because they were held at different locations each time, making it harder for police to track them.
Around the same time, Sonny was accepted into the Profaci family, later known as the Colombo family. His trouble with the law started simultaneously. By 21, he had already been arrested three times. In all cases, he received no jail time. He would go on to have dozens of arrests until the 1960s, successfully dealing with all of them and remaining free.
Sonny took a brief break only when the US entered World War II and he volunteered. During training, Franzese acted as if he had never left Brooklyn. He constantly fought with people and had a fling with the wife of a major. Just before being sent to the front, he was discharged as unreliable. In the documents, the reason was given as pronounced homicidal tendencies, which wasn't far from the truth.
He would later tell a secret informant that he had killed a lot of people in his lifetime, not five or 10 guys. Authorities speculated the number of hits Franzese took part in went over 50.
As an enforcer, Sonny was a very tough guy with an intimidating reputation. More often than not, just a stern look was enough for the other guy to know that fighting was useless. Sonny was careful to make sure people could not even open their mouths with a disrespectful tone in his direction.
For example, he sold a car to a dealership. The owner, when presenting it to buyers, joked that they should check the car for bugs because it was driven by Franzese. Sonny found out and took it as an insult. He lived in a decent neighborhood where not many people knew what he was up to, and such jokes could raise questions. The owner of the center was beaten up by several guys and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
By the late 1950s, Sonny was considered one of the toughest guys in the Colombo family. When the Gallo brothers revolted and kidnapped several people, he was one of the negotiators on behalf of boss Joe Profaci. In the early 1960s, there was a war between the Gallo brothers faction and the Profaci faction. Joe Profaci died, and his successor Joe Magliocco continued the war. Joe Colombo eventually took over and negotiated an end to the conflict. Franzese was promoted to captain.
Sonny not only survived the clan war but also built his criminal business network. From running dice games, Sonny went on to patronize four bookmakers who brought in about $80,000 a week. Franzese provided them with protection and assigned people to recover debts from losing customers.
Another form of income was usury. One time a bank employee came to him for a loan. The guy lost big from playing cards and urgently needed money. Franzese gave it to him but asked for a favor. The guy had to ensure that Sonny's people got loans at a favorable interest rate. Franzese's loan sharks took money from the bank at 5 percent interest and gave it out on the street at 15 percent. The difference went into their pockets and no one risked their money.
Sonny made money from labor unions. At that time on Long Island, about 7,000 barbers and hairdressers worked. Franzese unionized them all, calling it the Long Island Barbers Guild. Each member paid a $50 initiation fee and another $10 monthly. The barbers received no special privileges. Most joined under threats of physical violence.
Sonny broke into the music business. He opened a small booking agency and began helping unknown performers get work in bars and clubs in New York. He had a hand in launching the careers of Sammy Cook, Johnny Nash, and the Supremes. It could be said that Franzese helped introduce Bob Marley to the world. It was Sonny who gave initial capital to producer Danny Sims, who found Marley.
Franzese was also an unspoken partner in several recording studios such as Kama Sutra Records, Buddha Records, and Capitol Records. Don't think he was the kind of good uncle who pulled unknown musicians out of oblivion. Musicians were squeezed dry and left for ruin. They were used to make as much money as possible and then thrown out. If a musician found out about it and wanted to leave, then often said musician was hung upside down from the top floor window or put in the hospital after a beating.
The most unconventional activity where Franzese made money was the porn industry. He sponsored the most lucrative pornographic movie in history, called Deep Throat. It became possible when in 1964 the US Supreme Court ruled that all pornography except for special forms was protected by the First Amendment. This immediately caused an upsurge in everything related to porn.
The big man in this field in New York was Marty Hodas. His peep show establishments brought in staggering profits. From one salon, Hodas received about $1.5 million a year, equivalent to $10 million in today's money. Naturally, he couldn't help but be noticed by the mob.
Sonny started by asking Hodas to be his partner. Marty said no. Then came the psychological terror. First, Franzese's men broke into Hodas's house. Then Sonny's men kidnapped Marty's son. The boy was 6 years old. He was taken in the afternoon while walking off the school bus and returned in the evening with a note saying that Hodas should think twice. There were also attempts to kidnap Hodas's 12-year-old daughter, which failed, but Marty decided to give in.
Franzese entered Hodas's business on these terms. Marty paid him $100,000 in portions of $4,000 a week and then $100 a week on a regular basis. Hodas was forced to open all new establishments in a 50-50 partnership with Sonny.
The 1960s were a golden age for Sonny. He was making a lot of money, had unquestioned street credibility, and the numerous arrests never held up. Sonny was an all-star in clubs and bars. He could easily get into the Copacabana through the back door and ask to be seated at a crowded club table right next to the stage. No one dared to defy him.
Famous actors or singers would come up to say hello. Female celebrities would gladly share a bed with him. At different times he had flings with the two main sex symbols of the mid-20th century, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.
The clout that Franzese gained gave advantages in the form of money, women, and power, but also created a huge problem called law enforcement. After all, the bigger the fish, the greater the desire to catch it.
By the late 1950s, Sonny was a rising star in the Mafia scene. He was both a tough guy who could do the dirty work and a successful breadwinner, bringing in tons of money. His ascent coincided with the time when US authorities went after the Mafia.
First the meeting in 1957 in Apalachin made national headlines. Then in 1963 defector Joe Valachi testified and confirmed the existence of La Cosa Nostra and told how it was organized. His testimony was watched by the whole country. The hunt for the main members began and would last for several decades.
Franzese was among the first whom the authorities wanted to get. The authorities started talking to informants, and one by one they began to state that Sonny was one of the most powerful men in the Colombo family. In particular, this characterization was given by defector Joe Valachi and confidential informant Gregory Scarpa.
