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LEONETTI: When you join the La Cosa Nostra, you're in it for life. You have to have honor and respect. But when somebody does something wrong, I mean, you know, they're gonna get killed. Louis DeMarco was a junkie who was sticking up a made member of the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra. So Angelo Bruno told us, "Find him and kill him." Me and Vincent Falcone hid in the, one of the rooms in the hotel. And we waited for Louis De Marco to walk to his car. When he came out, I ran out first and I shot him in the back of the head.
The power of the blast of the bullet pushed him so much forward it looked like he was running away. After he fell down I ran over to him and I emptied my gun into him. After we shot him me and Vincent Falcone ran through the alleyway, and when we hit this certain spot, we threw both guns up onto this roof. And we continued running to my uncle where he picked us up in the car. When I committed my first murder, it felt like I was doing a good deed for our family. I was killing a bad man.
REPORTER (over TV): Mob warfare is on the rise all across the nation. It's just the latest sign of organized crime in America becoming more and more disorganized. NARRATOR: It's 1980, and the United States government is locked in a battle to the death with the mafia. CHERTOFF: And that sends the message to these people that they cannot be above the law, and that they will be brought to justice, and they will be convicted. NARRATOR: But the secret society known as "Cosa Nostra" still remains immensely powerful throughout the country, a force for corruption and extreme violence, especially in the cities of Philadelphia,
Chicago, and New York. REPORTER (over TV): Police say that Calabrese was ambushed by two gunmen in ski masks as he walked to his car. NARRATOR: Where five gangs called "families" bring men in, but almost never let them out alive. DIRECTOR: Take three. Watch your head when you sit down. NARRATOR: These men are witnesses to a secret society's history, stepping out of the shadows now to tell their stories first hand.
CALABRESE JR: Okay. NARRATOR: A few remain in shadows, fearing for their personal safety, afraid of an organization with branches all over the country. In 1971 the shooting of mob boss Joe Colombo and the murder of Joe Gallo in retaliation, mark a kind of awakening for young guys like Michael Franzese, who was standing near Joe Colombo when he was shot. FRANZESE: The shooting that day really impacted me, when I said you know what? Something's really going on here that I don't, I don't quite understand. NARRATOR: So Franzese turned to the one man who can answer his questions: his father, Sonny, one of the most notorious figures in the entire history of the American mob.
MCDONALD: Sonny Franzese was somebody who was a legendary figure in, in the world of organized crime. Very powerful. FAT SAL: He's 100% gangster. Everybody heard of him, everybody knows him, there's not a person that don't know who Sonny Franzese is. He lives the mob code to the tee. FRANZESE: Law enforcement said he killed at least 30 people back then. Now it's, I think it's 60, um, which I don't believe.
60 people? I mean, come on. NARRATOR: Growing up, Michael worshipped his father and despised the cops who shadowed him. FRANZESE: One day I was playing ball in the street, I think I was eight or nine years old, the ball sailed over my head and rolled down the street. The detective stopped the ball with his foot. And when I got close to him, he pulled over his jacket and he had a gun in there. And he said, "this is for your father. He's gonna get it one day." And I just looked up at him, I'll never forget it and I said, you know, "Can I have my ball please?"
He kicked the ball roughly past me. And boy, I hated that guy at that moment. You know, I always say, if I was lost when I was a kid, uh, the last person I would go to would be a cop. I always looked at my dad as the hero and them as the enemy. The FBI had a car parked in the back of our house, on the left side, the right side, everywhere. So any time we left with my dad, we had a parade of law enforcement vehicles following us.
WOMAN: How is your food, Michael? FRANZESE: One night we went out to eat as a family. WOMAN: Alright? FRANZESE: Yeah. All the law enforcement people would file in afterwards, sit in the table behind us and watch us eat. On this one particular night, one of the agents as he passed by my table he got a little out of hand. And he made a nasty remark to my dad. My dad jumped up and went right after the cop. You don't disrespect him in front of his family. And the restaurant was crowded, the cop got scared.
He pulled out his gun. My dad said to him, "Shoot it. I'll drop you before you get a shot off." You know, moments like that, I had more than one. And that leaves an impression on you when you're younger. NARRATOR: At the time of Joe Colombo's shooting in 1971, Sonny was in prison serving ten years for bank robbery. Michael paid him an urgent visit. FRANZESE: It was that when we first really had a discussion about the life. First he got angry with me. He said, "I told you not to be involved here.
