Sonny

Award-winning investigative journalist S. J. Peddie writes the first groundbreaking account of the legendary mafia boss, Sonny Franzese, the head of the Colombo crime family and the financier of the infamous pornographic film Deep Throat.

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

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

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

“By turns blood-curdling and hilarious, Sonny regales us with the life and career of one of the most powerful and least-known New York Mafia crime bosses. A scrupulously documented and compulsive read.” —Teresa Carpenter, Pulitzer Prize–winner and author of Mob Girl: A Woman's Life in the Underworld