The Megyn Kelly Show - What Life is Really Like in the Mob, and Finding God in Prison, with Former Mafia Member Michael Franzese ｜ Ep. 674

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.040 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we bring you the fascinating

00:00:17.220 story of a man born into the mob. Imagine that. Michael Franzese grew up as the son of the notorious

00:00:26.340 underboss of New York's Colombo crime family and became extremely successful himself. He's been

00:00:33.280 called one of the biggest mob earners since Al Capone, but he has since left his life of crime

00:00:39.280 behind and is now a best-selling author, speaker, and host of Sit Down with Michael Franzese on YouTube.

00:00:48.880 Michael, welcome to the show. Nice to meet you. Well, nice to meet you, Megyn. Thanks for having me.

00:00:53.820 Oh, what a fascinating story you have. So let's start at the beginning.

00:00:57.720 You were born into the mob. Describe your dad and how he came into it.

00:01:03.560 Well, my dad, my grandfather actually immigrated here in about 1902, 1903, and he was a prominent

00:01:10.380 guy in Brooklyn. Even though he wasn't a member, he certainly knew a lot of the guys. My dad,

00:01:15.080 my grandfather had a bar and a bakery, and a lot of guys would come in and associate with him,

00:01:21.020 and my dad started to meet them through my grandfather. And my grandfather was known as

00:01:25.480 Tootie the Lion, so he was a pretty substantial guy. And my father got drawn in, you know. He was

00:01:33.080 just that type of guy, had that type of spirit, and they saw something in him before you know it.

00:01:38.720 You know, he became a made man and eventually rose up in the ranks to captain and an underboss of the

00:01:45.780 Colombo family. And, you know, Megyn, I grew up a lot differently than most people. I grew up,

00:01:50.840 you know, hating the government, hating the police, because my dad was constantly under surveillance.

00:01:56.240 We had law enforcement around us all the time, and I always viewed them as harassing my dad. So,

00:02:02.340 you know, I kind of grew up, you know, from the time I can remember, you know, in that lifestyle.

00:02:07.260 Hmm. So how, talk us through, like, your earliest memories of your dad and, like, okay, my childhood,

00:02:17.480 my family is not like all the others.

00:02:20.680 Well, you know, my very earliest memory, and it's amazing how you can remember some things that just

00:02:26.620 really impact you. I was probably four years old, and my dad had, we were in Brooklyn at the time,

00:02:33.160 but my dad had moved us out to my grandmother's house, who lived in Long Island. And I hadn't seen

00:02:38.740 him for a couple of days, I assume. Again, I was four years old. But then one day, he comes into my

00:02:45.020 grandmother's house. He hadn't shaved in a while. His right-hand guy, a guy by the name of Joey,

00:02:51.540 who is, again, my dad's right-hand guy, was out on the porch, and I can see through the window,

00:02:56.060 and he was kind of like standing guard. My dad comes in, hugs my mom, and, you know,

00:03:02.580 they talk for a few minutes. Then he comes over to me. I was sitting on the steps,

00:03:06.200 and he gives me a big hug, and, you know, I love you, son, and all of that.

00:03:10.380 And I didn't know what was going on, and then he left. Well, what I realized later on, it was that

00:03:14.960 was during the Profaci Gallo War, and they had taken to the mattresses, as the saying goes,

00:03:22.080 and my dad wasn't around for a while. That's the earliest memory that I have. And it just continued

00:03:27.400 there, because my dad was so high-profile. He was always under investigation, always a major

00:03:33.200 target of law enforcement. I always say he was kind of like the John Gotti of his day.

00:03:37.560 So, you know, it's my memory, you know, going way back, and he was always in the media.

00:03:43.740 So, you know, I had issues at school, because my dad, you know, guys was, hey, you got a mafia dad,

00:03:48.600 you know, I would fight, because I love my dad. I didn't care what anybody said.

00:03:51.620 And so it was, you know, from my earliest days that I remember that.

00:03:56.760 And did he ever, like, tell you, you know, I'm in this thing called the mafia. This is what I do.

00:04:03.000 You can't talk about it. How did you come to realize he was part of this organization?

00:04:07.980 You know, one of the many things I respect about my dad at that time, he never brought what was going

00:04:13.580 on outside into the house. He would never talk about it. He would never mention it. Obviously,

00:04:19.720 you know, every once in a while, I'd hear a crack, because law enforcement was outside

00:04:24.140 surveilling him. But he would never bring it up. He would never admit to anything, never talk about

00:04:28.800 anything. Obviously, a lot of his guys were coming to the house all the time. But to me,

00:04:33.400 they were like uncle, you know, Uncle Sam, Uncle this guy. So it was normal, you know, but I saw the

00:04:39.500 way my dad was treated. We would go to the Copacabana and go out places. And, you know, he always had a lot

00:04:44.780 of respect. People, he had a lot of charisma, and he commanded a lot of respect in that regard.

00:04:50.160 But never, never, never did he mention anything when I was younger. Never.

00:04:55.040 So how'd you figure it out?

00:04:57.260 Well, again, you know, from what I, from my observation, from what I read in the media,

00:05:01.600 you know, there was huge stories about him all the time. And obviously, you know, what I saw and what

00:05:06.980 other people told me. So, and I never really brought it up to him. I would never say anything

00:05:11.140 to him, because to me, he was dad, you know, he was a loving father. And I never did. It wasn't until

00:05:16.680 I got older. And my dad started, you know, getting indicted quite a bit and going on trial for,

00:05:21.900 you know, serious crimes. He was on trial twice for grand larceny and once for murder.

00:05:26.580 So obviously, during that, we had some talks. And my dad would always say, you know, I'm innocent,

00:05:31.120 son. I didn't commit these crimes. Eventually, he was acquitted on three of those trials that he

00:05:36.260 went to in the state of New York. So, you know, I started to know, obviously, as I got older.

00:05:41.040 How was, was I, cause I, I know, you know, Sammy the bull and he came on the show two summers ago

00:05:48.460 and he was talking to me about how he tried to move his family into a sort of a nicer neighborhood

00:05:53.620 and he wound up leaving because he was getting really angry that the neighbors were telling their

00:06:02.800 kids not to play with his kids. And he went over to the neighbor's house and he threatened them at the

00:06:09.020 door, you know, like I'm going to get you unless you, and he said he had this realization, like,

00:06:13.900 what am I doing? What, this is not, I'm scaring these people, you know, to within an inch of their

00:06:19.080 lives. These are civilians. I can't be here. I got to go back to my normal. Like, I'm wondering how

00:06:26.020 your dad was when you had scuffles at school, when the teachers were nasty to you, when the neighbors

00:06:31.960 crossed a line, were there any situations like that?

00:06:35.820 You know, not really. I mean, we were kind of accepted in the neighborhood. You know,

00:06:41.440 what happened then, my dad was under surveillance from seven or eight different agencies,

00:06:46.080 law enforcement agencies, and their tactics were different back then than today.

00:06:49.900 So everything is very covert, undercover informants, high-tech surveillance equipment.

00:06:54.500 Back then, when they had you under investigation, they wanted you to know about it. And so for a period,

00:06:59.720 like seven, eight, nine years, we had constant law enforcement around us. They would sit,

00:07:03.960 you know, on the front of our house, the back of our house, so that we couldn't leave without them

00:07:08.320 surveilling us. The neighbors actually got upset with them. I remember one woman putting a garden

00:07:13.100 hose on them because she was so upset or tired of seeing them sitting in front of our house. 0.95

00:07:18.840 My dad, you know, he was a charismatic guy. People liked him. You know, I didn't run into any of that.

00:07:25.020 I mean, sometimes, like I said, kids in school would get a little out of hand, but I would deal with it.

00:07:29.280 But, you know, one thing I'll tell you, I played sports in school and my dad wouldn't miss a game.

00:07:35.480 And when I was playing baseball, if I was up to bat, my dad walked onto the field. The umpire would

00:07:39.980 never call strike three on me when he saw my dad. So I used to say, dad, you're very good for my

00:07:45.940 batting average back then. But I didn't run into that kind of resistance from people and neither did

00:07:52.140 we.

00:07:52.280 Take me, like, what years are we talking about? What year were you born?

00:07:57.660 I was born in 51. So we're talking, you know, late 50s, early 60s. And right through the 60s is

00:08:04.040 when my dad really, you know, had all his trouble. So it was that whole decade.

00:08:10.560 All right. And so how about you? You become, I mean, I'm picturing something, of course,

00:08:14.080 like Goodfellas, where you're a young kid and you're entranced by the lifestyle and you feel like

00:08:19.580 a big man. But you tell me, how did you get attracted to the business yourself and make

00:08:24.020 the decision to join?

00:08:25.840 You know, it was just the opposite with me. My dad, you know, preached against me doing

00:08:30.360 anything but getting an education. He wanted me to go to school. He wanted me to be a doctor.

00:08:35.640 He was, you know, hell bent on education. Mike, you're going to be the first professional in the

00:08:40.560 family. And he meant it. He kept me on that road. It wasn't until, you know, he was indicted in a

00:08:46.720 federal case for masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies. He gets convicted. He gets a 50

00:08:51.800 year prison sentence in 1967. And in 1970, when I was 19, he went off to do his time. Joe Colombo,

00:09:00.700 who was the boss of our family, and I was very close with their family, he kind of takes me under

00:09:04.480 his wing. We start to march with the Italian American Civil Rights League. We were marching

00:09:09.680 against the FBI for, you know, defaming Italian Americans. So I got very involved in the league

00:09:14.960 as a way to help my dad. Because, Megan, I'll tell you this, you know, when we get later on in

00:09:19.860 this, I went to jail for a crime that I was guilty of. I pled guilty, did my time. My dad obviously did

00:09:25.520 a lot of bad things in his life. But that particular crime that he did 40 years in prison on, my dad was

00:09:31.860 innocent of. I'll take that to my grave. We investigated every one of those witnesses. They recanted

00:09:38.440 their testimony. We gave them lie detector tests, proved they lied at the trial. We can never get the

00:09:43.060 conviction overturned. So I was hellbent on trying to help my dad prove his innocence, because he had

00:09:48.780 essentially a death sentence. He went in when he was 50 years old, 50 on top of that, you know, that's

00:09:53.700 a long time. So I got into that life because I lost interest in school. I was a sophomore in college,

00:10:01.020 and I was a pre-med student. I was highly influenced by Joe Colombo and the guys that, you know, that I met

00:10:07.800 during that time. And they would say, Mike, if you don't help your father out, he's going to die in

00:10:11.860 prison. So I went to see him in Leavenworth in the penitentiary. We sat in the visiting room. I said,

00:10:16.880 Dad, you tell me you're innocent. I believe you. I'm not going to school anymore. If I don't help

00:10:21.460 you out, you're going to die in here. And we had a pretty intense discussion because he was against 0.70

00:10:26.360 it. But he knew my mind was made up and I was a pretty headstrong kid. So he said to me, son,

00:10:31.200 if you're going to be on the street, you know, I want you on the street the right way. And then,

00:10:37.020 you know, Megan, I don't like to, you know, say this. I don't like to be offensive to people,

00:10:41.520 but he asked me one question and he said, son, if you had to kill anybody, could you do it?

