The Last Mafia War of the Twentieth Century | Colombo Family War with Michael Franzese

today i'm going to get into something that i think is interesting and i've been asked this question so many times and it's about the last colombo war which was really the last mob war of the 20th century [Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis it is now friday november 6th i'm sure everybody had a rough week i'm sure the elections were tuesday i know everybody's still kind of settling in after that maybe not a lot going on we're not going to know the end of this yet uh just calm down people catch your breath calm down everything's going to be okay life will go on i assure you with that and oh look at this perfect timing my son michael jr just walked in with a pizza from slices let me see got to show you you know we're opening up the store if you can see it what is this pepperoni how does that look oh my gosh can i stop this and take a bite right now no i don't think so slices we're opening up soon in newport beach all over the country after that but thanks mike looks good as soon as i'm done here we'll have some pizza together anyway again friday november 6th and today i'm going to get into something that i think is interesting and i've been asked this question so many times and it's about the last colombo war which was really the last mob war of the 20th century that was it after that everything was peaceful you know throughout 2000 or until 2000 so it was the last big war of all of the families uh in the 20th century so before i get into that let me kind of set the table for what was going on back then it was 1986 when giuliani had indicted everybody from the mob commission you know all the bosses my boss carmine persico at the time was certainly one of them a lot of columbo guys involved in that they were convicted they all received a hundred year sentence at that time just prior to that i had taken a plea myself for racketeering got a 10-year prison sentence you all know that that uh 15 million restitution go off to do my time during that time i had no bail and i was in the um uh mdc the uh jail federal jail in um in manhattan at the time everybody was in there we're all there waiting to get designated to wherever it is we're going to be sent to prison and i was there with junior and langella and everybody we're all there and uh during that time carmine asked me junior came over to me we were speaking one time and he asked me so what do you think about little vic vic hadn't been indicted up to that point and i knew vic basically all my life he was around my father for a while so you know i said you know look i gave him my opinion a bick at the time and he just asked that question you know he asked me a couple of things about him and i'm not going to get into all of it but he asked me about him and i know he had something in mind uh we all go off to prison and uh ali boy persico who was my gumbada he baptized my oldest son john he was out he was uh junior's son uh he took over as a boss of the family he was a captain at the time and then he got in trouble and little vic was very close with him it was part of ali boy's crew at that time he got in trouble and he designated little vic arena to take over the family and as acting boss and he had full authority at that time i mean he could have uh you know he could have brought guys into the family could inducted people he could have you know ordered a murder i mean he was the full-fledged acting boss at that time and uh things were going pretty good from what i understand for a couple of years it's funny because junior um i forget where she i think he originally went to lompoc federal prison out in california at that time i had went to terminal island and um you know we were all doing our time and vic was out on the street and he was kind of managing things and for a while i understand he was doing okay carmine cessa who was uh very loyal to persico he was a consuelieri at that time and uh after a couple years for some reason i think vic got tired of uh you know taking orders from junior because people were going up to see persico his brother teddy a few other people were seeing him and and junior was you know giving orders from prison because he was the real boss and uh after a while it seemed that vic was getting tired of that and there was some word that junior was going to uh try to do a television show to try to prove his innocence uh they said he was getting you know a little antsy in there he was doing things that weren't right i don't know this is only what i was told from you know some of the guys that i've seen at that time and anyway vixx decides to make a move he wants to become boss and uh so he gets carmine cesar to start polling all of the uh soldiers to see what they thought of if if vic was to take over from junior and uh carmine cesar who was very close to persico i think he went to his brother teddy and he told him what was going on teddy goes and tells junior junior right away you know he was a tough guy he wasn't going to stand for any of this and he kind of ruled with an iron hand he said that's it kill vic and um there was a murder attempt on vick's life i think in in 1990 and 1991 they shot at him they missed him that's it the war was going to begin but before the war began the two sides had gotten together the persico faction and the arena faction and the way i understood it at the time because i was getting word in prison about all of this uh the way i understood it at the time there was about you know maybe 85 90 guys that sided with arena guys that i was surprised was siding with arena and maybe 25 30 of uh junior's guys that were siding with him you know junior was smart in some respects he made a lot of his relatives his sons his cousins his brothers people close to him and you know you can't beat family when it comes to that