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 SONNY
The Last off the Old-Time Mafia Bosses
JOHN “SONNY” FRANZESE

S. J. Peddie

CITADEL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2022 Sandra Peddie

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief
quotes used in reviews.

CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-8065-4160-0

Library of Congress Catalog Number: TK

Electronic edition:

ISBN: 978-0-8065-4162-4 (e-book)

 Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page
AUTHOR’S NOTE

CAST OF CHARACTERS
PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 - The House on Shrub Hollow Road

Making His Bones

CHAPTER 3 - Down to Business

CHAPTER 4 - Dazzling Nights

CHAPTER 5 - Cops Turn Up the Heat

CHAPTER 6 - The Hawk Surfaces

CHAPTER 7 - Sonny Makes Music

CHAPTER 8 - Public Enemy Number One

CHAPTER 9 - Sonny Goes on Trial

CHAPTER 10 - On Trial for Homicide

CHAPTER 11 - Peep Shows, Porn, and Pop Music
CHAPTER 12 - A Home Invasion

CHAPTER 13 - Sonny Goes Away

CHAPTER 14 - Family Fights to Survive Without Sonny
CHAPTER 15 - Business Behind Bars
CHAPTER 16 - Easy Betrayals

CHAPTER 17 - Michael Flying High

CHAPTER 18 - John Steps Up

CHAPTIER 19 - Family Spins out of Control

CHAPTER 20 - Colombos Go to War

CHAPTER 21 - John Takes a Fateful Step

CHAPTER 22 - No Turning Back

CHAPTER 23 - The Tapes

CHAPTER 2 - A Protégé’s Betrayal

CHAPTER 25 - John Testifies

CHAPTER 26 - Regrets and Reconciliation

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCE NOTES

 AUTHOR’S NOTE

One of the challenges of writing this book was the long life of my subject,
John “Sonny” Franzese. By the time he died in February, 2020, he was 103 years
old (even though on his last birthday, Sonny tried to tell me he was really 104).
Many of the key players in his life had predeceased him. I’m used to getting
around reporting obstacles, but death is a tough one.
The other challenge was that for many of the people I interviewed—130 in
total—the events in question were so long ago. When someone would complain
that I was asking about something forty, fifty, or even sixty years ago, my
standard response became “You’re alive, you’re lucid, you’re ahead of the game.
It’s better than the alternative.”
With a little prodding, they remembered. The events in this book are based on
hundreds of interviews, including six extensive conversations with Sonny
Franzese—his first and only extended interviews. Most of my interview subjects,
including the ones with criminal records, were remarkably candid and consistent
in their stories. They wanted me to get it right.
Street guys don’t put things down on paper. Fortunately, government
bureaucrats and journalists do. I fleshed out the narrative, wherever possible,
with sworn court testimony, archived court proceedings, other federal and state
court records, transcripts of undercover recordings, depositions, police reports,
indictments, FBI records, testimony before the U.S. Senate and Congress, U.S.
Bureau of Prison inmate data, state investigative reports, New York State prison
records, marriage licenses, U.S.
Census records, U.S. Bureau of Labor Management reports, property deeds,
government press releases, the archived papers of columnist Jack Newfield, and
accounts in books, magazines, and newspapers.
The quotes in this book are culled from interviews, court records, transcripts
of recordings, and newspaper accounts.
This book is the story of a unique American family.
 CAST OF CHARACTERS

FRANZESE FAMILY

Sonny Franzese—The handsome and charismatic underboss of the Colombo

family reigned over his illegal rackets with ferocity and guile.
Tina Franzese—She was Sonny’s beautiful and tough-minded second wife.
Michael Franzese—The son of Tina and her first husband, he made millions
running a gas tax scam on Long Island.
John Franzese Jr.—Sonny and Tina’s first child and seen as the one most like
his father.
Gia Franzese—Sweet and caring to her friends, she was attracted to bad boys.
Christine “Little Tina” Franzese—The youngest of their children, she had
health problems throughout her life.
Maryann, Carmine, and Lorraine—They are Sonny’s children from his first
marriage to Anna Schiller.

THE CRIME FAMILIES

The New York Mafia is comprised of five criminal families, or bor-gatas,

overseen by a commission of family bosses. Although they operate their own
rackets, they work closely together. New members are assigned to a family when
they are inducted.
COLOMBO FAMILY—Joseph “Olive Oil King” Profaci was the original boss of the
family, then known as the Profaci family, until he died in 1962. Profaci’s
brother-in-law, Joseph Magliocco, briefly became boss after his death. In 1963,
Joseph Colombo, Sonny’s friend and business partner, took over the family, and
it was renamed for him.
GENOVESE FAMILY—Founded by Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the family was
taken over by Vito Genovese and then Frank Costello after Luciano’s conviction
for promoting prostitution. Costello retired after being shot in 1957 by Vincent
“The Chin” Gigante.
GAMBINO FAMILY—Albert Anastasia is believed to have killed the family’s
original boss, Vincent Mangano, in 1951 as part of a coup. By 1957, other
mobsters, led by Carlo Gambino, staged their own coup against Anastasia.
Sonny, who was close to Anastasia, opposed it, but to no avail. Anastasia was
shot to death as he sat in a barber’s chair. Gambino took over the family, and it
was renamed for him.
BONANNO FAMILY—Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, the family’s original boss,
was forced out after he plotted to kill rival bosses. Sonny despised Bonanno.
LUCCHESE FAMILY—Gaetano “Tommy Three-Finger Brown”
Lucchese took over the family in 1951 and ran it until he died in 1967.

SOME OF THE GANGSTERS

Carmine “the Snake” Persico—He took over the Colombo family in 1972 after
Colombo was shot at an Italian-American celebration in New York City. He
acquired his nickname, which he loathed, after betraying the Gallo brothers in an
internal Colombo war.
Gregory “the Grim Reaper” Scarpa—Nicknamed “the Grim Reaper” because
of his love for killing, he became a top-echelon informant for the FBI in 1961.
As a capo in the Colombo family, he was well-positioned to give the FBI
valuable information. Sonny never trusted him.
Sebastiano “Buster” Aloi—He sponsored Sonny’s induction into the Cosa
Nostra when Sonny was just fourteen years old. Aloi became the family’s
underboss and was the father of Vincenzo “Vinny” and Benedetto “Benny” Aloi,
who sided with Victor “Little Vic” Orena in the 1990s Colombo war.
Anthony Carfano—Also known as “Little Augie Pisano,” he was a capo in the
Luciano family and was unhappy when Genovese took over. In 1959, he and a
former beauty queen, Janice Drake, were shot to death in his black Cadillac.
Felice “Philly” Vizzari—He was an active loan shark and bookmaker who
worked under Sonny. Vizzari’s name surfaced in a State Investigations
Commission hearing in 1964.
Frank “Franky Camp” Campione—Fiercely loyal to Sonny, he was his
sometime driver and later helped nurse Sonny back to health when he became ill
in prison.
Ernest “the Hawk” Rupolo—Called “Ernie the Hawk” or “the Hawk” because
he never missed a shot, even after losing his right eye, he was killed in grisly
mob hit in 1964.
William Rupolo—He was the Hawk’s brother and testified at Sonny’s trial for
the murder of the Hawk. Eight years later, William, his wife, and daughter-in-
law were found bound, gagged, and stabbed to death in their burning Brooklyn
apartment. Police believed the killings were mob-related. He and his brother are
buried in the same plot at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Joseph “Little Joey” Brancato—Brancato served as acting boss of the
Colombos and was close to the Franzese family.
Andrew “Mush” Russo—Persico appointed Russo, his cousin, as acting boss in
2009. More polished than the average street guy, Russo had ties to the
entertainment industry and was close to Sonny.
John “Johnny Irish” Matera—Sonny’s longtime bodyguard and driver, he also
was one of his codefendants in the bank robbery and homicide cases. A solid
earner, he became a capo and moved to Florida. In 1981, he was summoned to a
meeting with Persico and never seen again.
Lawrence “Champagne Larry” Carrozza—Extremely close to Michael
Franzese, he fell in love with Gia Franzese.
Victor “Little Vic” Orena—After Persico was imprisoned on a racketeering
conviction in 1986, he named Orena acting boss. In 1991, Orena tried to wrest
control of the family from Persico, sparking another internal Colombo war.
Sonny was key to negotiating peace after that war.

THE BANK ROBBERS

Four street hoods testified against Sonny in three criminal cases against him.
Sonny denied ever meeting any of the men. Some people believed that they only
testified because a rival gangster, who was deeply jealous of Sonny, provided
them with protection.
James “Smitty” Smith—Known as “the vault man,” because he was the guy
designated to jump over the bank counter to scoop up the money, his eyesight
was so bad he seemed to be perpetually squinting. During one heist, he hurdled
the counter, but only grabbed one-dollar bills. After that, he always wore his
glasses.
Richard Parks—He was the oldest of the bank robbers and seen by investigators
as the most cunning.
Charles “Blackie” Zaher—Bushy-haired and lanky, he was an unstable drug
addict. He tried to commit suicide in jail after a prison chef passed on a threat to
his life. He managed to escape from jail and stayed on the lam until a couple of
sharp-eyed patrolmen spotted him hanging around a bank in a ski mask. He
insisted he wasn’t there to rob the bank, but police arrested him anyway.z
John “Blue Boy” Cordero—He was able to tie Sonny directly to the bank
robberies. Although he was a drug addict, he came across well on the stand.
Eleanor Cordero—The Hawk’s widow, she married John Cordero about a year
after Ernie’s death. She was the driver in two of the bank robberies. Brash and
loud, she would show up at the prosecutors’ offices with pillows and sheets for
her conjugal visits with John. After John Cordero tried to kill her with an ax, she
said Sonny was framed.

THE SONGBIRDS

Joseph Valachi—A Genovese soldier, he made international headlines when he

broke the mob’s code of omertà and testified before Senator John McClellan’s
committee in October 1963 about the inner workings of the Mafia.
Michael Franzese—After being convicted of racketeering and facing ten years
in prison, Michael signed a cooperation agreement with federal investigators and
provided information on mob bosses across the country.
John Franzese Jr.—He became an informant for the FBI in the mid-1990s and
then wore a wire against his father, beginning in 2005. He later testified against
his father, who was ninety-three, helping to send him back to prison. John went
into the Witness Protection Program but later left it.
Gaetano “Guy” Fatato—A hulking former standout football player, he and
Sonny got to know each other while serving time in prison. Fatato agreed to
wear a wire and recorded Sonny making numerous incriminating statements.

THE INVESTIGATORS

Bob Greene—A hard-charging investigative reporter for Newsday, he pursued

Sonny and other mobsters relentlessly, and had to have police protection for his
wife and children as a result. He went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes.
Michael Gillen—He was the shaggy-haired Assistant U.S. Attorney who
prosecuted Sonny in the bank robbery conspiracy. Gillen was capable of
courtroom theatrics, once pulling out an M1 semiautomatic rifle to make a point.
James C. Mosley—Cerebral and committed to seeking justice, on behalf of the
Queens district attorney’s office, he prosecuted Sonny for the homicide of Ernest
“the Hawk” Rupolo.
Robert Lewicki—He was the FBI agent who became John Franzese Jr.’s
handler.

