John "Sonny" Franzese was born on February 6, 1919, as Giovanni Carmine Franzese, which was his true name. It is said that Sonny was born on the ship while en route from Naples, Italy, to Ellis Island, New York.
Sonny grew up and resided for the first 30 years of his life in a three-story apartment house in Brooklyn's Greenpoint section. In 1942, he married a girl named Ann Schiller, and they had three children together before they later divorced.
He got married a second time to a young nightclub hostess named Christina Capo Bianco, who went by the name Tina. She had a young son from a previous marriage whom Sonny adopted, and she and Sonny had three other children together.
By 1961, the Franzese family relocated to the exclusive and newly built Hamilton Park section of Roslyn on Nassau's North Shore. Sonny and Tina, with their seven children in tow, were now firmly settled into suburbia.
Sonny was a health nut who started a steady exercise regimen even before the Jack LaLanne era of the 1950s. Since the early 1940s, he had been taking vitamins every day, and by the 1960s he was known to consume up to 20 odd vitamins daily.
Sonny was a diet-conscious, calorie-counting hood who watched his food intake religiously. He also kept fit by regularly lifting weights and dumbbells in his home basement, long before it became in vogue.
He never smoked cigarettes or drank alcoholic beverages, even though he frequented known bars and nightclubs his entire life. He typically always drank club soda, and only in the private company of a few of his most trusted personal crew members would he occasionally have a single glass of red wine during the course of a night out. He never wanted to be out of control or vulnerable while out in public.
After he was finally incarcerated for bank robbery conspiracy in 1970, it was later widely reported by fellow mob guys and prison officials that during his time behind bars Sonny had become the handball champ at Leavenworth federal prison, where he was jailed. He later garnered that same championship status on the handball courts at Otisville and several other prisons where he was jailed.
Back when he was a child first growing up in Greenpoint, Sonny had been the youngest son born to Carmine "Turi the Lion" Franzese. His father was an early associate of the Camorra, a Naples-based criminal organization then operating from downtown Brooklyn around the Navy Yards.
Turi the Lion was associated with Neapolitan hoodlums such as Vito Genovese, who was said to be an early idol and mentor of Sonny's. Vito's top aide Michael "Mike" Miranda and Antonio "Tony the Chic" Carillo, the Camorrista, were all later inducted as Mafia members after Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Calabrese factions formally joined together as one organization.
Although his father was technically affiliated with the Neapolitan Genovese faction, Sonny was befriended as a young man by the top capodecina overseeing his Greenpoint neighborhood for family boss Giuseppe "Joe" Profaci. That man was a highly respected Sicilian mafioso named Sebastiano "Buster" Aloi.
After observing how the tough young hoodlum conducted himself within the neighborhood, Aloi eventually took Franzese under his wing, putting him on record with the Profaci borgata, which was then the preeminent Cosa Nostra family operating within that section of the borough. The Profaci family shared the territory with members of the Bonanno family.
As Sonny grew in stature and reputation, faithfully serving Buster Aloi and the Profaci family as required of him, Aloi eventually proposed Sonny for formal induction. This was thought to have been by the time Sonny had reached his late 20s or early 30s. He was accepted into the family ranks shortly thereafter.
First establishing himself within Brooklyn's underworld, Sonny originally operated out of the Miami Bar, a local neighborhood gin mill he co-owned with his older brother Mike. In 1954 or 1955, when he was about 35, he was said to have been elevated to capodecina status and put in charge of his own regime.
Several soldiers were then assigned to him by the Profaci family. In addition, he later proposed several close friends for formal induction into his crew as well. As a side note, some sources say Sonny became a capo in 1962, but this is incorrect. The year 1962 may be when law enforcement first learned about it, but Sonny had been a capo for several years already by that time.
By the late 1950s, Sonny had gained a notorious reputation as a top torpedo for the Brooklyn underworld. Prosecutors once claimed in open court that law enforcement suspected Franzese had committed an estimated 30 to 50 gangland killings during his fast rise to the top of the crime family.