00:10:47.400 And I thought about it for a minute, you know, kind of a little bit surprised by the question,

00:10:51.800 but I said, Dad, the circumstances were right. I can do it. And he said, that's the right answer.

00:10:56.940 Go home. Somebody's going to be in touch with you. Do whatever you're told. And that's when he

00:11:00.840 proposed me for membership in the life. Wow. It's almost like you were on the

00:11:07.020 the same path as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, right? He was supposed to be the son

00:11:11.700 who didn't get drawn into the business. He was going to be a senator or in a position of power.

00:11:16.380 You were supposed to become a doctor and pursue a legit life. And yet you did get pulled. You did

00:11:22.100 get pulled in. Yes. And, you know, it's like I said, it wasn't even though I was around my dad and

00:11:28.820 listen, we always got first class treatment. I can't tell you how many times, Megan, I went to the

00:11:33.220 Copacabana. We met everybody from Sinatra on down and they all had respect for my dad and the owner,

00:11:39.300 Julie Padell, love my father. And we got that kind of treatment. My dad was also in the music

00:11:44.000 business. I met a lot of artists when I was younger. So he carried himself in that way where

00:11:49.580 people were attracted to him. And he was a tremendous influence on me in that regard. I watched him. I

00:11:55.300 observed him. And but it wasn't I didn't want to be a gangster. That's not what my life was all about.

00:12:01.040 You know, I I was heading the legitimate way. And then I got drawn in because I just felt,

00:12:07.720 you know, it was incumbent upon me to help my dad. I was also the oldest of the kids.

00:12:12.380 You know, and there's a myth in that life that, you know, once you're part of that life,

00:12:16.120 you go to prison, they take care of you forever. That's not true. Whatever my dad had on the street

00:12:21.300 at the time, you know, it ran out after about two years. And then we were on our own. So I had to help

00:12:27.280 support the family and do all the things that, you know, an older son would do.

00:12:32.080 Wow. I didn't realize that. I thought I thought I believe the myth, too. So now you're what,

00:12:38.560 like in your young 20s. And what how did you start to become a part of it? You know, do they

00:12:44.380 do they give you a gun and say you've got to shoot somebody? This is one of the rumors that you've got

00:12:48.460 to shoot somebody. You've got to kill somebody in order to officially be accepted as part of the 0.99

00:12:53.380 Mafia. Is that true? What how did you realize you were in and what was expected of you? 0.98

00:12:59.500 Well, my dad sent word, you know, downtown to the to the officials. About two weeks later,

00:13:05.240 a cop regime or captain in a family picked me up and he took me to see the boss. Now, Joe Colombo

00:13:10.540 had been shot, seriously wounded at a big rally we had for the Italian American Civil Rights League

00:13:16.120 at Columbus Circle. And I was like 12 steps away from him when that happened.

00:13:20.060 So a new boss had taken over. He's passed on now, Tom DiBella. And I sat with Tom. He says,

00:13:26.160 Mike, I got a message from your father. He said, you want to become a member of our life. Is that

00:13:30.280 true? And I said, yes. He said, well, here's the deal. From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

00:13:36.300 you're on call to serve this family, the Colombo family. And that means if your mother is sick and

00:13:41.200 she's dying and we call you to service and you're at her bedside, you leave your mother's side,

00:13:46.020 you come and serve us. From now on, we're number one in your life before anything and everything.

00:13:50.980 When and if we feel you deserve this privilege, this honor to become a member of Let Your Know.

00:13:56.400 And that's how it started. I was 21 years old. I was in kind of like a pledge period. I was a recruit.

00:14:03.080 That's the official title of that, where I had to do anything and everything I was told to do to

00:14:07.480 prove myself worthy. And, you know, it could have been something very menial, a lot of discipline in that

00:14:11.960 life, a lot of alleged respect, a lot of, you know, authority. You had a meeting at eight o'clock.

00:14:17.280 You weren't there at seven thirty. You were late. Can never be late in that life. Drive the boss to a

00:14:22.120 meeting, sit in the car, two, three, four hours. God forbid you leave, go to the restroom, get a

00:14:26.680 newspaper. He comes out. You're not there. You're in trouble. You know, I know I did that once. I paid

00:14:31.100 the price. A lot of stuff like that. And, you know, Megan, I got to be honest. You know, the life is

00:14:37.800 very violent at times. And if you're part of that life, you're part of the violence and there's no

00:14:42.280 escape. And if anybody tells you differently, they're either not being honest with you or they

00:14:46.540 weren't a made man in that life. And, you know, I think you know what I mean. It's but, you know,

00:14:51.600 here's the other myth. You know, a lot of guys talk about, you know, all these killings like we ran

00:14:57.120 around all day long and all we did was baseball bat people and murder people. Absolutely not true.

00:15:03.520 You know, you know, in our life and at least in our family, I can tell you this, you know,

00:15:10.840 murder was taken very seriously. It was a last course of action. It had to be approved by the

00:15:16.580 boss. There was discussion over it most of the time, at least that the my experience in a 20 plus

00:15:22.280 years are put into that life. It wasn't that guys were around running around every day just targeting

00:15:27.340 people to hurt. And I know, you know, there's a lot of guys on YouTube that talk their way now.

00:15:32.580 That wasn't my experience, but it is part of the life. And if you called upon to do it,

00:15:39.200 you got to do it. Hmm. Was it petty crime? Was it like you didn't pay back the loan? So I got to

00:15:46.060 break your legs. That's not petty. But I'm just saying it wasn't it was violent, but it wasn't 0.99

00:15:50.100 murder. So did you have to hurt people? Because I feel like that would be a before and after moment.

00:15:55.280 Well, let's put it this way. You know, a lot of I had a lot of bookmakers around me that were

00:15:59.420 taking, you know, obviously taking bets illegally at the time. And, you know, the last course of

00:16:05.940 action is to hurt somebody, because if somebody is in debt to you, you want you want them to pay

00:16:10.160 you. It's only if they're, you know, doing something like so obnoxious to you that, hey,

00:16:15.300 you've got to teach this guy a lesson. But it's not the first course of action, at least with me,

00:16:19.920 it wasn't. And with most of the people that I knew at that time, certainly not with my dad,

00:16:23.760 that wasn't a first course of action. But did it happen at times? Yeah, I'm not going to say it

00:16:28.700 didn't. And, you know, there was kind of a it was kind of two different categories, I would say,

00:16:33.540 in that life. You're either a racketeer or you're a gangster. Give an example. In our family, we had

00:16:39.820 115 made guys at that time. This was after I took the oath. 115 made guys out of that 115, maybe 20 of

00:16:47.600 us were real earners. We were bringing money into the life 20. The other 95, you know, who's got a

00:16:54.200 no show job? Who's got a gambling? Who's trying to do something just to to make a few bucks? And

00:16:59.640 they're the guys that, you know, were leaned upon most of the time to do the work because you got to

00:17:04.960 earn your way in that life. Guys that are bringing in money, they want to protect those guys. However,

00:17:11.260 a gangster never really had the ability to become a racketeer because if he did, he would be and he'd be

00:17:16.420 earning. But a racketeer has to be both because you're going to be called upon in that life to do

00:17:21.060 what you have to do and you can't refuse and you got to be capable in that regard. So, you know,

00:17:26.080 but again, the smarter guys, you don't want to hurt people every day. That's not what we were out to do.

00:17:33.100 It must have been a jarring flip, right, to go from this world in which you thought you were going

00:17:38.760 to be a doctor healing people to this world in which you became part of the mafia, sometimes having

00:17:44.940 to hurt people. Right. Like, do you ever think about it like that?

00:17:49.480 You know, I did, Megan, but quite honestly, maybe it was because being around my dad my whole life,

00:17:56.340 or maybe I did have something in me. Maybe I wasn't destined to be a doctor. I don't know. I mean,

00:18:02.120 I often reflected on that myself and said, you know, how do I how did I adapt to this so well?

00:18:08.120 Um, because, you know, I had some success in life and look, I'll be honest with you. You know,

00:18:13.700 I had a very idealistic view of the life when I got into the life, you know, they told me, Hey,

00:18:18.980 you know, you don't ever have to worry wherever you go in the world. Somebody's going to have your

00:18:22.680 back. Don't ever worry about your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter, nobody's ever

00:18:26.540 going to hurt them. We'll protect them. You have a brotherhood around you. You know, I was going to be,

00:18:31.460 you know, bonded in blood in a different way. Um, you know, with my father than I already was.

00:18:37.360 So I had a very idealistic view of the life coming in. I was excited about it, uh, you know,

00:18:42.440 and I wanted to be the best possible mob guy could be at that time. So, you know, maybe,

00:18:47.120 maybe I did have it in me all the time. I just didn't know it.

00:18:53.860 This is mobs for dummies. So to become a made guy, what does it mean? And I know you took like the

00:19:00.500 oath of omerta, which I really, I think I also took that same oath at Fox news. Um, but is that

00:19:06.540 only when you become a made guy or is that just like when you first sort of joined the mob?

00:19:11.400 Yeah, well, I was in kind of, like I said, a recruit period. And it was an interesting period

00:19:15.900 because from 19, from the early 1950s, right through 1974, 75, they had an expression in the life that

00:19:24.620 covered all five families and that the books were closed. They weren't making, uh, recruiting any

00:19:30.420 new guys. Um, the only way they were able to do that in one of the families, if somebody died,

00:19:35.500 they were able to bring another guy in to replace that person. So when I was a recruit,

00:19:40.940 I was around guys that were waiting 20 years to become a made guy.

00:19:45.720 And meaning what though? Like, cause you're in the mafia, but what, but you're not made. I mean,

00:19:49.700 I only know the Goodfellas reference when Joe Pesci's character became made, he became more

00:19:53.940 important somehow, but he was in the mob prior to that moment.