You gotta go to school." I said, "I'm not going to school. It's over. I have no desire. I'm part of this, I gotta help you out." He said, "Is this what you want to be part of?" And I said, "Whatever I gotta do to help you out. I don't even know what I'm really a part of. You never sat down and explained anything to me. But it's time." He says, "If you had to kill somebody, could you do it?"
I thought about it, and I said, "You know, if the circumstances were right, I think I could." And he said to me, "Well that's the right answer." Somebody's gonna be in touch with you." He said, "You do whatever you're told." That was it. And that was the extent of the discussion we had. In asking me that question, he gave me a choice. And I made my decision right then and there. NARRATOR: While Michael Franzese readily joined his father's crime family in New York, in Chicago another mob scion lived blissfully unaware of his father's business.
CALABRESE JR: I grew up in Chicago. As a young kid, I felt loved, I felt safe in my home. I went to school. I played sports. Wanted to go to college, become a lawyer. As a young man I idolized my dad. He was a great father. NARRATOR: But Frank Calabrese Senior was not just a father, he was also a prolific loan shark, and a feared hitman with the Chicago mob. CALABRESE JR: As I got older, I would see FBI agents sitting around the house sometimes. But it wasn't that big of a deal to me because my dad always used to say, "Don't bring your business in the home, it corrodes the family structure."
And I just did my thing like ev, every other kid. NARRATOR: Little did Frank Junior know, Frank Senior was a serious operator. CALABRESE JR: In fact, in the '70s and '80s, my dad had one of the biggest operations in the city for, for juice loans. You know, million dollars on the street at most times, sometimes more. NARRATOR: Frank Senior also loved to kill. CALABRESE JR: My dad's preferred method, or signature trade of killing you was with a knife and a rope.
He loved hands on. He'd strangle you, and then cut your throat to make sure you were dead. NARRATOR: It wasn't long before Frank's father began to groom his teenage son to join the family business. CALABRESE JR: His intention was to teach me about the street. He would give me these errands to do, or I would assist my uncle or, or my dad in, in mob activities, I looked at it as chores right away. Get them done so I can go be with my friends. NARRATOR: But in Chicago, grooming kids for the mob life was off limits. CALABRESE JR: In Chicago, you weren't supposed to bring your kids into it.
Okay, so when he did, he never went in and got permission from his boss or anybody like he was supposed to. It was kind of like their secret weapon. NARRATOR: By age 19, Frank Junior was collecting quarters from neighborhood peep shows and keeping the books on his father's illegal gambling and loan-shark operations. CALABRESE JR: Over time, the more my father gave me to do, the more he seen of him in me. I never believed through all of this that I had a choice.
It was more like, "Be a good son and do this for your dad." My dad was a master manipulator. And slowly, I bought into all this. I graduated to that next level. Extortion, violence. Arson. Planning and assisting murders. Even though I did not like violence, I was good at it. And that was one other thing that drew me into him even closer to him. NARRATOR: So close that in 1986, when Frank Senior got the contract to kill a fellow mobster in trouble with the Outfit, the plan was for Frank Junior to carry out the murder.
CALABRESE JR: It was a guy named, John Fecarotta. John Fecarotta killed a lot of people, killed people with my dad and my uncle. NARRATOR: Frank's uncle, Nick Calabrese, worked hand in hand with his brother Frank Senior's crew. Fecarotta had screwed up covering his tracks in the notorious killing and burial of mobster Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael. CALABRESE JR: And when John Fecarotta had also done some stuff personally to my dad, and my uncle, and our family, I felt that this was my obligation to step up for my family and kill him.
NARRATOR: But in the end, Frank Junior's uncle Nick stepped up and carried out the hit on Fecarotta. CALABRESE JR: He lied and said it was a better plan if he went alone, and my dad bought into that. And I was actually mad at that time, too, because I thought he was trying to take this away from me, my uncle, but really, he was looking out for me. NARRATOR: It's a move that will later prove disastrous, not just for the Calabrese family, but the entire Chicago mob. NARRATOR: While Frank Calabrese Junior is moving up in his father's Chicago Outfit crew, mob son Michael Franzese begins his own career in New York's La Cosa Nostra.
FRANZESE: One of my dad's soldiers called me and said, "Meet me at the JV lounge," which was on Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. We go see Tom DiBella. Tom was acting boss for Persico at the time, who had taken control of the family. And Tom says to me, "I got a message from your father." He said, "You wanna become a member of our life. Is that true?" And I remember saying, "Yeah, if that's what my dad wants, that's what I want." And he said, "I didn't ask you that.
