Overview

John Sonny Franzese reportedly committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. As 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 . . . This is the true story of an old-school Mafioso as it's never been told before. Newsday reporter S. J. Peddie interviewed Franzese in prison--and uncovered a lifetime of shocking secrets from the legend himself: why FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a very personal interest in Sonny; how Sonny managed to juggle numerous affairs with women, including a famous model; how Sonny spent a third of his life in prison--and still managed to earn untold millions for the mob; how Sonny accidentally revealed some of his worst crimes--to a friend wearing a wire; and how Sonny hobnobbed with celebrities such as Ava Gardner, Jayne Mansfield, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dionne Warwick, among others. This is a must-listen for anyone fascinated with Mafia history--and a rare look inside a criminal mind that has become the stuff of legend.

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S. J. Peddie is an investigative reporter at Newsday Media Group and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of stories on police misconduct. Inducted into the Long Island Press Club Hall of Fame, she's the recipient of National Headliner, Casey, Scripps Howard, Silurians, and New York State Newspaper Publishers Association Awards. In 2018, she won a New York Emmy for coproducing the documentary Cost of Corruption. Peddie served on the board of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and has been a featured speaker at national conferences sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Poynter Institute, as well as the International Center for Journalists, the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, Columbia University and New York State Archives. She has taught journalism at Hofstra and Stony Brook universities. Tanya Eby has a B.A. in English language and literature from Grand Valley State University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine. A voiceover artist and audiobook narrator for over ten years, she has also been a writer for as long as she can remember. She lives with her two quirky children in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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