00:19:56.500 Right. Well, prior to that, you become an associate, meaning that somebody that's an

00:20:02.580 official in that life puts you on record with them. And you're officially with that person

00:20:07.460 that makes you an official associate. Nobody else can do business with you unless the made guy says

00:20:13.260 it's okay. And he has complete authority over you. He's responsible for you. And you're responsible

00:20:18.280 to answer to him. That's an associate. So when you're in a crew recruit, like I was,

00:20:22.980 I was an associate, but it's not an official position in that life. Once you get, um, you know,

00:20:29.900 you prove yourself and you're approved to become a made member, which is the, uh, the term that they

00:20:35.760 use. Well, then you take an oath and you become a soldier and a soldier is the first official

00:20:41.180 position in that life. Uh, the next ranking up is a cop regime or a captain. And then you have

00:20:47.180 the hierarchy, which is the boss, the underboss and the consigliere. So, and that's it. Those

00:20:52.820 are the rankings. And, and with the boss, the underboss and the consigliere and who's the Don

00:20:58.940 is he, is he above all of them or is that the boss? Yeah. You know, the, the Don is an expression

00:21:04.060 that you, you know, you hear from Italy, but the boss of the family is, is, can be considered the Don.

00:21:09.180 Okay. So thank you for walking me through this. Yeah. Uh, okay. So we, they made a movie about your

00:21:17.360 life and, um, they, they reenacted the moment that you took the oath, uh, which would have been in 1975.

00:21:24.600 This is from the 2014 documentary profiling you. God, the father was the name. Here's a bit of that.

00:21:39.180 If you ever violate the oath of La Cosa Nostra, are you burning in hell like the saint burning in your 0.96

00:21:47.240 hands? Your allegiance to La Cosa Nostra is bound in blood. Should you ever violate this oath,

00:21:57.520 your blood will be shed. You will keep the secrets and traditions you will hear and learn about.

00:22:04.100 You will not violate another member's wife, sister, or daughter, or ever raise your hand against

00:22:11.620 another member and you will carry out every order given to you. La Cosa Nostra comes before anything

00:22:21.060 and everything in your life. How accurate was that? Oh, it was pretty accurate. You know,

00:22:28.940 that's, that's the oath. And obviously they, they do, you know, shed a little blood. They,

00:22:33.320 they prick your, your finger and they have a knife there and they make a little slit. So,

00:22:38.120 and then they burn a saint in your hands. And, um, that's the oath. I mean, it's quick,

00:22:43.620 but it's very serious. Hmm. And tried out. They spin you around three times and make you sing a song.

00:22:49.980 It's different, but it's also similar. It's quite, quite the initiation experience and different

00:22:58.300 expectations. So you become a maid guy. Now at this point, are you developing a family? Like I would

00:23:04.500 think the more layers you have and the more connections to sort of regular society, schools

00:23:08.840 and the bridge club, whatever, the more complicated this gets.

00:23:14.200 Well, yes. I mean, I was, uh, I was married young. I got married when I was 24. Um, and that marriage

00:23:20.460 lasted for a couple of years. I had three children within three years with my first wife. And I'm married

00:23:26.220 now for 38 years with my, my wife, Camille, and we have four more children. So I have seven all

00:23:30.580 together, but you know, Megan, here's, here's the thing that I've said, and I'm, I'm careful the way

00:23:36.380 I said this, you know, I always call the mob life, the street life, the gang life, they're evil

00:23:42.120 lifestyles. And I'm not calling the guys evil. I was one of them. I just happened to be very fortunate

00:23:47.580 to be in the position I am now. Uh, but the lifestyle is evil because I don't know any family of any

00:23:54.140 member of that life that hasn't been devastated. And I mean that including my own now, not my wife

00:23:59.440 and kids. I've been able to, you know, to, uh, spare them of that. But my mom was, my dad did 40

00:24:05.640 years on that 50. My mom, um, she died in 2012. She was 33 years without her husband at the end of

00:24:12.860 her life. I can only describe her relationship with my dad as being ugly because she blamed him for

00:24:19.060 everything that went wrong in her life. And rightfully so what went wrong. I had a sister,

00:24:23.580 27 years old, died of an overdose of drugs, a lot of turbulence in my household always. And it was a

00:24:29.300 crazy lifestyle. Uh, she dies at 27, my younger brother, 25 years as a drug addict. When he, um,

00:24:36.760 uh, I can't even begin to tell you how many times I had to save his life and how much trouble he caused

00:24:41.740 the family because of his drug addiction. Eventually he got himself in trouble, cooperated with the

00:24:47.780 government, wired himself up against my father. And he put my father back in jail on another case.

00:24:53.420 And my dad was 92 years old when that happened. He was out on parole. A son going against the father

00:24:59.940 and another sister, you know, 20, I mean, uh, she was 41 years old. She wasn't ever mentally stable.

00:25:06.300 She grew up in this turbulence, didn't sit well with her. She passed away at 41. So my whole family

00:25:11.940 was destroyed. And every family of every member of that life that I know is, is in a

00:25:17.680 similar situation. So any lifestyle does that for a family is obviously a bad or an evil lifestyle.

00:25:23.460 So, you know, it's, and you don't realize that going in, I didn't realize, Hey, I'm going to go

00:25:29.760 to jail for all these years and my family's going to be destroyed. I didn't think that way. Again,

00:25:34.160 I had an idealistic view of the life, even seeing what my father went through. I kind of pushed that

00:25:39.880 out and said, well, that's not going to happen to me. Or if it does happen to me, I'll deal with it.

00:25:43.600 I was always type of guy that figured, Hey, I can figure everything out and I'll deal with it. And

00:25:47.080 somehow I'll make it work. Um, you know, so I had that kind of an attitude, but yes,

00:25:52.080 it very, very rough on the families. No doubt. So your, was your first brush with the law,

00:25:59.460 Rudy Giuliani? No, that was, Oh gosh, that was way, way, way later on. I had, that was your last.

00:26:07.580 Yeah, that was, that was way late. That was in 84. I mean, my first brush with the law was

00:26:12.320 with the Italian American, Italian American civil rights league. When we were picketing,

00:26:17.180 um, I got in an altercation with a, with a cop and I hit him and, you know, they beat me up and

00:26:22.860 it was a mess, but I was, uh, I was like 20 years old when that happened. And then, you know,

00:26:28.380 I had a bullseye on my back immediately because of my dad. I was arrested 18 times. I had seven

00:26:34.140 indictments altogether. I had, uh, two federal racketeering cases, one state Rico indictment,

00:26:40.000 and I had, uh, four other, uh, state in New York cases. So from the time I was 20 years old,

00:26:45.520 I was just getting arrested, getting indicted, fighting the law. It was just a lifelong battle

00:26:50.060 for me. That's amazing. I mean, it's, it's really like racketeering Giuliani, um, multiple

00:26:56.140 indictments in New York. It sounds just like somebody who I know is the former president and

00:27:00.140 likely to be potentially the next president, Donald Trump, which we'll get to, because I know

00:27:04.440 you've got some insights on what he's going through, but this, you know, racketeering was,

00:27:08.200 is a charge that was created so that, uh, federal prosecutors could get at mobsters who they hadn't

00:27:13.180 been able to sort of sweep up in a big net of criminality. And I know you got caught in that,

00:27:20.120 that net eventually. So you've got maybe 14 years there where you get arrested and you get out or

00:27:24.920 you get some small punishment. Can you give me a flavor for how you were the, you were a racketeer,

00:27:29.960 you weren't a gangster. What kinds of things were you doing? How are you paying the bills to where you

00:27:34.680 were considered in that first group? Well, you know, I, um, I was fortunate, I think, in that I

00:27:41.640 understood how to use that life to benefit me in business. And, um, you know, I went on to make a

00:27:47.640 very significant amount of money, both legally and illegally. You know, I had two automobile

00:27:53.240 dealerships, legitimate. I had a Mazda and a Chevrolet agency. I had a leasing company. Uh, I had a couple of

00:27:59.400 restaurants that I was involved in. I had a film production company at one point in time that,

00:28:05.300 um, actually we made about 30 films at the time and distributed throughout the world. So I had a lot

00:28:11.180 of legitimate things going on, but the, the biggest enterprise or scam, whatever you want to call it,

00:28:18.160 that I got involved in was the wholesale gasoline business. And in a nutshell, I devised a scheme along

00:28:24.200 with a partner, uh, to defraud the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline. And it was an

00:28:29.420 operation we ran for about eight years. I had the Russian mob guys from Brighton beach involved with 0.98

00:28:33.960 me. I had about 350 gas stations. I either owned or operated at that time. And I had 18 companies

00:28:40.680 that were licensed to collect the tax on every gallon of gasoline height of our operation. We're

00:28:46.920 selling a half a billion gallons of gas a month. And we're taking down 20, 30, 40 cents a gallon,

00:28:52.100 whatever the mark was bare at that time. So we bring it in several million dollars a week.

00:28:56.640 And, um, that was, you know, there were other guys doing it, you know, some of the Russians were

00:29:01.740 doing it, but I think we perfected the system, uh, and lasted, you know, quite long. And we had a lot

00:29:08.180 of other people that were trying to do it that were involved with us. So we, we created that scam

00:29:13.180 and it was, uh, you know, people said it was the biggest scam since prohibition. And I believe that

00:29:18.160 I don't think there was anything else because we weren't big drug dealers. And obviously when

00:29:22.960 you talk drugs, you know, enormous money, but we weren't big drug dealers, despite what everybody

00:29:27.640 says, not true. Uh, when I took an oath, they told me straight out, you deal with drugs, you die.

00:29:33.620 And we weren't allowed to touch it. And there was some guys doing it on the sly. Yeah. But we

00:29:37.680 weren't major drug dealers, uh, at least back during my era. So, um, you know, I was doing a lot

00:29:43.680 of things and I had to head for business and I just kept plugging away. What do you do with the

00:29:48.620 money? Do you turn it over to the family? Do you put it in a checking account? Well, you know,

00:29:54.640 we do both. I mean, uh, I had to give up, uh, 25% of my, whatever I earned, how to go up the ladder

00:30:01.260 to the family. And that's the deal that I made with the boss at the time. And then, uh, you know,

00:30:06.660 I had several bank accounts. I had bank accounts overseas that we wired money out to. I had a lot of

00:30:12.120 cash at that time. I had a safe in my house. So, you know, different ways. And, um, you wash money

00:30:18.240 when I was in the film business, I produced a couple of movies with, you know, gas tax money

00:30:23.540 that I had cleaned up. So, you know, it's, it became a chore quite honestly, because we had so

00:30:29.420 much money coming in and we had to devise a system, uh, to get rid of it basically, or to put it in

00:30:35.340 places that was secure. Do you, is it like the movies where you get in trouble if you're too flashy,

00:30:41.280 if your wife buys a fur coat, you know, you're supposed to look like you're not making that

00:30:46.100 kind of dough? Well, you know, some guys like my dad, I mean, he would drive around in a 1964

00:30:54.180 Red Plymouth Valiant that my mother wouldn't even get into. I mean, he didn't want anybody to know

00:30:59.560 what he was doing in a way. Uh, I wasn't that way. I mean, look, I was earning money. So, I mean,

00:31:04.620 I had a jet plane, I had a helicopter, I had houses in three parts of the country. Um, you know,

00:31:10.660 one house I built on two acres of land with a racquetball court and all of that. So, but I was

00:31:15.200 making legitimate money. I was paying taxes at that time too. So, uh, I was able to show that.