I said, is this what you want?" And I said, "Yes. It's what I want." DIBELLA: Michael. FRANZESE: He said, "Well, here's the deal. From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're on call to serve this family. If your mother is sick and she's dying, and we call you to serve this family, you leave your mother's side and you come and serve us. From now on, we're number one in your life, before anything and everything. I'm putting you with Andrew Russo, he's your captain. You do whatever Andrew tells you." I said, "Okay." Andrew looks at me, he says, "You're gonna be busy from now on."
He says, "Meet me tomorrow night on Carroll Street, and wear a suit." And that was it. When you're in your recruitment period, you're not really making money for them you're just being around. And I used to sit around in the social club, again, listened, took everything in. I always had a nice car, so Tom DiBella and Andrew would always have me drive them. Except that I would never drive. I'd have to sit in the back and they would sit in the front. So I just listened, and I heard so much conversation between the two of them.
They did talk pretty openly in front of me, and, um, I guess they trusted me at that point. That recruitment period was very valuable to me, because I tried to absorb everything like a sponge and really learn what the life was about. NARRATOR: Michael Franzese is now a Colombo family associate. His education begins and ends with one lesson, how to make money for the boss of the family. POLISI: As an 'associate,' if you made a score, you had to make sure you sent something up to the boss, a couple hundred dollars in an envelope.
Most guys that are 'associates,' not 'made' members, they always have to kick up to their boss. ANASTASIA: If you get involved and you become an 'earner,' somebody who can be trusted, you become a higher 'associate.' FRANZESE: I had to be a good earner. I wanted to be the best possible mob guy I could be. I made a score at one point, some guy came to me with a load of meat. If I remember, six or $7,000 worth of meat. MAN: Let me show you. FRANZESE: So I said, "Andrew, I got this load of meat." He says, "Make sure when you get the money that you turn it in."
Great. So I bring it, and I turn it in, it's like seven grand, and he takes it and after a day or so, he gives me back 600 bucks. And I said, "Wait a second. I give him 7,000, I get 600 back?" I said, "What the, I don't like the math here," you know? I saw my father the next time and he said to me, "What'd you turn it all in for?" He said, "Rule of thumb: 25% goes to them." He said, "you keep the rest." It's really on the job training. I mean, nobody prepares you for this stuff.
NARRATOR: Franzese soon found a much bigger way to earn, a gigantic scam in overseas shipping. For a cut of the take, a friend who worked for a shipping company sent Franzese fake work orders to repair his containers. Franzese didn't actually repair the containers, but billed the company anyway. FRANZESE: And they would cut me a check. We were doing sometimes 20, $30,000 a month and all he did was submit a work order and I sub, submitted a bill. And that was the scam. MCDONALD: He became the biggest earner not only in the Colombo family, but probably on an individual basis among all the made guys in the five families.
FRANZESE: It was only a handful of us that were making real money. NARRATOR: He's so successful at earning, that the highest honor in the mafia is within his grasp. He's on the verge of becoming a made man. FRANZESE: Even though I didn't know the time or the place or when it would happen, I knew that things were starting to heat up because a couple of guys were all of a sudden being made. So I, I kind of knew my time was coming.
One morning. It was early. And I get a call from Andrew. And he said, uh, "Meet me on Carroll Street at such-and-such a time." He said, "Dress up." It happened to be Halloween night, and it was 1975, a night I obviously can't forget. We end up in Brooklyn at Anthony Colombo's catering hall. And then I started to realize, this is it, you know? This is my time. POLISI: To become a made guy, you have to participated in a murder, you were 100% Italian, and you were sponsored by two official members, you qualify and you had to go in and take this oath that you were never supposed to reveal the secrets
of the organization. FAT SAL: You could refuse it all you want. If they want you to become a 'made' guy they're going to force you to become a 'made' guy. It is a lifetime contract. Respect and honor is, is the whole life. POLISI: The only way out would be death. FRANZESE: It was very dark, uh, there was a couple of candles lit. I walk down the aisle and I stand in front of Tom DiBella. And um, this initiation starts. And it's very intense. And Tom looks at me and he says, "Are you ready?" And I says, "I am."
And then we went through the ritual. Andrew had a little knife. He cuts my finger and some blood drops on the floor. And he, I remember him gripping my hand very firmly. And I remember looking down and seeing blood spots there, so this was a place I knew that had been used before. He took a picture of a saint, put it in my hands, and lit it a flame. And then Tom started to say to me, "Tonight, Michael Franzese, you're being born again." And I'll never forget those words.