By the early 1960s, he was being closely watched by police and regularly hauled in for questioning by both local and federal law enforcement agencies. Sonny had also become one of the top racket figures in New York City.
His home base became the Jackson Heights section of Queens. At that time, the area of Queens was known as a top entertainment capital for New York City, second only to Midtown Manhattan itself.
Franzese was said to be silent partners with Genovese family capo Frank Funzitieri in the Orchid Room in Jackson Heights. He also held interests in the popular Sorrento's Italian restaurant, also located in Jackson Heights, and the flamboyant Nightclub of Queens Village, which was another top Queens County night spot at the time.
By 1962, after he relocated out to Nassau County, Franzese invested in his most popular nightclub venture yet, the famous San Su San in Mineola. It featured top-tier entertainers such as Jimmy Roselli, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra Jr. Over the next decade, everybody who was anybody frequented the San Su San.
Among other legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses Franzese was thought to have held ownership interest in over the years, aside from nightclubs, bars, and restaurants, were dry cleaners, trucking companies, entertainers, and professional prize fighters, and more. He was partners with promoter Norby Walters in a top Manhattan-based talent agency. Norby's father, known as "Soldier Major," had been a close friend and business associate of Sonny's for years.
By the mid-1960s, Sonny was elevated to the underboss position by boss Joe Colombo. He had arguably also become the number one target of every law enforcement agency in the greater New York City area and the nation for that matter, including the FBI, which at that time was headed by J. Edgar Hoover.
Sonny and his personal crew of men had grown to become the largest regime in the entire Profaci-Colombo family and one of its most deadly. They operated extensively throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau and Suffolk County on Long Island.
In fact, Sonny was largely credited by law enforcement with having expanded the Brooklyn-based family's influence into Queens and Long Island. At the time, the island was untapped fertile territory for the mob, and the Joseph Colombo family soon became the largest mob group operating in those areas.
By 1968, Franzese had also reputedly infiltrated the Times Square flesh industry. Later he would also be credited, along with fellow Colombo family soldier Anthony "Fat Tony" Peraino, of being the behind-the-scenes principles of the infamous porno movie Deep Throat, which starred Linda Lovelace.
By 1963, it seemed that Sonny was getting his name printed in the local newspapers nearly every other day. He and his associates were now under intense law enforcement surveillance and were being investigated or arrested on a regular basis for high-profile racket activities.
All this adverse publicity would eventually culminate with several very extensive articles and exposes being written about him, including in Life Magazine. John "Sonny" Franzese instantly became the most publicized underworld figure in the United States.
He was a John Gotti of an era. He was Gotti before Gotti was even Gotti. Nobody but nobody was more notorious than Sonny. It automatically made him Public Enemy Number One among every law enforcement agency in the country.
Sonny's criminal record started back in 1938, and over an 80-year span he was convicted on numerous offenses, including contempt of court, bookmaking, bank robbery conspiracy, six parole violations, and a RICO conspiracy. Additionally, he was held without bail several times when charged with murder and other serious crimes. Sonny served a total of about 40 years of his life in prison.
At his zenith, Franzese oversaw a huge crew rivaling that of a small LCN family, which literally numbered into the hundreds. This was in addition to his other duties as the underboss of the Colombo family.
As both federal authorities and mob figures alike recognized, Sonny controlled a virtual army within an army, consisting of bookmakers, gamblers, loan sharks, extortionists, truck hijackers, thieves, strong-arm men, enforcers, union officials, labor racketeers, and much more. Sonny and his crew were into nearly everything, from extortion and shakedowns to bookmaking, police bribery, gasoline tax bootlegging, and more.
The one exception was drugs. Sonny was never known to mess around in the drug business, but pretty much everything else was on the table and fair game.
His personal core crew, consisting of his closest confidants, friends, and mob associates, easily numbered 40 to 50 quality capable men. This core membership was mostly based in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island and owed their sole allegiance to Sonny and Sonny alone.
It was a fact not lost on the rest of the Colombo hierarchy. Family boss Joseph Colombo and later succeeding boss Carmine Persico both cast a respectful but wary eye on the massive size of Sonny's personal crew and were fearful of Franzese's true underworld power.
