The former Colombo Crime Family underboss and father of Michael Franzese the former Colombo Capo, has passed away at the grand age of 103. Not an age many mobsters live to!

From 1964 to 1967 Sonny was underboss in the Colombo Crime Family, a period where Joe Colombo led the family until his demise in 1971 when he was shot and put into a coma.

In 1967 Sonny was sent to prison for 50 years on bank robbery charges. He was then in and out of prison from his parole date in 1978 for the next two decades, violating his parole agreement at least six times.

In 2004 he was given the opportunity to take the underboss role once again, when he was just a few years off turning 90! He held the underboss title for some 7 years before he was convicted in 2011 for extortion, his son had testified against him, becoming the first son of a New York mobster to turn state’s evidence and testify against his father. Sonny was handed down an 8 year sentence. In 2011 Sonny was 94 years old, and no one thought he would return to life outside prison, but incredibly the 100 year old Franzese was released in 2017 (which also marked the 50th year date of his original sentence) to return home.

Did you know?

Franzese was heavily involved in the movie business, both father and son. Sonny actually helped finance a $22,000 budget for the adult film ‘Deep Throat’ which ended up raking in up to $50 milion in revenue. He also had a hand in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which generated some $30 million from a budget of around $100,000, and more recently he was said to have helped and produced ‘This Thing of Ours’ which was released in 2003 and starred the late Frank Vincent and The Godfathers’ James Caan.

John "Sonny" Franzese, one of the most feared and enduring figures in the history of American organised crime, passed away on February 24 at the extraordinary age of 103. The former underboss of the Colombo Crime Family, one of New York's legendary Five Families, Sonny outlived most of his contemporaries by decades, a remarkable feat for a man who spent the better part of his life navigating the brutal and unforgiving world of the mob.

Franzese rose to the position of underboss of the Colombo Family between 1964 and 1967, serving under boss Joe Colombo during one of the family's most powerful periods. Colombo himself would meet a dramatic end in 1971, shot at one of his own Italian-American civil rights rallies and left in a coma until his death in 1978. Sonny, however, would face his own reckoning before that, receiving a 50-year sentence in 1967 for bank robbery charges. Upon his parole in 1978, he proved incapable of staying out of trouble, violating the terms of his release no fewer than six times over the following two decades.

What made Sonny's story all the more remarkable was his return to power in 2004, when, approaching his late eighties, he was once again installed as underboss of the Colombo Family. He held the title for seven years before a 2011 extortion conviction brought him crashing back into custody. The case carried a deeply personal sting — his own son had testified against him in court, becoming the first son of a New York mob boss to turn state's evidence against his father. Handed an eight-year sentence at the age of 94, few believed Franzese would ever again breathe free air. Yet in 2017, marking almost exactly fifty years since his original conviction, he walked out of prison aged 100.

Beyond the rackets and the courtrooms, Franzese had a surprisingly significant footprint in the entertainment industry. He helped finance the infamous adult film Deep Throat on a budget of just $22,000, a picture that went on to generate as much as $50 million in revenue. He also had involvement in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which turned a modest $100,000 budget into roughly $30 million at the box office. More recently, he was associated with the 2003 mob film This Thing of Ours, which featured the late Frank Vincent and the Godfather star James Caan.

Sonny Franzese leaves behind a legacy that is equal parts myth and menace, a man whose grip on organised crime spanned generations and whose story remains one of the most extraordinary in the annals of the American underworld.