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As a child, Michael Franzese suspected his father of being part of the Mafia.
“One day, my dad took me and my mom to my grandmother's house on Long Island,” the Brooklyn native recalled to Fox News Digital. “I was probably 4 or 5 years old. We hadn't seen my dad for a few days… He hadn't shaved. He had a thick beard. His right-hand man, who I called Uncle Joey, was at the front door, sitting on the steps, keeping watch like a security guard.”
“My father came into the house and hugged my mother,” the 73-year-old said. “He spoke to my mother for a minute, then came and hugged me, and then he left. It felt strange to me. Nobody explained anything to me. But it turned out the family was at war. My father couldn't stay at home. He was very well-known, so he couldn't get away. He was always being arrested and prosecuted. There were police all around us all the time. I experienced it at school, I experienced it everywhere. That was my life.”
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Former New York Mafia boss Michael Franzese talks about his experiences in the documentary series “American Godfathers: Five Families.” (Max Mason Hubers / Newspix via Getty Images)
Franzese, who would later follow in his father's betrayed footsteps as a mob boss, is currently telling his story in “American Godfathers: Five Families,” a new documentary series premiering on the History Channel. Executive produced and narrated by “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli, the special follows the rise and fall of five New York City mob families.
“American Godfathers: Five Families” is executive produced and narrated by “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli. (Getty Images)
Franzese is the author of several books, including “Blood Pact.”
“This is not a romantic life,” Franzese said. “It's a bad life. I would even say an evil life because it destroys families. It destroyed my family.”
John “Sonny” Franzese was a close friend of Frank Sinatra and also of Marilyn Monroe. (Bob Koller/NY Daily News Archives via Getty Images)
Franzese's father, John “Sonny” Franzese, was a former underboss in the Colombo crime family, a notorious tough guy and big spender who was friends with Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, but later was convicted of bank robbery and became the oldest federal prisoner in the United States.
Christina “Tina” Franzese emerges from the grand jury testimony room in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with an audio tape on Nov. 28, 1973. Her son, Michael Franzese (wearing light pants), walks behind his mother holding a tape recorder. Grand jury witness Jerome Zimmerman, a car salesman from East Meadow, follows behind. The three appear to have testified in the John “Sonny” Franzese case. (Jim Nightingale/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
Franzese had big dreams of becoming a doctor, but the alluring life of crime beckoned: As a pre-med student at Hofstra University, Franzese received an offer the family patriarch couldn't refuse.
“My father was sentenced to 50 years in prison for masterminding a series of bank robberies across the country,” Franzese explains, “…that was a turning point for me. He was 50 years old. If he wasn't released, he was going to die in prison. I felt an obligation to help him.”
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Organized crime mastermind John “Sonny” Franzese is taken into Brooklyn Federal Court in New York after being escorted by FBI agents on April 12, 1966. (Dick Krause/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
“I finally said, 'Dad, I'm not going to school. I'm going to help you. You're going to die in prison,'” Franzese recalled. “And he told me, 'If you're going to be on the streets, I want you to get out the right way.'”
Franzese was 21 when he joined That Life. On Halloween night in 1975, Franzese became a “nouveau riche.”
Michael Franzese (right, with his father) became a “made man” on Halloween night in 1975. (Courtesy of Michael Franzese)
During the initiation ritual, Franzese's fingers were cut with a knife. Franzese had his hands cupped with a picture of a saint placed in his palms. The picture was set on fire. As the picture burned, Franzese was told, “Tonight you are reborn into a new life. If you betray your brother, you will die and burn in hell, just as the saint is burning in your hands.”
Michael Franzese enlisted and was put in charge of 300 soldiers. (Courtesy of Michael Franzese)
Franzese got to work right away. He was put in charge of 300 men, Esquire reported. He was primarily involved in tax evasion, the paper said. As a “yuppie don,” Franzese claimed he was making $5 million to $8 million a week during his mafia heyday.
Sonny Franzese and his wife Tina leave their son's court hearing in New York, circa 1985. (Newsday file/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
“I made my first million dollars within two years of becoming successful,” Franzese explained, “I made a significant amount of money in my late 20s, early 30s. I was fast and I was lucky. I knew how to use that lifestyle to my advantage. I had a lot of success. I wanted to prove myself and be a good guy who could provide for my family.”
“I had my own jet,” he says, “and my own helicopter. I had homes in Florida, New York and California. I had my own racquetball court. And I had 300 men ready to do anything I told them to do.”
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Michael Franzese, pictured in 1985, was known by the press as the “Yuppie Don” and the “Mafia Prince.” (Jim Cummins/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
Franzese reportedly made millions by masterminding a gas tax fraud scheme. As a “Prince of the Mafia,” he was “one of the highest-paid men in the Mafia since Al Capone.” He was included in Fortune magazine's list of the “50 richest and most powerful Mafia bosses.”
