Nick Sorrentino/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesColombo family mobster John “Sonny” Franzese pictured in 1966, not long before he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
More often than not, the life of a mobster is a short one. It takes a lot of smarts and even more luck to make it in the criminal underground — and John “Sonny” Franzese had both in spades.
Sonny Franzese rose through the ranks quickly, his name eventually becoming synonymous with some of the most violent — and lucrative — operations of the infamous Colombo family. But like any good gangster, Franzese knew how to keep his name away from any direct connection to the crimes he was committing.
He couldn’t evade the law forever, however. Sonny Franzese spent some time in prison starting in 1967, then got out on early release in 1978. Once he was free, it was business as usual for Franzese, and he would be re-jailed at least five more times for violating his parole. Undeterred, the mobster continued to run rackets into his 90s.
Finally, in 2011, Sonny Franzese was convicted of extortion after his own son testified against him. Though he would be given a sentence of eight years in prison, he would once again be released early in June 2017, just a few months after his 100th birthday. By some incredible stroke of luck — perhaps the same luck that had followed Franzese throughout his life — he lived for another three years, dying in a New York City hospital at the staggering age of 103.
This is the story of Sonny Franzese, one of the toughest and longest-serving mobsters of all time.
Wikimedia CommonsOne of John Franzese’s many mugshots. Though he lived to the age of 103 before dying in 2020, he was put behind bars many times.
Sonny Franzese Begins His Life Of Crime With The Colommbo Family
Sonny Franzese was born on February 6, 1917 in Naples, Italy to Carmine Franzese and Maria Corvola. Interestingly, his parents had already immigrated to the United States by that time, but they happened to be visiting Italy when their son was born. Six months later, they were back in Brooklyn.
Carmine Franzese ran a bakery, but his son wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. Instead, he would fall into a life of crime and solidify his own legacy as one of New York’s most powerful mobsters.
Public DomainJoe Profaci, longtime boss of what would eventually come to be known as the Colombo crime family.
In the 1930s, Sonny Franzese started working under Joe Profaci, one of New York’s most powerful Mafia bosses and the man in charge of what was then the Profaci crime family, which would later come to be known as the Colombo family.
Franzese was 21 when he was arrested for the first time on charges of assault in 1938. His violent inclinations didn’t cease there. A few years later, during World War II, the New York Times reports that he was discharged from the Army due to his “homicidal tendencies.” A few years after that, in 1947, his name appeared in court papers in relation to the rape of a waitress.
Meanwhile, Franzese was back working for the Colombo crime family. In the ensuing decades, Sonny Franzese cemented his reputation as one of New York’s flashiest and most fearsome mobsters.
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How John Franzese Helped “Glamorize” The Mafia
While participating in a slew of criminal activities including racketeering, loansharking, and murder, Sonny Franzese lived a glamorous lifestyle. Franzese was a well-dressed regular at the Copacabana nightclub, where he spent lavishly and befriended the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra.
Wikimedia CommonsSonny Franzese (left) with famous boxer Rocky Graziano (center).
“He is largely responsible for the glamorization of the Mafia over the past century,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Cristina Posa after his 2017 release from prison, according to the New York Daily News.
Meanwhile, Franzese dabbled in the entertainment industry himself, financing movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974 and Deep Throat, the infamous 1972 pornographic film starring Linda Lovelace that inspired the name of the informant who helped The Washington Post break the Watergate scandal.
Meanwhile, Sonny Franzese also became notorious for his racketeering and fraud schemes. At the height of his criminal career, he was making an estimated $1 to 2 million a week.
Public DomainWhen John “Sonny” Franzese was convicted on bank robbery charges in 1967, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
But the good times didn’t last forever.
When Sonny Franzese’s Crime Career Came Tumbling Down
Though he evaded capture for years, Sonny Franzese’s criminal ways eventually caught up with him — but not before he skated by the law one last time.
In the mid-1960s, he was charged with murdering a rival gangster. He had allegedly chained cement blocks to the victim’s feet and then dumped the body into a bay. However, Franzese ultimately beat the case in 1966.
