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March 3, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
43:07
20240303_former-mafia-boss-michael-franzese
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Mafia Code Over Father's Life 00:15:06
I've never interviewed a senior member of the mob before until now.
Michael Francis is a real-life former Mafia boss, a lieutenant in a now infamous crime family who inspired a character in Goodfellas.
Mikey Frances.
Then turned his life around and somehow lived to tell the tale.
Well, Michael Francis has a lot of tales to tell.
Your own father would put the Mafia code ahead of his son's life.
Pierce, in that life, you've got to watch everybody.
We're bringing in seven, eight, nine million dollars a week.
God forbid you violate another man's wife, daughter, sister, mother.
What would happen if you do?
Death.
A lot of people that I knew that I liked are no longer here.
Somebody one day may tap you on the shoulder.
I know that that's a possibility, Piers.
Did you kill anybody?
What was the truth about Sinatra and the mob?
He had those relationships, yeah.
You spent some months in the same prison that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in.
There's no way, in my view, that he could have committed suicide.
Michael Francis, uncensored.
And Michael Francis joins me now.
Well, Michael, it's good to meet you.
Good to meet you.
I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone who was a member of the Mafia.
So it's the first for me.
And you've never been interviewed by me.
So we're both passing the first line here.
Let me just start with, I think one of the most obvious questions to me about your story is that you've become this big media star.
You do lots of big high-profile interviews.
And yet when you join the mafia, you sign up to the Emerta, the Code of Silence.
How have you been able to spend the last few years talking so openly about the Mafia, having been a former capitan, without someone trying to kill you?
Or have they?
Well, listen, I had my challenges when I first walked away from that life.
But, you know, the bottom line is I never hurt anybody, didn't put anybody in prison, didn't go into the witness protection program.
So I didn't cooperate in that sense.
And Pierce, to be really honest with you, a lot of things I talk about have been talked about already.
You know, surveillance tapes.
And, you know, there aren't many secrets anymore about that life that law enforcement doesn't know about it.
So, and when I left the life, I didn't leave with enemies.
I had mostly friends.
But there must have been some of them who just on principle would be, because you swear this allegiance and you swear never to talk about what goes on.
There must be some that wish you harm, surely.
Let's put it this way.
When I walked away, I had a lot of trouble.
I mean, the boss of my family was now gone, Carmy Persigo, immediate contract on my life.
My dad, who was a pretty prominent figure in the world.
Which is extraordinary because he'd been an underboss himself.
He put a contract on your life.
Your own father?
He didn't put a contract.
He went along with it the way I was told.
He didn't put the contract.
But how did that feel?
It didn't feel good, honestly.
You know, my dad and I were very tight up to that point.
But, you know, one thing about my father, this life meant more to him than anything else.
That oath meant something to him.
And if I was to violate it, you know, he was very upset with me.
There's no question.
Prepared to have you killed.
You know, I've been asked this, and I don't think my dad would have ever pulled a trigger on me.
I know he wouldn't, but he might have looked the other way.
Honestly.
In the normal world, Michael, this is just an unconscionable conversation.
I know.
People watching this going, your own father would put the Mafia code ahead of his son's life if it came to it.
You know, I hate to say it, but I think that's a possibility.
You know, I've had issues with my wife because I love my father.
He was my idol, my hero growing up.
But my wife said, you would never do that to your son.
We have two boys.
Never do that to your son.
I said, you're right.
But my dad looked at this a little differently than I did.
You know, he was a stand-up guy in that life until he died at 103.
He would never give up any part of that life.
Did you ever make it up with him after you found out that he had gone along with the contract?
I did.
And he denied it.
He said it wasn't true, which I assumed he would.
But you met he got released from prison when he was 100 or something.
100 years old, yeah.
And he comes out, and you, did you go and see him in prison before he came out?
Oh, yeah.
After knowing about the contract.
Yes.
And how did that first conversation go?
Yeah, again, I didn't even say anything to him because it was the FBI that came into the prison.
They said, contract on your life, Persico put it on, and your dad went along with it.
He said, we got word from all our informants.
I said, okay, I'll deal with it.
You know, what was I going to say?
But I never really brought it up to him.
We had a discussion about it because there was another time during my time in that life that I felt my dad betrayed me a little bit.
So I was on my guard with him.
Because, Pierce, in that life, you got to watch everybody.
There's no question.
I was on my guard with him, but I didn't talk about it that much.
I didn't bring it up to him.
I didn't say, hey, you did this to me.
Never.
Did you ever, before he died, have that conversation?
No.
Even when he was released?
No.
But you would have normal conversations with him without mentioning it.
I mean, talk about an elephant in the room.
That's like a herd.
I know.
And people have said it's not normal for you not to have real animosity towards your dad, but I didn't because I understood the life.
Not that I would do it with my son, but I understood the life.
So I guess it was just my way of thinking.
How did you get into the mafia?
What was the short version of that journey for you?
Short version, I didn't aspire to be a mob guy my whole life, even though I grew up in it.
My dad got a 50-year prison sentence for a crime he swore to me that he was innocent of.
And until this day, I believe that.
What was the crime?
He was alleged to have masterminded a nationwide string of bank robberies.
He was the one that ordered them.