He said, "You're being born again into a new life, our life, La Cosa Nostra. Do you swear to give your life to this, to La Cosa Nostra?" I said, "Yes, I do." "If you violate what you know about this life, betray any of your brothers, you will die and burn in hell like this saint is burning in your hands." And he said. DIBELLA: "Amiga nostra." FRANZESE: "You're a friend of ours." And he hugged me. Andrew hugs me. And then all the captains line up and they all give me a hug, and welcome me, a kiss on the cheek. And Tom said, "From now on, wherever you go in the world,
you'll have a brother there. Don't ever worry about your mother, your sister, your daughter. We're gonna protect them. And um, you know, I got your back, you got mine." That was exhilarating for me to know that, okay, I made it, I'm here, and now it's, it's up to me to really prove that I'm worthy of the life. And Tom said, "Let this be a lesson to all of you: We don't earn for you, you're gonna earn for us. It's all about earning for the family and doing for us." And he looked at me. "We want you guys that are earners to get out there and earn." And then, uh, and then we ate, and we had a celebration. And then that was it.
And I went home that night after we talked and I was, uh, very exhilarated. And I understood that once you're part of that life, you're a new creation within that life. NARRATOR: It's 1982. And Michael Franzese is earning his place in the mob with cold hard cash. MARKS: Did you ever have a nickname? FRANZESE: You know, not till later on when the media tagged me as being the Yuppie Don, which I hated. But, uh, nobody would call me that to my face.
I tell 'em, don't ever say that to me, I don't like it, you know? It reminded me of California and all these kind of weird guys out there in suits. RAAB: Michael Franzese was an immense earner for the Colombo family. And a guy who knew how to really deal with modern day capitalism. He was a new breed. FRANZESE: All right, fellas, let's go. REPORTER (over TV): This handsome, young mafia prince from New York is Michael Franzese, son of a legendary mafia godfather.
MCDONALD: Michael Franzese went to college, I guess he dropped out of college after about two years, but was more sophisticated than the average run of the mill mafia guy. REPORTER (over TV): Franzese got the keys to the city and a bible blessed by the Pope. FRANZESE: There's a big perception out there that there's this genius about us, that we know just what to target and just how to make money. Rarely does that happen. It's always somebody from the legitimate world coming to us. And then you just show them how to do it, protect them, and you make money with it.
NARRATOR: And one way Franzese hoped to make money is classic mob: through the labor unions. FRANZESE: I had some very lucrative situations with unions. One of them, in a major contracting construction job with a major developer in, um, in Queens. And this is a major job, it was the biggest co-op conversion in the country at that time. And one of the guys in there, uh, happened to be the brother of a girl that I was dating at one time. And he got in touch with me, and he said, "Mike, I've got this job," and he said, "The union is really harping on us," he said, "You think you can help out?"
I said yeah. CHERTOFF: What the mob dominating union would do is try to do a sweetheart deal with the employer, where the actual workers pay the price, they don't get the benefits they already get or the salary they already get because the mob has cut a deal with the employer at the expense of the worker. FRANZESE: So um, I go and meet the labor union guy. And I said, "You realized what we got here, right? "Biggest job in the country." I said, "Let's work this thing." And he said, "Great." So we made a deal to keep the union out of there, and we charged the developer so much for every apartment that he converted.
We hired all the trades, we did everything, and we made a ton of money, both legitimately and through the unions. And we whacked it up among everybody. MARKS: Can I ask you, the term whack it up, is that the same as kick it up? FRANZESE: Whack it up, divide it up, cut it up, share it, yeah, that's a street term. You never said share it. It's whack. Whack has different forms of uh, different uses, I would say. NARRATOR: Soon Franzese was making a name for himself as an earner among earners.
He brought in big scores that attracted attention throughout the five families of the New York mob. But nothing so far compared to the scam he was about to pull off. FRANZESE: This guy came to me and he tells me, he says, "Look we can make some money, I've got kind of a scheme. I have many gas stations." So I said, alright, let's start a new company," I says, and "show me how this thing works and I'll see if I want to pursue it." I'll never forget, a week or two later, this guy came to me, and he's holding a box. And he used to bring me meat, he was a butcher.
He walks in, I says, "What are we having a party? What we're gonna do with all this meat?" And he says "Hey chief, it ain't meat." And he goes in, and he puts it on the kitchen table and he opens it up. He said, "First week's take in the gas business." $380,000 in cash. Got my attention, right? RAAB: Michael Franzese his biggest coup was something known as the daisy chain gasoline scam. What happened was, New York State, in the 1970s, decided to use a different way of collecting gasoline excise taxes every year.
