Cosa Nostra News

" B efore there was John Gotti, there was Sonny Franzese," someone once said, and we concur. Former Colombo capo Michael Franzese said he was made on Oct. 31, 1975. On Long Island—especially the Long Island of the 1960s, decades before Amy Fisher shot Mary Joe at Joe Buttofuoco's Massapequa home, making all us Long Island natives (aka Long Islanders) look like jerks—and especially after  Ernest (Ernie the Hawk) Rupolo's stabbed and bullet-riddled body was recovered  from the beach at Jamaica Bay, Queens in August 1964 (his feet had been weighted down with cement blocks, the proverbial concrete shoes), most Long Islanders generally believed that  John Sonny Franzese was the major Mafia power  in the Northeast United States.  Never mind that Sonny most likely had nothing whatsoever to do with Rupolo and wasn't found guilty for it at the conclusion of the 1967 trial. Nevertheless, Rupolo's murder prefaced an unprecedented legal onslaught against Franzese, wi...

Ernie (The Hawk) Rupolo wasn't destined for underworld greatness; he didn't seem destined to live as long as he did, either, and when he finally did get rubbed out, in 1964, no one was supposed to know what happened to him because his body was never supposed to be found. John Sonny Franzese, left, next to the heavyweight champ. Rupolo was supposed to be just another gangland disappearance of just another hoodlum who got on the wrong side of the wrong person and then fell off the edge of the earth. That's where the story was supposed to end, only Ernie came back -- floated back, actually, and that set in motion a chain of events that knocked Sonny Franzese off his feet. (Sonny died last week on February 23 at the ripe old age of 103.) No, Sonny wasn't found guilty of Rupolo's murder, which some on both sides of the law believe he had nothing to do with (one of the "mob rats" who testified seems to have been a much more obvious and believable suspe...

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"There are two more members that are talking,"   from Joe Valachi's autobiography, as quoted by journalist Jack Anderson in an  article published in 1963 . Fat Andy and Tony Lee. Before Anthony Ruggiano (Senior, aka Fat Andy) could get made in 1953, his name had to go around to the other New York families to solicit any possible objections. There were objections--two, actually--one of which required then-boss Albert Anastasia to win a sitdown with the Genovese family (or the then-Luciano family). As noted, Fat Andy and partner Tony Lee met Carmine (Charley Wagons) Fatico after they robbed his card game, but Fatico decided to hire them rather than kill them. For this, the previous story, and the rest in this series, we are using information provided to us by Anthony Ruggiano Jr.  In the next installment Anthony will address your comments... Profaci family member John Sonny Franzese put in a claim over Fat Andy, who, Franzese argued, belonged to him. A...

“One time, I met an FBI agent on the street. And he said to me, ‘[On] account of you, we could have broke the Mafia up. We had Joe Valachi, and if you would have opened up, it would have destroyed the Mafia. You wouldn’t help us.’ I said, ‘Go and F yourself!’ And I walked away from him.” --John Sonny Franzese speaking to Newsday reporters.... John Sonny Franzese was the ultimate stand-up wiseguy. He was the embodiment of omerta, a man inherently incapable of breaking the Mafia's codes. He spent decades in prison because he refused to name names. Even at the advanced age of 90, he served the sentence handed down rather than talk, even though everyone, including himself probably, thought he was giving the FBI the gift they had craved for decades: the thought of Sonny Franzese dying in a cage. Guys like John Sonny Franzese simply don't talk to newspapers. They especially don't give huge, splashy interviews with color photographs and a video. Granted, guys ...