00:31:20.880 Um, but no, we didn't get in trouble for that. I mean, nobody told us how to live, you know, if,

00:31:26.520 if, I mean, if there was something like in the movie, Goodfellas, and you had to lay low for a

00:31:32.200 while, I mean, that was certainly a possibility, but I wasn't in that category.

00:31:36.260 Yeah. You mentioned that you made some movies and it just so happens that the producer of this

00:31:42.200 segment, Natasha, is a huge fan of one of your movies called Mausoleum. So she has queued up

00:31:49.380 this, this little clip, uh, in part of the trailer for the audience and sought to.

00:31:55.540 She gave her soul to the evil force in the mausoleum. What's the matter, Susan?

00:32:01.300 What? What? What? What? Oh, my God! 0.98

00:32:12.860 Now, the secret haunts her and she cannot control the power.

00:32:20.600 That looks amazing.

00:32:22.980 Megan, I got to tell you the story behind this really quickly. All right. Especially if somebody

00:32:27.540 you have there that loves the movie. I have a guy around me. It was a Jewish guy by the name of

00:32:32.220 Jerry Zimmerman. Very close to me. Loved the guy. He was in the car business with me. Long story short,

00:32:37.360 he gets himself in some very serious trouble. And I have to have a sit down with a maid guy 1.00

00:32:42.780 from another family over Jerry. They wanted to kill him. And I really had a fight to keep him alive 0.86

00:32:49.680 because he insulted some maid guys. You're not allowed to do that. Anyway, I clear him, right? But this guy

00:32:56.520 was an old timer, the captain in the other family. And he was so incensed with this. I said, Jerry,

00:33:02.540 I don't trust this guy. Even though we got it clear, you could be walking down the street,

00:33:06.520 a car barrels into you. I don't know what's going to happen. I said, I want you to go out to California

00:33:11.040 with your brother. He had a brother out here. And just stay there. And let me make sure this is okay.

00:33:15.760 So he goes out. About two months later, he calls me up. He says, hey, chief, we're going to be in the

00:33:20.180 movie business. I said, what do you know about movies? He said, oh, don't worry about it. I got a script. I got a director.

00:33:24.940 He says, send me $83,000 and you're my partner, right? So I send him the money. P.S. This is the

00:33:31.680 movie Mausoleum. A million dollars later, we produced that film that honestly didn't scare

00:33:37.960 anyone but me after I saw what happened with it. But that was my intro into the business because

00:33:43.740 we lost money on that film initially. But listen to this, especially for your worker there.

00:33:49.420 All of a sudden, that film becomes a cult classic. And I've been earning money on that film for the

00:33:55.900 last 30 years. Up until about three months ago, somebody came to me and said, I'll give you 50 grand

00:34:02.120 to take it over. And I sold it to him. But I've been earning on it for 30 years after it was the worst

00:34:07.720 film. It was crazy. This business is so crazy. You never know what's going to happen.

00:34:12.880 It's so rare to make money off of the movies. It happens once in a million. So, okay,

00:34:20.780 Mausoleum comes out. Now you're in the movie business. That's kind of exciting. And was there

00:34:25.640 ever, like you said, you met Frank Sinatra at the Copacabana. How incestuous do you feel like

00:34:32.780 Hollywood, the entertainment industry is with the mafia? Because there's all sorts of speculation.

00:34:38.740 Well, look, we had relationships there for sure. I mean, there was agents that I was very close

00:34:46.000 with. One in particular that's passed away now. But so, you know, Megan, I have to tell you this.

00:34:52.980 A lot of people in the industry liked being around us. We didn't have to chase them and threaten them

00:34:58.280 and do all of that. They enjoyed our company. Some of the guys, like they love being around my father.

00:35:03.020 I think people enjoyed being around me because, you know, we carried ourselves a certain way. We weren't

00:35:08.120 looking to put the arm on somebody all the time. And so they enjoyed being in business with us.

00:35:13.820 And I don't have to tell you, you know, in this business, if you can bring money to the table,

00:35:17.760 people like you. I don't think they really care who you are, you know, in many cases. But, you know,

00:35:23.220 so look, we did have involvement. We didn't control the industry in any way. I wouldn't say that. But

00:35:28.320 did we have, you know, a presence there? Yes. Listen, did Joe Colombo absolutely have an impact on

00:35:35.660 the movie The Godfather? A hundred percent. I mean, I don't know if you saw that series,

00:35:39.720 The Offer. Yeah, but I actually am watching that right now.

00:35:43.820 Well, I thought it was brilliantly done. I mean, I really did. And a lot of it was true.

00:35:48.720 You know, that was my era. I was there during all of that. And I was very close to Joey at that time.

00:35:53.180 So a lot of it was very accurate. And, you know, he did have that control and he did have an impact.

00:35:59.860 The word mafia was taken out of the script. That's for sure. Joey did that. He did shut it down at

00:36:04.600 some point, you know, with the union. And they did have to come back to him in order to continue

00:36:08.560 production. So, you know, we did have influence. What about, you know, I realize the mafia is not

00:36:15.260 what it used to be. But when you're out there walking around as a civilian, what are the businesses

00:36:21.440 you go by or you go into or you're like, probably connected?

00:36:27.680 Oh, gosh. Well, unions, you know, for sure. And, you know, another myth, another myth is that my

00:36:35.340 friends, we sit in our social clubs and we target the next business that we're going to

00:36:41.380 take over, defraud, influence or whatever. Not always so. So often people from inside their

00:36:48.120 company would come to us. Hey, we have a way to defraud our company. We have a way to make some

00:36:52.780 money. You know, you're going to protect us. You're going to give us money. You're never going to tell

00:36:56.040 on us. So a lot of people from inside the company would come to us. Happened to me with General Motors,

00:37:01.160 happened to me with Mazda, happened to me with GE Credit quite often. And that's how I got involved in

00:37:07.200 some legitimate businesses. But, you know, look, unions, of course, you know, I'll tell you this,

00:37:12.460 too. You know, people come to me about Donald Trump. Did Donald Trump deal with the mob?

00:37:16.460 And yeah, he did. And so did Helmsley and so did Gutterman and so did anybody in New York that

00:37:21.320 wanted to get that building made and had to deal with the unions. You just had to. And, you know,

00:37:27.460 so does that does that make somebody in bed with the mob? No, you're just doing business.

00:37:32.040 So, you know, yes, we had influence, you know, in the poultry businesses to like launder because

00:37:38.440 for a very brief time when I was with Jones Day, the law firm I was with for many years,

00:37:43.180 I did a little white collar crime work, the opposite side. And I remember I took the deposition

00:37:51.080 of this guy who was working for one of the crime families and they were laundering money through

00:37:54.420 these funeral homes. And I thought, my God, I would never have thought funeral homes would be a place

00:37:59.420 where the mob would be in control laundering money. But, you know, anything's like that.

00:38:03.840 Did you have any familiarity with funeral homes or anything like it?

00:38:09.020 Yeah, one of my dear friends who's passed on now, he was a funeral director. He had a funeral home.

00:38:14.520 So, yeah, it is a place you can wash money. People pay with cash. Any place where people are

00:38:19.800 paying with cash is a place to launder money. Restaurants, pizza ballers, you know,

00:38:24.860 obviously places like that. So because there isn't a really good accounting with that and you can you

00:38:30.520 can put a lot of cash through it and get a lot of cash out of it. So, you know, those were the kind

00:38:36.600 of favorites. I mean, listen, in the in the film business, nobody really did an accounting of where

00:38:42.440 the money came from. So, I mean, I I made movies with stolen gas tax money.

00:38:46.920 Right. Nobody ever. So you and as you were rising in wealth and notoriety and, you know,

00:38:53.640 you were succeeding. You were, you know, as we said in the intro, one of the most successful

00:38:57.040 mobsters ever. You got featured. You you weren't in the movie Goodfellas, but your name was used as

00:39:05.080 one of sort of the big guys when Ray Liotta was walking through the restaurant or going into the sort

00:39:10.460 of the seat. This is where is this where he's taking his girlfriend out for a date, like one of the

00:39:15.880 first dates. I'm trying to remember. I haven't seen the clip yet, but I. Yeah. OK, so we'll play it

00:39:20.240 because they mention your name in this. And he says, yeah, Mikey franchise. I saw him friends.

00:39:27.380 Watch. And then there was Pete the killer, who was Sally Balls, his brother.

00:39:32.040 And you had Nikki eyes and Mikey franchise. So that's supposed to be you. Were you

00:39:45.520 surprised to see yourself featured in Goodfellas? I was really surprised because, you know, I mean,

00:39:51.700 I knew that crew very well. I knew Henry very well. I knew Jimmy Burke and Pauli Barrio,

00:39:56.340 you know, was was a dear friend of mine in the family's. But I was I was surprised because that

00:40:01.660 was a different family. And Nick Pelleggi, who was the writer, after I saw that, I called Nick up and I

00:40:07.600 said, Nick, why'd you throw me in there? He said, oh, Michael, you had name value and all that. And,

00:40:11.760 you know, you knew all those guys. I said, yeah, but you could have at least got them to say my

00:40:15.580 name correctly. You know, so. Yeah. But I was surprised. I didn't expect to see that.

00:40:23.440 OK, so eventually Rudy Giuliani does come into your life. And, you know, Rudy Giuliani,

00:40:29.220 we kind of know him much differently today, but he was, I mean, an absolute hero in many ways back in

00:40:35.220 the day and cleaning up New York. And he was former federal prosecutor. He was he was the U.S.

00:40:39.540 attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is considered the most prestigious

00:40:42.560 U.S. attorney post in the country. And when he was young, he wasn't kidding around. He was,

00:40:48.100 I mean, a true crime fighter and very focused on the mob. And that put you in his crosshairs.

