Testimony Of Colombo Capo Michael Franzese
" 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...
