History of the Mafia | Michael Franzese

and he says mr franzisch you got anything you want to say to the court and i'll never forget that you looked at him you shook your head for a minute and you said yeah your honor it's judge jacob micheller he said i'm going to fool you and everybody in this courtroom i'm going to do the whole 50 years that's what he said to the judge and you know it was 50 years actually to the day okay that my father walked out of that prison because i'll never forget he looked at me and he said you know what i keep my word even to that rat judge i ain't dying until 2017 and that was 50 years [Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis and hope everybody is doing well i had a great week and i hope all of you had a a similar experience good week for all of you i'm going to give you an all out all of you an opportunity to send me what movie you would like me to review because i'm getting so many some of them i never even heard of but i'm going to pick the ones that i think best depict or portray that life but send me your comments we're working on that we're going to put it together and i get asked all the time about individual people a lot of people want to know about persico call my personal obviously i know a lot about him he was my boss the boss of the colombo family joe colombo obviously i had a relationship with him before he passed away people asked me about roy demaio i think i spoke a little bit about him about greg scarpa who i knew very well he was one of our guys who was part of our family i'm going to get into that at some point little vicarina you may not know who he is but he was a captain in our family that led the revolt against persico in the early 90s when the family went to war i knew vic since the time i was your kid so i'm going to be getting into my relationship and and some of the stories about these people that i know and today i'm going to start with somebody very very familiar to me because i get asked this all the time and that is my father sonny francis so i'm going to talk a little bit about him obviously i could make a movie about him i could speak for days about him i knew him all my life he was my father he brought me into the life but i'll give you a little bit of his history because it is very interesting my dad as you know he died uh many of you know in february at the age of 103 he was the oldest living made man guy that took the oath in america quite possibly in the entire world at the time of his death i don't think there's anybody that outlived my father and my father's story is very interesting because he was there throughout the whole formation of organized crime the cousin or strong mafia in this country my dad was born in 1917. a little bit history before that my grandfather carmine francis they called him tooty the lion very powerful guy came to this country um i think around 1905 1910 somewhere like that and uh he set up shop he uh resided in brooklyn in the green point section of brooklyn him and my grandmother they went on to have 19 children my dad was one of 19. there was 15 girls 14 4 boys and my dad out of his out of the four boys was the only one that became a member of that life but my grandfather um he had a bakery on the corner of jackson and leonard street which is in the green point section he had a bakery my father used to work for him and my grandfather was a very well respected guy he could have been a part of this life he could have become a member but he didn't want that and as a matter of fact when my father was recruited to become a member of that life my grandfather tried to talk him out of it he said you know my father's name is john he said son john uh your life is not your own once you become a member of that life and he did try to talk him out of it but this is what my father wanted uh my father early on caught the eye of uh many of the mob guys that used to hang in my grandfather's uh bar and cafe there and um he was an amateur boxer growing up he was a tough kid very very well respected and he caught the eye of made guys and that's how he eventually got involved in life a lot of people ask where my father was born my father was actually born in italy in naples on a boat trip my grandfather and grandmother used to go back to italy almost every year by boat and he was born during one of those trips so he is an american citizen because they were naturalized here my grandfather was if that wasn't the case my father probably would have been deported later on because of his activity and organized crime but that's kind of the back history and the reason you know i don't know if you know this but organized crime really grew in america uh in in the early 1900s and early on you know there were a lot of jewish guys that were involved in that life it wasn't la cosa nostra as we know it today there was a lot of prominent jewish guys like arnold rothstein big big big uh figure in this life early on as a matter of fact he was the mentor for lucky luciano luciano learned a lot from him marilansky as you know a very close partnership with lucky luciano uh bugsy siegel prominent member at that time these were jewish guys murder incorporated a guy by the name aleppi louis lepcke i forget bookwalter his name was uh he was pretty much the mastermind of murder incorporated which is a prominent group of a lot of jews at that time during the formation of of lacozano straha of the organized crime