00:40:55.180 So talk about that. Well, yeah, he indicted me on a major racketeering case. I was a lead defendant

00:41:02.360 and I had 15 co-defendants and it was a big, you know, Shylocking case, you know, money extortion 0.97

00:41:09.100 case, allegedly. And I was supposed to have financed a leasing company that was probably had

00:41:16.240 1500 legitimate loans on the street and about 30 Shylock loans. And I was the one that, you know, 0.88

00:41:22.460 allegedly put up the money for that, which wasn't true. But anyway, so I get indicted and I'll never

00:41:28.260 forget in the courtroom, you know, Rudy comes up to me and my attorney, John Jacobs at the time.

00:41:32.960 And he says, Franzese, if I convict you on this case, I'm giving you a double what your father

00:41:37.700 got. You're going to get a hundred years. And, you know, that's the kind of time that were giving

00:41:41.560 us guys back then. And I remember standing toe to toe with him and I say, Rudy, bring it on.

00:41:46.360 I beat you guys four times already. Let's go for round five, which I always say is the dumbest thing 0.98

00:41:51.800 to do. You know, you don't give them any more. Fortunately, after a several month trial in Federal

00:41:57.200 Corps of Manhattan, I was acquitted in that case. And my code events, some of them got convicted.

00:42:02.000 One of them got 30 years. So I would have got a lot of time, no doubt.

00:42:06.520 That's, you know, I mean, that's, that's not right. Scary. The only thing that's scarier than

00:42:09.960 seeing somebody like you across from me angry would be somebody like that, who really has the power

00:42:14.760 to take your life away in a different way. And he could do it.

00:42:18.700 Well, I'll tell you, you know, you got to give Rudy either the credit or the blame,

00:42:22.180 depending upon what side you're on. He was the one that really

00:42:25.120 used the racketeering, racketeering laws effectively, because it had been on the books

00:42:30.300 for quite some time. They just didn't use it. But he, he made it a tremendous weapon. And I say

00:42:37.060 that RICO is the single most damaging tool that the government had to, you know, bring a lot of

00:42:42.620 destruction to that life. And, you know, Rudy and I, I wouldn't say we were friends, but we certainly

00:42:47.760 healed things after 30 years. He actually wrote the forward in my book, which he did a great job.

00:42:52.260 Yeah, it really is. And you know what? He was a great mayor. I don't care what anybody says. He

00:42:57.440 cleaned up. He was a great mayor. He was great. Yeah, I know. It wasn't until he got, you know,

00:43:04.240 connected with Trump and so on. And then he's just started behaving very erratically. He was kind of

00:43:08.280 not like his former self. But yes, he wrote wonderful things about you in your book and

00:43:12.640 talked about how when, when he first met you, his team was prosecuting you, um, that they took on the

00:43:17.980 five families in, uh, of New York's mafia and one, and that they prosecuted you many times.

00:43:24.120 But he goes on to say that, um, hold on a second. I want to find it that he got a little angry when

00:43:31.180 he read articles about you in places like fortune, uh, the list of the 50 most wealthy and powerful

00:43:37.100 mob bosses, vanity fair, claiming you were the biggest moneymaker in the mafia since Al Capone,

00:43:41.540 which we referenced, but ultimately struck a deal with you. And really what he was saying in the

00:43:46.540 forward was that you ultimately had a conversion and that while he was skeptical at first, he,

00:43:53.560 knowing you all these years actually came to believe it, that you were committed to changing

00:43:57.500 your life, that you actually did find God and that you were going to leave this life of crime behind

00:44:03.620 you, which is the redemption part of your story. And it's extraordinary. So eventually you did not,

00:44:09.840 you did not escape Rudy's focus and tell us how you wound up going to jail.

00:44:16.540 Well, you know, after I, uh, was acquitted in the Giuliani case, um, several months later,

00:44:23.460 I think not that long, three or four months later, I was indicted in Brooklyn on this whole gas tax

00:44:28.140 scheme among some other things. And, um, and you know, the principal witness against me in the

00:44:34.620 Giuliani case would have been the principal witness against me in this next case in Brooklyn,

00:44:39.560 in this next Rico case. And we beat them, you know, in Rudy's case, they didn't, jury didn't 0.90

00:44:45.240 believe him. So the government was getting nervous now because I had beaten them. That was my fifth

00:44:49.420 time that, uh, they tried to convict me at trial and were unsuccessful. So that was five failures on

00:44:55.380 their part. At the same time, um, Megan, I met my wife who's now my wife for 38 years. And I basically

00:45:03.120 started to think, you know, I saw what was going on with the racketeering law guys were when I was

00:45:08.000 in MCC, when they locked me up without bail, there were guys going to trial, getting convicted,

00:45:13.200 getting a hundred years, 70 years, 150 years. I'm the youngest guy out of many of them. I said,

00:45:19.060 they're going to give me 300 years. If I ever get convicted, this life is in trouble. I see guys

00:45:23.520 starting to become informants. I meet my wife. I said, this is trouble. I got to try to make an exit

00:45:30.440 here. And so I had leverage over the government because beating them in the Giuliani case gave me

00:45:36.040 some leverage. So we negotiated a plea deal. I got a 10 year prison sentence, $15 million restitution,

00:45:42.060 5 million in forfeitures, and went off to do my time. And it was, it was planning my exit at that

00:45:48.580 time. Cause I figured, Hey, I do a bunch of years in prison, but I'd come out, I'd have parole and

00:45:53.700 probation. Uh, I move out to the West coast. I can't associate with anybody when I was on parole,

00:45:59.220 maybe after 10 or 12 years, the guys will forget about me and, uh, I can live happily ever after

00:46:04.600 with my new wife here in California. And that was my original plan. That's how I started to make the

00:46:10.000 exit. Didn't work out exactly that way, but eventually it worked out well. Okay. But I got

00:46:16.460 to ask you whether you ever considered, you know, flipping becoming a rat as they say, because there

00:46:22.740 must've been some sort of a deal that would have involved no jail time. If you would have helped

00:46:27.580 Rudy Giuliani, as opposed to just admit it, you did some things.

00:46:32.060 Absolutely. They offered me when I was taking the plea, they offered me no jail time, minimum jail

00:46:36.900 time. If I would cooperate and I refused, I said, no, you know, I just want, um, as part of the plea

00:46:44.020 deal, I had not immunity, but they couldn't prosecute me for any of my past crimes other than murder.

00:46:50.780 And I wasn't worried about that. So, cause I wanted to try to wrap everything up,

00:46:54.920 but my plea deal was no cooperation whatsoever. I didn't talk to them, didn't do anything.

00:46:59.600 What happened was, uh, four years later, when I was doing my time, a fellow by name of Norby

00:47:05.680 Walters got himself in some trouble and he was my partner. I had given him 250,000 to be an agent,

00:47:11.620 um, uh, for sports athletes. And long story short, he implicated me in some scheme while I was in

00:47:19.180 prison. They brought me in to testify against him. And I said, listen, I don't know what he was doing.

00:47:24.260 I was in prison, but yes, he was my partner. Yes, I did give him money. And that's what I

00:47:28.780 testified to. Well, after that happened, and that was in Chicago, people from the Eastern district

00:47:34.560 came out to see me and they said, well, you're already a dead man. Now you got on the stand and

00:47:38.680 you testified. I said, Norby Walters was my guy. He's not, has nothing to do with anybody.

00:47:44.460 He's my responsibility. Nobody's going to be mad at me for this. Um, and so I chased them away. I said,

00:47:50.440 I'm not cooperating with you guys. I got a few months left to go to, uh, to be in prison.

00:47:54.780 I'll do my time and come home.

00:48:00.340 Megan, I made it. I said, I will never go against my associates and put anybody in prison. I can't do

00:48:06.260 that. So I'm going to be honest with you. And John Gleason verifies this in his book. I sat down

00:48:12.080 and talked to them, but I basically was able to pull the wool over their eyes because what somebody

00:48:16.860 had told me at the time, and it turned out to be true. I was dealing with the strike force in the

00:48:22.580 Eastern district. And somebody told me they were going to be disbanded. They said, Michael, you can

00:48:27.060 talk to these guys. It's never going to go anywhere because they're going to disband the strike force.

00:48:32.240 And so when I started talking to them about certain things, a few months later, they disbanded the

00:48:37.040 strike force and that was it. And they only had a year to talk to me. After that, they couldn't talk to

00:48:42.000 me anymore. So it really was. This is sorry. This I thought this is very interesting because

00:48:47.040 I mentioned Sammy the bull. And I mean, honestly, that was one of the most interesting interviews I

00:48:51.880 have ever done. I mean, I have never had an interview before that had a line like, was that

00:48:57.020 before or after the 19th murder? I mean, this is the conversation he and I had. And he put it all out.

00:49:02.500 There was absolutely riveting. And I know you guys together in a very interesting series,

00:49:09.200 Patrick, Beth, David did on the mafia went on together. It got kind of heated. I know you guys,

00:49:15.200 I think you get along, but in this particular moment, not so much. Here it is in SOT 6.

00:49:22.080 Granted, he cooperated, he cooperated with the fucking government. He wants to get on his 0.99

00:49:26.660 fucking high horse. I didn't send somebody to prison. He met with the fucking government 1.00

00:49:30.820 and ratted. You're a fucking rat. You want to talk about respect? You want to talk like that? 1.00

00:49:35.560 Put your fucking finger at me. Oh, what are you going to do? 1.00

00:49:37.900 What am I going to do? I'll break your fucking face. 1.00

00:49:40.920 Oh, God. I would not upset him. Just FYI, having researched him quite a bit. That's not 1.00

00:49:50.840 somebody you want to upset. So he's calling you a rat. But isn't that what Sammy the bull 0.98

00:49:55.420 is infamous for? Well, among other things, right? Because he didn't have to serve jail time

00:50:00.060 because he actually did turn. He turned on Gotti.

00:50:02.960 Well, he served a lot of jail time. I mean, they cut it short. But listen,

00:50:07.920 Sammy and I are friends. We did get into a heated moment and I understand what he was trying to do

00:50:12.820 at the time. But we patched it up after that because I don't know if you continue that. I got

00:50:18.780 up and said, Sammy, you're not the underboss anymore. Sit down. And that's how we kind of ended

00:50:24.560 it. But we've become friends since then. Listen, I'm not joking. He did. Look, I like his family very much.

00:50:31.340 His son. His son calls me up and asks me, how do I deal with my dad? He's driving me crazy.

00:50:35.520 You know, so it's. Yeah. But we patch it up because, you know, we both came to realize,

00:50:41.560 you know, it doesn't benefit either one of us by showing that side of that life or we're angry

00:50:47.480 with one another and all of that, because there was, you know, we'd rather show a different side

00:50:51.480 of that life, even though it is what it is. But anyway. Yeah. You know, look, Megan, for me,

00:50:58.320 the bottom line is I didn't put anybody in prison. I didn't testify at any made guys trial. I didn't

00:51:04.340 do any of that. They tried to get me. They put me in solitary for three years trying to break me

00:51:10.280 29 months and seven days. Actually, they were very upset with me. And John Gleason said it in his book

00:51:16.140 about Gotti. He says, Franzese basically took us to the cleaners because we got nothing out of him.

