The Mafia Cemetery | Where Are Most Mobsters Buried?

st john cemetery in queens new york it's an imposing place 169 acres mausoleums burial sites unbelievable when you see it but you know what's even more imposing how many mob guys are buried there bosses from lucky luciano to carlo gambino to john gotti long list let's talk about it [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody's doing well all is blessed on this end praise god for that and uh subscribers thank you we're on a march to a million we appreciate all those of you who have subscribed all my viewers i appreciate it you want to subscribe jump on you're getting us to that million mark whenever that comes it's all thankful to you for enjoying the content and we appreciate it on this end you motivate us and you encourage us to give you the best possible content that we can provide you with and michael francis.com my crew my inner circle take a dive i think you'll enjoy it and trust me coming out of this pandemic people are really really benefiting from it you get a lot of me on it a couple of years back i did a and actually a documentary it was called god the father and it was based upon my life my family participated in it we shot it in bulgaria and then israel we really had a great time was a wonderful project and i had a great time doing it and one of the producers was a good friend of mine we were driving from new york out to long island and we drove over the brooklyn queens expressway after you come out of the manhattan tunnel and uh i don't know if you ever taken that drive but right underneath is one of the biggest cemeteries you will ever see in this country and it's called saint john's cemetery and as we were driving i told him i said you know you have no idea how many former mob guys are buried in that cemetery it's very famous the cemetery was established in i think 1872 and they actually call it like a boot hill for the mob there's that many guys buried there and i think the catholic diocese runs it and it's really an amazing place you know they still have mausoleums i mean and it's it's expensive i think it's 169 acres of property it's huge mausoleums gravestones the whole bit and i remember i was a kid when i would drive over the bqe with my dad he would always tell me the story he would say you know mike two things you got to know he said you know a friend of mine offered me a lot of money to walk through this cemetery at night and they all thought that i wouldn't do it but i did it now i don't know if that was a fairy tale one of my dad's stories or whatever but i can imagine it's a pretty imposing thing to do at night of course we're not afraid of the dead but you know some people gotta have a little issue with that and then uh he told me how my grandfather you know his dad tooky the lion they called him when he came over here from italy he actually bought plots early on i think he bought like 25 plots for the whole family now understand my grandmother and grandfather had 19 kids and i guess they thought every one of them would be buried you know all the franzisias together so uh he bought that you know over 100 years ago but it really is an amazing place unfortunately i've been there many many times a lot of my family is buried there i get a little bit into that uh but it is an amazing sight you know and i've been to cemeteries in different parts of the country i was in new orleans where they don't put anybody underground because of the sea level if they put people underground they buried them they would pop up so everybody's in a mausoleum there it's pretty amazing fascinating actually they have tours through that cemetery but st john's is is just something else and you know i thought of maybe doing uh a little video to inform you about a number of former close on austria guys my former associates that are buried there and there's a lot but i got like 21 most of them you're gonna know who they are famous guys notorious guys in that life i thought i'd just go through it a little bit and and give you some information about it like i said it's pretty fascinating you know the sad thing is as always going through this so many of these guys just did not live or did not die well i should say many of them died in prison some of them died because they were murdered and it's it's really a sad story it really is and you always wonder you know when you live your life and you go through everything where are you going to finally end up and i'll be honest with you people i don't know how you go through life without believing there's something better waiting for us on the other side and that's one of the things that i hold on to in my christian faith we're very very clear you know if we confess our sins and accept jesus christ that we are going to heaven regardless of what we've done in our past now obviously you know god knows our hearts we can't fake it he knows if we're sincere or not and then we have to try to live the right way and i've sort of done that since i left you know my former life and became a person of faith and we believe there's something much better for us waiting on the other side but some of these guys who knows you know we don't know what they did in the last moments of their life i remember i was talking to uh i was in springfield missouri and i was at a church and the prison hospital the federal prison hospital is located in springfield a lot of guys went there just before they passed away john gotti being one of them and i was talking she attended my service and i was talking to one of the nurses that actually took care of john gotti and a few others and she was telling me some stories because john you know was very very sad for several months he lingered on he died of cancer and it was a pretty rough death from what she told me and i always asked her i said you know did john have any any second thoughts did he talk to you about anything and she shared some things with me i don't think it's appropriate for me to share it here now but you know i'm hopeful that maybe john did make his confession make his peace with the lord because fortunately you know in the last moments of your life you know you can turn it around that's the kind of god that we serve but i thought of a lot of the other guys some of them i knew some of them you know i knew of and i thought i'd just run down so that you can see who is actually buried in this cemetery and it's pretty fascinating again i picked out 21 there are a lot more but 21 that i'll just go through