FRANZESE: At that time, whoever owned the gas station was responsible to pay the tax on every gallon of gasoline that they bought and pumped. RAAB: And somebody hit upon the idea that this was stupid. DEVECCHIO: So the legislature in New York said well let's make distributors responsible for paying the taxes or whatever they want to levy. NARRATOR: But the gas companies are required to pay the tax on the honor system. So Franzese figured out all he had to do was set up dummy companies that don't pay.
It took months for the government to figure out the scam and collect, and by that time the dummy companies were long gone. DEVECCHIO: It was a fairly complicated scheme that involved a lot of dummy corporations, which made it difficult to trace back the original source, that being Franzese. MCDONALD: And somewhere along the line, a stamp would come out and would say tax paid. And it was very difficult to establish just, you know, which, which company was saying that they paid the tax.
NARRATOR: That's because no company was paying the tax. All of the money was going into Michael Franzese's pockets. FRANZESE: I had 18 licensed companies. All of them were operating um out of Panama, so there was no trail back to any of us. RAAB: The gasoline tax scam has to go down in history as one of the most successful coups ever pulled by the mafia. FRANZESE: I was making a lot of money in the gas business. Millions of dollars a week. I had a jet plane, I had a helicopter, I had all the money I wanted, I did whatever I wanted to do. And word was getting out on the street that even though I
was handing in millions, that I was making billions. REPORTER (over TV): The so-called "Franzese Group," a new mafia organization that federal prosecutors say. FRANZESE: A story came out, I believe in News Day again, that I was becoming powerful enough to break away from the Colombos and start my own family. REPORTER (over TV): Said to be behind the mobs theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in gasoline taxes in New York. FRANZESE: My dad then got out on parole.
NARRATOR: Franzese's father, Sonny, was released from prison after serving time for masterminding a series of bank robberies. But he's also rumored to be a cold-blooded killer, an accusation familiar to his son. FRANZESE: Law enforcement said he killed at least 30 people, back then, now I think it's 60, but as far as a dad, he was dad for me. I loved him. I idolized my dad. He was everything that I thought a man's man should be. Every child wants a reason to love their parents.
You have to give them strong reasons not to love their parents, and I don't have any reason not to love mine, regardless of anything. The word gets out on the street I'm becoming a target of law enforcement, and all of the sudden the two Franzeses together, the son is making tons of money, guys start to think about it. You know, a double-edged sword. Even my own father. I was told he put a contract on me.
NARRATOR: In the American mob, success can be as dangerous as failure, especially if the mob thinks you're skimming the take. So when Michael's father, calls him, he starts to sweat. FRANZESE: One night I get uh, a call from my dad and he said "I gotta see ya." I said, "Okay." He was on parole so I go to his house. Hey, how ya doin, Pop? We're in the driveway of his house and he said, "Uh Junior wants to see us tonight." I said, "Okay, what time do you want me to pick you up?"
He said, "Well, they want to do this differently, they want me to come in first and they want you to come in second." I said, "Why would we do that?" He says, "Well this is what they want." I said, "We're not gonna do that, dad." You're crazy if you're gonna do it. I'm not doing it. That was the first time as a made guy that I really had an argument with my dad. I was, like, "No we're not doing that." Back and forth, back and forth, he wouldn't give in. Finally, I remember, I threw my hands up, we're in the driveway.
I said, "Alright Dad, I've been listening to you all my life," and I said, "I don't like it but if this is what you want we'll do it." So I leave, and then Jimmy Angelina calls me and he tells me to meet him on uh, on 18th Avenue. Jimmy was a captain too at the time, I knew Jimmy all my life. I get in the car and there's a guy sitting in the back that I didn't know and uh he don't introduce me. And um, you know at that point I was just really thinking something's really bad here. It was a house in Brooklyn that we were going to. I get out of the car and I start walking. And Jimmy gets behind me. And the other guy is behind him.
Now this is bad set up. And I'll be honest with you, I was getting really nervous. I wasn't a religious guy anyway but I started to pray because I really thought that, I'm dead. Look, I been in the life quite a while. I know that you get walked into a room by your best friend, you don't walk out again. So um, door opens, I get in there. A couple of the guys are there, and um, they start grilling me about the gas business, and the money and all of this and that and everything else. And they're trying to make an impression on me that you know
I'm still the boss, don't think you can get away with anything. Without saying it, they said it. I got it. NARRATOR: The meeting ends, and to Franzese's surprise, he's still alive. FRANZESE: So now Jimmy's gonna drive me back. I said goodbye to everybody. We get in the car. I'm ready to really open up on him. I was really upset with him. He didn't tell me anything. So I get in the car and I say, "I know you all my life. You don't prepare me?