in america that committed a lot of murders this is historical and by the way people want to make this clear i'm not glorifying the life i'm giving you a history lesson you can't deny that organized crime played a major role in the united states especially in the big cities like new york and chicago and so on um it's it's part of our history so i'm just telling it i'm not glorifying it as you know i left the life if i was glorifying it i'd probably still be in it or i'd be dead or in prison as a result one of the two so i'm just telling a story and you know i don't glorify the life but my dad did know arnold rothstein didn't meet him he did meet lucky luciano he did meet frank costello he met all of those people during the real formation of la causa nostra during that time and um again my father was mentored by a guy by the name of sally the sheik he was a made guy in the columbo family and he kind of took my father under his wing and my father was mentored from sally the chic and i'll tell you how my father kind of grew to prominence and obviously i'm skipping around i can't go into the whole history i'll be here for days i want to tell you a little bit how my father rose to prominence i want to answer another question too about nepotism in that life i told you my grandfather could have been a part of that life and at that point probably would have brought my father into it nepotism in la cosa nostra is huge why for security reasons carlo gambino brought his son tommy gambino and some of his nephews into that life joe columber brought his son anthony and joey jr into life persico brought his son ali boy and michael into the life and on and on and on and on okay this is a a prominent part of that life my father obviously brought me into that life why because of security reasons you know their past you know their history so many people in la cosa nostra are related you know through a brother father whatever and i can i can go on and on with that so understand nepotism is a major part of that life so my dad starts to rise through the ranks he gets noticed i think at the age of 33 or 34 he took the oath and um shortly after that we had a war in the colombo family the gallo profacie war at that time it was the preface family colombo hadn't taken over yet but the gallows during that war and it's always a power struggle a war for leadership the gallows had kidnapped four members of the preface family joe colombo being one of them sally the sheikh being another and they tried to negotiate with profaci number one for money they wanted to hold ransom was albert and joey gallo at the time that did the kidnapping they were brothers and i think albert talked joey out of the ransom money but they wanted certain things um uh available to them that profacie had to give in to um and the interesting thing is at that time they asked for my father to come in and to negotiate to try to get the release of those hostages why did they ask my father they trusted him he was trusted on both sides burfaci faction trusted him the gala preface he trusted him so my father was brought in to negotiate the release of the hostages which he successfully did and my dad told me when he walked into that room to pull these hostages out he didn't know if he was going to walk out again that's how volatile the situation was but my dad was successful in obtaining the release based upon whatever the negotiation was and i don't want to get into all of that but that was one of the reasons why my father was well respected and after colombo took over the colombo family my father was made under boss as a result of that because he held such a prominent position so that's um that's kind of how my father started to rise through the ranks unfortunately for some reason he did become a major target of law enforcement and that eventually was his downfall i think i've told the story before of bobby kennedy really having it in for my father because there was a prior relationship with my dad and marilyn monroe and kennedy found out about it and he was very upset and as a result he ordered j edgar hoover head of the fbi at that time to go after my father and in the early 60s my father was indicted several times both on a state and a federal level went to trial three times beat all of those cases once for murder once for grand larceny and i think twice for grant larson he beat those cases but then he was eventually indicted in federal court got convicted for masterminding uh a nationwide string of bank robbery sentenced to 50 years in prison i'm going to give you one story about my dad that kind of really sums up who he was and this happened while he was in prison my mother had just passed away it was in 2012. now remember my dad was sentenced in 1967. he actually started his uh his prison term in 1970 1970. and um i went to visit him my mom had passed away we tried to get him uh released to go to the funeral we offered to pay for the marshals the whole bit the bureau of prisons wouldn't allow it right so i go and visit him bureau of prisons they gave me a special visit that day they allowed me going to the attorney's room with my dad normally have to stay in the in the visiting room but they allowed me going to the attorney's room so i can have a personal visit with him i get into the room and my dad was not himself he was uh he was depressed and i've never seen my dad depressed in my whole life never saw him depressed and so we're