so there was about 25 30 of of person goes that is that were very tight with him so the two sides get together and they try to negotiate and of course the big part of the negotiation was who was going to be the boss neither side gave in arena wasn't given in and boom the families officially go to war in 1991. now why is that meaningful to me i'm in jail at that time and people i'm going to tell you something i haven't really spoken about before this whole thing with norbie walters came up i was in lompoc federal prison i had been violated on my parole sent back to prison in 91 i was out until then right but this was occurring this occurred before i went into prison in 91. okay now yes i had testified against norbie walters but listen i was subpoenaed to testify in that case and when i was subpoenaed to testify i sent word back and let them know nobody cared about norby walters they tried to kill norby walters three times they wanted me to kill him i wouldn't do it so nobody cared about norby walters i knew what i was doing norby never went to prison for a day in his life i'm not going to get into all of the specifics about it but anyway they knew what i did i had you know made believe or said that i was walking away from that life it wasn't formal yet at that point so this thing started to brew while while i was out on the street and i didn't know where it was going to go because i knew the two sides were going to try to get together and work it out boom november i get violated i get put back in prison and the war starts because they couldn't come together junior happened to be in lompoc he was in the in the uh in the penitentiary i was in the medium security i get word from him you know what side are you on i you know i'll tell you how i got word it was a it was a correctional officer that came to me junior had sent word back and i said look uh you know where i stand because i had uh probably two and a half years and i was in the hole two and a half years before i was going to get out almost three years and i guess you wanted to know where i stood and i said look i don't jump ship i'm loyal in that regard even though i was still planning to walk away from the life it's not something that i was going to stay in but the family was at war and uh people i want to tell you this before i went in my father had sent word to me and with all of this talk about me walking away from the life he had said to me mike stop the baloney family's going to war we need you and my father was loyal to the persecute faction he wasn't jumping ship either in that regard and i gotta tell you this i was i was really torn i said man i'm on parole how could i do this you know my my my family's going to war i felt like i was betraying by not going back and i was really really torn as to what i was going to do honestly i i was so torn by it i had made a decision that you know what i need to go back to new york i was going to break my parole i don't know how i was going to tell my wife i was probably going to make up a story to go back there but i just felt you know too much of a pull on me at that point in time what happens boom when i make a decision to go back i get violated i get picked up i get put back in prison that was it now i want to tell you something some of you are going to say come on mike i believe the way this worked out i was in prison the entire time of the war i got out when the war was over just just ended you know what 12 or 13 guys were killed i think i don't know a bunch of guys became informants about 50 60 of our guys were indicted many of them went off to prison that wall was very destructive who knows what would have happened if i participated in it but that whole time i'm in the j i'm in jail and i'm in a hole poor michael's in a hole while everybody else is out there fighting a war and i was miserable don't get me wrong but you know what in retrospect probably saved me uh from either life in prison or maybe a bullet so i believe at that point in time people that god had a different plan and a purpose for my life the way it worked out you know it was almost a blessing that i spent that uh that three years in the hole anyway so the war goes on and um you know it was it was tough and uh people were getting killed like i said i think 12 or 13 guys got killed from both factions guys started to become informants and then a very interesting twist happened i think you've heard of greg scarpa a lot of people have asked me about greg now he was it was a captain in our family he was very close to persico but there was an interesting thing about grace garba that none of us knew when i found out i was like oh my god because i was i can't say i was very close to him but you know we were captains together we talked about a lot of things a lot of stuff went on between us during the years that i was in that life among us i should say and man it wasn't good news for me when i heard that he was an informant now what he had done greg he was a pretty smart guy way back in the 60s when he just came into the life he was a soldier he made a deal with the fbi it was kind of an insurance policy for him what did he do the fbi needed some help you probably don't recall this i'm not familiar with it but you know down in mississippi i think three three people were killed by the ku klux klan and their bodies were burned and the fbi actually uh enlisted greg scarpa to go down to mississippi and find out uh where the bodies were buried and who did the killings so greg does his investigation remember he's a mob guy he goes into uh uh he finds out he goes into i think a television repair store like he's gonna buy a tv the guy that owned the store was a ku klux klan member the guy uh takes the tv carries it out to uh to greg's car greg bang hits him over the head puts him in the back of the car drives him out to the woods uh beats the heck