THE JUDGE
Jacob Mishler—The U.S. District Court judge who presided over Sonny’s bank
robbery trial, Mishler refused to be cowed by threats to kidnap his daughter.
Sonny hated him with a passion he reserved for few other people. Sonny vowed
that if ever given the chance, he would find Mishler’s grave and “pee” on it.
 PROLOGUE

“SONNY” FRANZESE SAT in his wheelchair in the lounge of a Queens nursing

home, where he had lived since his release from prison in 2017 at age 100, the
oldest inmate in the federal prison system. He hated the place, though he didn’t
complain to visitors. Accustomed to far worse after his many years in prison—“I
wouldn’t put a dog in a jail pod”—the nursing home was at least an
improvement.
Jammed onto a busy block dotted with stores hawking cheap clothes and delis
selling canned beans and frozen pizza, the facility’s location made it easier for
people to get there to see him. The nurse’s aides, too, tried to be cheerful, even
though there seemed to be little they could do to get rid of the odor of urine that
hung in the air. It was a place that lacked the sparkling amenities of its
counterparts in the wealthier suburbs of New York. It was timeworn and frayed
around the edges, or, as an old friend of his indignantly put it, appeared to be “a
home for indigents.”
The friend was indignant because of who Sonny was. John “Sonny” Franzese
was the last of the great Mafia bosses, a pro-tégé of Albert Anastasia, friend of
Vito Genovese, ally of Carmine Persico. At the peak of his power in the 1960s,
he generated millions in income for the mob, and himself, through illegal
rackets, like bookmaking and loan-sharking, and legitimate businesses, like
independent record labels and nightclubs. Men on the street both revered and
feared him for his ruthless ferocity. Organized-crime investigators believe he
killed or had killed as many as fifty people. Because he steadfastly refused to rat
on his confederates, despite repeated entreaties from FBI agents, he earned a
grudging respect from law enforcement and near-mythic status on the street.
And yet here Sonny was, hobbled by a litany of physical ailments, stuck in a
nursing home because no one in his large family was able or willing to take him
home. He had outlived most of the people who wanted to see him behind bars or
dead, something he considered a victory in itself. Musing a bit about “all the
guys I left behind,” he chuckled and said, “But I’m still alive. Ain’t that
something?”
Even at his advanced age, Sonny had a full head of hair—something he was
very pleased with—and a thick neck and strong jaw. The years hadn’t really
worn down his appearance. His health was another matter. He had a pacemaker,
one kidney, hearing loss, false teeth, spinal stenosis, and a host of other
conditions, but he didn’t complain. Sonny exuded a zest for life, laughed easily,
and was a great storyteller, with a comic’s sense of timing. In every one of his
stories, he won the fight, got the girl, secured the better part of the business deal.
But his charm masked the darker reality of his life in the Mafia: a life full of
betrayal, treachery, and petty grievances resulting in often-lethal consequences.
He could trust no one, not even his beloved sons. As he sat at a table, he cast
glances behind him to see who was there. In the end, many of his old friends
who were still alive didn’t bother to come and see him. His children were
scattered and busy with their own lives, and his once-elegant wife had died
destitute and estranged from him.
His life had reached both the pinnacles of high society and the depths of years
of being locked away in prison. As he reflected on his past, Sonny expressed no
regrets about his career in crime—“I never hurt nobody that was innocent”—but
he never once acknowledged even the existence of the Mafia. “Omertà? What’s
that?”
He was true to his oath until the end.
Shown a picture of himself from his heyday, when he cut a ruggedly
handsome figure in his perfectly tailored suits, with a jaunty smile for
photographers, Sonny grinned and said, “Hey, let me ask you: A face like that,
could he be a murderer?”
Yes, he could.

***

What was I doing, sitting down with a killer?

I grew up in Minnesota, a pretty sheltered existence, far away from the Mafia.
What I knew about the Mafia was the little I had seen in movies, and I wasn’t
impressed. I saw nothing glamorous in preying on other people. When I moved
to Long Island for a reporting job at Newsday, I was appalled at the respect, and
deference, shown to the mobsters who operated freely on the margins of local
governments. They sucked up lucrative paving and garbage contracts, and
blocked legitimate contractors, as the mob padded the bills and provided
substandard service or worse. That any politician would even talk to these thugs
shocked me, but they did more than that. Often they were friends.
Over the years, I interviewed some bona fide mobsters, and they were, for the
most part, not very interesting. They were greedy and violent, and there was no
code of honor among them. They were out only for themselves. I knew enough
to stay away.
And yet here I was, interviewing a man who had murdered and hurt countless
people in pursuit of power and money, and I was enthralled.
It started when I interviewed Michael Franzese, Sonny’s adopted son, for a
story that would touch on the Mafia’s influence on Long Island in the 1980s and
’90s. Michael had once been a huge earner for the Colombo crime family.
However, when law enforcement caught up with him and he faced years in
prison, he cooperated, feeding federal authorities information about Mafia
leaders all over the country. That put a target on his back, and he left the life.
After serving time in prison, he moved to California far away from the mob and
became an evangelical pastor. Handsome, articulate, and comfortable with the
press, he has turned his time in the Mafia into a profitable personal brand.
After our interview, Michael mentioned that he was going to visit his father,
who was due to get out of prison in a few months. Because of Sonny’s deep
Long Island roots, it was an obvious story for Newsday, and I jumped at it.
In doing the story of his release, I was struck by the respect Sonny had both
from street criminals and people in law enforcement. That’s unusual. Cops and
prosecutors typically are dismissive of mobsters because so many of them are
like the ones I’ve met—greedy, violent, and dangerous. Sonny was different. He
was tough and self-disciplined and inspired loyalty among his men. He had been
a massive celebrity in his day and had spent years in prison because, unlike
Michael, he had refused to rat out his confederates. I had to get an interview with
him.
I tried the usual channels—his lawyer, family members, and friends—but few
were willing to talk. Finally, “Frankie Blue Eyes,” Sonny’s longtime friend,
emerged. In the traitorous world of the Mafia, Frankie Blue Eyes was pure in his
devotion to Sonny.
Frankie—to this day, I don’t know his last name, and he likes it that way—
asked Sonny if he wanted to talk to us. He said he would. I’m not sure why.
Frankie said he remembered the old Newsday stories about him, when he was
frequently front-page news. I think it may have been that Sonny was simply
ready. He knew he had a great story to tell.
When we arrived at the nursing home, Sonny was out for an appointment. As
we waited for him at the deli across the street, Frankie Blue Eyes talked about
his regrets in his own life, but remained proud of his friendship with Sonny. It
pained him deeply that his old friend was stuck in a nursing home.
After three hours of waiting, we gave up and started to leave. I went to the
front desk to leave a platter of freshly baked Italian cookies for Sonny. My
thinking was that, at the very least, the prospect of meeting a gangster of
Sonny’s stature was an occasion and that I should bring an offering. The only
thing I could think of was a platter of cookies. I’m sure other people thought
bringing cookies to a mobster was laughable, but the gesture paid off.
The nursing-home employees had been strict about adhering to patient privacy
guidelines. But upon seeing the cookies, one aide pulled me aside and
whispered, “If you wait a little longer, he just might be coming back in twenty
minutes in the next ambulette.”
So we continued to wait, until it finally seemed inevitable that we had missed
him. We got up to leave again. Then Sonny rolled in. Though in a wheelchair, he
looked far younger than his years because he exuded vigor. He quickly took
command of the situation. He eyed each of us, appraisingly, smiling, but
reserved. Frankie Blue Eyes stepped forward. “These are the people from
Newsday I told you about,” he told him.
Sonny relaxed, smiling broadly. He wanted to talk.
I had come armed with court records, old newspaper and magazine articles,
and photos of Sonny. I had thought they might help break the ice, and they did.
He dove into the records with gusto, occasionally asking me to read sections,
because his eyesight was failing. When I read him the notes FBI agents had
written while listening in on private conversations at his home through illegal
bugs, his jaw clenched. For a moment, I thought he would erupt, but ever
disciplined, he remained calm. His mood lifted when I showed him his rap sheet,
with crimes dating back to 1938. It was as if I had shown him his high-school
yearbook. He went through each crime, filling in details, laughing at the
memories.
Sonny was unabashed about being a bad guy.
“Every night I sleep good,” he said.
The stories came tumbling out—his time in the army, his affairs with famous
women, his tense friendship with Frank Sinatra. He spoke about prison, his
family, even his regrets. I found him to be surprisingly open, but still cagey. He
was far less willing to talk about money—“I don’t want the IRS coming after
me”—and he only admitted crimes for which the statute of limitations had
expired.
He spoke fondly of Bobby Darin, whom Morris “Mo” Levy, of Roulette
Records, had “given” him. He was really impressed with his talent, which he
thought far outstripped Sinatra’s. And he genuinely liked Darin’s first wife,
Sandra Dee—“She was a nice girl, couldn’t sing, though, couldn’t sing.” Unlike
all the other famous women he told me about, he never claimed to have had an
affair with her.
We were together for several hours that day, and he never tired. Both
avuncular and crude, he recalled long-ago events with startling clarity. He was
keenly aware of his place in the annals of American crime and expressed pride
that he had never ratted on anyone. “No one in history” had done what he had
done, and a comparison to Jesus Christ was apt, in his view. “Jesus suffered. He
didn’t squeal on nobody.”
An aide brought him dinner, and he slapped the tray in disgust. “Rice again!
I’m so sick of that crap.”
I don’t know if he was performing for me, but it worked. I immediately
offered to bring him food the next time we saw each other. After going through
several options, we settled on pasta e fagioli, his favorite.
“My mother used to make it good,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize it.
They don’t put garlic in it, it don’t taste good.”
When I left, Frankie Blue Eyes turned to me and said, “You made his day.”
“No, Frankie,” I replied. “He made mine.”
We would meet five more times, always with pasta e fagioli, pizza, meatball
hero sandwiches, and more from the one pizza place left in the neighborhood
actually run by an Italian. Sonny had an enormous appetite, and he often looked
over to my plate to poach a bite. One time, a bunch of his old friends showed up.
Sonny performed for them, telling vulgar and ugly stories, as they hooted their
approval. For some reason, I wasn’t repelled. It was fascinating to see this
completely different facet of his personality.
In between visits, Sonny would hear from others I had contacted for
interviews. They weren’t calling to let him know; they were calling to ask his
permission. He never denied it, and his friends kept talking to me.
I couldn’t help but like Sonny. It might have been because I never spoke to
any of his victims, because they were either dead or too terrified to talk to me.
Or perhaps it was because he was so good at reading me. His ability to read
people, after all, was part of what kept him alive for so long. Years ago, I
rejected the chance to talk to guys like him, but Sonny had the ability to draw
you in. He was the kind of guy you’d want to invite over for a backyard
barbecue, until you remembered that you’d be crazy to let anyone you loved
anywhere near him.
Maybe the simplest explanation for my liking Sonny is that I fell in love with
his story. His life was an epic adventure, and he knew it. Just before his last
birthday, he sent word through a mutual acquaintance that he wanted me to come
to the celebration at the nursing home. A coworker was convinced that Sonny
didn’t mean it and said I shouldn’t go. But the invitation was so specific and
intentional, I was pretty sure he did mean it. When I arrived, Sonny looked
delighted to see me, which immediately put his wary relatives at ease. He was
recovering from pneumonia and looked pale and tired. We chatted for a while,
and though his relatives invited me to stay, I didn’t want to intrude on a family
gathering. I left.
Besides, the message had been sent: Sonny wanted me to tell his story.
A little more than two weeks later, he died.
 CHAPTER 1

The House on Shrub Hollow Road

“They wanted me to roll all the time. I couldn’t do that.”