00:51:20.560 And, you know, look, but they can call me a rat or, you know, that's that's that's the most widely

00:51:27.180 used term on all of this genre on, you know, the comments that you get and people that are on

00:51:33.060 YouTube now. But hey, look. Well, that's the one that I have realized in the wake of my interview

00:51:37.640 with Sammy, like. You don't want to be called that. I mean, I know guys who I believe have some

00:51:44.280 sort of a connection who have said nothing to me ever about any show I've ever done.

00:51:49.900 But after Sammy, the bull came on, they started coming out of the woodwork. The guy's a rat. 0.99

00:51:55.280 He's a rat. And I've always wondered, oh, God, you know, like, are they saying that because 0.99

00:51:59.660 they're connected or they just understand the code? I don't know. But that seems to be something

00:52:03.900 taken deadly seriously in the mob. Oh, yeah. You know, I wanted to think this might be interesting.

00:52:10.100 Joe Pistone, Donnie Brasco. Joe and I have become very good friends now. Now, I met him

00:52:15.320 once on the street and I always tease him. This is the guy, Mooser, who went undercover

00:52:18.820 and infiltrated the mob and was portrayed by Johnny Depp in a movie of the same name.

00:52:23.340 Keep going. Correct. Well, we became friends. He was on my YouTube. I did his. And Sammy and

00:52:28.660 I got into a heat about that. He said, how can you befriend that guy? He put so many Italians 1.00

00:52:33.520 away. And I said, hey, Sammy, I said he was an undercover agent. He was doing his job and he did

00:52:39.260 his job better than we did ours. You don't get mad at a guy when they're not framing you,

00:52:44.360 when they're doing their job and they outgun you. That's it. You know, we used to tell agents

00:52:49.100 on the street, hey, come after us. We get it. You're on one side. We're on the other.

00:52:53.260 Just don't frame us. Get us. Honestly, you have enough tools, enough weapons. You got all the money

00:52:58.180 in the world and all the time. Just come after us the right way. And we're not mad. And, you know,

00:53:03.100 look, Joe Pistone, I mean, what he did for six years to be undercover and not be noticed by our

00:53:09.440 guys, that was a real failure on our part, number one. And number two, it was pretty heroic because

00:53:14.900 at any point in time, he could have walked into that room if somebody would have discovered

00:53:18.400 something and he would have been in a lot of trouble. And it didn't turn out that way. So,

00:53:22.140 I mean, I give him credit for the work that he did. And, you know, if I was on the street,

00:53:26.060 I wouldn't be saying that. But, you know, just just.

00:53:28.740 Yeah. No, I mean, certainly from my vantage point, that guy's a hero, right? It takes a lot

00:53:33.160 of courage to infiltrate the mob and try to crime fight in that particularly dangerous manner. Just

00:53:38.160 for the audience at home, here's a clip of from the movie Donnie Brasco, where Al Pacino's character,

00:53:44.720 Lefty, who's in the mob, meets Donnie, played by Johnny Depp, and tries to sell him a diamond.

00:53:52.380 I'm asking you to middle a diamond for me. Now, all I want for my end is $8,000.

00:53:58.740 Listen, what I'm saying to you is you should give it to somebody that don't know any better,

00:54:03.020 because that's a fugazi. All right?

00:54:07.420 That's a fugazi? How do you know it's a fugazi? You looked at it for two seconds.

00:54:11.880 What? It's a fake. Yeah, I know what a fugazi is.

00:54:17.440 What do you make of that? So you don't think that could have really happened? I mean, it did happen.

00:54:22.000 He did infiltrate. And you're just saying that those guys were too careless, that they should have caught him.

00:54:28.740 Yeah, I mean, they should have did their homework and their research. Unfortunately,

00:54:32.180 when he presented himself as an earner, sometimes guys' eyes open up and, hey, I can earn money with

00:54:39.440 this guy. And they get a little bit careless. And I do have to say this, that was Al Pacino. In my

00:54:44.920 view, that was his best role. I knew Lefty fairly well. And he just nailed that character so well. He was

00:54:52.860 just great. Really great. What did you make of you said you knew Henry Hill? That was the

00:54:58.300 Ray Liotta character and Godfather, Godfather, Goodfellas. What did you think of that portrayal?

00:55:03.700 Because that was I mean, I don't know. You know, everybody loves Godfather, including me. But

00:55:07.600 Goodfellas was just such a riveting film where you couldn't. You were so pulled in by that character,

00:55:13.520 Henry Hill.

00:55:13.920 Well, Megan, I, you know, Henry's gone now. And I knew Henry. Well, I had kind of an affection to

00:55:36.980 Henry because when he did that whole Boston College betting scandal, he he gave me some tips

00:55:43.180 and I made some money at the time. But Henry never looked so good as he did in that movie.

00:55:49.360 That's for sure. You know, and I can tell you this. He never walked into the back of the Copacabana

00:55:54.700 without Paulie or somebody being with him. That's for sure. He he didn't have that kind of prominence.

00:56:00.020 You know, unfortunately, he had a drinking problem. He was an alcoholic and he got into drugs fairly

00:56:05.180 early, you know, and he had that kind of problem. Look, he he's he would have got killed.

00:56:10.660 There's no question about he wouldn't have lasted on the street because Paulie Vario was was pretty

00:56:15.160 upset with him. So was Jimmy, you know, and he did what he did. But believe me, he was made to look

00:56:22.660 great in that movie. I'll bet. Well, I mean, it was based on his book, right, which I'm sure

00:56:27.620 also made him look great. And then Hollywood takes it next level. So and of course, Ray Liotta's gone

00:56:33.260 too, which is sad. What about these guys? You know, there's a question about whether any of them

00:56:39.860 is actually in the mob, whether there's any sort of a connection, whether it's De Niro Pacino. Did

00:56:44.400 these guys have any sort of a relationship? I mean, for Sinatra, we've heard we've heard. Yes.

00:56:50.400 Well, you know, not that they were, like I said, part of a crew or anything like that. Did they have

00:56:56.380 relationships? I mean, Paulie Sirico, I think, you know, he you know, he was involved at one point in

00:57:01.540 time, then became an actor. They all had relationships. Jimmy Kahn, you know, was very

00:57:06.140 close with my one time captain, with Andrew Russo. Very close. The what was his name? Oh, gosh.

00:57:15.100 Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi in The Godfather, was very close with me. Very close,

00:57:21.060 you know, and he was we were together out here on the West Coast before he passed away. So a lot of

00:57:26.420 guys had relationships. But again, you know, we were all over the place. So we met with a lot of

00:57:32.380 people. And, you know, we had a lot of relationships, no doubt. So you find yourself in prison now,

00:57:40.280 10 years. And at the time you were in prison, your dad was still in prison. And the relationship

00:57:46.100 broke down. Was that because of the thing you just told us about where you did wind up testifying

00:57:52.100 in that one case? Is that what turned him on you? No, it wasn't that. What happened was when

00:58:00.460 I was in I was in Terminal Island prison out in California, and the warden had called me or the

00:58:08.720 associate warden, I don't remember exactly, and said, there's a reporter that's doing a story on you

00:58:14.320 in Life magazine. And I think 20 years earlier, they had done the biggest story ever on my dad in Life

00:58:20.800 magazine. It was like 29 pages. It was on his murder case. And it was a huge story, right?

00:58:27.060 So this reporter now is doing a story on me. So I'm in prison. And he tells the warden, if Michael

00:58:32.940 talks to me, it'll be a better story. So I'm trying to make my exit. I'm trying to get the government

00:58:37.460 off my back. I want to get out of there and have no trouble. I just married this young girl.

00:58:41.940 So I sit down with him. And I tell him, standard mob stuff. There is no mafia. I married this girl.

00:58:47.620 I'm living out in the West Coast, and all this kind of stuff. I'm done with anything back in New

00:58:52.260 York. Well, the article comes out, and the warden calls me into the office. He says,

00:58:57.140 Franzese, do you have a death wish? I said, what are you talking about? And he shows me the article.

00:59:01.620 And it was a big double page with a picture of me and on the top quitting the mafia. And I'm in jail

00:59:07.280 with other mob guys. And this guy had me doing everything but testifying at the time.

00:59:11.660 And that's when word started to drop that, hey, maybe this guy is going bad. What's going on?

00:59:19.100 Then the government comes in to see me again. The feds come in, and they say,

00:59:22.780 Franzese, this is a bad article. You better cooperate with us. We got word from our informants.

00:59:27.760 People are upset with you. Then what they did, Megan, it was really dirty. They put my name on

00:59:33.400 the witness list of certain trials that were coming up in New York. I'm sending messages back to my dad.

00:59:39.060 I said, Dad, don't believe this. I'm not cooperating. But everybody says that. And

00:59:43.380 then you see them on the witness stand, or you get their info and discovery. I mean, that happened to

00:59:47.100 me. So they really, really tried to put a lot of pressure on me at the time. My dad kind of backed

00:59:53.480 off. But he never really totally backed off. Megan, what happened with me and my dad, and I'll

00:59:59.640 summarize this. I got called into one of the horrors of that life. You make a mistake. Your best friend

01:00:06.580 walks you into a room. You don't walk out again. And obviously, throughout my years, I know when

01:00:12.540 that's occurred. Well, I got that call because there was an article that came out. I think it

01:00:16.640 was in Long Island Press that I was becoming powerful enough to break away from the Columbo,

01:00:21.600 start my own family. They had me making $2 billion a year. It was a total fictional article,

01:00:27.480 no basis in reality at all. But I get called into a room one night, and I was scared. I said,

01:00:34.140 wow, the way the circumstances were, I thought I can get killed walking into that room. That's how

01:00:40.380 I felt. And I was scared. I'll be honest with you. You know, when you think you're going to meet your

01:00:43.460 maker, it's scary. And I knew the life. And so I'm sitting down there, and I'm getting grilled on

01:00:50.240 how much money is coming in. $2 billion. And I said, hey, you know, they lie about everybody. Now they

01:00:55.580 make a story about me, and it's true. I said, what are you listening to? I'm handing in everything.