You don't tell me anything that's going on?" And uh, he said, if it was the other way around would you have told me anything? He just hit me like that, you know, and I thought about it for a minute and I said, "No. I wouldn't have." And he said, well, the life we chose Mike, he said, you know it as well or better than anybody, you grew up in it. He said, "I'm gonna tell you something Michael." He says, "Your father was in there before you tonight. He didn't help you one bit.
You were on your own in there. And it really affected me in a bad way. And I said, "Man, I can't trust my own father here." I kind of felt the walls closing in on me at that point. He threw me under the bus in that he didn't defend me. And that's almost as bad as indicting me, you know? As saying, "He did it." And I said, "This money that I'm making. What do I do? Do I stop?" This is like a double-edged sword for me. And um, I, I didn't have an answer. I didn't have a solution. And I said, "I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing."
NARRATOR: While Michael Franzese struggled with the consequences of his gas scam, in Chicago Frank Calabrese Junior was starting to see a different side to the mob and his father. CALABRESE JR: I've seen what this life does to people on the street. It wears them down. And they start changing. My dad had multiple personalities. I didn't know what dad I was dealing with anymore. I've seen a lot of guys killing each other off more, the FBI getting stronger. And when I've seen my dad changing, I wanted out.
NARRATOR: Frank resolved to start life over and that takes money. But he didn't have much money in hand. CALABRESE JR: My dad was holding close to $400,000 of my money. And I went and I stole money of his from a hiding place. Because I felt it was my money and I had it coming. NARRATOR: At first Frank thought he'd gotten away with it. But then one day Frank's father summoned him. CALABRESE JR: I went and met him. I thought we were working on our relationship. He wound up getting me to a garage, he set me up. And when we got in that garage, he slammed the door. And when I turned around, he had me by the throat and he
had a gun in my face. He says, "You know what I tried controlling you, I can't control you no more. I'd rather have you dead than you disobey me. But I'll come to your grave and pay my respects." When I seen that look in my dad's eyes, I wouldn't break eye contact with him, and I was using trigger words. "Dad, I'm your son, what are you doing? I've done everything you asked." And I don't know what or how that night, but my dad couldn't do it. And from that point on, I knew I could never trust my dad. He's the only man in life I ever feared. NARRATOR: It's just the start of one of the most notorious betrayals in American mob history. In New York, Michael Franzese, a captain and top earner in
the Colombo family, is also becoming disillusioned with his way of life but that's the least of his troubles. law enforcement's closing in. FRANZESE: I started to feel the pressure in the early 80s and the government uh opened my eyes to it, and that they had a major undercover operation on me, on this gasoline case and everything else. GIULIANI: It would seem that Michael Franzese is unfortunately following in the footsteps of his father. FRANZESE: The FBI can allege and say whatever they like.
They've been doing it for many, many years. MCDONALD: Well, the FBI identified him as a significant target. Informants were providing information to the FBI about this up and coming, um, you know, sophisticated gangster. So the FBI came to us and said that they wanted to bring a case against him. FRANZESE: And I got a visit uh in my uh offices out in Long Island from two FBI agents. And they came in to see me and they said, "We need to talk to you." I said, "What do you want?" They said, "Listen, tell us what you're doing and we'll give you a pass." Yeah, right. And I said, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about with gas, you know?"
Fellas, if you need a car. So I knew, and said, man this is, this is not good. I mean I really got their attention now. MCDONALD: We gathered evidence, primarily from, from cooperating witnesses, and when he was faced with a lengthy trial and the prospect of getting a very lengthy sentence. FRANZESE: People were being convicted, 100 years, 150 years, I said, they're gonna give me 1,000 years if I go down on this. MCDONALD: He decided to plead guilty and to make restitution payments of $10 million, which he pretty much defaulted on.
REPORTER (over TV): Michael Franzese indicted on 28 counts of racketeering, fraud, and extortion. FRANZESE: I had made two very bad decisions in my life. I trusted my father, look where it got me. I surrendered my life to La Cosa Nostra and look where it got me. I got death threats, hits all over me, the FBI hates me, everybody on the street hates me, my father disowned me. I don't have a friend in the world. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in a six by eight cell. And it was the first and only time in my life that I, I really felt hopeless.