In the end, it was a nonviolent crime that would finally put Sonny Franzese behind bars. In 1967, he was convicted for his involvement in a bank robbery and sentenced to 50 years in prison. After the sentence was announced, Reuters reports, Franzese’s estranged wife told reporters, “I’d be shocked if he doesn’t live to 100. That man can do jail time standing on his head.”
Getty ImagesJohn “Sonny” Franzese is escorted by police in 1967, the year he was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery.
Not only was she ultimately proven right on both counts, but Franzese didn’t even have to finish that prison term. He was released on parole in 1978. But after violating parole by associating with known mobsters, he was placed back in prison in 1982 — only to be inexplicably paroled again in 1984.
In 2008, Sonny Franzese was arrested along with eight other mobsters. Their collective charges included racketeering, gangland hits, the theft of fur coats in New York, and a home invasion in Los Angeles — with Franzese held responsible as the underboss of the Colombo crime family.
At the time of the arrest, Sonny Franzese was 89.
Franzese Is Finally Captured, Then Released Again
To be sure, Sonny Franzese hadn’t been leading a quiet life since his 1978 parole. And after his 2008 arrest, a number of grisly stories about the mobster’s misdeeds finally came to light.
Investigators determined that Franzese had largely been able to avoid murder charges because of his knack for making bodies disappear. As the Huffington Post reported in a 2010 article, in 2006, a mobster-turned-government informant had caught Franzese on tape describing his favorite way to dispose of corpses: dismember them in a kiddie pool, then cook them down in a microwave before stuffing them into a garbage disposal.
As for how many people Sonny Franzese killed and disposed of this way, that remains uncertain. Authorities believe he is one of the Mafia’s deadliest hitmen of all time and could be responsible for the murders of as many as 50 to 100 people. By Franzese’s own estimate, he killed too many to remember them all but was caught on tape saying, “I killed a lot of guys… you’re not talking about four, five, six, ten.”
Nevertheless, murder wasn’t the case that authorities were able to use to bring Franzese down. Following his 2008 arrest, it was the racketeering charges that stuck, allowing authorities to take Franzese to trial.
In 2010, the jury convicted Sonny Franzese of extorting money from two Manhattan strip clubs and a Long Island pizzeria and running a loansharking operation. It was the testimony of Franzese’s own son that truly sealed the prosecution’s case.
Federal Bureau of InvestigationAn FBI surveillance photograph of John “Sonny” Franzese and his son, John Franzese Jr.
At the trial, John Franzese Jr. urged jurors not to be fooled by his elderly father’s frail appearance (Sonny was dubbed “the Nodfather” by the press due to his habit of dozing during the trial). This man was a hardened criminal who needed to pay, regardless of his age.
At the age of 94, Sonny Franzese was sentenced to eight years in prison, where he was widely expected to die of old age.
Indeed, Franzese suffered from multiple maladies that could have brought his story to an end, including kidney disease, heart problems, and high blood pressure. But he beat the odds each time. And on June 23, 2017, Sonny Franzese was released from prison at the age of 100.
Sonny Franzese’s Final Chapter Before His Death At 103
Jeffrey Basinger/Newsday via Getty ImagesSonny Franzese as a free man in 2018. Queens, New York.
He had been the oldest inmate in the federal prison system, but now he was free and on his way to spend time at his daughter’s home in Brooklyn. Though frail, he was all smiles. Once again, Sonny Franzese had beaten the system.
But just like everyone else, he couldn’t beat death.
Franzese spent his final days in a nursing home before dying of natural causes in 2020. He had been a mobster all the way until the end.
Michael Franzese/FacebookJohn “Sonny” Franzese with his son, Michael, himself a one-time capo in the Colombo crime family before walking away from the Mafia.
After Sonny Franzese’s death, his son Michael, a former mobster himself, told The New York Times that he’d learned his father had once approved an order to have him killed for renouncing his ties to the Mafia.
“My father was a chameleon,” Michael said. “At home, a loving father and husband, but on the street, a hard-core guy who never had regrets, never would admit to any crime, never give anybody up, never violate his Mafia oaths — a mobster all the way.”