out of him and then puts a gun in his mouth and tells him you're going to tell me what happened with those bodies where they're burned where they are or you're dead gives them up right of course the guy knew he was serious so anyway greg kind of cemented his relationship with the fbi at that point in time and he was a government informant unbeknownst to us for about 30 years what kind of deal did he made greg was smart he made a deal that he could never be revealed he would never be called to testify in a case his name was never be be uh told to anybody not even to prosecutors it was only to the fbi agent that he was working with turned out he worked out with a he was working with rather an fbi agent called lynn de vecchio and that became a whole fiasco i'll get into that a little bit later but anyway throughout the war scarpa who was a vic i mean a a persico ally was committing murders he was you know he he and by the way they called him the grim reaper and they called him the grim reaper because he said he loved to kill people as a matter of fact he said he loved to kill people so much when he killed somebody and buried the body he wanted to dig out the body and kill the guy again i mean this is what he would say i heard him say that anyway that was him so he was very active in the war on the persico side going after little vic's guys and this turned out to be this was a big blowout afterwards i mean it turned it turned out really bad because um what happened throughout the course of the war obviously everybody knew what was going on the government was upset people were dying in the streets this raged on for about two years like i said and um eventually uh gray got indicted and again they weren't supposed to tell the prosecution about what was going on and it was said that you know he got so in bed i would say with de vecchio that he was giving de vecchio only the information that he wanted to give him de vecchio they were saying it came out afterwards was kind of helping scarpa you know actually commit these murders i don't know if it's true or not but that was the word on the street that's what came out i believe in in court papers later on de vecchio i know uh had to retire under this big cloud even people in the fbi were upset with the relationship between de vecchio and scarpa actually because of that relationship some of the colombo guys got off uh on on a case that we were they were on trial the you know the the defense witnesses went wild when they got this information but anyway it didn't work out well for scarpa because he ended up getting indicted getting convicted or pled guilty and got a 10-year prison sentence prior to that and other twists a lot of things with scarpa i think in 1988 or so he had a bleeding ulcer and as a result of that bleeding ulcer he had to get a transfusion he got one of his guys on the street to give him a transfusion turns out the guy had aids and he got a transfusion with infected blood uh while he was in prison as a result of that he ended up succumbing to age and he died actually of age in prison crazy story with greg unbelievable de vecchio like i said he got uh you know he got it was terrible what happened with him i mean as far as him being embarrassed he had to retire they never indicted him they never charged him with anything that he said they didn't have enough but he was uh you know he was humiliated because of this whole thing another crazy thing happens with scarpa you know this guy was into a lot of different things allegedly he was into a drug deal that went bad and as a result of that uh somebody went after him shot him in the eye you know during this this dispute over drugs had nothing to do with the colombo war so this guy was in and out of trouble the whole time but uh you know interestingly enough like i said he eventually died of aids and and that was over so this war pretty much had a devastating impact on the colombo family my former family and um you know it took a while to rebuild now is the family dead now no it's not you know it's alive it's well it's uh it's being run by somebody that i know very well and who was very capable i'm not going to mention his name but they seem to be doing things the right way at this point in time all of the families in new york seem to be doing things a lot less high profile kind of keeping things quiet who knows you know what i found out people you know things with the government and the mob they run in patterns meaning that for a time the fbi the government the justice department is really on the mob on the mob on the mob they go after them they put a lot of guys away and then what happens something else takes over like you know terrorism and they remove a lot of the agents off of the fbi or for the organized crime squads and they go on to something else and the mob has a chance to rebuild they might be in that rebuilding period right now i don't know but i knew do know this not like it was before the government has too many weapons they have too many tools to go after the the guys too many surveillance techniques uh too many informants on the street now and that's why again i'll leave this and i'll tell everybody if you're thinking about a life of crime forget about it that life is over the street life is over the gang life is over you know the only way i tell everybody especially the young people you got to go straight so that's it for today so um we're going to be doing mob movie monday i'm not going to tell you what it is now got another surprise for you i promise it'll be a good one you guys reacted great to the one last week and that's it for today so how do i always leave you be safe be healthy god bless [Music]

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 1,070,494

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Id: mZ0u1cv1UJE

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020