MCDONALD: Then he kind of shocked us, because he came forward and agreed to cooperate. And based on the cooperation he provided, he did get his sentenced reduced. FRANZESE: I got four years on a parole violation, and I spent 35 months and 13 more days in prison, 29 months and seven days in the hole. And during that time is when I, um, strengthened my faith and, um, started to read the Bible. NARRATOR: But Franzese got out and lives to tell the tale. FRANZESE: Do I find it surprising that I'm alive? I feel I'm the most blessed guy walking the streets.
What should my fate have been? I should either be dead or in prison for the rest of my life. NARRATOR: The son who once followed his gangster father blindly into the life now walks away from the mob forever, unscathed. MCDONALD: I cannot explain how Michael Franzese was able to do what he did. The only speculation you could have is that he paid his way out. Somehow he was able to persuade people in the Colombo crime family not to do anything to him. FRANZESE: Really, the only way that ends is when you end, and you're in a coffin, it's over.
NARRATOR: How Michael Franzese got out of the American mob with his life remains a mystery to this day. But the worst deeds of Franzese's past still haunt him. Especially the murder of a close friend, "Champagne" Larry Carrozza. FRANZESE: Larry Carrozza was someone very close to me. I mean the kid loved me and I loved him. I baptized his kids. He baptized my daughter. Unbeknownst to me, he was having an affair with my sister.
I was brought in and it was told to me that this is what was going on. MAN: The word is on the street. NARRATOR: No one messes with mob women. Those who do pay a heavy penalty. FRANZESE: I was told he disrespected you and he disrespected your father and that's something that uh, we don't stand for in this life and I said, "But you know, he's not a made guy." Stupid. And how do we know what really happened and let me talk to my sister," and, "Nope, you want to take care of it, you take care of it. If not, we'll take care of it." And I said, "I don't wanna do it."
I says, "The guy's too close to me." NARRATOR: Larry Carrozza's body was found near his car. He was shot a single time behind the ear. FRANZESE: His murder, that's probably something that uh has been the heaviest on my heart. NARRATOR: These days it's faith that helps Franzese cope with dark memories of his past. FRANZESE: Guys, be honest. You don't come to church but you figure, hey, Sopranos is off the air, let me go see what the real mob guy is all about.
Right? That's your only interest. What I did, I did. And that's it. As Christians, we happen to believe that we can be forgiven for what we've done in the past. So I believe with all my heart that I've been forgiven. As a Christian we believe. NARRATOR: A line that's hard for a lot of people to swallow. FRANZESE: Prayer. People can say it's a phoney thing and it's a scam and you know fortunately, in the end, they're not gonna be the ones that judge me. But I can't fool God, you know? God bless you all, thank you very much. MAN: Thank Michael Franzese. Michael, thank you man. NARRATOR: Michael Franzese is out of the life today, but his father Sonny never walked away.
FRANZESE: I think he's part of this life 66 or 67 years ago he took the oath. MCDONALD: I think he was convicted on racketeering charges and was incarcerated again, uh, was active until the age of 96, and it's absolutely amazing. FRANZESE: He is a treasure trove of mob stories, if you can get him to talk about them. FAT SAL: Sonny Franzese told me that at the time he would finish parole, I believe at 103 years old, he was gonna go piss on the White House and call the guards over and tell them yeah, I pissed on the White House, come on, bring me to jail. NARRATOR: Sonny Franzese is a hold-over from the golden age of the American mob, but in Chicago, mobster Frank Calabrese Senior passed his mob legacy on to
his son, along with prison time. CALABRESE JR: In 1995, we were indicted for running a loan-sharking operation through threats, intimidation and violence. When we went to jail, I thought this was a blessing in disguise, because I want to get away from my dad. NARRATOR: Frank hoped they'd end up in separate prisons. A few years earlier Frank Senior nearly killed his son, when he found Frank Junior had stolen $400,000 from him. Since that time Frank Junior lost all trust in his dad. But Frank's worst fears were realized, when father and son landed in the same prison.
CALABRESE JR: I always feared my dad. But in prison, I says, I'm going to try to work it out with my dad one more time, become a family. NARRATOR: After just a few months, Frank realized his father would never be the kind of dad he wanted. CALABRESE JR: He had this second chance to make some changes in, in his life, and he didn't. Because of the addiction of this life on the street. And at one point, I realized that he was manipulating me. And there was no way I was going to ever get out of this in his eyes.