THE WHITE HOUSE on Shrub Hollow Road was not unlike the other houses on the
winding street on suburban Long Island. A newly built Colonial, with a two-car
garage, it was set back on a half acre of manicured lawn about forty minutes east
of New York City in Roslyn. The family, a husband and wife and five children,
went about the normal business of life in the well-heeled suburbs—Little League
games, parent-teacher conferences, and Sunday dinners. But inside the house,
life was far from normal.
In fact, someone was listening.
It was the early 1960s, and the FBI had placed bugs in the kitchen wall while
the house was under construction. After the family moved in and went about
their daily routine, FBI agents listened in on a special line that went to their
Manhattan office, taking notes. The bugs were entirely illegal, but that didn’t
stop agents from eavesdropping on the family’s conversations. The family didn’t
know.
Agents had bugged the home because it was owned by John “Sonny”
Franzese, the notorious Mafia up-and-comer who had murdered his way up
through the hierarchy of what was then known as the Profaci family. Sonny
committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. Aspiring wiseguys did not get
to choose their Mafia family; the mob hierarchy assigned them to families.
Sonny became affiliated with the Profaci family. The New York City Police
Department heard rumors that the young Italian from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was
involved, but his father, Carmine “the Lion” Franzese, moved quickly to shut
down any investigation. In those days, a well-placed bribe in the NYPD worked
wonders.
It became a singular point of pride for Sonny, because as a result of that act,
he was “made,” or inducted into the Mafia, which at the time was still a secret
society unknown to the general public. Because Sonny was so young and
because of law enforcement’s interest in the murder, the family decided to keep
his new status under wraps for two years. Secrecy was one of the Mafia’s most
important currencies, and Sonny was more disciplined than most in adhering to
his oath. Over the coming years, as mob boss after mob boss rolled and violated
omertà, the Cosa Nostra’s vow of silence, Sonny was steadfast. He never ratted,
even though his refusal would come at a great personal cost.
“They wanted me to roll all the time,” he said years later. “I couldn’t do that.
Because it’s my principle.”
As Sonny rose through the ranks, he enforced his discipline with a bloodlust
that terrified even the toughest of gangsters. Once, he sold his car to a Long
Island dealership, which, in turn, put it up for sale. A car salesman told the buyer
to have it swept for bugs because it had belonged to “a hoodlum named Sonny
Franzese.” Whether the salesman had merely been making an offhand remark or
having a little fun by passing on underworld gossip, he had made a profoundly
stupid mistake. Word got back to Sonny. Days later, three thugs showed up at
the dealership with baseball bats. They beat the salesman savagely, nearly killing
him, and left him bleeding and broken on the floor. The man survived, but was
crippled for life.
Authorities believed Sonny personally killed or ordered the murders of scores
of people. He admitted as much in a boast to a young hustler he was mentoring,
but who was secretly taping him. “I killed a lot of guys . . . You’re not talking
about four, five, six, ten.”
It wasn’t just the body count that excited him. He took pride in his methods of
disposing of bodies. When he stopped into a body shop he owned, he always
pointed out the vats of acid to his youngest son, John. “Oh, that’s good, that’s
good,” he told him. “Acid, that’s good. Remember that.” John understood that
his father was referring to dissolving bodies with it.
Keeping tabs on Sonny was so important to the FBI that agents’ Airtel memos
went directly to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. “Hoover would give his left nut
to get Sonny Franzese,” proclaimed one FBI agent.
Sonny was keenly aware of law enforcement’s interest in him. Years later, he
said he had suspected that the government was eavesdropping on him: “I didn’t
know. Had an idea, but they denied it, so I couldn’t use it because they said it
wasn’t true.”
He didn’t worry about it anyway because he prided himself on his discipline.
He had two separate phone lines installed at his house and still kept his phone
conversations short and vague. When he was on the streets of Manhattan, he
never used the same phone booth twice. If he wanted to have a business
conversation with an associate at home, he’d pull the man into the bathroom and
run the water. Even with that, he would still whisper. And he never discussed
business with a woman.
For Sonny, eluding the government and beating the system was part of the
endgame. One day, a friend stopped by with his nine-year-old son. Sonny
noticed that the boy looked glum and asked him, “What’s wrong with you?”
“My dad hit me because I was charging people to be my friend, and if they
didn’t pay me, I’d fight them,” the boy replied.
Sonny slapped the boy on the side of his head. Stunned, the boy said, “What
was that for?”
“For getting caught,” Sonny replied.

By the 1960s, Sonny was at the peak of his power. In his mid- to late forties, he
cut a handsome figure in finely tailored suits. Thick-necked and built like a
boxer, he walked with an athlete’s natural grace. When he walked into a room,
he would survey it, always calculating his edge. Without a word, he could
dominate a room. Conversations would quiet down and people would steal
glances his way. He knew the effect he had on people, and he relished it.
If he had any weakness at all, it was for his second wife, Tina, a lovely and
lissome brunette he had fallen for when she was just a teenager, seventeen years
his junior, and he was married to someone else. They met in 1950 at the Stork
Club, a swanky Manhattan hot spot frequented by celebrities. Friends thought
he’d like to meet a pretty young cigarette girl there, sixteen-year-old Tina
Capobianco.
“So they told me, the guy said, ‘Sonny, why don’t you come along? She’s a
nice girl, and you’ll like her. She’s a pretty son of a gun.’
“I says, ‘All right, if I got nothing to do, I’ll meet you.’
“So then I came, and I went to the club, and I saw her. If I hadda married her
that minute, I woulda been married from that day on. I fell in love with her the
second I saw her. Isn’t that something? That’s how it went. Love at first sight.
She was very pretty, a very pretty girl. She knew how to dress, she knew how to
walk, every goddamn thing.”
Tina was the perfect partner for his ambitions. Smart and status-conscious, she
kept up appearances, dressing her children in expensive clothes and schooling
them in social graces. They were the only children in the neighborhood who said
“yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am” to adults. When guests visited their home, which
was always immaculate, Tina had coffee cake and fresh coffee on hand. And like
Sonny, she immediately sized up anyone who came into their home.
 Tina had no illusions about who her husband was. When Sonny was courting
her, he took her to Manhattan’s hottest clubs, flaunting his ties in the
entertainment business, as well as his other connections. On one date, Albert
Anastasia, then the boss of not only “Murder Inc.,” but also of New York’s
waterfront, came over to their table to say hello to Sonny. Tina was impressed.
The two of them made a dazzling pair—with movie-star looks, smarts, and
charm that inevitably drew people into their orbit. In fact, when he and Tina first
met, movie producers offered her a contract. Sonny hated the idea.
“She knew I was against it,” he recalled. “I told her, ‘You do that, we’ll break
up. You’re not gonna be my girl.’
“Every girl that went into the movies hadda be a whore . . . That’s what I was
worried about. I’m a die-hard guy. You’re my woman, you’re my woman,
nobody else’s. She didn’t take it.”
By the time the family moved into the house on Shrub Hollow Road, Sonny
controlled gambling, extortion, and loan shark rackets throughout Brooklyn,
Queens, and much of Long Island. An informant told FBI agents that Sonny and
his pal, Joseph Colombo, were paying New York City police $1,500 a month for
the protection of a single craps game in Brooklyn.
One day, a profitable trucking company came to his attention. Mobsters
always look to see who’s making money, and Sonny wanted in. He sent two of
his men over to explain that the trucker was going to have a new business
partner.
Bemused, the trucker told them, “Hey, I don’t need a business partner.”
Sonny’s men laughed and looked at each other. “Oh, yeah, you do.”
He kicked them out. The next day, one of his new trucks didn’t start. Someone
had poured sand into the carburetor. He cleared it out and went about his
business. A few days later, four men burst into his office with baseball bats.
Before he could run, they launched their attack, beating him mercilessly with the
bats. The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was one of the
men shouting, “Sonny wants to talk to you!”
As they had at the car dealership, they left him on the floor, bloody, broken,
and barely alive.
The next thing he remembered was waking up at the hospital. But it wasn’t
over. Several very large men stopped by his hospital room with some paperwork.
That’s when he signed over half his business to Sonny.
In the 1960s, truckers knew the risks they faced from organized crime, but the
injustice of it rankled the victim. He complained to an Internal Revenue Service
agent, who contacted Gerald Shur, then an attorney in the U.S. Justice
Department’s organized-crime and racketeering section. “We got a promising
lead,” the agent told Shur. “How fast can you get here?”
Around that time, in October 1961, the U.S. government, prodded by U.S.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was ramping up its efforts against
organized crime. Shur saw the trucking company owner’s story as the perfect
opportunity to make a case against a major organized-crime figure. He asked
him to testify against Sonny.
“Testify?” he responded. “I thought just telling you would be enough. The
mob will kill me and my entire family if I testify. No way am I speaking out
against Sonny Franzese!”
Shur was dumbfounded. He pushed hard, but a government bureaucrat was no
match for the Mafia. The trucking company owner, understandably, refused.
Shur, a serious man who believed deeply in the power of government to do
justice, fumed on the way back to his office from the meeting. “There’s got to be
a way to get witnesses to testify against the mob,” he said.
“Would you?” asked one of the agents in the car.
Shur turned to what he knew best: government bureaucracy. He began writing
memos urging the Justice Department to create a program to protect government
witnesses. It was the only way, he argued, that they could make headway against
gangsters like Sonny Franzese.
His argument resonated with like-minded attorneys in the department. Within
a decade, the Witness Security Program (WITSEC), or the Federal Witness
Protection Program, would become a reality. The program, which became a
critical tool to keep witnesses who testified against organized crime and other
violent criminals out of harm’s way, would come back to haunt Sonny years
later in a way he never could have imagined.
Sonny had no idea that his little trucking-company takeover had caught the
attention of the U.S. Justice Department. He wouldn’t have worried about it
anyway, as he was preoccupied with something far more important in his life at
that time.

***

A war had broken out within the Profaci family after one of its soldiers, Joe
“Crazy Joe” Gallo, made a move to take over the family. And Sonny was at the
center of it.
Gallo had been angry for years. He felt that family boss Joseph “Olive Oil
King” Profaci treated him like a peasant and favored his relatives and sycophants
over the men who did the real work. Making money under him was tough, too.
Every time Gallo tried to move in on a racket, he discovered it was under some
other wiseguy’s control. He and his brothers had had enough.
Sonny warned Profaci that the Gallos were going to make a move; but Profaci,
by then rumored to be ailing with cancer, didn’t act.
The Gallos struck in February 1961. They kidnapped Profaci underboss
Joseph Magliocco and bodyguard John Scimone, but failed to grab Joe Profaci,
who had gone to a Florida hospital for cancer treatment.
As they demanded a bigger piece of the numbers racket, and amnesty for the
kidnapping, they held their hostages at a Manhattan hotel. Tense negotiations
followed, with Sonny acting as emissary. Profaci passed word that he would
negotiate, only after his men were released, but Crazy Joe insisted that they kill
one of the hostages as a sign of their resolve.
Joe’s older brother, Larry, nixed that plan. After two weeks, they released
three of the hostages, but hung on to Scimone, whose toughness they had come
to admire, for another week.
The Mafia commission, or bosses of all five families, weighed in. The Gallos’
revolt clearly had violated Mafia rules, but the bosses believed they had a
legitimate complaint about not getting their fair share. The commission decided
not to intervene, ruling that it was an internal matter of the Profaci family.
Negotiations between the boss and the rebels dragged on. Profaci promised
concessions, but never came through. The Gallos felt squeezed financially; but
unlike the ailing and older Profaci, they were young and strong and had struck
up new alliances, most notably with Carmine “Junior” Persico, who was known
for a particular bloodlust. “He likes to kill,” one friend said of Junior. The Gallos
waited, stocking up on guns.
Profaci, however, had his own plans.
One Sunday afternoon, in October, Scimone called Larry Gallo and asked him
to meet him at the Sahara Lounge in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Larry trusted Scimone,
believing they had bonded during the kidnapping. He went to meet him. While
he was chatting with the bartender, two men emerged from the shadows and
looped a rope around his neck—they had opted for a rope, rather than a gun, for
the killing to be more discreet. They didn’t try to kill him right away. They
pulled the rope tight until he was gasping for breath and then loosened it ever so
slightly, enough to let him gulp some air. Their torture had a point: They ordered
Larry to summon his brothers to the bar.
He refused, evidently ready to accept his fate. Just as they pulled the rope
tighter to kill him, a patrolman, who had noticed that the side door to the bar was
ajar, walked in to check on the place. Larry was saved.
One of the two men who had pulled the rope around Larry Gallo’s neck was
none other than Junior Persico, their supposed ally. From then on, the Gallos
called him “the Snake,” a moniker that stuck, and one that Persico loathed
throughout his life. Though Sonny and Junior Persico were closely allied, Sonny
would come to understand the “Snake” epithet years later.
Persico was arrested and charged in the garrote attack, but refused to testify.
The attack sparked a vicious internecine battle within the Profaci family,
resulting in at least a dozen murders. New York tabloid newspapers covered the
war with gusto, sparing no grisly detail. Readers lapped it up.

