The night Jimmy Fratianno became a government witness, not a single Mafia boss slept. As a "made guy" in La Cosa Nostra, Jimmy Fratianno knew their best-kept secrets. A soldier, capo, and ex-boss of the Los Angeles family, involved at the highest levels with bookmaking, gambling, union racketeering, extortion, pornography, and virtually every criminal activity to which organized crime is linked, Fratianno also earned the reputation as the Mafla's top killer in California.Fratianno became the highest-ranking Mafloso ever to "turn," and in the past two years his testimony, in courtrooms across the nation, has been making sensational headlines. A veteran investigative reporter and bestselling author, Ovid Demaris had the unprecedented opportunity to debrief Fratianno in order to write this book. Demaris also had access to wiretaps, surveillance reports, prison and court records, The result is the most important work to date on organized crime in America---a disturbing, yet extraordinary and vivid life story that makes the other "insider" stories of the Mafia look like tales of innocence.The Last Mafioso details eleven murders Fratianno was personally involved in, and relates Fratianno's inside knowledge of some two dozen others, including the slayings of Bugsy Siegel, Nick DeJohn, Albert Anastasia, Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, and Tamara Rand. Fratianno was a confidant of Johnny Roselli, so Demaris tells the real story of Operation Mongoose, the CIA-Mafia plot to assassinate Castro. Here also are the behind-the-scenes deals and machinations of the Mafia in Las Vegas. Fratianno's life was not spent entirely with his criminal friends, although The Last Mafioso records the secret lives of virtually all the important Mafiosi of the last thirty years. Fratianno moved perpetually in exotic circles, a man of inexhaustible energy, an ingenious schemer and scammer, an insatiable womanizer and socializer who was quick to ingratiate him-self with Mafia royalty, Hollywood celebrities, politicians, prominent lawyers, successful businessmen, and Teamster officials. In The Last Mafioso there are countless episodes with the likes of Frank Sinatra and ex-San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.

An account of the hard life and underworld career of Jimmy Fratianno, the highest-ranking mob figure ever to turn government witness, explores the ganglord world of California and Las Vegas

“Couldn’t put it down.” —Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy (Goodfellas) and Casino The extraordinary life and times of a legendary crime boss who refused to squeal—but who finally agreed to talk to an award-winning New York Newsday reporter shortly before his death at age 103 . . . 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. 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.

Henner Hess's classic work, first published almost a quarter century ago, gives a detailed picture of the typical career of mafiosi. Hess describes a distinct subculture whose behavioral patterns have been largely determined by the specific political, economic, and social history of Sicily, a society characterized by a weak state and organized on the basis of self-help. This subculture was and is the breeding ground for the strong-arm man "mafioso" or "uomo d'onore," man of honor, as he is called in Sicily, the proud, taciturn, independent man who believes in the use of violence to achieve personal goals. As a rule, the men come from poor families and rise through violent crime, shrewd diplomacy and the building of a "family" of followers to a respected position of power and wealth. Most important are the mafioso's reciprocal arrangements with politicians and government officials whom he supports in the elections and who protect him from law enforcement. Mafia, popularly conceived as a strictly centralized secret society, is instead proven to be a system of independent families which might on many occasions cooperate, but just as easily be driven to bloody feud. Only in the last decade have there been a number of so-called "pentiti," crown witnesses who cooperate with the criminal justice system. Using their testimonies, an extensive afterword brings the book up to date.