The original Franzese crew operated from approximately 1950 to 1985. It was comprised of men who were all close associates of Franzese. The FBI and U.S. Justice Department later said all of them were eventually formally inducted into the Mafia ranks through the years as the membership books allowed.
Some of these inducted men included Joseph "Little Joey" Brancato, Dominic "Mimi" Ciailo, Joseph "JoJo" Vitacco, John "Johnny Irish" Matera, Sonny's son Michael, Sonny's nephew Carmine "Tutti" Franzese, Anthony "Tony D." DeGazio, and others.
In addition to so-called soldiers, other significant crew associates through the years included such hoodlums as Felice "Philly Cigars" Visari, Dominic Santoro, Sonny's brothers Michael Franzese and Onofrio "Nufio" Franzese, Frank Gianpoli, Albert Mayon, and many, many more.
Through the decades, an overwhelming majority of his closest men either passed away, were killed gangland style, got reassigned to other regimes, or chose to shift to different families altogether. Unfortunately, by the early 2000s, the aging underboss was basically left without a solid crew.
As he got older and reached his mid-80s, it forced him to accept complete strangers and other untested men into his inner circle. This weakening of his regime allowed the FBI to introduce informants such as Gaetano "Guy" Fatato and other underworld traders to gain Sonny's confidence. But back in the good old days in the trenches, Sonny knew no such betrayals among his men. They were a very loyal crew.
Sonny and his crew certainly had quite a few exploits in their belts. In 1955, crew member JoJo Vitacco was investigated and hauled in for the suspected double murder of two gangland truck hijacking figures. They were bludgeoned, hacked apart, and found in a car parked on a Lower East Side street. As Vitacco's capo, Sonny was suspected of having ordered the hits. The charges were eventually dismissed.
In 1962, Sonny and several other crew members, including Frank Gianpoli, were picked up for trying to extort beauty parlors in Queens County. Franzese and his minions were accused of releasing mice and swarms of bees into targeted beauty shops to scare away screaming women customers in order to ultimately coerce beauty shop owners into paying him weekly protection money. These charges were also dismissed.
In 1964, Sonny and several of his close pals, including Dominic Santoro, Charlie Monk, and others, were investigated for their push into various nightclubs and restaurants throughout Queens and Nassau counties. They were suspected of shakedowns and extortion in an attempt to obtain control or hidden ownership of these establishments. Although a grand jury was later impaneled to investigate these allegations, law enforcement again failed to make a solid case, and formal charges were never brought against him.
In 1966, Franzese was suspected of being a behind-the-scenes conspirator after his bodyguard and driver, John Matera, was one of five men arrested for a brazen armed robbery of nearly 100 safe deposit boxes at the plush Harbor Island Spa hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Authorities said over 2 million dollars in jewels and cash were stolen, none of which was ever recovered. At the time, it was recorded as being the largest cash heist in Florida's history. Sonny was never charged, but Matera ended up getting a life sentence after conviction.
Also in 1966, Sonny, Matera, William Crabb, and others were arrested, indicted, and later went to trial for the gangland execution of a notorious underworld hitman turned informer named Ernest "Ernie the Hawk" Rupolo. After mysteriously disappearing, Rupolo's body washed ashore in Jamaica Bay several weeks later.
Police said it was a textbook gangland rubout. An autopsy later revealed that Rupolo had been repeatedly shot, stabbed, and gutted. His body was then wrapped in heavy motorcycle chains and attached to several cement blocks at the ankles, then it was dropped into Jamaica Bay in Queens. But despite his stomach and lungs having been ripped open so he wouldn't float, Rupolo's body still popped up anyway.
After a highly publicized trial, Sonny and company were acquitted of all the charges. Years earlier, Rupolo had testified against Mafia boss Vito Genovese for the murder of Ferdinand "The Shadow" Boccia. Some said that Sonny had a special extra incentive to kill Rupolo as a favor to his dear friend and underworld idol. Authorities said that Sonny had allegedly orchestrated the murder with an artistic flair, toward perfection, since Vito, who died in prison in 1969, was watching admirably from the sidelines while serving prison time on a narcotics conviction.