In the Franzese household, though, the stories were far more than simply lurid
headlines. They were disturbingly real.
FBI agents could hear the tensions simmering in their house. Sonny and Tina,
who had gotten married in 1959, fought constantly. They fought over money,
taking care of the children, even whose mother was better. It became clear to the
agents, however, that the ever-present threat of violence often ignited their
arguments.
One day, FBI agents heard Tina scream, “Your mother hates you, and I have
to put up with you.”
With that, Sonny slapped her. Tina, unafraid, threatened to leave him.
“Where’s your gun, big man?” she yelled.
Sonny left, and Tina called her mother, Antoinette Capobianco. She was
furious about the argument and still seething over something that had happened
earlier.
“I’m definitely leaving him,” she told her, explaining that they had had a
violent fight after John, their first child and then just a toddler, walked into the
bedroom and saw Sonny sitting on the bed with a gun next to him. John, a bright
and curious child, asked what it was. Tina was horrified.
“That’s a fine thing for a father to show his baby,” Tina spat.
“Hide the gun, Tina,” Antoinette replied.
“I will not hide it. I will have nothing to do with it. Besides, it’s never
loaded,” Tina said. “You know what he did? While I was holding the baby in my
arms, Sonny held the gun up to my eyes! If he ever does that again, I’ll cut his
hand off.”
Tina meant it. For all her husband’s ferocity on the street, she wasn’t cowed
by him. She continued to fume to her mother. “Nobody ever bothers him. He’s a
big man!” she said, her tone oozing with sarcasm.
“He’s always playing with that gun.”
After getting off the phone with her mother, Tina called another woman and
related the same story about their fight, but then confessed to a deeper worry.
“He’s out tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll be reading about all the murders,
and I won’t sleep nights.”
At times, the tensions would ease. One night, Sonny kissed Tina good-bye,
put two guns in his pockets, and left. Tina silently watched him go. For all her
rages, her terror of his being killed trumped everything. Neither one of them
knew whether he’d come back alive.
When Sonny stayed away for days at a time, two bodyguards kept watch over
Tina and the children; but Sonny knew that might not be enough.
When he finally came home days later, tense and unshaven, he confessed to
his own worry: “I was on pins and needles. I didn’t know if something had
happened to you.”
Tina, too, was racked with worry. She turned to her mother; they spoke every
day.
“Every time he goes out, I’m afraid,” she told her. “I expect to read in the
paper that he’s been murdered.”
CHAPTER 2

Making His Bones

“I was a pretty good fistfighter.”

SONNY WAS BORN in Naples during one of his family’s sojourns to their native
Italy, but he grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a tough neighborhood teeming
with Italian immigrants who had fled World War I in the 1920s. His father,
Carmine “the Lion” Franzese, who had been a Cosa Nostra don in Naples, was
well-respected in America. He owned eighteen buildings, including the spartan
three-apartment building on Leonard Street where Sonny grew up and opened
his own social club at Leonard and Jackson Streets. The club, though
unassuming on the outside, was an important place to be seen for local
gangsters. Al Capone, a fellow Neapolitan, carved his initials, A.C., into a
wooden counter there.
To the world outside the Mafia, the Lion was a simple baker, which could
account for Sonny’s lifelong fascination with ovens. But to those who knew him
well, he was tough and treacherous. A man once came to his store to beg
forgiveness for witnessing something he shouldn’t have. The Lion smiled,
reassured him everything was all right, and invited him to relax with him in the
back of the shop. The relieved man followed him back there, and the Lion
promptly killed him.
The man had witnessed Sonny committing his first murder at age fourteen.

***

Sonny was the youngest son of eighteen children, only ten of whom survived to
adulthood. His sisters fussed over the beautiful baby, and his older brothers
carted him to baseball games at Ebbets Field, the Major League baseball stadium
in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. But the bloody undercurrents of his family’s life
were never far away. When he was two years old, Sonny was eating pasta e
fagioli and playing cards with a girl—family members say it was a sister, but he
said it was a neighbor—and they fought over a card. “She lets go of the fork, and
boom! It went right in my eye.”
His mother, Maria, rushed him to the hospital. “They wanted to take the eye
out. And my mother’s crying, ‘Please, Doctor, please don’t take his eye out!
Please save it. Do something! Do something! ’ The doctor got so impressed, he
said, ‘All right, Mom, I’ll try very hard to save it,’ and he saved it. I still got the
eye. Can’t see as good with it, I can’t see good, but I still got it.”
There was no coddling in the Franzese family, his eye notwithstanding, and he
quickly picked up the code of the street. He became a fighter.
“In our neighborhood, you had to be a fighter because the whole
neighborhood was fighters. And if you didn’t fight, you got your lumps, so you
hadda be a fighter. That’s how I wound up fightin’.”
Sonny’s older brother Onofrio, known as “Nufrio,” was someone nobody in
the neighborhood messed with. He was small, but people knew what he was
capable of. He managed to win over at least some of his neighbors by hosting
block parties, staging fireworks on the Fourth of July, and opening the hydrants
—called “Johnny pumps” in those days—for the kids on hot summer days.
He also staged fights “to prove that their neighborhood didn’t have a better
fighter than us,” and because a little wagering made it more interesting. Sonny
was the star. Although he complained to his brother—“them punches hurt”—
boxing held him in its thrall. He loved the two-man contest, the primal nature of
it.
Unsanctioned fights were popular in the neighborhood, and word spread about
the young Italian. One day, Sonny, still a teenager, had a fight set with a much
larger guy at the Broadway Arena in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. He was
apprehensive—“How am I into this one?”—but could not refuse, because his
friends would think he was a coward.
“Now there’s all guys around. I look around, I see all my friends. I said, ‘I
can’t say no, they’ll think I’m afraid.’”
The fighters weighed in. Sonny was 147 pounds, his opponent 169—too much
of a weight difference for a fight.
“So the guy said, ‘We can’t make the match.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘thank God.’”
The promoter had other ideas, however. “So he said, ‘No, no, no.’ He said,
‘Something’s wrong. The guy had his foot on the scale. He must have been
touching it. Let’s do it again.’ So he makes me one seventy-one . . . and the guy
one sixty-nine. And I fight the guy.”
The other fighter came on strong, trying to overwhelm the smaller teenager.
“And when I fight him, as soon as I walk in the ring, he hits me, a shot on the
nose. I thought I was knocked out on my feet, standing up. As soon as I come to,
I went at the guy like a maniac. I hit him; he goes down. When he goes down, I
jump on him on the floor and I start hitting him. That’s where Rocky Graziano
got that stuff from hitting a guy on the floor, he got it from me.
“And I start hitting him on the floor, I was banging him out till the referee
comes over. ‘You guinea bastard!’
“I said, ‘Screw you, you rat son of a bitch, I’ll fight you next, you bum.’
“ ‘You gonna fight me next?’
“ ‘Yeah, I’m gonna fight you next. Get out of the way!’ And I knocked the
guy out.”
The referee backed out of a fight with Sonny. He said he was a police sergeant
and, thus, couldn’t fight.
“You know something, I’ll be honest—not that I’m bragging. I hate to brag,
because you brag, then you go out on the street, you fight with a guy, you get
knocked dead—I was a pretty good fistfighter.”

Even as a young man, Sonny carried himself with an easy authority. He was
nearly five-ten and solidly built. An avid sports fan, he loved listening to boxing
matches on the radio. He had a broad grin and always greeted his neighbors with
respect. Schoolwork came easily to him, as did the girls. “I was in demand,
believe me. I never knew why. I never thought I was good-looking. I never
really did. As time went on, I became overcome with the attention I got, you
know.”
For a while, Sonny dated a “cute Irish girl,” and he really liked her. But her
father barred him from their house: “I’m not pure-blood. What kind of blood do
I got? I thought there was only one kind of blood, red.”
Furious, he confronted her. “Did you tell him I went to bed widja? I aint pure-
blood! I’m more red-blooded than anybody. I’m a die-hard American!”
Normal boundaries didn’t apply to Sonny. He went wherever his appetites led
him, even trying to seduce a teacher in high school. “It made me a little nervous.
I’m a kid, but I know enough about life to know what to do. When she heard me
talking like that, she buckled away. She was afraid . . . She used to always come
near me, and I’d say, ‘Let’s do something.’ God bless her, she held her place.”
By then, life at Eastern District High School in Brooklyn seemed small and
dull compared to life on the street. Another boy’s cigarette lighter caught
Sonny’s eye, when he was fifteen. “It was stolen,” he said, never explaining just
how he happened to wind up with it. When the lighter’s owner saw Sonny
playing with it, he challenged him to a fight. This was no idle threat; the boy was
the school’s entry in the Golden Gloves tournament. Naturally, Sonny couldn’t
refuse a challenge. By his telling, he easily dispatched his opponent.
Although he won the fight, he lost any future in high school. He was expelled.
“When my father heard I was fighting, he went crazy . . . ‘Look,’ he said—in
Italian, he couldn’t speak English—‘if you wanna fight, I’ll make you fight. You
fight with me. I’ll beat you up. Nobody’s gonna beat you up, but me. Either you
stop, or I’ll break both your legs.’ So I stopped. He was a firm believer in that.
He didn’t want to see any of his children hurt.”

After leaving high school, Sonny ostensibly had gone to work in his father’s
bakery, but his real job was running a craps game in Brooklyn—the biggest
game in New York. Sonny had an intuitive feel for business and powerful
backing. Although the craps game was under the aegis of an older wiseguy, “I
was the one running it.”
Sonny was a soldier in the Profaci family. To move up in the family ranks, he
needed to make money, and he was very good at that. He was making an
impression on the adults around him, even the principal who expelled him from
Eastern District High School. “He comes back into the neighborhood and starts
asking questions about me. When they told him that I ran the neighborhood, that
I become a wiseguy, he said, ‘I expected him to become something big, but not
that.’”
The principal wasn’t the only person who noticed Sonny’s success. Powerful
mobsters did, too.
Albert Anastasia, who ran a hit-man-for-hire organization, nicknamed
“Murder Inc.” in the press, and Vito Genovese, a longtime associate of Charles
“Lucky” Luciano, clashed in a dispute over turf. Both were powerful men, and
they eyed each other’s activities warily. Sonny idolized both men, and soon
found himself in the middle of a precarious standoff that would test his ability to
navigate the treacherous byways of the mob.
Anastasia had asked two brothers from Genovese’s neighborhood to tell him
whenever Genovese was on his turf. Instead, they reported it back to Genovese,
who was furious at the affront. Genovese called Sonny and said, “You busy?”
Sonny told Genovese, a fellow Neapolitan, “No, no, no, for you, I’m never
busy.”
He went to see Genovese, who asked him if he knew anybody around
Anastasia. Sonny said he did. Genovese asked him to set up a meeting with
Anastasia’s people.
Sonny brought two of Anastasia’s hoods to the meeting and then expected to
leave. His family, the Profacis, was not part of the dispute; and he didn’t want to
know what was discussed. He knew that that could only create problems for him.
 But the men insisted that he stay. The meeting lasted two hours and
culminated with a succinct order from one of Genovese’s men: “Tell him
(Anastasia) to fucking stay away from this neighborhood.”
Sonny left, but it wasn’t over. Someone from his crew heard about the
meeting, and he was summoned to another meeting to explain what had
happened. Sonny was in a tough spot: He knew he couldn’t reveal what had
happened at the meeting, nor could he show a lack of respect to his own crew.
He danced around it, insisting that he hadn’t really heard anything.
He handled himself with enough aplomb that both Genovese and Anastasia
were impressed, and Genovese became his lifelong champion. Men on the street
viewed Genovese as a homicidal maniac, but Sonny admiringly called him “the
toughest cocksucker I ever met.”
The guys in Sonny’s own crew weren’t sure he was leveling with them, but
they let it go, because he was earning too much money.
Gambling was big business, and floating craps games—a dice game that never
remained in the same place, but changed locations frequently—were especially
popular. Players would arrive at a predetermined location and were taken to
wherever the game was being held. Food and entertainment, usually in the form
of prostitutes, were often provided. Such setups invariably attracted the attention
of authorities, but liberal payoffs to police ensured that the wiseguys would be
tipped off to any planned raids. More than once, detectives assigned to the
NYPD’s elite gambling squad would break down the door of a game, only to
find that the players and hosts had vacated the premises moments before their
arrival.
Sonny, too, was becoming adept at evading the legal consequences of his
illicit activities. He loved besting the cops. His first arrest was for felonious
assault in Brooklyn on January 7, 1938. A day later, the charge was dismissed.
Two more arrests followed in the same year. Each one was for disorderly
conduct and resulted in a $10 fine and a day in jail. He was twenty-one years
old.
So began a pattern of arrests over the next twenty-eight years in which he
displayed a remarkable ability to dodge jail time. Each time he was arrested, he
was acquitted, the charges were dismissed, or he was let off with a nominal fine.
For Sonny, the arrests were a brief interruption of business. Anytime he got into
a jam with the police, he could turn to the mob’s vast network of snitches and
cops receptive to bribes and friendly judges, when necessary.