and i'll go through them quickly because many of them you know about and you know their history for you mob aficionados i would say you probably uh you know studied up on these guys i've spoken about them before so we're not going to get into great detail but you know when you drive into st john's it's in it's in queens and when you drive into st john's you know as you get past the gates and you move in a little bit you're going to see this stone building flanked by grecian columns and denoted by the family name lucana and that's actually lucky luciano's mausoleum and it's fascinating it's beautiful it's big it's unbelievable beautiful you know as beautiful as something could be in a cemetery but it really is pretty amazing to see it and you see these mausoleums all over the place i mean it's actually pretty fascinating to go through and do a tour of that uh cemetery you'd be amazed at who's buried there you know one of the oldest guys that was buried there was a guy benedict salvatore toto de akira and he came over here from sicily in i think 1906 he was one of the original mustache pete's i think he was probably the first boss of the gambino family you know the way history tells it back then he ruled the family for about 10 years until he was murdered one day he left his house and i think he was going to the doctor's office and he was shot several times i think they shot him once in the head and then seven times in the chest to make sure that he was killed he has a mausoleum there pretty elaborate pretty ornate but he was one of the the older guys that have buried theirs next someone you're very very familiar with i just described his mausoleum and that's charlie lucky luciano you know the story of lucky i'm not going to go through that again we've done that but lucky was deported to italy and tried to get back here to the united states he couldn't he died of a heart attack in italy i think he was 64 years old and then his body was transported back to the united states that's where he wanted to be buried and he's buried there in saint john's in a very elaborate mausoleum and everybody knows who lucky luciano was he was the guy that really formed cousin oscar in this country formed the mafia commission and very very highly regarded if you want to talk about being a godfather he was probably the original godfather of cousin austria here in the united states next we have joe prefacci and joe prufacci again people know who he is he is buried in a mausoleum or is in a mausoleum i shouldn't say buried but that's where he's resting and uh joe perfacci he ruled his family for about 30 years they called him the olive oil king he again came over here from italy after joe profaci passed away myoko who is his underboss took over for a short time until the commission moved him out carlo gambino was part of that and then joe columbo became the boss and i think many of you know my dad was his underboss for quite some time i think you know what happened with joe colombo you know the fascinating thing is all of these people are buried or resting a short distance from one another if you go through the cemetery you'll see because it's a huge cemetery but they all seem to be pretty close together closer in life close in death amazing next we have veto genovese i think you know the story there he also has a mausoleum pretty elaborate and we know vito took over for charlie luciano you know the story him and costello were at odds costello was the acting boss for a while while luciano was in italy genovese and him had kind of a falling out genovese was kind of power hungry he wanted that position so he took over there was an assassination attempt on frank costello i think you know friendship the chin giganti was a uh actually a botched hit frank lived through it it was shot in the head but uh it was only it only grazed him and he lived through it and vito took over but then vito got indicted on a big drug case ended up getting a long sentence and he went away in prison and he's buried there and we know the story would veto genovese that family name still exists today and then we have uh jimmy james jimmy knapp napoli they called him jimmy knapp i knew him he was from my neighborhood in greenpoint he hung out there he had a huge huge gambling operation he was a captain in the family very very well known high profile guy at the time i met him a couple of times met him with my dad when i was younger and met him a little bit later on and jimmy knapp is also buried there oh an interesting thing about jimmy knapp he was indicted on a murder conspiracy for trying to kill john gotti some of you may not know that but uh that was kind of the uh not what he's known for but unfortunately that was part of his resume i would say and of course and john just as he was in life uh pretty much the same in death he's in a very elaborate building kind of in the in the center of the uh cemetery and everybody knows that that's john's sight unfortunately there are a lot of visitors that i understand that come in tourists that come into town that want to see his site and the cemetery doesn't really like that they don't enjoy that but they do allow visitors to come in at certain points in time then we have carlo gambino everybody again knows who carlo was boss of the gambino family we did you know a video on him we talked about him he ran his family for over 20 years boss of bosses they called him at one point in time and he's obviously one of the most infamous people buried there and carlo had uh you know a better ending than most you know he died at home in long island he was 75 or 76 years old when he passed away didn't do much prison time at all but you know carlo was the epitome i would say of what a mob boy should be it was very very low profile very low key the government had numerous investigations on him they were never able to get him for anything he lived his life the way a mob boss should live his life undercover total opposite of an al capone or john gotti or some of these more flamboyant guys then we have a another guy by the name of frank abendando and he was called the dasher and he was part of murder inc and one of the fascinating things about him is that you know he was he had a lot of victims from what they say and he would use an ice pick and stab somebody through the heart that's how he killed him you know about murder inc they were responsible they claimed for over 200 murders they were contract killers hired by luciano and maya lansky to do their bidding at