01:00:59.360 Yeah. Well, my father wasn't there, but he was called in before me. And what I found out that

01:01:05.640 night is that he didn't help me in that meeting. He actually hurt me. Because what he did, instead

01:01:11.180 of standing up for me, he said, I'm on parole. I don't do anything. My son handles everything. If

01:01:16.920 anything's wrong, I don't know. So he kind of threw me under the bus. And I can tell you this,

01:01:22.840 Megan, I didn't meet my wife until two years later. But I really believed I was stunned when I found

01:01:28.580 that out. And it was true. Because I said, man, if this life can separate me and my dad,

01:01:33.840 what do I really have here? And I just filed it away. I didn't say anything. You don't speak out

01:01:39.120 of turn in that life. And you don't share your thoughts with people, because you never know.

01:01:43.140 But I can say this, if I didn't have that meeting, I don't think, I mean, if that didn't occur,

01:01:51.000 I don't think I would have ever walked away from the life. Because I think that bond between me and my

01:01:55.840 dad had to be broken. And I had to get a sense of reality. And I didn't hate him for it. When it

01:02:02.940 finally came that he confronted me on it, because he read it in my book, I wasn't going to say

01:02:07.980 anything. But then it was such an impact on my life. I said, no, I have to be honest about this.

01:02:12.680 So I put it in my book. That's where he reads it. And he denies it. And I said, Dad, remember you

01:02:17.720 taught me something in life? And he said, what? He said, no matter what, deny, deny, deny, deny,

01:02:22.520 deny. I said, I know you're denying this now, but it's okay. I love you. I'm not mad. I get it. I

01:02:27.380 understand. But that had such an impact on me that I think two years later, when I met my wife,

01:02:33.700 that's what really kind of put the icing on the cake, as I say, for me to walk away.

01:02:39.920 Did your dad, because last we left off in his story, he was going to jail until he was 100.

01:02:45.000 So you say he's on parole. What happened? Did he get out?

01:02:47.680 Yeah, he gets out in 2017 at the age of 100. He was the oldest inmate in the system at the time.

01:02:56.200 And my dad passed away at 103 during the pandemic. He was the oldest living mob guy for sure at that

01:03:02.740 time. And probably the oldest guy in the world. Guys don't live to that age in that life. It's not

01:03:09.120 conducive to a long lifestyle.

01:03:10.860 Right, right.

01:03:12.180 Yeah, it was amazing. And, you know, we patched it up. I mean, I stayed with him, visited him during

01:03:18.080 that time. The relationship was never exactly the same. But he accepted what I did, because he knew

01:03:25.900 I never hurt anybody. And, you know, there was another situation came up, Megan, where, you know,

01:03:30.680 a guy became an informant. And the feds came to me again, he implicated me in some things, and they

01:03:36.380 wanted me to cooperate with him. And I said, no. And I told my father, I said, Dad, look, if I were to

01:03:41.540 cooperate, a lot of guys are going to go down. I'm not going to do that. Just tell them to leave

01:03:45.300 me alone. Because I had people upset with me. There was a contract on my life from my former boss,

01:03:50.720 because he took it very personal when I walked away. He was really upset with me.

01:03:55.880 But that backed everybody off, because I said, I'm not hurting anybody. Just leave me alone. I just

01:04:01.040 want to be on my own. Live my life.

01:04:02.660 Because nobody leaves the mob. Like, you stay in it till you're dead, one way or the other. And you found

01:04:08.780 a way out. Talk about threading the needle. So I know you've spoken about when you were in jail,

01:04:14.660 there was a prison guard who walked by your cell and gave you something that I think was the beginning

01:04:20.100 of your transformation. What was it? Well, yeah, I mean, I had done five years. I'm out on parole,

01:04:27.020 13 months, worst 13 months of my life. People are trying to hurt me. Feds were all over me. I'm trying

01:04:33.400 to get my life reorganized in LA. I was like a fish out of water, quite honestly. And like a fool,

01:04:39.640 I violate my parole, and the government was really on me. And they locked me up again. And that first 0.99

01:04:46.120 night, they tell me, we're going to indict you on another racketeering case. We violated your parole.

01:04:50.320 You'll never see the street again, is what they told me. And they throw me in a hole in MDC in LA,

01:04:55.700 and they're going to transport me back to Brooklyn in the morning. And quite honestly, Megan, it was the

01:05:01.560 worst night of my life because I said, wow. I said, another case? What are they bringing up now?

01:05:06.780 Number one. Number two, I'm married to this girl. She waited for me five years. We have two little

01:05:11.820 babies. She's 27 years old. I'm going to lose the girl I did all of this for. I said, they can't put

01:05:17.020 me out on the yard. Talk to people who want to kill me. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a 0.99

01:05:21.700 six-by-eight cell. Having visited my dad for 20 years and seeing what it did, I said, you know what?

01:05:27.260 I wish I could just close my eyes and not wake up. And that's how I felt. And, you know, honestly,

01:05:32.380 I used to demean people that were suicidal. I was called them weak. Can't face up to their troubles.

01:05:37.540 I don't do that anymore. Now, I wasn't suicidal that night, but I can understand how you can reach

01:05:42.520 a low point in your life where is it worth even going forward? Now, of course, I dissuade anybody

01:05:47.780 from suicide, but I know how that feeling was. That's how I felt that night. And yeah, a prison guard

01:05:52.940 walked by my cell and he says, Francis, you're okay. You don't look good. And I chased him away. I said,

01:05:56.980 get away from me. Leave me alone. I don't want to see any of you guys tonight. And he came back

01:06:01.020 with a Bible and pushed it through the slide on the door. And I spent the next 29 months and seven

01:06:06.900 days in solitary, six-by-eight cell, 24-7, me and God. And it was during that time, Megan, that I not

01:06:15.040 only studied my Bible inside out and upside down, I had my wife send me in several books and on every

01:06:21.680 faith. I was studying every faith because they said, if I'm going to spend the rest of my life in this

01:06:26.040 cell, I want to know where I'm going at the end of it all. And I just came out of there strongly

01:06:31.200 believing in Christianity. Wow. That guard was like an angel. I mean, truly like delivering the 0.74

01:06:38.640 word of God to you. And, and it doesn't always happen, but it took, like you heard it and you

01:06:44.360 acted. It changed you. So would you say, you know, you, cause you met Camille, who I know has been such

01:06:49.120 a game changer in your life, you know, between Camille, the Bible, a renewed faith, or maybe a

01:06:54.940 brand new faith in God. How then did you come to see this other version of yourself, this other

01:07:01.680 possibility for how your life could be? Well, you know, what I found out that there's two things in

01:07:09.580 life that are so important. Number one is I always say this, and I, I, I try to mentor a lot of young

01:07:15.180 people. I go into, you know, prisons and juvenile halls and spoke at many men's ministries. And I

01:07:20.260 told him, you are who you hang out with in this life. If you hang with the wrong crowd, you're going

01:07:25.420 to be the wrong type of person and they will influence you. You know, I'm on the street.

01:07:29.760 Obviously I was influenced and that's the person who I was. And I'm not blaming the others. I'm just

01:07:34.500 saying that's, we're all in the same boat in that regard. And secondly is accountability is

01:07:40.360 everything in life. Who you are accountable to is going to dictate the path that you serve in your

01:07:44.540 life. On the street, accountable to my oath, my God, my, my boss. I was a criminal. So when I come

01:07:51.940 out now, I'm accountable to God first, accountable to my wife and children, not to screw up. So I end

01:07:57.380 up back in prison. Cause I will say this, look, you can take the boy out of Brooklyn. You can't always

01:08:02.120 take Brooklyn out of the boy. There's a lot of times when I could react the wrong way. Cause I still

01:08:07.380 have certain instincts inside of me, but I catch myself most of the time. And I say, no,

01:08:11.920 I can't do that because I'm jeopardizing the people around me, the people that I love.

01:08:16.340 And so I don't want to make a mistake. It's like, look, I'll say this. And I say this in church,

01:08:20.800 Megan, I have no moral issue whatsoever. We're taking money from the government in taxes,

01:08:26.320 no moral issue whatsoever. Cause I can do better with the money now than they can. No doubt about it.

01:08:30.980 They throw all money in the toilet half the time, but I won't do it because I'm not going to

01:08:35.960 jeopardize my freedom again. I'm not going to jeopardize my wife and kids and my grandkids.

01:08:40.420 So you just have a different outlook and outlook. And I believe, you know, in Christianity, we believe

01:08:46.920 that we're changed from the inside out. When you develop a relationship with the Lord,

01:08:52.960 he's changing you from inside out. It's not your work on the outside that's doing it.

01:08:57.560 And that's why it's so important to be nourished. It's so important to, you know, to read the word

01:09:02.980 as often as you possibly can, you can never get enough of it and hang out with people that have

01:09:08.200 the same beliefs as you. Um, and, and that's, what's done it for me. I mean, I don't attribute it to

01:09:13.940 my work. I think I'm probably the most fortunate, most blessed person around because I should either

01:09:19.460 be dead or in prison for the rest of my life. That's what I earned. But for some reason,

01:09:24.380 you're like your dad, you're what? 71 years old. Now you look amazing. You look young. You seem

01:09:29.880 vibrant. Like you probably have another 30 years at least, but it's probably related to your good

01:09:35.920 choices in your second half. Yeah, I think I'm 72. And you know, my wife, I have five daughters and

01:09:42.460 two sons. Well, my daughters are all fitness crazy. I mean, they're fitness experts and personal 1.00

01:09:48.840 trainers. My wife, that's been her lifestyle. So they don't allow me to get off track in that 0.55

01:09:54.140 regard. So, yeah. And I think we have some good DNA. I mean, my dad was one of 19 kids and all of

01:10:00.420 the kids died in their late eighties, nineties. My dad outlived them all, but, um, you know,

01:10:06.340 so we have some good DNA also. So, you know, I think that's part of it. So you just got to watch

01:10:10.320 yourself. Hey everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. Mark your calendars. News nation, Sirius XM December 6th

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01:11:12.960 All right, I got to ask you this because I know you're on the straight and narrow now and you

01:11:18.880 found God, but you ever have the moment, you know, where you have like the nasty clerk at the store

01:11:24.040 or what where you're like, if you if you only knew, like, just, just, you know, like, just watch it.

01:11:33.480 Oh, absolutely. Megan happens quite a bit. And let me tell you some, you have to keep going.

01:11:39.460 Oh, my gosh. I'm on social media and some of the comments that come in, you want to like jump through

01:11:44.520 the computer at him, you know, and get it. But it's crazy stuff. But yeah, I have those moments,

01:11:50.640 you know, absolutely. It's like I said, you don't, you know, you don't get a lobotomy when you come to

01:11:56.260 Christ. You just you just try to, you know, tell your behavior the right way. And, you know, and I think

01:12:03.200 older when you get older, too, you start to calm down a bit. At least I don't know about Sammy, but with me.