Secure in his chosen career, Sonny took up with a pretty and voluptuous blond
teenager, Anna Schiller, who gave birth to their first daughter, Maryann, in
February 1941. Anna was fifteen. Sonny was twenty-four. Throughout his life,
Sonny would favor younger, but not necessarily docile, women. Although he
considered himself a traditionalist, he didn’t legalize their union until November
1942.
Their marriage was volatile. Anna and Sonny fought often, and he threatened
to disfigure her face with a knife.
Sonny’s newfound domesticity, as tenuous as it was, was soon eclipsed by
world events. The Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl
Harbor in Honolulu pushed the previously neutral United States into World War
II. Sonny wanted to join the fight. He went to a recruiter’s office to sign up, only
to be rebuffed after the recruiter decided he had to talk to a psychiatrist, who
didn’t think he’d be a good candidate for the Army.
Furious, Sonny lunged at the psychiatrist, grabbed his arm, and demanded that
he let him enlist. They fought for about fifteen minutes, until the doctor got up,
left the office, and told him to wait. Sonny expected him to return with military
police to arrest him. Instead, “He comes back with two more doctors. They sit
down and says, ‘What’s on your mind, soldier?’
“I says, ‘What’s on my mind? Nothin’ is on my mind.’
“ ‘Then what are you arguing with the doctor for?’
“‘He says he wants to reject me. I don’t want to be rejected. I want to go
overseas and fight.’
“So he looks at the guy and he says, ‘What the hell are you getting mad
about? What do you want to reject him for? He wants to go and fight, let him
go.’”
Things were no less contentious once he successfully enlisted in May 1943.
He had frequent scrapes with other soldiers. By Sonny’s account, he won every
fight, and they were always against bigger and better-trained fighters. Once,
while stationed in South Carolina, he got into a fight and ended up with two guys
holding his arms while a third punched him. Another soldier persuaded the
group to settle their beef with a fair fight, so they went to the gym. They squared
off, and Sonny, of course, knocked out his rival.
Not surprisingly, Sonny’s combativeness came to the attention of the military
brass; in his view, they were impressed. “They liked me because I had guts. Now
I could fight with everybody. I didn’t care for nobody. I figure I’m going to die,
I’m going overseas and dying. I wasn’t worried about nobody. You know what I
mean?”
The top brass weren’t his only admirers. “My major’s wife fell in love with
me. I was having sex with her all the time. I didn’t know they’d shoot you if you
have sex in the wartime.”
 Army officers tried to get Sonny to make a career of the army, he said, but he
told them, “‘I ain’t a career man. I’m not. I just joined the army to fight for my
country. Help them to win or lose,’ I said. ‘I can’t be the guy. Once the war is
over, I’m out.’”
Years later, he wasn’t sure he had made the right decision. “I should have took
it. I’d have been a general today.”
When his unit boarded a train to go overseas, a lieutenant pulled him off the
train. “He said, ‘We have to hold you.’ Somebody told them that if I went
overseas, that I was going to shoot all the officials. I never said that. I never
would shoot them . . . How could I shoot them? They made up stories about me
that were never true. They took me off and they put me in the hospital.”
He was dishonorably discharged for “pronounced homicidal tendencies” in
1944. He had been in the army a little over a year.

Once he was out, Sonny was back on the street. One night in the late 1940s, he
was sitting in a back corner of the Orchid Room, a bar he owned in Jackson
Heights, laughing and talking with a younger man. Everything seemed friendly.
All of a sudden, a shot rang out, and the man slumped to the floor. Sonny
signaled to an associate, and the body was quickly removed and dumped on the
street.
What struck observers who later recounted the scene was that afterward,
Sonny resumed talking and laughing, as if nothing had happened.
That steely resolve—Sonny would later call it “determination”—caused others
to recall a certain look he had, the kind that when he flashed it at you could make
your blood run cold. He could toggle from telling a funny and folksy anecdote to
an ice-cold stare. Anyone who saw that stare remembered it.
Meanwhile, his marriage to Anna was crumbling. Once he met Tina, it was all
but over, though it would be years before they got married.
Like Sonny, Tina had grown up in Brooklyn, but under very different
circumstances. Her father, Rocco, was a school bus driver, and her mother,
Antoinette, worked in a textile factory. They were hardworking people and ran a
strict household. They had high expectations for their children and disciplined
them when they fell short—Tina’s mother would pinch her cheeks if she earned
anything less than an A in school.
Tina yearned for a more glamorous life beyond Brooklyn. Though still a
teenager, she moved easily among the celebrity patrons at the linen-topped tables
of the Stork Club. Actor Montgomery Clift was said to be smitten with her.
However, once Sonny saw her, he became determined to clear away any
competition.
 With Tina, however, that wasn’t so easy. Her parents disapproved of Sonny,
who was seventeen years older than their daughter, and besides that, he was
married. In any case, Tina had other suitors. In January 1951, she married a
soldier named Louis Grillo. Four months later, she gave birth to a son, Michael.
But Sonny would not be put off; if anything, her slipping out of his grasp only
increased his ardor. He pursued her relentlessly, sending friendly neighbors as
emissaries to the Capobiancos to vouch for his good intentions.
By 1959, Tina and Sonny shed their respective spouses and got married.
The two of them would become a formidable couple.
 CHAPTER 3

Down to Business

“What we done in New York is unbelievable.”

IN THEIR WEDDING PHOTO, Tina and Sonny look triumphant. Tina, chic with a hat
perched jauntily on her head and a simple gold cross around her neck, is smiling
broadly. Sonny, wearing a tuxedo and white carnation on his lapel, is positively
beaming with pride. She was twenty-five. He was forty-two.
They were finally married. It was what she had wanted for years. While
Sonny was still married to Anna, Tina would drive by their apartment, screaming
at her to leave him. And finally, they were married. She had prevailed. She
savored that victory, ready to start her new life with an important man who
adored her.
All of that ruptured the moment they returned home from their honeymoon in
Mexico. That’s when Sonny sat Tina down to talk. “She ran off and left the
kids,” he told her. “We gotta take ’em.”
It blindsided Tina. She had thought she was marrying a wealthy and powerful
man who merely needed to divorce his first wife. She never knew Sonny had any
children, let alone three. Her son, Michael, was just eight years old, and now she
was expected to raise three more children from another mother—Maryann,
Carmine, and Lorraine—as well. Everything she thought she knew was wrong,
and the man she loved had kept this enormous secret from her. The new life she
had dreamed of for so long vanished in an instant. She seethed with resentment.
But before long, her anger over her new circumstances was temporarily
alleviated by the birth of their first child together, John Franzese Jr., on April 22,
1960. Both Sonny and Tina were over the moon at John’s birth. It was as if the
stars had aligned perfectly to create this child. He was the spitting image of his
father. A happy and energetic boy, he could do no wrong in his parents’ eyes.
Tina would go on to have two daughters, Gia and Christine (“Little Tina”), but
John was always his parents’ favorite, forgiven for any transgression.
Tina made it clear to her stepchildren that they were just that. At Christmas,
they got cheap toys, while her own children were spoiled with expensive gifts.
John, a sensitive boy, noticed it and didn’t like it.
One wintry day, Tina pushed twelve-year-old Carmine, who had walked
barefoot into the kitchen to check what was in the refrigerator, onto their snow-
covered porch. She locked the door as she screamed at Sonny, “They belong
with their mother!”
He responded, as he always did, that Anna wasn’t cooperating. “What am I
supposed to do? Throw them out on the streets? My hands are tied.”
Whether that was true was never clear, and it didn’t matter, since the result
was the same. The argument was a routine between them and frequently ended
with Sonny simply leaving the house.
Tina threw herself into decorating their home. If she couldn’t have the life she
dreamed of, she would at least create the façade of that life. She had exquisite,
and expensive, taste. She bought the latest appliances and had washable plaid
carpeting in the kitchen. Elsewhere in the house, she had their wooden parquet
floors stained blue, revealing all the grains of the wood. The effect was
breathtaking. With her fastidious housekeeping, their home looked like a
designer showcase.
Outside, she had inground sprinklers installed, a novelty at the time. Because
Tina never felt she had to pay her contractors—because she was, after all,
married to Sonny Franzese—the system was poorly installed and didn’t work. A
couple of repairmen were summoned to fix it. As they were working, Sonny
arrived home with two bodyguards. He watched them on his lawn for a while
and said, “Whaddya doing?”
They chatted a bit, and Sonny learned that one of the repairmen had a fuel oil
company on the side. That piqued his interest. “Oh, you got a fuel oil company?
How big?”
The man, named Louie, puffed up and bragged about his fledgling business,
which had all of one broken-down truck, but seemed bigger in Louie’s telling.
He wanted to impress the homeowner that he was more than just a sprinkler
repairman. Sonny listened attentively, smiling, drawing him out. Finally, when
Louie finished, he said, “Whaddya think? You wanna expand? I’m an
entrepreneur. I finance young guys like you.”
Fortunately, Louie was working with a friend who was savvier about street
guys and knew enough to get out of there as soon as possible. The friend offered
an excuse, and they finished the job and left without any complications for
Louie’s little business.
 Sonny, for the most part, tolerated Tina’s home improvements. But one day,
she went too far. Disturbed by their barren front yard, she spent thousands to
have trees and bushes planted all around their home. As always with Tina, she
made sure it was done beautifully.
When Sonny came home and saw the new landscaping, he erupted and
demanded that it all be ripped out. And so, their lovely suburban lawn was
stripped of any potential hiding spots for assassins.

Sonny had reason to be cautious. He had been successful in brokering the truce
in the Profaci internecine war in March 1962. Peace—always more profitable
than war—was possible. Joe Gallo was in prison, having been convicted of
conspiracy and extortion; Joe Profaci died shortly after the truce. Profaci’s
brother-in-law, Joseph Magliocco, was set to take over, but he had his own
health problems. Far worse, however, was the way he had reacted when the
Gallos had taken him hostage. He had shown fear. Word spread—gangsters are
notoriously gossipy about such things—and Gambino, always looking for ways
to knock out his rivals, pushed the commission bosses to show Magliocco that
his standing had fallen.
Sonny, once again, emerged as the mediator. He began to talk to Magliocco
about retiring. Sonny was one of the few people in the family with the stature to
approach him; and besides, they had a long-standing personal relationship.
Sonny’s daughter had been a flower girl in a Magliocco family wedding.
Sonny’s efforts appeased the commission. Family soldier Gregory Scarpa,
who was working secretly as an informant for the FBI, told agents that “the
family would be completely reorganized and that young men would be put in all
of the executive positions, and the old men would act only as advisers.”
Scarpa, known as “the Grim Reaper” because he loved killing, had become a
top-echelon informant for the FBI in 1961. The agency considered it a coup
because at the time, little was known about the key players in the Mafia or how
it operated. Scarpa was intelligent, informative, and cagey enough to dangle
tantalizing tidbits, while also settling scores with rivals. FBI agents filed copious
reports about his information over the years, and they never balked when he
whined about money, which he did constantly. They felt he was just too
important an informant, and they were right.
Sonny never liked Scarpa. He didn’t trust him and kept his distance. He later
would tell his son John, “There’s something wrong about that guy.”
Sonny’s instincts were right. Scarpa provided agents with valuable
intelligence about him. Early on, Scarpa flagged Sonny to the FBI as an up-and-
comer in the organization: “His opinions carry a great amount of weight because
of his activity for the organization.”
Scarpa’s information was good. After helping to broker the truce, Sonny was
made a capo, alongside his old pal Joe Colombo, in July 1962. It was an
important promotion because it meant that he would have his own crew of men
kicking up money to him. He already had a core group of men working for him,
but now he was one of nine caporegimes in the four-hundred-man family, just
below boss and underboss in rank. Below him were soldiers—all made members
of the family—and a legion of associates, all involved in highly lucrative and
tax-free illegal moneymaking operations. In addition, the bosses gave Sonny
several of the illegal operations that Gallo’s crew had run.
Money was rolling in.
“I started buying businesses, you know,” Sonny said years later. “I started a
used-car business. I started making money, and then I opened up a club, another
club, another club, and I started making big money. Never under my name,
though. I couldn’t get a license . . . I was a bad guy.”