that point in time and i think we might have done something on murder inc at one point in time but frank arbendando was a major figure in murder inc and he's buried there then we have joe colombo also my family somebody i was intimately familiar with everybody knows the colombo story italian-american civil rights league how he was gunned down basically became i hate to use the word vegetable but after he was shot he lingered for about six or seven years basically brain dead until he passed away he's buried there so that's another boss so you got carlo gambino you got john gotti you got salvatore aquila big guys that were buried in that cemetery and like i say it's pretty much a tourist attraction people like to come and visit the gravesite it's unbelievable then we have johnny dio diogati i met johnny dear once and long time ago i was a kid johnny was a big union guy as a matter of fact he was pretty active with the teamsters i think he got indicted for labor racketeering a few times but he also helped jimmy hoffa become the boss so johnny dio and i'm sure you might have heard that name for those of you that study the mob stuff i'm sure you know who he is he's buried there then we have salvatore marangiano again one of the original mustache pete's he came over here early on you know he was part of the casta alamoresi war against mazzaria at that time and charlie luciano lucky luciano was responsible for both mazaria's death and maranzano's death he was a boss another boss buried in saint john's cemetery roy demayo everybody knows who roy demeo is the gemini lounge so many people ask me about him roy had a rough reputation you know he's responsible they say for several hundred murders many of them which he committed himself uh i did have the opportunity to meet roy um you know it's funny i had uh two jaguars at one time this is going way back during my time in that life and both of them were stolen i was at somebody's apartment in uh queens and both of them were stolen i made a couple of phone calls because i knew that roy demayo had these uh chop shops and uh by the end of the day i got both cars back and roy was involved in that so but i did have the opportunity to meet him a couple of times and uh you know he's a rough guy and you know his reputation he's buried there then we got carmine fatico i don't know if you've heard that name they called him charlie wagons and the reason they called him that is because he had he liked to hijack transport trucks he was a gambino guy and he's known to be a mentor an early mentor to john gotti along with neil de la croce he was also one of john gotti's mentor carmine fatico charlie wagons then we got willy boy johnson i'm sure many of you heard of willie boy willie boy was not a made guy obviously he was an associate because he was an indian and unfortunately with willie boy you know he was a government informant from what we understand for over 20 years from 1965 until the mid-80s when he was murdered and they said that the reason he became or he gave the reason that he became an informant was because he did some prison time he was under carmine fatigue and fatigue was supposed to take care of his wife and kids while he was in prison and he never did and as a result he turned informant i don't know if that's true but that's what what was told to us and that's what he said and i got a little bit nervous when we finally found out as a matter of fact i think i told the story before i was shylocking money with willie boy i liked him a lot you know we got along i asked john if it was okay if i shot like money through him he said yeah i probably put you know well over a hundred thousand out on the street he was good you know he paid the juice every week and uh when we found out that he was an informant gotti and i were in mcc the federal jail at that time and i was up on the seventh floor and the seventh floor behind the glass was where many of the protected the whitsec people were and you could see them but they were behind the glass they wouldn't be able to communicate or associate with the rest of the population but john sent word up to me he says michael this is what we're hearing about willie boy can you find out and so you know i was able to you know show him some papers and stuff and i said willie is this true you know i held up a paper asked him a question there you know i wrote something on it and willie boy kind of shook his head but he shook his head and made me understand that i had nothing to worry about and he never did say anything about me nothing whatsoever so you know i appreciate that very much because he could have said we were sherlock and money obviously that's a crime you're not allowed to charge you know usurious interest rates so but he never did but uh willy boy he was murdered by tommy patera and tommy patera did actually did john gotti a favor when he took willie boy out and i think patera was indicted for that but i think he was acquitted i don't think he ever went to jail for that murder anyway willie boy johnson another person in saint john's cemetery they probably wanted to separate him from everybody else but i don't know i've never seen the gravesite carmine lombardosi uh somebody that i was very familiar with my former gumbada larry carosa was pretty close to him and we sat with carmine a couple of times i did with larry and carmine carmine was a very intelligent guy as a matter of fact he had a number of nicknames one was the doctor one was alberto another one the king of wall street and they also called him the italian meyer lansky and he was known as one of the biggest earners the gambino family had at that point i believe that and actually he was uh and money to larry carosa i didn't need it at the time but he gave larry some money i think to get his funeral business started but i enjoyed sitting with him he was a wise old guy and he lived the life the right way he was also buried in saint john then we got vincent papa and vincent papa he was a lucasia guy a maid guy and what he's known for is he stole the heroine out of the police department the nypd that was taken during the french connection yeah and he was known for that how he did i don't know i don't know what the circumstances were but that's what he was known for stole the heroine out of the nypd lockup that was taken during the french connection robbery i'm sure you're familiar with that then we got philip rostelli he was known as rusty he was the boss of the madonna family for some time he lived in