Michael Franzese (left) arrives at the U.S. District Court in Uniondale, Long Island. (Dennis Caruso/NY Daily News via Getty Images)
“I was so used to that lifestyle,” Franzese admitted. “I never thought about getting away from it. I never even considered it. But I became a prime target. I was arrested 18 times, indicted seven times, went to court five times. I was a constant target for the police.”
In 1984, he fell in love with Camille Garcia, a dancer from California, and began to question his future with gangsters.
Michael Franzese fell in love in 1984. That's when he began to question his role within the Mafia. (Courtesy of Michael Franzese)
“I knew it was a bad life,” he says. “My mother was separated from her husband for 33 years. When she died in 2012, I can only say that her relationship with my father was ugly because she blamed my father for everything that went wrong in her life. My sister died of a drug overdose at 27. My brother was a drug addict for 25 years. My other sister was mentally unstable. She died at 40.”
Michael Franzese and Camille Garcia were married in 1985. (Angela Weiss/WireImage/Getty Images)
“So I fell in love with this girl,” he said. “I said to myself, 'What do I do, marry her and make her go through the same thing? I'm a target. I'm going to die or go to prison. My family was a contentious family. Why would I do this to her?'”
In 1985, Franzese and Garcia married. That same year, he was indicted in both Florida and New York for his involvement in gas tax fraud. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit tax evasion. Franzese was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released on parole after nearly four years. He was returned to federal prison for four years for violating probation.
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Arrest photo of Michael Franzese in 1993. (Oklahoma County Sheriff's Department/Getty Images)
During his time in prison, Franzese was feeling increasingly frustrated, so a prison guard handed him a Bible, which made all the difference.
Between 1991 and 1994, Franzese began living a different life.
Michael Francese was played by Joseph Bono in the Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas,” which also starred Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino, and Joe Pesci. (Dirk Halsted/Getty Images)
“My wife is a devout Christian,” he explained. “And my mother-in-law was a devout Christian. I read the Bible from cover to cover. I came to the conclusion that Christianity is true and real. The church that married me and my wife, the pastor and all the people there, they supported my wife and my children at that time. They sent books to the prison. They were very kind to my family. It gave me a new faith. It gave me hope.”
Franzese left the mob for good in 1995. He is now a born-again Christian.
Now a published author, Michael Franzese speaks around the world about his past. (Gerrit Clark/WireImage/Getty Images)
“The bottom line is, I believe in Christianity 100 percent,” he said. “I'm not the best Christian, but my faith is unshakable. No one can change that for me.”
Arrest mugshot of John “Sonny” Franzese, circa 1990. (Federal Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images)
“It was hard,” he said. “I made a vow. I didn't want to disappoint my father, but I chose my wife. I made a plan to get out without hurting anyone. I didn't want to go into the government, I didn't want to go into the witness protection program, so it was a very difficult road to walk without hurting my former friends. I also had to convince the government that I was getting out of this life. People were angry with me, they put a contract on my life. My father practically disowned me. The feds were on me. They wanted me to be a material witness. But we got through it.”
Franzese stressed that he “never put anybody in jail” and made few enemies during his rule, but he and his father were estranged for 10 years.
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Sonny Franzese passed away in 2020. He was 103 years old. (Jeffrey Basinger/Newsday via Getty Images)
“I kept messaging him, 'Dad, I'm not hurting anybody. Don't listen to what the feds have to say,'” Franzese said. “But people say the same thing and he ends up testifying in court. It took him about 10 years to realize that he's not hurting anybody.”
According to Esquire magazine, Franzese and his family moved to California to escape death threats. He never went to the same restaurant twice, never put his house or utility bills in his name, and never went to nightclubs. Eventually, Franzese “outlived most of them.”
“Everyone I know is either dead or in prison,” Franzese said. “Most of them are gone now.”
Michael Franzese pictured with his family in Los Angeles (Kyle Espeleta/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Franzese has many regrets now, but blazing a new path for himself isn't one of them.
“There are some things I've done and some things I've witnessed and seen that I wish hadn't happened,” he said. “I've lost friends, close friends. I regret that my dad and I had a little bit of a falling out… It's never the same.”
“We have a lot of regrets, but it was part of what we believed in. It doesn't mean that every man in this world was a terrible person. There were a lot of good men out there. We felt we were doing a good thing at that point. We took the vows and we felt it was an honorable thing to do. We thought it was a noble thing to do, but our hearts just weren't in it.”
History Channel's “American Godfathers: Five Families” will premiere Aug. 11 at 8 p.m.