Law enforcers soon included Franzese in their unspoken list of gangsters on whom more effort and resources were spent to catch. The authorities bugged his house while it was being built. They put bugs in the walls. They regularly went through his trash, but they never got anywhere. Franzese skillfully evaded surveillance. He never discussed business at home or on the phone. He was extremely cautious.
Did that stop the authorities? Of course not. They brought up old cases. They started arresting Franzese's partners. In 1964, Ernest Rupolo was found dead. The authorities tried to blame his death on Franzese. Franzese was eventually acquitted.
Rupolo had a wife named Eleanor. After his death, she married a robber named John Cordero. He went into business with James Smith, Charles Zaher, and Richard Parks. In 1965, the four began working on tips for Sonny. They later claimed that Franzese personally met with them and gave them instructions.
The authorities decided to build a case. The trial lasted five weeks. The prosecution pressed the point that Sonny was the mastermind behind the planning of numerous robberies. The defense argued that the witnesses were coerced into testifying. The jury gave a guilty verdict. Numerous appeals followed, but the verdict stood. Sonny received 50 years in prison. The robbers got 5 years each.
He would go to prison in 1970. He was put in Leavenworth Penitentiary, where from the first days he was regularly visited by FBI agents offering him a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation, but he refused the deal every time. In prison, Sonny quickly took a leadership position among the other members of La Cosa Nostra who were serving time there.
Meanwhile, his wife Tina and their son Michael were trying to get him out of prison. The opportunity came unexpectedly. Eleanor, the wife of the robber who testified against Franzese, had a fight with her husband. During this quarrel, he almost killed her. Michael sent a man to her to convince her to testify that Cordero and the others had lied at the trial. Eleanor agreed in exchange for $50,000.
The authorities found out about the conspiracy before Eleanor testified. She told them herself. This did not stop Sonny's wife. One reporter named Manny Toppel agreed to independently investigate and eventually concluded that Franzese's guilt was weakly proven. His words, coupled with Sonny's exemplary behavior in prison, finally allowed Franzese to be released on parole in 1978.
Sonny would then repeatedly receive multiple years in prison for probation violations. Almost always the reason was his encounters with other criminal entities. He would get out, do something for a few years, then the authorities would see him with the wrong person and Sonny would go back to jail.
Once outside, Franzese immediately returned to his criminal endeavors. For the authorities, he worked at a car dealership owned by his son, Michael. He was in the Mafia just like his father. Soon thereafter, Sonny helped solve a problem and then turned Lawrence Iorizzo along with his partner David Bogatin over to his son Michael, who went into partnership with them in a gasoline tax scam.
In brief, the crooks created a fake wholesale company and sold gasoline to gas stations with the tax already included in the price. Then they buried their one-day enterprise and all taxes were taken into their pockets rather than transferred to the state. Doing this, the crooks earned millions of dollars a month.
Michael engaged in this scam until the mid-1980s, but he eventually got caught, receiving a 10-year prison sentence in 1986. That was the first betrayal. That's when Sonny got one of the two hardest hits of his life. Michael made a deal with the authorities and testified.
By all means, Michael should have been killed. As whistleblower Gregory Scarpa claimed, Carmine family boss Persico did indeed write out the contract to kill him. But as people close to Sonny said, he managed to convince Persico to keep Michael alive. Rumor has it he went to the commission asking that they sway Persico. In return, Michael would give up the lion's share of all his stashed money from the gasoline scam. A life was bought for tens of millions of dollars.
The second betrayal came from another son. Sunny himself lived in his usual routine. He got out, violated parole, went away for a couple of years, then did it all over again. When he was in prison, his main link to the outside world was his own son, John Franzese Jr.
Outwardly, he resembled his father very much, but in character, he was far from him. John was a hardcore drug addict. For a long time, he lived in a brothel, stole things from his mother's house, and appeared to his parents only when things got out of hand. One day, she gave him a new Jaguar after rehab. He sold it for a tenth of what it was worth and went on a month-long trip to the drug house.
When his father began to trust him more in business, John stopped going to the drug house, and his periods of sobriety began to outweigh his time on drugs. While his father was in jail, John collected money from the establishments under his control.
In the '90s, John fell back into his old drug life. He was eventually caught stoned in a car with an unregistered gun. He pleaded guilty and got a year in jail. During his sentence, John had time to think hard about his life, because he later accepted an offer to cooperate with the FBI.
That's how John became a confidential informant. At first, he just relayed the information he heard. Then he agreed to wear a wire. Sonny, not knowing what his son's changes were related to, thought that he had finally cleaned up and could be pulled into the family business. Except that all those family matters were now being taped and sent straight to the FBI. John worked for the government until 2006 and then disappeared into the witness protection program.
It's impossible to even imagine how a father would feel when his other son became a traitor as well. As a result, at 90-plus years old, Franzese was back in court on racketeering and extortion charges. John and another informant gave authorities enough to put Sonny behind bars again.
The trial of a 90-year-old racketeer who personally goes and shakes down a pizza parlor and a strip club was a very unusual sight. Add to that the fact that his own son testified against him and you get a Hollywood-sized drama. The judge gave him an 8-year sentence.
Everyone thought Sonny would die in prison. But he got out in 2017, becoming the oldest inmate in the federal prison system. He spent the last years of his life in a nursing home. He forgave his sons and told his grandchildren to stay out of crime. Franzese just believed there was no more money in it, so it hardly had anything to do with remorse.
He died in 2020. Neither John nor Michael attended the funeral. This was the story of John "Sonny" Franzese, the last true old-school mobster.