By the early 1960s, the Mafia was riding high in New York. The syndicate had
crime families throughout the country—from Chicago to New Orleans to Denver
—but New York was the apex. In addition to making millions from traditional
rackets, members of the city’s five crime families had steadily insinuated
themselves into government, labor unions, and the entertainment industry.
Buoyed by money and power, mobsters enjoyed a star status all their own. From
the sidelines, honest cops and prosecutors watched the mob’s rise, seemingly
helpless to stop it.
Even Sonny marveled at the Mafia’s reach and influence—“What we done in
New York is unbelievable.”
And word was spreading about Sonny. Mobsters from all over the country
began to hear about this rising star in New York. He was becoming known as a
guy you could turn to, to take care of a problem, big or small.
That became evident one night when Frank Sinatra Jr. came to perform with
the Tommy Dorsey Band at one of the nightclubs Sonny owned as a silent
partner, the San Su San, a sleek dance club in Mineola topped with a huge neon
sign. Built to accommodate large crowds, the club hosted big-name entertainers,
like Red Buttons and actor Mickey Rooney, which was unusual for a club on
suburban Long Island. That night, however, crowds were thin, and Frank Jr. was
bombing. A call came in to Sonny from the Chicago outfit. The next night, the
club was jammed, with a well-primed standing-room-only crowd and Sonny
seated at the head table. After every song, they hooted and hollered, giving
Frank Jr. standing ovations. Frank Jr., energized by the applause, rose to the
occasion and gave a rousing performance. Someone alerted the entertainment
press, and, miraculously, a series of rave reviews were published. Frank Jr. was a
smash.
It was vintage Sonny. He was adept at fixing things behind the scenes.
It was one way Sonny separated himself. Rising to the top levels of a Mafia
family and running a profitable crew required more sophisticated skills than leg
breaking. It required managerial acumen, networking, and the ability to craft
agreements with other families. Law enforcement recognized that and watched
uneasily as Sonny moved in on what were supposed to be legitimate businesses.
Sonny opened the floodgates for organized crime in the suburbs. Not content
with traditional rackets, he seized every opportunity he could to make money.
While other mob bosses thought small, he thought big.

Sonny found the perfect place to expand his loan-sharking operations—banks.

Banks were an obvious target; that was, after all, where the money was. But
Sonny saw a better way to get in. It seemed that some banking executives found
themselves getting into debt because of their own vices—whether it was an
affinity for prostitutes or gambling—and had to turn to the street to get out from
under. Sonny was only too happy to oblige. In return, his guys were able to take
out bank loans at very reasonable interest rates and then put that money on the
street for a much higher rate of return.
Sonny was a master of using OPM—other people’s money.
Banks were an excellent place to do business, but labor unions were even
better. Unions had a steady stream of revenue through members’ dues and
pension funds—irresistible to guys like Sonny. Just as significant, anyone who
controlled the union controlled the associated industry. That meant the mob
controlled the ability to call strikes and raise prices, giving it extraordinary
power over civilian life—anyone outside the Mafia was considered a civilian. Its
reach in labor ultimately extended from sanitation workers picking up garbage to
the construction workers putting windows in new buildings, with the costs
always passed on to the public.
To exercise that kind of control successfully, you needed someone who could
think strategically, who understood what levers to pull. That’s where Sonny
came in.
Established unions were one thing, but Sonny wanted more. He was behind a
novel plan to organize the roughly seven thousand barbers working on Long
Island. The scheme had nothing to do with workers’ rights or working
conditions. It was about money.
Sonny’s associate Salvatore “Sam the Pizza King” Calascione ran a sham
union called the Long Island Barbers Guild. The guild set out to charge barbers a
$50 initiation fee and $10-a-month dues, and enforce a price of $1.75 for a
haircut. At the time, the going rate for a haircut was never more than $1.50. The
beauty of the price increase was that the cost would be picked up by the public.
Those barbers who were disinclined to join were, of course, subject to forceful
persuasion. One barber in Oceanside who didn’t see the wisdom of joining the
guild was physically ejected from his barbershop. On his way out of his shop, his
attackers warned him that there were orders to chop off his hands. Before that
order could be carried out, the barber signed up.
The sham union steadily picked up members, until one of Calascione’s strong-
arm men tipped off police about a plan to dynamite a barbershop. Authorities
moved in quickly and shut it down, resulting in a high-profile trial. Sal Giglio,
an associate of Sonny’s, was expected to be a key witness in the case. Giglio
never made it to the witness stand, however.
He died just two days before he was scheduled to testify, after his car crashed
through a fence and hurtled into twelve feet of water in Newtown Creek in
Greenpoint, Sonny’s hometown. Police determined that it was an accident, and
no one was ever charged.

As good as Sonny was at strategy, he was just as capable when it came to the
nuts and bolts of extortion. That became obvious when some profitable hair
salons in Queens caught his eye. For nearly a month in January 1961, he and an
associate set loose mice in the shops to scare the hairdressers and customers,
wreaking havoc.
That wasn’t enough to make the owners capitulate, however, so Sonny had to
come up with something else. He hit upon one that both satisfied and amused
him. When shop proprietors sent out for coffee or soft drinks, Sonny sent back a
surprise. He intercepted the order and substituted cups filled with bees. When the
unsuspecting hairdressers opened up the cups, bees flew out. Once again, chaos
ensued.
The shop owners caved. The price they paid to be left alone was hefty—
$5,000 a month. Sonny netted $500,000 for himself.
Police caught wind of the scheme and arrested Sonny and a partner and
charged them with extortion. Sonny insisted he was merely a salesman and labor
organizer. The charge, like so many other earlier charges against Sonny, was
dismissed. The judge simply voided it.

While some people resisted Sonny’s brand of unionizing, others wholeheartedly

embraced it. One night, Sonny attended a testimonial dinner in Brooklyn for
Chuck Browne, president of Local 164 of the Hotel Employees and Bartenders
Union of Nassau County. Roughly 2,500 people showed up, with Sonny and his
nephew Carmine “Tutti” Franzese as honored guests. Browne did very well for
himself that night: He got a thirty-foot cabin cruiser, a wristwatch, a ring, and
many other small gifts.
That largesse didn’t come directly from Sonny, but he allowed it to be given
out. He always believed in sharing profits. “I always treated people fair,” he
said.
The men under him agreed. Unlike Profaci and other greedy bosses, Sonny
always let them make money when they were working for him. It not only gave
them an incentive to earn—and kick up more money to him—it ensured their
loyalty.
But they could never get him to spring for a meal. Members of his crew made
a game of trying to get him to pick up the tab when they went out to eat. It never
worked. One night, Sonny invited his guys to a restaurant, promising he’d pay.
Eager to see this unique event, they all showed up. After dinner, he asked the
waitress for the bill. He started scrutinizing it, questioning each charge. His guys
squirmed uncomfortably. They hated looking cheap. Finally, one of them
couldn’t stand it any longer. He jumped up and offered to pay the bill.
“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” Sonny told him.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” the embarrassed man replied, grabbing the bill.
Sonny’s gambit had worked.

Unlike his mob contemporaries, Sonny never flaunted his wealth. Luciano crime
boss Frank Costello, who craved acceptance in the legitimate world, lived in a
sprawling estate in tony Sands Point on Long Island’s Gold Coast. Carlo
Gambino summered in a stately mansion on the water on the South Shore in
Massapequa. Not Sonny. He preferred maintaining the veneer of middle-class
respectability and dressed like an IBM executive. Besides, picking up a check
wasn’t the only way in which he was cheap. He hated spending his money,
period.
It drove Tina crazy. She pressured him to take the family on vacation—like
other suburban families—and he would oblige, as long as it was a free resort or
complimentary plane ride. When they went to a restaurant, they would order, eat,
and walk out without even being presented with a bill. It was just assumed that
they wouldn’t pay.
Tina didn’t mind stiffing restaurant owners, but it infuriated her that he didn’t
want to spend money on his family. She’d spend more money just to get under
his skin.
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actions. If, however, he should neglect to do so, a judgment shall be
rendered by the court in favor of the plaintiff, without prejudice to the
rights of the minors to have the matter reviewed, when they shall
become of lawful age. If the party who made the claim should lose
his case when the minor has reached his majority, he shall be
compelled to restore to the minor, or to his relatives, or to any one
who may have a right to it, whatever property he obtained under the
judgment aforesaid, along with any income it may have produced,
and any profits which may have accrued from its possession; and he
shall be compelled to pay ten solidi in addition, because he has
prosecuted a claim which was not valid in law. Where a guardian
desires to defend any action brought against his ward in court he
shall have full authority to do so; but if the rights of the ward should
be affected, or his property impaired or lost through his neglect, the
guardian shall afterwards be compelled to make restitution.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
IV. Guardians shall have no Right to Exact from Wards in
their Charge any Instruments in Writing whatever.
As minors are unable to care for themselves or their property, it
has been wisely provided by the laws that they should be subjected
to the authority of guardians, and that their business should be
transacted for them for a stated number of years. For the reason,
however, that certain guardians, by means of either persuasion or
threats, defraud those whose interests it is their duty to carefully
protect, and compel them to enter into agreements that they will not
demand an accounting of their property, or exact bonds or other
written instruments from their wards, by means of which they seek to
prevent inquiry into their actions: therefore, that our solicitude for the
rights of such wards may the better appear in all matters where such
rights are involved, we hereby decree that the following law must be
strictly observed, to wit: that in the case of such wards, even when
they have passed the age of fourteen years, where the guardian or
guardians who had charge of their persons and property shall be
found to have caused the execution of any bond or written
instrument of any description, which enures to the benefit of said
guardians or any person designated by them, then such bond or
instrument shall be void, and of no force whatever in law.
When the time shall come that he who has been under
guardianship shall have the right to assume the management of his
own affairs, the guardian shall give a complete account of the care of
his ward’s property, in the presence of a priest or a judge, and shall
receive from his former ward a full discharge from all obligations; so
that, all restraint being removed, the said ward may come into full
possession of his property, and have the right to dispose of it at his
pleasure. But if it should happen that, while the guardianship is in
force, the ward should be attacked by a dangerous illness, and
should wish to dispose of his property by will, he can do so, provided
he has completed his tenth year, according to the provisions of a
former law.
If the guardian, while living or dying, should give any of the
property belonging to his ward to his own children, or to any persons
whomsoever, and no account of the same was made to the wards,
according to the terms of the inventory which was made at the time
the guardianship was accepted, and proof of this should be legally
established, those who received said property from the guardian
shall make full restitution to the wards. All wards shall have the
benefit of this legal remedy, except where, by the lapse of time, and
having passed the age of fifteen years, their rights shall be
extinguished by law.
 TITLE IV.—CONCERNING FOUNDLINGS.

I. Where Anyone Casts Away, or Abandons, a Freeborn Child, he shall

Serve as its Slave.
II. Where a Male or Female Slave shall be proved to have Cast Away a
Child, with, or without the Knowledge of his or her Master.
III. What Compensation for Support anyone shall Receive for the Bringing up
of a Child committed to his Care by its Parents.

I. Where Anyone Casts Away, or Abandons, a Freeborn

Child, he shall Serve as its Slave.
If anyone, induced by compassion, should rescue, and care for a
child, of either sex, who has been abandoned, and such child, after
having been brought up, should be acknowledged by its parents;
where the latter are freeborn persons, they shall either give a slave,
or the price of one, as compensation for the service performed. If
they should neglect to do this, compensation shall be made by order
of the judge of the district; and the parents who have been guilty of
such wickedness shall be condemned to perpetual exile. Where he
who casts away the child has not sufficient property to redeem it, he
shall serve as its slave; and he whom the pity of others has
preserved, shall enjoy complete freedom. It shall be lawful for the
judge both to prosecute and impose sentence for this crime
whenever committed.

II. Where any Male or Female Slave shall be Proved to have

Cast Away a Child, with or without the Knowledge of his or her
Master.
If a slave, of either sex, in order to defraud his or her master,
should expose and abandon their own child, without the knowledge
of said master, and anyone should bring it up, the latter shall be
entitled to receive the third part of its value; but, under such
circumstances, the master must swear or prove that he was ignorant
that his slave had abandoned the child. If, however, it should be
shown that the master was aware of the fact, the child shall become
the slave of him who reared it.
 III. What Compensation for Support anyone shall Receive for
the Bringing up of a Child committed to his Care by its Parents.
If anyone should accept from its parents a little child to be reared,
he shall receive as compensation one solidus every year, until the
child has reached the age of ten; but he shall be entitled to no further
compensation after it has completed its tenth year, because after
that time the services of the child should be sufficient to pay for its
support. And if he who seeks to take the child again should be
unwilling to pay this sum, it shall be held in slavery by him who
reared it.
TITLE V. CONCERNING SUCH PROPERTY AS IS VESTED BY THE LAWS OF
NATURE.

