John Franzese Jr. was born into mob royalty, but after getting clean and doing the unthinkable—testifying against his own father—he sought out the unimaginable: forgiveness.
John Franzese Jr. is just standing there, 60 years old and still wiry, dragging on a Marlboro Light outside a red-sauce place in Wherever, Indiana, when the feeling returns. This surprises him. Minutes earlier, he’d been working the room in his particular way, greeting waiters by name and ordering off-menu—the anchovies with garlic and tomatoes for himself, the carbonara for his guest—while a Buddy Greco song played in the background.
“Did Dad kill anyone?” John asked. Michael sidestepped the issue. Made guys never discussed past killings. “But if you’re asked to kill someone,” Michael said, “you got to.” “I am a rat. You wanna say that, fine. It’s true, okay?” His eyes narrow. “But there’s a different story to me.”Such a sweet kid, everyone said. A bit soft and feline, maybe. But everyone liked the little guy who spent his days singing as he romped around Roslyn, a prosperous village on Long Island’s North Shore. The family occupied one of the biggest houses on Shrub Hollow Road; it had a 40-foot-long pool, a putting green, and a “museum room” filled with art.
By the late ’60s, the Franzeses were the most famous family in town. Sonny was facing two separate trials—one for murdering a snitch, the other for masterminding bank robberies. Anyone who read the papers knew he’d killed upwards of 50 people, and that the New York mob bosses viewed him as their “coming king,” asJohn didn’t read the papers. To be Sonny’s son was to be cocooned by the knowledge that dad owned an enviable dry-cleaning business.
“We’re all partners,” Michael and Sonny told John. That he wasn’t getting paid as such—and that he still lived in his childhood bedroom—irked John. He wondered whether Sonny and Michael were cashing in on his efforts. Both he and Carmine, who by then was long home from his stint on the California commune, thought Michael was jealous of Sonny’s namesake. It would have been within reason. “When I saw you at your christening,” Sonny told John, “I knew my goal in life was for you to be the boss.
John was in a Manhattan strip club in the early ’80s when everything changed. He was 23 and driving a cream Cadillac Biarritz. He’d already been hitting the clubs and booze too hard when a buddy offered him a line of cocaine. John, like Sonny and Michael, had always scorned drugs. But now he was too drunk-sick to care.
Sonny’s moment of clarity arrived after he told John to visit a guy who was “a problem”—Sonny-speak for those he wanted killed. Instead, John got high and blew this off too. “Never in my life have I been so embarrassed,” Sonny raged. “The first time somebody asked you to take care of business, you never got it done.”
All the Franzeses knew Lewicki, an affable Long Islander who’d for years been openly investigating Sonny. He’d even arrested him a couple times for parole violations. It was a relationship conducted with degrees of mutual professionalism. When Lewicki happened into a local bakery, Sonny offered him bread and cakes. “We’re hoodlums, they’re cops,” Sonny told John. “If they catch you, that’s on you.
John was good with that. But he says the main selling point came when Lewicki suggested that John’s cooperation might take legal heat off his parents. Sonny was frequently jailed for parole violations; Tina was suspected of credit card fraud. Lewicki believes John’s motives were mixed. John says they were pure, but his feelings were mixed.“Your dad would have to cooperate,” Lewicki replied.“Your dad’s not the target,” Lewicki said. “The target is the Colombos.
John stayed clean until he didn’t. One day, while wandering through a music store, something caught his eye: a CD by his ex-“client” Christopher Williams. John scanned the liner notes until he found the special-thanks section, which included his name. Thanks to a regimen of weight lifting and HIV-related treatments, which included injections of testosterone and human growth hormone, John looked like a bull shark wearing sweats and a backward baseball cap. His transformation thrilled Sonny, who wanted John in the fold.
