Sonny Sanctioned The Hit On His Own Son

Michael Franzese sits in a nondescript room,

the weight of a multi -million dollar empire

replaced by the silence of a man who knows exactly

how much a human life is worth in the eyes of

the Colombo crime family. In the mid -1980s,

Michael was the Yuppie Don, a capo who moved

500 million gallons of gasoline a month. generating

nearly eight million dollars in cash every single

week. But the spreadsheets and the shell companies

in Panama couldn't protect him from the one thing

the mafia values more than money. Absolute, unwavering

loyalty. When Michael decided to walk away from

that life, he didn't just leave behind the fast

cars and the Long Island mansions. He left behind

a father, John Sonny Franzese, who had spent

decades serving as the iron -fisted underboss

of the family. The betrayal was so deep, so foundational

to the code they lived by, that Sonny did the

unthinkable. He didn't just disown his son. He

sanctioned a contract on Michael's life. To understand

how a father could sign his son's death warrant,

you have to look at the man Sonny was and the

world he built for Michael to inherit. Sonny

Franzis was a legend of the old school, a man

who allegedly boasted of 60 kills and who treated

the Mafia's code of Omerda as a holy scripture.

He was the kind of man who would go to his grave

before speaking to a federal agent, a principle

he proved by serving decades in prison without

ever breaking. In the 1960s, Sonny was the king

of the Copacabana, rubbing elbows with Frank

Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., while simultaneously

masterminding rackets that reached into every

corner of New York. But in 1967, the government

finally caught up with him. Sonny was convicted

of masterminding a nationwide string of bank

robberies. The evidence was built on the testimony

of men like Richard Parks and James Smith, Bank

robbers who flipped to save themselves. When

the judge handed down a staggering 50 -year sentence,

Sonny didn't flinch. He looked at the bench and

famously declared that he would do the whole

50. It was a moment of pure defiant mob theater,

but it left his family in a tailspin. Michael

was a pre -med student at Hofstra University

at the time. A kid Sonny had wanted to keep legitimate.

But with the breadwinner facing a lifetime behind

bars, Michael felt he had no choice. He dropped

out of school and walked into the world his father

had tried to keep him from, eventually taking

the blood oath on Halloween night in 1975. The

gasoline scam Michael pioneered wasn't just another

mob racket. It was a masterpiece of white collar

crime. that he realized that while the government

was focused on traditional mob activities like

gambling and loan sharking, the excise tax on

fuel was an untapped gold mine. Michael set up

a daisy chain of dummy companies. Here is how

it worked. A wholesale company would buy the

gas tax free, then sell it through a series of

shell corporations. By the time the IRS showed

up at the end of the chain to collect the nine

cents a gallon in federal tax. the company responsible

for the bill had vanished, declared bankrupt,

or simply dissolved. Michael was pocketing the

tax money that should have gone to the state

and federal government, moving so much volume

that he was arguably the most profitable earner

in the history of the American mafia since Al

Capone. He had an army of soldiers, a private

jet, and the yuppie don title, but the higher

he rose, the more of a target he became. When

federal indictments finally rained down in 1985,

one in New York and a massive 177 -count indictment

in Florida, the government didn't just want his

money. They wanted his cooperation. They wanted

him to bring down the very infrastructure his

father had spent a century defending. The fracture

began when Michael did the one thing Sonny could

never forgive. He took a plea deal and eventually

agreed to testify in a case against sports agent

Norby Walters. While Michael maintains he never

gave up, made members of the mafia to save himself.

In the eyes of the Colombo family, and especially

in the eyes of Sonny, any cooperation with the

feds was a death sentence for your reputation.

By the mid -90s, When Michael walked out of prison

and moved his family to California to start a

new life, the contract was already out. Sonny

didn't just know about the hit. He endorsed it.

To Sonny, the mafia wasn't just a business. It

was a family higher than blood. If his son had

become a rat, then his son was no longer his

son. Michael has described the chilling reality

of being told by FBI agents that his own father

had sanctioned his murder. It is a level of psychological

warfare that few can imagine. The person who

taught you how to walk and talk is now the person

who has given the green light for your execution

to maintain his standing in a dying criminal

society. But the tragedy of the Franzese family

didn't end with Michael's exit. The true collapse

of Sonny's legacy came years later, and it didn't

involve Michael. It involved his other son, John

Franzese Jr., unlike Michael, who had been a

high -earning capo. John Jr. was an associate

struggling with a severe drug addiction. In 2005,

John Jr. did something that shattered the last

remnants of the Franzese name in the underworld.

He wore a wire. He recorded his own father, then

in his late 80s, discussing mob business and

shaking down strip clubs in 2010. The world watched

as John Jr. took the witness stand in a Brooklyn

federal court. Sonny, then 93 years old and nearly

deaf, sat at the defense table, occasionally

nodding off, earning the nickname the Nodfather

from the tabloids. But there was no humor in

the testimony. John Jr. was the first son of

a high -ranking New York mobster to testify against

his father in open court. He told the jury how

Sonny had groomed him for the life and then watched

as Sonny was sentenced to eight more years in

prison, a term that meant the centenarian would

likely die behind bars. The legacy of the Franzese

family is a story of two sons who took different

paths out of a dark world, but both left their

father behind in the ruins of a code that no

longer worked. Sonny lived to be 103, finally

walking out of prison at the age of 100 as the

oldest federal inmate in the country. Before

he died in 2020, there was a quiet, fragile reconciliation.

Michael visited him in a nursing home and John

Jr. eventually met with him too after years in

witness protection. Sonny reportedly told his

grandchildren to stay out of the life not because

of some moral awakening but because he believed

there was no more money in it. The man who had

sanctioned a hit on one son and been sent to

prison by the other died as a relic of a time.

when the family meant everything and blood meant

nothing. Michael Franzese is still here, a living

testament to the fact that you can survive the

mob, even when the person who wants you dead

is the man who gave you life. If you found this

look into the dark heart of the Colombo family

compelling, share this episode with someone who

enjoys a story of true crime and complicated

legacies. And that's how I heard it.

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