chatting a little bit and finally i stopped and said hey dad what's the matter with you he said ah what do i got to live for he said you know my wife is dead they wouldn't even allow me to go to the funeral we're together 60 some odd years he said my son real problem he testified against me meeting my younger brother john he had a drug problem all his life he said i lost my daughter to drugs he said i'm probably going to die in his prison what do i got to live for and i looked at him and i said hey dad are you getting weak on me and with that he kind of stood up what do you mean by that i said let me let me remind you of something 1967 we're in judge mitchell's courtroom he just sentenced you to 50 years in prison he gave you two 25-year sentences running wild consecutive back-to-back 50 years okay courtroom is jammed he turns to you i know i was sitting right behind you dad and he says mr franzisch you got anything you want to say to the court and i'll never forget that you looked at him you shook your head for a minute and you said yeah your honor it's judge jacob micheller he said i'm gonna fool you and everybody in this courtroom i'm gonna do the whole 50 years that's what he said to the judge and you know it was 50 years actually to the day okay that my father walked out of that prison because i'll never forget he looked at me and he said you know what i keep my word even to that rat judge i ain't dying until 2017 and that was 50 years to the day that my father was released from prison and during that time the judge died the prosecutor died all his co-defendants died the witnesses were all died he outlived them all but that was the kind of guy my father was okay kept his word even to that judge so give you a little bit insight into his character he was special in that way he was really an old time i didn't know too many guys that were like him and fortunately he was my mentor during that time and i learned a lot from my dad i've spoken about that in other videos i could talk about it for days but he was a very special guy i do miss him i do love him our relationship had changed a little bit you know he was a little disappointed obviously when i walked away from that life but he understood because he knew that i wanted to preserve my life and my family's life and look quietly and secretly my dad had conversations about that life and we both knew the good and the bad of it and of course he would admit it to me even though he may not admit it to others so that's kind of a summation of my dad and maybe at another time we'll go into a lot more stories so that's it for today i want to i want to thank all of you that have been subscribing to these to these videos you know we're way over a hundred thousand now and it keeps growing got a lot of good things coming up people gonna be doing a lot of interviews the first one probably with bruce mcnall because he lives in la you know who bruce is i told you the story about him he owned the la kings gretzky big movie producer a lot of stuff and we're going to be doing donny brasco you know joe perstone he and i will be sitting down and people i don't interview these people i chat with them we share stories and ideas different than what you've seen before on other platforms going to be doing daryl strawberry mike tyson mike is fighting on september 12th gonna probably go to the fight but after he finishes his training and everything i'll get him to sit down two guys from brooklyn we're going to talk about a lot of things got a lot of great content coming up so subscribe when you subscribe you get alerts that these things are happening i want to thank all of you there's a lot of content on youtube and so many of you have been tuning in for me and we really appreciate it thank you very much for those of you who have joined my crew michael francis.com we're building we're growing we always have we already have over 3 600 members that are sharing ideas and encouraging thoughts and good information and i'm jumping in providing content for all of you this is a full-time job by the way doing these videos providing the content but we care this is why we're doing it for those of you that want more personal relationship with me you want me to answer some questions that i can't really get to on youtube okay we have our inner circle there is a slight fee it's not a lot of money we're not breaking the bank i promise you but you know i'm putting a lot of time into this um and i'm giving you leadership skills and talking about business i'm getting a lot of questions about that we're doing zoom calls two or three times a month and we're going to be providing a lot more content so thank all of you for your loyalty for coming aboard we're going to continue the stories continue providing great content god bless you all have a great rest of your day [Music]

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 307,820

Keywords: michael, franzese, michael franzese, mafia, mob, mobster, mob boss, mafia boss, capo, caporegime, colombo, colombo family, colombo mafia, gambino, gambino family, bonanno, bonanno family, lucchese, lucchese family, genovese, genovese family, al capone, john gotti, gotti, american mafia, italian mafia, cartel, prison, federal prison, prison gangs, fat tony, fear city netflix, sonny franzese, history of mafia, history of mob, italian-american mafia, la cosa nostra

Id: ttYFco2ixOQ

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020