Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
Legendary mobster Sonny Franzese, 93, indicted for shaking down Hustler, Penthouse strip joints
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, May 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Legendary gangster Sonny Franzese just isn't the retiring type.
The reputed Colombo underboss has been indicted again - at the ripe old age of 93 - for shaking down the Hustler and Penthouse strip joints.
Franzese, who has been around long enough to have seen Frank Sinatra play the Copa, offered the skin clubs protection from other crime crews, prosecutors said.
And he gave the scheme the personal touch, coming to the flesh palaces with his goons to see the girls and have the little people pay homage, the indictment charges.
When the manager at the Penthouse Executive Club refused to comp Franzese's drink bill, he got a lesson in senior-citizen clout.
One of the henchmen threatened to throw him down the stairs, "asking whether he could come up with a way to get rid of the bill before his head hit the ground," prosecutors said in court papers.The same thug threatened to choke a manager at the Hustler club after he refused to let the old man drink for free. "The manager apologized to Franzese and kissed his hand," prosecutors wrote. "The next time he and Franzese visited the club, the manager put them at the best table."
An undeniably colorful character, Franzese reportedly got a cut of the iconic porn flick "Deep Throat" and was a front-seat fixture at classy nightspots when Sinatra or Jimmy Roselli were in town.
He went to prison for 11 years after a conviction for bank robbery and is on parole until he's 102. He has been jailed five times since, usually for palling around with other wiseguys. One of his sons is in witness protection; the other left the mob to become a born-again Christian lecturer.
Franzese, who is free on $1 million bail, will be arraigned Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The extortion charges join a racketeering case that features testimony from an informant that Franzese boasted he "killed a lot of guys."
Federal Judge Brian Cogan has yet to decide whether the jury will hear tapes in which Franzese holds forth on the art of murder - chatting about wearing a hair net and nail polish on the fingertips to avoid leaving forensic evidence.
The most chilling recording contains Franzese's advice on disposing of a victim by dismembering the corpse in a kiddie pool and drying the body parts in a microwave oven before stuffing them in a commercial-grade garbage disposal.
"You can't have a body no more," Franzese said. "It's better to take that half an hour, an hour, to get rid of the body than it is just to leave the body in the street."
Franzese's defense lawyer Richard Lind plans to ask the judge to throw out the strip club charges because they were leveled just a month before his trial for loansharking and extorting a pizzeria.
gangsta
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, May 4th 2010, 4:00 AM
Legendary gangster Sonny Franzese just isn't the retiring type.
The reputed Colombo underboss has been indicted again - at the ripe old age of 93 - for shaking down the Hustler and Penthouse strip joints.
Franzese, who has been around long enough to have seen Frank Sinatra play the Copa, offered the skin clubs protection from other crime crews, prosecutors said.
And he gave the scheme the personal touch, coming to the flesh palaces with his goons to see the girls and have the little people pay homage, the indictment charges.
When the manager at the Penthouse Executive Club refused to comp Franzese's drink bill, he got a lesson in senior-citizen clout.
One of the henchmen threatened to throw him down the stairs, "asking whether he could come up with a way to get rid of the bill before his head hit the ground," prosecutors said in court papers.The same thug threatened to choke a manager at the Hustler club after he refused to let the old man drink for free. "The manager apologized to Franzese and kissed his hand," prosecutors wrote. "The next time he and Franzese visited the club, the manager put them at the best table."
An undeniably colorful character, Franzese reportedly got a cut of the iconic porn flick "Deep Throat" and was a front-seat fixture at classy nightspots when Sinatra or Jimmy Roselli were in town.
He went to prison for 11 years after a conviction for bank robbery and is on parole until he's 102. He has been jailed five times since, usually for palling around with other wiseguys. One of his sons is in witness protection; the other left the mob to become a born-again Christian lecturer.
Franzese, who is free on $1 million bail, will be arraigned Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The extortion charges join a racketeering case that features testimony from an informant that Franzese boasted he "killed a lot of guys."
Federal Judge Brian Cogan has yet to decide whether the jury will hear tapes in which Franzese holds forth on the art of murder - chatting about wearing a hair net and nail polish on the fingertips to avoid leaving forensic evidence.
The most chilling recording contains Franzese's advice on disposing of a victim by dismembering the corpse in a kiddie pool and drying the body parts in a microwave oven before stuffing them in a commercial-grade garbage disposal.
"You can't have a body no more," Franzese said. "It's better to take that half an hour, an hour, to get rid of the body than it is just to leave the body in the street."
Franzese's defense lawyer Richard Lind plans to ask the judge to throw out the strip club charges because they were leveled just a month before his trial for loansharking and extorting a pizzeria.
gangsta