greenpoint unfortunately he was away for most of the time that he was the boss i knew him my cousin tooty who was a made guy with us with the columbos was very close to him and i met rusty a couple of times while he was home i think he was home for maybe two three years for the whole time that he was boss and joey messina took over after rusty was i don't know if he died or he stepped down i'm not sure the circumstances there but joey messina followed him you probably know with the story with joey messina he got convicted of murder and i think he was sentenced to a couple hundred years eventually became an informant and did some damage to the bonanno family but philip rostelli another boss buried in saint john's then you got frank funzi thierry i knew frank i had met him a couple of times again i was younger at that point in time but he was the boss of the genovese family in 1972 he was a very low profile guy he was a diplomat people liked him i understand uh the the soldiers under him liked him very much because he believed in sharing the wealth i always heard good things about ponzia at that point in time and again another wise guy another boss buried in st john's and of course somebody that we're all familiar with that you are all all familiar with is uh neil de la croach just a great guy high-ranking guy in the gambino family you know the story with him he was passed over for boss when carlo gambino died and he appointed his brother-in-law paul castellano his boss and people were not happy about that neil was a very well respected guy you know the story with him and gotti he was a mentor to gotti he loved god he got he was very upset when neal was passed over as boss he never got along with castellano you know later on he orchestrated the the hitock paul castellano and then he became the boss so neil de la crosse another very high up guy again buried in st john's and last but not least somebody that i have to mention unfortunately is my dad sonny francis and he is one of the 20 or so you know of our family member that was buried with his mom and dad my grandparents in st john's like i said i think there's 25 bodies buried there and i think they stack them up you know three four five high i'm not sure exactly how it is but we have a very extensive plot there big headstones the whole bit my mom is also buried there two of my sisters are buried there i won't be buried there i'm living out here in california and i'm gonna be you know whenever that time comes i'll be with my wife obviously and you know it's something that we have to plan you know we don't want to think about it but we really got to plan because we got to go somewhere when we're you know when we pass on and to make it easy on our family it's good that if we have that you know done in advance anyway i thought you might find this interesting you know it's if you're ever in new york and you drive over the brooklyn queens expressway you can't miss it you're going to look down you're going to see this huge expanse of headstones and you know mausoleums and everything else and obviously you know grave sites there st john cemetery so listen people i don't know what to say you know about this i'm just very fortunate that i was able to walk away from that life and not meet with the faith that some of these guys some of my former associates met with so many of them you know died in prison so many of them were murdered i was talking to somebody from netflix this morning they're doing a series they want me to participate it's about certain mob bosses i'm not going to say who it was and you know they asked me what the difference was you know between current mob bosses and mob bosses from you know 40 50 60 100 years ago basically it was law enforcement that made the difference because the laws that they came up with in the mid 80s between the racketeering laws and and the bail reform act sensory reform act i've said this before they were so devastating they put so many guys in jail so many guys became informants you know the life just changed because the government you know came up with all of these weapons in their arsenal to go after the mob and they really targeted the mob it was different back in the days of luciano and capone yeah if you were a luchano you weren't getting away with anything you know dewey who was the prosecutor at that time you know he was hot and heavy on luciano and he put him away for a long period of time you know he got a 50-year sentence who knows if he was framed or not i don't know you know a lot of people say he really wasn't involved with you know prostitution which is one of the crimes he was convicted of but who knows but the bottom line is things were pretty much the same it was law enforcement that changed and just you know beefed up their arsenal and put so many guys away and change the the whole course of the life for so many people and again i'm just fortunate i'm not one of them laying in that cemetery uh the way some of these people passed away whether in prison or you know in a very unfortunate circumstance i'm just glad i'm here to talk to you about it and not sit again now i'll get there one day but hopefully it's going to be under different circumstances so that's it for today hope you enjoyed it you know we got some other good things planned you know how i always leave you same way be safe and again i'm not kidding you know rough world out there so much stuff going on in l.a you don't even want to go down there anymore new york city i'm hearing the same thing so be safe watch your back ladies you get into a parking lot look around make sure nobody's you know uh watching you or doing anything they shouldn't be doing watch for shady people be safe be healthy okay pandemic showed us something got take care of our health you know get in the gym eat right do what you got to do it's important and i mean this from the bottom of my heart to all of you that have been supporting me thank you so much but god bless you all and yes i'll see you next [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 1,308,879

Keywords: franzese, michael franzese, mob stories, where are most mobsters buried, where is john gotti buried, mafia cemetery, mob cemetery, mafia graves, mafia grave sites, mafia graveyard, mafia funerals, mob funerals, the mafia cemetery, the hole mafia graveyard, mob boss graves, where do gangsters go when they die, crime boss gravesites

Id: LUyQPKxbPkA

Length: 24min 29sec (1469 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022