As though this cavalcade of back-to-back criminal cases wasn't enough to bury any aspiring hoodlum, there was an even more infamous one that happened in that apparently golden year of 1966. Sonny, Matera, and several other members of his crew were accused by the FBI of operating a ring that had robbed banks in various states across the country, including New York, Utah, and Massachusetts.
Sonny was specifically charged with multiple counts of bank robbery conspiracy. But unlike all of his other arrests and accusations, this one was different. Much different.
The entire complexity and depth of this case is way too voluminous to be explained properly here, but this is the criminal case that would be Sonny's downfall. It has been said that this case was a complete frame-up of Sonny that was orchestrated by none other than FBI director J. Edgar Hoover himself.
It has been alleged that the U.S. Justice Department conspired with certain federal agents, federal prosecutors, and the federal judge who actually conducted Franzese's trial, and his later conviction was allegedly ordered from the highest levels of the federal government back in Washington, D.C. The bottom line is that John "Sonny" Franzese was getting way too big for his own good. Both law enforcement as well as several key members of the underworld wanted him out of the way.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was said to have been embarrassed by Franzese's high profile and seeming impunity from the law. He eventually ordered his agents to get Franzese at all costs. So they did.
Subsequently, in 1967, Sonny was tried and convicted on the robbery charge by a kangaroo court and sentenced to serve 50 years. After serving only nine years behind bars, he was able to make parole in late 1978.
But in the ensuing years, Sonny violated his parole at least six times, on minor technical violations. Any other parolee would have typically either not been violated or, in the alternative, would have served no more than three to nine months for what is termed technical violations, which is all Sonny was ever charged with. But Sonny Franzese was not a typical case.
So his alleged meetings with other men who had a criminal record was not considered a minor violation. It was repeatedly used by the U.S. Justice Department to bury him. Because of his notoriety, Franzese was always sentenced to serve at least two years incarceration. Several times he was sentenced to four years, and once to an unconscionable eight-year jail term, just for parole violations, which is almost unheard of. But in all those instances, not once until his last criminal arrest and subsequent parole violation had he ever been charged with being active in new criminal activity.
In 2008, the curtains seemed as if they were finally going to close on Sonny Franzese. Due to the use of several questionable informants, including his own son John Jr., the FBI was finally able to indict him as being the Colombo family underboss from approximately 2005 to 2010. He was charged with having supervised various gambling, loan sharking, and extortion activities on behalf of the family during that time period.
Basically, the FBI intended on making Sonny serve life imprisonment on the installment plan. It was a major RICO indictment that also included reputed acting boss Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli and 11 other family members and associates.
After a highly publicized trial, Sonny Franzese was convicted and later received an eight-year prison term, surely a death sentence for a 93-year-old man. It was a jail term that nobody in law enforcement or those on the streets ever thought Sonny would survive.
But whether it was due to a fabulous gene pool, he drew from all those vitamins he took religiously over the decades, his weekly regimen of handball, racquetball, and jogging, or possibly a combination of all of the above, coupled with an uncanny mental stamina, Sonny Franzese served his full sentence and later emerged from prison aided by a walker and wheelchair at the historic, very ripe old age of almost 100 years old.
Sonny was front-page news across the country, touted as the oldest prisoner in the federal prison system. If it wasn't so tragic, it would have been funny. You certainly have to laugh and give him credit for literally outliving practically every local police detective, FBI agent, criminal prosecutor, trial judge, or parole officer who ever hounded him for practically his entire adult life.
At the golden age of nearly a century old, Sonny became the living embodiment of all that the life ever was or was ever supposed to be. In his twilight years, Sonny also had to endure the tremendous embarrassment and shame of having two of his sons, Michael and John Jr., go bad, as mob terminology goes, by cooperating with law enforcement. They each became underworld informants and repeatedly testified against their former Mafia associates.
Yet Sonny's reputation has stood the test of time to this very day. He is still one of the most revered racket bosses ever. John "Sonny" Franzese died on February 23, 2020. He was 101 years old.