Sonny The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John Sonny Franzese

The brisk, chilling, fascinating story of the handsome and charismatic underboss of the Colombo family who reigned over his illegal rackets with ferocity and guile.  Based on extensive conversations with Sonny Franzese with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Newsday investigative reporter S. J. Peddie - his first and only extended interviews before his death at 103 in 2020 - this is the definitive book about his life and influence.

“Sonny Franzese was a standup guy. He lived his life, and he didn't hurt innocent people. And I knew him my whole life.” —Former Philadelphia crime boss Ralph Natale


John “Sonny” Franzese reportedly committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. A “made man” for the Colombo crime family, he operated out of his Long Island home, specializing in racketeering, fraud, loansharking, and other illicit deeds he would deny to his dying day. His career in organized crime spanned over eight decades—and he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for robbery charges. But even behind bars, Sonny Franzese never stopped doing business . . .


Through it all, Franzese refused to break the Mafia’s code of silence. Authorities believe he may have murdered, or ordered the murders of, forty to fifty people. Yet he earned a grudging respect from law enforcement and an absolute reverence from his fellow gangsters. Eventually he managed to outlive them all—until his death in 2020 of natural causes, a rare event in the Mafia. Thanks to a series of exclusive firsthand interviews, the astonishing life story of John “Sonny” Franzese can be told in all its bold, brutal, and blood-spattered glory. This is a must-read for anyone fascinated with Mafia history—and a rare look inside a criminal mind that has become the stuff of legend.

S.J. Peddie is an investigative reporter at Newsday Media Group and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of stories on police misconduct. Inducted into the Long Island Press Club Hall of Fame, she’s the recipient of the National Headliners, Casey, Scripps Howard, Silurians and New York State Newspaper Publishers Association Awards. In 2018, she won a New York Emmy for co-producing the documentary Cost of Corruption. Peddie served on the board of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and has been a featured speaker at national conferences sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Poynter Institute, as well as the International Center for Journalists, the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, Columbia University and New York State Archives. She has taught journalism at Hofstra and Stony Brook universities.