I. Concerning the Disinheriting of Children; and What Disposition Parents

should make of their Property.
II. What Part of her Dowry a Woman has a Right to Bequeath.
III. What Property Parents should Bestow upon their Children, at the Time of
their Marriage.
IV. Concerning Children Born of Different Parents; and What Distinctions
Parents may Make in the Disposition of their Estates.
V. Concerning such Property as Children may have Acquired during the
Lives of their Parents.

I. Concerning the Disinheriting of Children; and What

Disposition Parents should make of their Property.
As soon as we have ascertained that any unlawful acts have
been committed, it behooves us to prevent, by legal measures,
similar occurrences in the future. For many persons living reckless
lives, squander their property upon strangers, either on account of
riotous living, or through the unwise counsel of others, and, as a
result of this, leave their inoffensive children or grandchildren weak
and penniless; for those cannot be of any benefit whatever to the
community upon whom the duty of labor has not been enjoined by
the example and virtues of their parents. And, in order that, under
such circumstances, the rights of the community may not be
sacrificed, or children or grandchildren be deprived of the benefits of
that natural affection which should be bestowed upon them, the law,
by which a father or mother, or grandfather or grandmother, have the
right to give their property to a stranger, should they wish to do so, or
a woman to dispose of her dowry in any way that she pleases, is
hereby abrogated; and we decree that the following more equitable
law shall be observed by all, to wit: that neither parents nor
grandparents shall have the absolute right to dispose of all their
property, nor that children nor grandchildren shall, through an unjust
will, be deprived of the inheritance of their parents and grandparents;
therefore, any father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, who
wish to bestow any of their property upon their children or
grandchildren, must observe the following rule, viz: that in the
bestowal of said gifts upon their children or grandchildren they do not
exceed the third part of their property; nor shall it be lawful for them
to transfer any of their property to any stranger, unless they should
not have any legitimate children or grandchildren living.
The following, however, we decree shall be observed, as being in
accordance with the dictates of reason: that if the father or mother,
grandfather or grandmother, should decide to bequeath, by any
instrument in writing, any portion of the third part of their property, as
aforesaid, to their children or grandchildren, in compliance with the
laws governing inheritances, all such proceedings shall be forever
inviolable; and whatever bequest concerning said property may be
made, shall have full and uncontrovertible validity. Nor shall it be
lawful for the child or grandchild who has received any of the said
third part of the estate from their parents, to claim anything more,
unless they should prove to be entitled to it by some former bequest
of their parents or grandparents.
If those having children or grandchildren, should wish to bestow
anything upon the Church, or upon freedmen, or upon anyone else,
they shall have the right to dispose of the fifth part of what remains,
after the said third part has been reserved. The authority of such
persons to dispose of the said fifth part is indubitable; but, in such
cases, either the third part of the property which is to be bequeathed
to the children, or the fifth part which is to be otherwise disposed of,
as aforesaid, must be separated from the remaining property, and a
proper estimate made of the same. But whatever anyone has
received through the generosity of the king, shall, under no
circumstances, be included in the estimate of either the third or the
fifth parts of the estate aforesaid; for, according to another law,
whatever anyone has acquired through the royal bounty shall be
absolutely at his disposal.
It has been already provided that children and grandchildren
cannot be disinherited by their parents for any trifling offence. The
grandfather and grandmother, as well as the father and mother, shall
have the right to chastise and restrain their children and
grandchildren, as long as they remain members of the family. And if
a son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter, should attempt to
inflict any serious injury upon their parents or grandparents; that is to
say, if he or she should give any of them a blow with the fist; or a
kick; or strike them with a stone, or with a scourge, or with a whip; or
should insolently seize any of them by the foot, or by the hair, or
even by the hand; or be guilty of any shameless assault upon them;
or should publicly accuse them of crime; then, any child or
grandchild convicted of such an offence, shall receive fifty lashes
with the scourge, in the presence of the judge, and shall forfeit all
claim to the inheritance of its grandparents or parents, should the
latter so desire. But if, repenting of its conduct, it should implore the
pardon of those whom it has offended; and, through the love of its
parents, it should be again received into favor, and designated as an
heir; it shall not be deprived of its inheritance, or be accounted
infamous, on account of the punishment which it has received.
FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
II. What Part of her Dowry a Woman has a Right to Bequeath.
For the reason that many women to whom the privilege was
granted of disposing of their dowries as they pleased, have been
found to have bestowed them upon persons with whom they were
living illegally, to the injury of their children or grandchildren;
therefore, we declare it to be both necessary and proper that those
for the rearing of whom the marriage was celebrated, should receive
some benefit from said property. In pursuance whereof we decree
that, if any woman has children or grandchildren, and should wish to
bestow a gift upon the Church, or upon freedmen, or upon any other
person or persons; she shall not have the right to dispose of more
than the fourth part of her dowry in this manner. Three fourths of it
shall be left, without question, to her children or grandchildren,
whether there be one, or many of them. On the other hand, a wife
shall have full power to dispose of her entire dowry, in any way she
pleases, when she leaves no legitimate children or grandchildren.
Nevertheless, it shall not be lawful for any woman who has married
two husbands, or more, to give the dowry she has received from one
husband, to the children or grandchildren of another; but the children
and grandchildren born in a certain line of descent shall, after the
death of their mother, have the entire dowry given by their father or
grandfather.
FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
III. What Property Parents should Bestow upon their
Children, at the Time of their Marriage.
Wherever wrong is done by parents to the interests of their
children it must be remedied by law. Therefore, because the duplicity
of parents sometimes prompts them to deprive their children of what
they have given them at the time of their marriage, we hereby
declare such acts to be void; and decree that the following law shall
hereafter be observed forever, to wit: that if any property should be
transferred to any person, either by writing, or in the presence of
witnesses, at the time of his or her marriage, excepting such as is
usually given in the way of ornaments or clothes, as a marriage gift,
whether said property consists of slaves, lands, vineyards, buildings,
clothing, or jewels, presented by the parents to the children, either at
the time of the marriage, or after it, the said children shall have full
power to dispose of such property as they wish, with this exception:
that, after the death of their parents, the inheritance shall belong to
the children exclusive of what said parents have previously given to
them according to law, and an equal distribution of said inheritance
shall be made among the heirs; so that a son or daughter shall have
full power to dispose of what they received from their parents at the
time of their marriage, according to the provisions aforesaid.
After the death of the parents, an inventory shall be made, and
the property which was donated at the time of the marriage shall be
appraised, and the other heirs shall receive an equivalent in value to
the amount of said property; and all shall then share equally in the
remainder of the estate of the parents.
FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
IV. Concerning Children Born of Different Parents; and What
Distinctions Parents may Make in the Disposition of their
Estates.
 If a man marries several wives, and has children by all of them,
and any of his sons or daughters should die intestate, his or her
brothers or sisters shall be entitled to the estate, provided the
decedent left neither children nor grandchildren; and said heirs shall
have a right to claim it after proving that they are descended from the
same father and mother. Where there are children by one father and
by different mothers, those only who are descended from the same
father have a right to an equal division of the property belonging to
him. With regard to those who are sprung from one mother and
different fathers, we prescribe the following regulations, to wit: that if
a woman should have children by different husbands, only those
brothers and sisters who are the children of the same father and
mother shall have a right to the inheritance, descending either in the
paternal or maternal line from such as have died intestate, or without
offspring or descendants. As it has been established by a former law
that the grandchildren shall not be deprived of the third part of the
estate of their grandparents, it shall be lawful for the grandsons and
granddaughters who have lost either of their parents, to share
equally with their paternal or maternal uncles in the estates of their
grandfathers and grandmothers; that provision only of said law
remaining valid, by which it was decreed that parents and
grandparents may bestow their property upon their children and
grandchildren, or may give away what they please to a stranger.[22]

V. Concerning such Property as Children may have Acquired

during the Lives of their Parents.
Any son who, while his father and mother are living, acquires any
property, either through the favor of the king, or through the
generosity of his patron, shall be entitled to absolute control of the
same, and shall have the right to sell, or give it away to any one he
chooses, as has already been provided by our laws; nor can his
father or mother claim any of said property while the son is living.
Where, on the other hand, a son obtains property, not through royal
generosity, but by his own labor, or during some public expedition;
should he be living with his father at the time, the latter shall be
entitled to the third part of said property, and the other two-thirds
shall belong to the son.
 BOOK V.
CONCERNING BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS.

TITLE I. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.

I. Concerning Donations to the Church.

II. Concerning the Preservation and Restoration of Property Belonging to the
Church.
III. Concerning Sales and Gifts of Church Property.
IV. Concerning Church Property in Charge of Those Devoted to the Service
of the Church.
V. Concerning the Repairs of Churches, and Divers Other Matters.
VI. Concerning the Arbitrary Conduct of Bishops.
VII. Emancipated Slaves of the Church, who are still Bound to Render it
Service, shall not be Permitted to Marry Persons who are Freeborn.

THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.

I. Concerning Donations to the Church.
If we are compelled to do justice to the merits of those who serve
us, how much greater reason is there that we should care for the
property set apart for the redemption of our souls and the worship of
God, and preserve it intact by the authority of the law. Wherefore, we
decree that all property which has been given, either by kings, or by
any other believers whomsoever, to houses devoted to Divine
worship, shall eternally and irrevocably belong to said churches.[23]

II. Concerning the Preservation and Restoration of Property

Belonging to the Church.
We are of the opinion that it vitally concerns the interests of our
kingdom, to provide by our laws that the temporal rights of the
church shall be protected. Therefore, we hereby decree, that, as
soon as a bishop has been consecrated, he shall straightway
proceed to make an inventory of the property of his church in the
presence of five freeborn witnesses; and to this inventory the said
witnesses shall affix their signatures. After the death of a bishop, and
as soon as his successor has been consecrated, the latter shall
require a second inventory of the church property to be made; and if
it should appear that said property had, in any way, been diminished,
then the heirs of said bishop, or those to whom his estate was
bequeathed by will, shall make up the deficiency. If a bishop should
sell any of the property of the church, his successor shall lay claim to
that property, along with all its rents and profits, and restore it to the
church, after having returned the price paid for it to the purchaser,
and no reproach shall attach to such proceedings. And we hereby
decree that this law shall be observed in every respect by priests
and deacons, as well as by bishops.
ANCIENT LAW.
III. Concerning Sales and Gifts of Church Property.
If a priest or bishop, or any other member of the clergy, should
sell or give away any of the property belonging to the church, without
the consent of the other ecclesiastics, we declare that such a
transaction shall not be valid, unless said sale or donation should
have been made in accordance with the holy canons.

