Newsday
offers an interview with 102-year-old legendary Colombo Cosa Nostra Crime
Family underboss, Sonny Franzese (seen in an earlier mugshot and below photo).
Now
102 years old, John (Sonny) Franzese, the longtime underboss of the Colombo
crime family, is the epitome of the old-style crime chieftain. Despite the
entreaties of FBI agents and a 50-year prison sentence for a crime he swears he
didn’t commit, Franzese did his time and never talked.
He’s
talking to Newsday now.
“They
wanted me to roll all the time,” he said over a bowl of pasta e fagioli in
the nursing home where he now lives. “I couldn’t do that. Because it’s my
principle.”
In
his first extended interviews following his release in June 2017 as the oldest
inmate in the federal prison system, Franzese spoke to reporters as he never
has, reflecting on a criminal life rooted in New York City and on Long Island
that spanned the birth, glory days and current lower profile of traditional
organized crime.
“What
we done in New York is unbelievable,” he said.
Linked
by law enforcement to multimillion-dollar bookmaking, loan sharking and
extortion rackets and caught on tape alluding to multiple murders he claimed to
have committed, he remained mute through more than 35 years behind bars as mob
boss after mob boss violated the mob’s code of silence in exchange for
lighter prison sentences.
He
was silent, even though he hated prison. “I could never give a guy up because I
knew what jail was,” he said. “I wouldn’t put a dog in a jail pod.”
You
can read the rest of the piece and watch a video clip via the below link:
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