Sometimes in life, all your choices stink, what am I going to do? Confront him? And one of us is going to wind up dead? My dad was good at killing. So, it'd probably be me. So, that's when I came up with the painful decision of cooperating with the FBI. NARRATOR: Frank wrote a letter from prison, volunteering crucial information about his father. CALABRESE JR: I just told them to come out, I wanted to talk to them. Basically I told them I wanted to keep this sick man locked up forever. NARRATOR: Frank wouldn't cooperate against other mobsters besides his father and he declined offers most prisoners would jump at.
CALABRESE JR: I told them, I don't want to be obligated to you guys, no disrespect. I'll do all my time, pay all my fines. No immunity, but I'm only helping you against my dad. NARRATOR: At first Frank said no when asked to wear a wire. CALABRESE JR: But then I thought about it after a while, my dad's too smart, I got to get him in his own words. So, I wore a wire. When I put the wires on, it's like a soldier. You train, you go out there, and you do it. And that's what I did. NARRATOR: But even soldiers have backup.
Frank Junior had no choice but to go it alone in prison. CALABRESE JR: The danger level. When I left that building that the agents were there, I was on my own. Because of the concrete, they couldn't monitor me. But I knew my dad. He taught me well. So, I knew when to back off, when to be aggressive with him. NARRATOR: Over about six months Frank recorded a number of conversations with his father. CALABRESE JR: We talked about certain murders. And also, what I did was, I pit my uncle against my dad. And, uh, that made my dad mad. And when sometimes when somebody gets mad, they talk a little more. If we were sitting anywhere where we thought there'd be
surveillance, we would talk heavily in code. But if we were out on the prison yard and walking, he felt comfortable talking. He told me a lot, a lot of murders that happened. NARRATOR: In addition to this goldmine, Frank's Uncle Nick turned informant, confessing to the murder of John Fecarotta, and implicating Frank Senior and several other mobsters in murder, racketeering, and loan-sharking over decades. By 2000 Frank Junior left prison, and by 2005 the FBI gathered enough evidence to indict the entire Chicago Outfit in what they called "Operation Family Secrets."
MAN: In total 18 murders were charged as part of the racketeering conspiracy, ranging from murder committed in 1970, to a murder committed in 1986. CALABRESE JR: The case of this magnitude in Chicago had never been like this. And for my Uncle Nick to cooperate, it was the first time in the history of the Chicago mob that made member actually cooperated against them. NARRATOR: For Frank Junior, the day he faced his father in court was a day of reckoning. CALABRESE JR: It was one of the hardest things I ever did.
First thing that went through my mind, "Oh my God. This is my dad. I hate his ways, but I love him." That family thing kicked in. Okay? Until he looked at me with the threats, and I knew why I was there. I am my father, and he taught me everything he knew, and that's what I used against him. My dad, he threatened to kill the prosecutor in front of the judge and the jury. So, besides putting $150,000 hit on my head, he actually put $150,000 hit on my uncle's head, too.
NARRATOR: Within days the jury reached their verdict. CALABRESE JR: Everybody at the trial was found guilty. Uh. My dad and two other bosses got life. Life in the federal system is life. And leaving that courtroom on the final day looking at my dad, knowing that I probably never going to see him alive, was also the hardest thing I've ever did in my life. I actually sat down in another room with tears in my eyes. NARRATOR: It's a huge blow to the Chicago Outfit. CALABRESE JR: Going all the way back to the early 1900's, there was a 1112 documented gangland slayings.
Okay? Only 14 convictions. In Operation Family Secrets, there was 18 convictions and over 40 murders solved. MAN: This is the first investigation that I can recall, an indictment that I can recall that involved so many murders, which really gets to the heart of what the LCN is, and that is a bunch of murderous thugs. NARRATOR: Frank Calabrese Senior died in prison in 2012. CALABRESE JR: So we are in one of three parts of little Italy at one time. NARRATOR: Today Frank Junior leads tours of Chicago's infamous mob landmarks.
CALABRESE JR: So this is breeding grounds for Tony Accardo, the Spilotro brothers who ran Las Vegas, my dad, Joey Lombardo. NARRATOR: But the profound effect of Operation Family Secrets is still apparent in Chicago. CALABRESE JR: So, it was a huge turning point for the Chicago mob. That's why there's not too much left today. NARRATOR: With La Cosa Nostra's skill at lying low in hard times, the question of just how many are left may be anyone's guess.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.