01:12:08.900 Yeah. He is like, I couldn't believe he talked. He had a very different experience, as you know,

01:12:14.820 because he, yeah, he was murdering a lot of people. And he talked to us about the story,

01:12:19.860 the first the first murder he committed. And it was someone he knew it was someone he was

01:12:24.780 like, kind of close to. We actually pulled the clip. I'll play it. It's top five.

01:12:30.360 Because I never thought about killing people. But I went through with it. We did it. One night,

01:12:41.280 we went out to half hour clubs. We got in the car about four o'clock in the morning. And as we drove

01:12:48.540 away, I shot him in the back of the head twice. I didn't feel any remorse. I didn't feel anything. 0.98

01:12:54.520 And I thought that was peculiar. I thought, either something's wrong with me, or I'm just a stone

01:13:02.900 cold killer. And I'm going to fit in the mafia perfectly.

01:13:08.080 Such an interesting man. And I asked him, Mike, you know, what do you ever think about

01:13:13.360 God, heaven, judgment? And he said, God made me a lion. He made me the way I am.

01:13:22.160 I've thought about it so many times. I've talked to my friends about it. I've done so many interviews,

01:13:27.540 of course. It takes a lot for one to stand out. And for obvious reasons, his did. But

01:13:32.700 how do you factor that in? Your redemption, your relationship with Christ now, and atonement?

01:13:39.660 You know, Megan, again, and I've thought about this quite a bit. And I had a very interesting

01:13:44.580 meeting with Jordan Peterson, who is so analytical. He asked me, you know, he delved. He said,

01:13:51.800 Michael, how did you do certain things that you did? And I said, well, you know, Jordan,

01:13:56.640 I didn't feel good about it. I said, but I knew I had to do it. So I would kind of step outside of

01:14:03.140 myself and handle what I had to handle very efficiently, and then come back to who I was.

01:14:10.020 And Jordan looked at me and he says, well, how do you know who's the real you? And I said, whoa.

01:14:15.540 I said, you know what, Jordan? That's a good question. I never thought of that.

01:14:18.880 But that's how I dealt with certain things that were uncomfortable for me to do.

01:14:24.560 But the fact that you're able to do them, I don't know what that says, Megan, quite honestly. But,

01:14:30.920 you know, the last thing that I was going to have anybody say about me was that I didn't

01:14:35.400 perform or I didn't follow an order or I didn't do what I was supposed to do.

01:14:39.120 So that's how I dealt with it differently than Sammy, obviously. Well, look, there was guys in

01:14:46.920 that life. You know, I say this all the time. You talk about a Roy DeMeo. I'm sure you heard his

01:14:51.520 name, maybe a Greg Scarpa. These were serial killers. They were serial killers. They would have

01:15:00.140 been killers even if they weren't in the mafia. The mafia didn't turn them into that. That's who they 0.62

01:15:05.500 were. You can't be that kind of person and say, well, the mob made me do it. No, you got to be

01:15:10.700 that person. And obviously the experience might be enhanced because that's a lifestyle that things

01:15:17.640 like that occur. But it didn't make you that way. That's who you were. And I think he just summed

01:15:24.580 it up. He said, I'd be perfect for the mob. But this is he figured that out, that this is who he was

01:15:30.660 and he'd be a perfect guy to be in that life. For the listening audience, that was episode 352

01:15:38.140 from July of 2022. If you want to go back and listen to it, 352. So, so then, so you've been

01:15:45.300 out of prison now by my count, some 30 years, you've maintained a life on the up and up, created a whole

01:15:52.520 family. You're a motivational speaker. So what are, what are the big takeaways for you? You know,

01:15:58.900 and you, you talk to people in these motivational speeches and you talk to your grandkids,

01:16:03.340 like what are the biggest things you've learned from this life?

01:16:08.320 Well, you know, when you're determined and you have the right support, you know, the right people

01:16:13.500 around you. And obviously for me, it's, it's also a faith issue. You can come out of a bad situation.

01:16:19.540 It's not easy. And, you know, I may have had an advantage because like I said, I surrounded myself with

01:16:25.280 the right people. And, but I think the message that I, that resonates all the time, and I've done

01:16:32.360 probably over 2000 speaking engagements, is that if I came out of a tough situation, you can also.

01:16:40.460 And that's what people want to hear. They love a redemption story. Many people are struggling out

01:16:45.660 there and it doesn't matter what walk of life. I've spoken to the most affluent people. And then

01:16:49.940 obviously people that, you know, are in almost poverty stricken themselves and everybody is

01:16:55.760 struggling with something and they want to know how to overcome it. And I think my story resonates

01:17:01.400 in that regard because people do believe you don't walk away from that life without entering a witness

01:17:06.120 protection program and going through the whole, you know, ordeal that you have to go through.

01:17:10.500 And the fact that I was able to do that, you know, raise a family, have a wife and children,

01:17:15.180 have a career and a profession. I think it's motivating to people. And, you know, it's amazing,

01:17:22.680 you know, no matter where I go, you know, I always open it up or quite often, I should say,

01:17:26.720 open it up for a Q and a, and you would think all the stories, all the questions rather are mob

01:17:31.340 related. They're not. The questions are, how did you do this? How did your wife react? Why did she stay

01:17:37.520 with you? What about your kids? What kind of an impact did it have on them? You know, so I understand

01:17:42.860 that so many of the questions become personal. The reason being, because those people are either

01:17:47.860 dealing with something in their life or they know somebody that's dealing with something.

01:17:53.340 You know, that's a good point. And it's really one of those, like, no matter what you're dealing

01:17:57.400 with, it's almost guaranteed. It's not quite as tricky as what Michael was dealing with. I mean,

01:18:02.100 very, very tricky to get out of the mob with your life secured and return to your family and a life

01:18:10.440 above board, you know, without crossing that criminal line after so many years on the opposite

01:18:15.040 side. I, it's, it's a magician type move. Um, what about today? I mean, the mafia was

01:18:22.600 really undermined by prosecutors like Rudy Giuliani, but it's not gone. So how do you,

01:18:30.000 how is it today? Do you know? And you know, what's its status?

01:18:33.340 Well, I can tell you, you know, I always say this, the golden years of Cosa Nostra mafia in this

01:18:39.160 country, really from the late forties, early fifties, right through to the mid eighties, when

01:18:43.480 again, we know what happened. And, you know, there was a time when I was in New York, Daily News,

01:18:49.540 New York Post, New York Times, Newsday, every single day or every other day, story about the mob,

01:18:56.360 without a doubt, one family or another who's getting busted every other day. Now I read the New York

01:19:01.800 Post every morning, maybe every six months. And as a matter of fact, I think last week,

01:19:06.100 10 guys got busted or something like that. So they've gone undercover. It's not nearly what it

01:19:11.560 was during my time. I know that for a fact, but it seems like they're getting smarter. You know,

01:19:18.160 you don't hear too many guys on surveillance tapes and things like that. It's not going to go away in

01:19:23.720 my lifetime. But you know, another thing I've learned, things happen in patterns. When I was on the

01:19:28.820 street, they had 1400 agents that were assigned to all five families, we had 750 approximately

01:19:35.480 made guys, guys that took the oath. You had almost two agents for every made guy. Now I believe there's

01:19:41.320 less than 100. Why? Because terrorism has become, you know, more important right now and the focus on

01:19:47.560 that. So when things like that happen, and some of the heat comes off, these guys are pretty resourceful,

01:19:53.200 and they start to build up again. And then there'll be a time possibly when, you know, they come down

01:19:59.400 hard again, because we're seeing the government is seeing more impact that the guys on the street are

01:20:04.900 having. I don't know, you know, this time, it might be that it was seriously wounded to the point where

01:20:10.100 it'll never recover to what it was before. But I don't sell them short. I'm not saying it's over.

01:20:15.960 But that's the pattern that I see, you know, that I've seen occur over the years.

01:20:21.480 Hmm. And last but not least, Rudy Giuliani. You know, we talked just a bit, I made a reference to

01:20:27.360 how his public image has changed. There's no question he has changed himself, personally.

01:20:33.240 He's had some personal problems. But, you know, many of us remember what he did in New York,

01:20:39.160 and how he behaved after 9-11, and what kind of a mayor he was, and factor all of that in and sizing

01:20:46.500 up his legacy. How do you see it? Well, again, for me, it's I don't look too much at what's going on

01:20:53.600 currently in politics with him. I just know that he was a tremendous prosecutor at the time. Again,

01:21:01.440 he was my enemy, but you have to give him his due. He did what he said he was going to do.

01:21:06.120 And he used the laws very, very effectively. And more than that, for me, his legacy was the

01:21:12.880 mayor of New York. You know, when I got violated, and the marshals came and picked me up, and they

01:21:18.640 were bringing me into to get in front of the judge was in the early 90s. It was 91, I think. We were

01:21:25.160 in the car. And they said, Mike, we got a little time before we have to appear in court. What do you

01:21:30.000 want to do? I said, I've been out of New York for a while. I said, I want two things. I'd like a cup of

01:21:34.440 Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and let's go around Manhattan. I haven't seen in a while. And I

01:21:38.720 could not believe Times Square and how Rudy had cleaned it up. I mean, I grew up with that being

01:21:44.060 Smut City. And I was like amazed that I said, wow, this guy really did do a job here. You know,

01:21:50.720 so I was fascinated by that. You know, so that's, to me, that's his legacy. I look at, you know,

01:21:59.020 him as a prosecutor, the job that he did, and the mayor of New York. And of course,

01:22:03.960 after 9-11, he was tremendous. So to me, that's how I remember him.

01:22:10.260 Thank you so much for telling your story, and for finding a way forward, and setting the example

01:22:15.600 for others who have struggled in any number of ways. All the best to you.

01:22:21.000 Well, Megan, thanks for having me. And like I said, I've been watching you since your days and

01:22:24.960 Fox, and I appreciate just your honesty and the way you, you know, you just carry yourself and

01:22:30.580 break things out. It's, for me, it's really a joy to see. So thank you.

01:22:36.140 Oh, I'm flattered. It's so nice to meet you. To be continued.

01:22:39.520 Thanks so much for joining me today. We are off now for a few days, celebrating Thanksgiving.

01:22:44.700 Back next week, we'll see you on Monday. In the meantime, I am so thankful for all of you

01:22:50.440 listening and watching our show each day. And I hope you have a great,

01:22:53.820 great Thanksgiving with your families and friends. See you Monday.

01:23:01.140 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 21, 2023

What Life is Really Like in the Mob, and Finding God in Prison, with Former Mafia Member Michael Franzese ｜ Ep. 674

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