The biggest hurdle was the wire. It wasn’t like in the movies, when they implant a microchip in your ear or hide a bug under yourLewicki handed John a black gizmo the size of a garage-door opener. “Just keep it in your shirt pocket,” he said. The wire transmitted a live feed to Lewicki, who monitored most of John’s sit-downs with his father from a post nearby. He was impressed. Wired John sounded exactly as he normally did. He didn’t flinch, even when his transmitter tumbled out of his pocket and clacked onto the floor during a meeting. John just picked it up, put it back in his pocket, and kept talking. He remained in character for 17 months, while recording some 400 hours of conversations, several of them involving Sonny.
John would have to shed everything and vanish overnight. He wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to his wife or his mother. The latter called Michael: “Do you know where your brother is? We can’t find him. He’s gone for days.” The byzantine itinerary, which allowed marshals to spot anyone who might be tailing John, ended in Oklahoma City, where a marshal in a cowboy hat spirited him to a hotel room and confiscated his ID and his cell phone. Despite John’s protests—the phone held his family and personal photos—the marshal filled the sink with water and submerged the device. John had no ID, no timeline, no guard. Or, at least, none he could see. “Don’t worry,” the agent said. “Keep your receipts.
Finally an SUV whisked John to the Brooklyn Federal Court building. He fought off panic attacks as a bailiff guided him into the courtroom and toward the stand. But he made a point of looking straight at everyone. His mother returned his gaze. Sonny, slumped at the defense table, wearing an expression of weary indifference, did not.
The trial’s most excruciating moment came when Lind homed in on the taped conversation in which Sonny acknowledged the Colombos’ new penalty for those who vouched for rats.“There was a day when that would happen,” John replied. He pursued his new life with compulsive precision: rise early, feed the cat, smoke, begin writing. He filled diary after diary with prayers and affirmations colored by Catholicism and recovery-speak; the entries alternated between despair and hopefulness, self-punishment and self-love. “I’m disappearing,” he wrote in 2016. “I walk alone in this loneliness, toward this bright spark, knowing beginnings happen there…TRUST. HOPE. FAITH.
One of John’s fellow 12-steppers had sussed out John’s identity and revealed his whereabouts in the comments section of an online news article. He waffled for two years. That’s how long it takes to decide whether to visit a father who’d put a hit on you, and who had recently told a reporter, “Jesus suffered. He didn’t squeal on nobody.”When John arrived at Sonny’s nursing home, in Queens in, he had a plan. He got there first thing in the morning, when he knew Sonny would be alone and not surrounded by visitors.
日本 最新ニュース, 日本 見出し
Similar News:他のニュース ソースから収集した、これに似たニュース記事を読むこともできます。
Japanese Megabank Acquisition of Stake in SBI Holdings Could Be Bullish for Ripple, Believes John Deaton.Ripple may find fortune in Japan, believes CryptoLaw founder JohnEDeaton1 xrp $xrp ripple
続きを読む »
Texas judge won’t let prosecutor cancel scheduled execution of John RamirezNueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez said he is ethically opposed to the death penalty, but an employee wrongfully requested the execution date against his wishes. Gonzalez sought to cancel the execution two days later.
続きを読む »
Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, John Lithgow Join ‘Spellbound’ Animated MusicalNicole Kidman, Javier Bardem and John Lithgow are joining Rachel Zegler in a new animated musical titled Spellbound, with an original score by Alan Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater
続きを読む »
Phillies to honor John Irvin Kennedy, their first African American playerSixty-five years after his debut, the Phillies will pay tribute to Kennedy with an on-field ceremony on June 29
続きを読む »
Trump blasts ‘RINO’ Sen. John Cornyn for bipartisan gun legislationFormer President Donald Trump on Wednesday slammed “RINO” Sen. John Cornyn for working with Democrats on a bipartisan gun bill as Republican opposition to the legislation grows.
続きを読む »
Michael Giacchino on Watching 'John Carter' and 'Speed Racer' Gain FansMichael Giacchino highlights two past films he worked on that deserved more love -- JohnCarter and SpeedRacer.
続きを読む »