IV. Concerning Church Property in Charge of Those Devoted

to the Service of the Church.
Where heirs of a bishop or of other ecclesiastics, who have
placed their sons in the service of the church, obtain lands or any
other property through the generosity of the clergy, and then return
to the laity, or abandon the service of the church whose lands or
other property they hold, they shall at once forfeit all such
possessions. And this provision must also be observed by all the
clergy holding ecclesiastical property, even though they have held it
for a long time; for the reason that the canons have so decreed. The
widows of priests or of other ecclesiastics, who have devoted their
sons to the service of the church, solely through gratitute to the
latter, shall not be deprived of any property possessed by the
fathers, which was originally derived from the church.[24]
FLAVIUS EGICA, KING.
 V. Concerning the Repairs of Churches, and Divers Other
Matters.
The different regulations established in former times by the Holy
Fathers concerning ecclesiastical affairs shall be still observed, so
far as they are consistent with the interests of the church. As
antiquity, which has been the cause of the destruction of many lofty
buildings, has not spared the houses of God; it is eminently proper
that such of the latter as are in danger of destruction should be
repaired. As a result of this necessity it has been made a source of
reproach to our organization, that the greed of certain priests has
caused their parishes to be oppressed by repeated forced
contributions; and that many churches have been impoverished
under pretence of repairs. Consequently it has been decreed and
confirmed by our Council that the third part of the ecclesiastical
revenues, which the ancient canons have set apart for that purpose,
shall be used for the repairs of churches, whenever required. And
when churches are to be repaired, it is better to learn this fact from
the worshippers themselves, and the repairs should then be made
under the personal care and direction of the bishop. For, although
according to the provisions of the ancient canons, every bishop has
the right to reserve for himself the third part of the revenues of his
diocese, if he should desire to do so; so, also, he had no right to
exact from the parish churches, by means of arbitrary proceedings,
the remaining two-thirds of the said revenues; nor was he at liberty
to give away any of such property to anyone by way of
compensation for services performed. We deem it necessary to
decree that a single priest shall never have charge of more than one
church at a time; nor hold any other office; nor by ecclesiastical
authority act as guardian; nor, in any way, have charge of the
property of wards; and any congregation which possesses ten
pieces of property is entitled to a priest, but such as have less than
ten shall be united with other churches. And if any bishop should
disregard this our regulation, and should hereafter venture to
disobey it, he shall expiate his offence by two months’
excommunication.[25]
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS WAMBA, KING.
 VI. Concerning the Arbitrary Conduct of Bishops.
God, the just Judge, who loves right eternally, does not wish that
justice should be subject to time, but rather that time should be
governed by the principles of equity. God himself is the
personification of justice, and to him should be given whatever is
bestowed by the faithful upon the church through motives of
devotion; for God, as mediator, accepts the vows of every true and
sincere worshipper. And vows should never be renounced which are
known to have proceeded from, and been confirmed by, a sense of
justice; and, therefore, he commits a fraud upon God who unjustly
takes from him his property. He also violates the rules of justice who
corruptly interferes with the vows of others. While, as has been said,
God is justice, what madness is it for anyone to remove from God’s
possession any property under the claim of prescription, alleging that
he has held it for thirty years? For many rash bishops, prompted by
avarice, are in the habit of bestowing upon their cathedral churches,
or upon various individuals, or paying out as wages for labor
performed, the donations that have been given to their dioceses by
the faithful, and, in this way, they not only break the vows of the
donors, but are also guilty of sacrilege, in that they thereby defraud
the Church of God; for it has been long established that to defraud
the church is sacrilege. And when they are urged to make restitution,
they decline to do so, because their predecessors acted in the same
manner; or refuse to make amends, because they claim to have held
the property in question for thirty years. Thus they attempt to
maintain their cupidity and rapacity by right of prescription; and
instead of at once making reparation for their fault, they attempt to
confirm and legalize it by the operation of time. He must be
considered a person of great impiety who asserts such a claim, and
acknowledges that, for thirty years, he has done injury to God, and
refuses to make amends for the injury after that period has elapsed.
Therefore, since these most iniquitous abuses are defended
under a pretence of justice, and as we are not concerned with the
past, but with the future, we shall now proceed to make regulations
applicable to the time of our own reign. For the reason that,
hereafter, all temptation to avarice may be removed, we hereby
decree that it shall not be lawful for a bishop to appropriate any
property belonging to the churches of his diocese; or, if any has
already been appropriated, to allege that he is entitled to the same
on account of his possession for thirty years; but, whenever the facts
have been established, he must make restitution at once. As, in
order that a long period may pass without a claim being made, the
nobility sometimes are guilty of such oppression of ministers of the
church that the latter do not dare to assert their rights against such
eminent persons, concerning property which has been appropriated
by the latter, and lest the voice of the despoiled church remain
forever silent, we decree that hereafter, it shall be lawful, where this
offence has been admitted by the parties or detected by anyone, in
any place, that the claim shall be instituted with all possible speed in
the following manner, to wit: that the heirs of the founders of the
church shall act as prosecutors, if they are present; but, if they
should not be present, and even if they should be, but are unwilling
to act, then the governor of the province, or the governor of the city,
or the deputy of either of them, or anyone else who has legal
cognizance of the matter, shall have the right to act as accuser and
prosecutor.
Where any bishops who, in past times, have committed the
offences hereinbefore mentioned, and have been in adverse
possession of church property for thirty years, and declare that they
hold said property by the right of prescription; such persons we leave
to the justice of God, for we decline to pass judgment upon them.
But whoever, up to the time when this law is promulgated, shall not
have had possession of such property for the space of thirty years,
shall be compelled to restore it intact to the church, but no penalty
shall be required of them. And where any bishop, who from the day
of the adoption of this law, should appropriate anything given by the
faithful to the churches of God, and should use such property for his
own benefit, or for that of his cathedral church, or should bestow any
of it upon any person whomsoever, his act shall not be confirmed by
any lapse of time; and, according to the above-mentioned decree,
whenever he shall have been convicted of the commission of such
acts by anybody, he shall be compelled to restore the property which
he took, along with lawful amends out of his own possessions, to
that church which has been defrauded. If he should not have the
means to make full restitution out of his own property, on account of
his abuse of authority, he shall undergo the penalty of
excommunication prescribed by the canon of the eleventh Council of
Toledo; that is to say, if the property that was appropriated was worth
ten solidi, he shall purge himself of guilt by twenty days of penance.
If the value of the property appropriated should be greater or less,
the proportion of days to be passed in penance shall always be
doubled; and he also shall undergo a similar penalty who retains
possession of any property taken from a diocesan church, which has
been appropriated by his predecessor.
Any judge who neglects to carry out the provisions of this law, or
delays the proceedings without just cause, or does not notify the king
that he may take cognizance of the affair, shall be liable to the same
penalty as the bishop who committed the offence, and shall pay said
penalty out of his own property to the church whose cause he
neglected to decide. This law not only applies to property which has
been bestowed upon minor and diocesan churches, but to that in
which all assemblies included under the general name of churches
are concerned; that is to say, monasteries and convents of men and
women.
We also think it proper to add the following provisions to this law:
that all bishops who ordain priests and rectors in the churches of
their dioceses shall give them instructions concerning the rights of
the churches to which they are ordained; that is to say, if any bishop
should have in his keeping any document defining the rights of any
church in his diocese, he shall show it to the rector of that church, so
that the latter may be familiar with the rights of said church, as well
as with the documents conferring the same, and not be ordained in
ignorance of them, and, what is worse, through the wickedness and
duplicity of the bishop, the will of the benefactor of the church be not
publicly known. It is also decreed that priests and rectors shall not
only have the opportunity to inspect such documents, but shall also
be entitled to copies of the same, confirmed under the hand of the
bishop, to enable them to direct the affairs of the church committed
to their care without any uncertainty, and to enforce the rights to
which it is justly entitled. Given and confirmed in the name of God, at
Toledo, on the tenth day of the Kalends of January, in the fourth year
of our reign.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS WAMBA, KING.
VII. Emancipated Slaves of the Church, who are still Bound
to Render it Service, shall not be Permitted to Marry Persons
who are Freeborn.
Great confusion of lineage results where inequality of rank
causes degradation of offspring; for what is derived from the root is
inevitably found in the fruit of anything. For how indeed can he bear
a title of honor, whose parents are bound by the obligation of
servitude? We refer to this matter because many of the slaves of the
church are set free, but nevertheless do not enjoy absolute liberty;
for the reason that they are still bound to serve the church from
which they deduce their origin; and who, contrary to natural laws,
contract marriages with freeborn women, and seek to have freeborn
children who, in fact, are not so; and thus what ought to enure to the
public good, becomes in fact a burden to it, both in respect to person
and property; as whatever children are born from such an infamous
marriage, following the position inferior in rank, from birth become
the property of the church, along with all their possessions.
Wherefore, that such insolent conduct may be put an end to
hereafter, we decree by this law, that if a slave of any church, while it
is still entitled to his services, should be freed, and accept his liberty
from the priest, he shall not be permitted to marry a freeborn woman.
Those, however, who have been freed in the regular manner, and
are absolutely exempt from all service to the church by the Canon
Law, shall have the right to marry freeborn women, and shall be
entitled to claim all honor and respectability for their offspring.
But if any of those set free, who are still under the dominion of
the church, should venture hereafter to marry any freewoman; as
soon as the judge shall be apprised of the fact, both parties shall be
scourged three times, as has been provided in a former law
concerning freemen and slaves, and the judge shall cause them to
be immediately separated; and where they are unwilling to be
separated, each shall remain in the condition in which he or she was
previously, and any children born of them shall become slaves to the
king.
Whatever property has been bestowed by any free person upon
any freedman, together with such property as a child of either sex
sprung from them can acquire, possess, or waste, shall belong
entirely to the heirs of said free person at his death; and, if such
heirs should be lacking, it shall become the lawful possession of the
king, to be disposed of absolutely at his pleasure. This law shall not
only apply to men, but also to women; that is to say, where either a
freedman or a freedwoman owing services to the church should be
so bold as to marry a freeborn person.
The following exception shall be observed in the execution of this
law, to wit: whoever shall be born of such parents within thirty years
of its promulgation, shall not follow the condition of that parent who is
bound to give service to the church, but shall be free, along with all
the property inherited from his or her parents, both noble and
plebeian. Given and confirmed at Toledo, on the twelfth Kalends of
January and the fourth year of our reign.
 TITLE II. CONCERNING DONATIONS IN GENERAL.

I. A Donation Extorted by Violence is Void.

II. Concerning Royal Donations.
III. Concerning Property Given to a Husband or a Wife by the King.
IV. Concerning Property, in Addition to the Dowry, Given to a Wife by her
Husband.
V. Concerning Property Given to a Husband by his Wife; and Where a Wife
has been Convicted of Adultery.
VI. Concerning Property Donated Verbally, or Conveyed by Instruments in
Writing.
VII. Concerning Gifts Bestowed upon One Another by Husband and Wife.

ANCIENT LAW.
I. A Donation Extorted by Violence is Void.
A gift extorted by force and fear has no validity whatever.

II. Concerning Royal Donations.

Donations conferred by royalty upon any person whomsoever,
shall belong absolutely to him to whom they are given; so that he
who is thus honored by the royal munificence shall have the power
to dispose of any property derived from such a source in any way
that he chooses. If he who received such gifts should die intestate,
the donations aforesaid shall belong to the legal heirs in regular
succession, according to law, and the royal favor can in no way be
infringed upon; because it is not fitting that the will of the prince
should be interfered with, where the recipient of royal bounty has not
been guilty of crime.

III. Concerning Property Given to a Husband or a Wife by the

King.
We especially decree that a wife shall be entitled to no part of
any property presented by the king to her husband, unless the latter
should bestow a portion of it upon her by way of dowry. And,
likewise, should the gift be made to a wife, her husband shall have
no right to any of it; nor can he lay claim to it after her death, unless
his wife should give or bequeath it to him.
 ANCIENT LAW.
IV. Concerning Property, in Addition to the Dowry, given to a
Wife by her Husband.
If a wife should, at any time, in addition to her dowry, accept from
her husband property acquired by him as a gift, or by profligate
conduct, or the proceeds of claims collected by him, she shall have
the absolute disposal of said property until the day of her death,
according to the terms of the will of her husband, even though there
be children born of that marriage. She shall have the power to
expend or use the income of such property, just as the testator has
designated by will; and, during her lifetime, she shall enjoy
unhampered possession of all such property, the income of which
shall be used for her expenses. But if the testator should not make
any special disposition of said income, his children shall have the
right to said property after his death; and, upon no occasion, shall his
wife be allowed to alienate any part of it, excepting the income.
Where there are no children by said marriage, the wife shall have full
control of all property given her by her husband, according to the
terms of his will. But if she should die intestate, the said property
shall revert to her husband if he is living, and if he should not be
living, it shall belong to his heirs. And we decree that the same rule
shall apply to husbands who, at any time, have received gifts of
property from their wives.
ANCIENT LAW.
V. Concerning Property given to a Husband by his Wife; and
Where a Wife has been Convicted of Adultery.
If a husband should give any property to his wife, and she, after
his death, should remain chaste, or should marry another husband,
she shall have the power of disposing of the property given her by
her first husband according to the terms of his will, if she should
have no children. If she should die intestate and without children, the
property shall revert to her husband if he is living, and if not, it shall
belong to his heirs. But if she should have been convicted of
adultery, or other meretricious conduct, she shall lose any property
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