And he told me he was innocent.
He was framed.
I was 19 years old.
He went away for 50 years.
That was his sentence.
And I believed him.
And he said, you know, you got to help me overturn this case.
I got involved in the life because I wanted to help my father get out of prison, which I eventually did.
But that was my reasoning.
How long did he serve in the end?
40 out of the 50.
Did he really?
Yeah, but he was in and out five times, each time on a parole violation.
Kept coming out, kept going back.
But as an under boss himself, he will have committed a lot of crimes.
He may not have committed the one that he was convicted of and sentenced to, but he was committing crimes every day.
Yeah, Pierce, yes.
I wouldn't say no.
But, you know, in my way of thinking, you know, you got to get somebody for what they did.
If they get away with things, they get away with things.
You know, law enforcement, Department of Justice, they have enough tools and weapons to get somebody for what they did.
That's my way of thinking.
They're not allowed to break the law in order to get the lawbreakers.
That's how I feel about it.
So your dad says that you've got to help me.
You think there's been a big injustice here, but what's the process that leads to you actually taking the oath and joining the Cosa Nostra?
My dad had to propose me for membership.
He had to vouch for me, say he has what it takes.
And what does that involve?
And when you vouch for somebody, and I've seen all the movies, I love The Godfather.
I love Goodfellas.
You're in Goodfellas when we come to that.
Yeah, I love all those movies, but when you sign up, you kind of know what you're signing up to, don't you?
Yeah, well, look, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
We're in the visiting room of Leavenworth Penitentiary.
And I said to him, I was a pre-med student, Oxford University at the time.
I said, Dad, I'm not going to school.
I had gotten very close to Joe Columbo, who was the boss.
I said, if I don't help you out, you're going to die in here.
And he said, if you're going to be on the street, I want you on the street the right way.
And he said, I've got to ask you one question.
He said, what?
He said, if you ever had to kill anybody, could you do it?
And, you know, it's a little shocking to get that.
And I thought about it.
I said, you know what, Dad, under the right conditions, yeah, I could do it.
And he said, that's the right answer.
He said, go home.
Somebody's going to be in touch with you.
Do what you're told.
That was the only preparation my dad gave me.
You just knew I had it in me.
And two weeks later, a captain in the family took me to see the boss, and he's passed on now.
Mike, I got a message from your father.
He wants you to become a member of our life.
Is that true?
Yes.
From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're on call to serve this family.
Your mother is sick and dying.
You're at her bedside.
We call you to service.
You leave your mother.
You come and serve us.
Really?
Yeah.
From now on, we're number one in your life before anything and everything.
When and if we feel you deserve this privilege, this honor to become a member, we'll let you know.
And then from that point on, you're basically at their service.
And how long before you were admitted in?
Two and a half years.
And the process is quite a kind of almost spiritual thing, right?
Taking the oath.
Yeah.
You get your thumb or finger pricked to draw blood.
And what else happens in that?
Burn a saint, an altar card in your hands, and you actually take an oath.
And what is that oath?
The oath is if you violate what you know about this life, betray your brothers, you'll die and burn in hell like saint is burning in your hands.
And do you accept that oath?
And I said, yes, I did.
That's how it starts.
Very quick, but it's a very solemn ceremony.
Dimly lit room, late at night.
They wanted you to understand the seriousness of what you're getting involved in.
For those who have no comprehension of mafia life, only from what they've seen in the movies, which tends to slightly glamorize it, to be honest with you, the reality, I would imagine, is not glamorous.
It's pretty hardcore.
It's about making a lot of money, and it's about where you need to breaking the law and where you need to killing people.
I mean, that's really how it works, right?
Well, it's part of the life, yes.
I mean, you know, I don't like people to get the impression that every day, you know, we go around killing people and baseball batting people and doing that.
That's not part of the life.
When you take the oath, it's an oath of homerte, meaning silence.
You're not even supposed to admit that the life exists.
But as part of that life, obviously you're a criminal.
You do bad things.
But it's not what you did every day.
It wasn't your everyday life.
But, you know, and I don't ever try to justify it.
The way we justified it, you know, one of the horrors of that life, Pierce, you make a mistake.
You violate the oath.
How do you violate the oath?
God forbid you violate another man's wife, daughter, sister, mother.
What would happen if you did?
Death.
Death.
You deal with drugs.
During my era, no drugs.
You deal with drugs, you die.
Death.
Like Don Corleone said in The GoFundMe.
Exactly.
And during my era, that was true.
We weren't allowed to mess with drugs.
You know, you hit or you raise your hands to another made man, death.
Really?
Yeah.
You can never raise your hands.
Can't be disrespectful to one another.
And a made man is someone who's gone through that initiation.
Taking the oath, yes.
You know, so things like that, you pay serious consequences.
So you were always on your guard to do the right thing.
The Cray twins here, who were the nearest thing to the kind of mafia we had, I guess, in terms of public consciousness, they would always use the argument, well, we only killed our own.
Was that the thinking of most people in the mafia, that actually you didn't kill innocent women, children, and so on.
You killed rivals.
Yes.
Predominantly.
Or you killed somebody that broke the oath.
Right.
And you know the way.
So what's there in a, you know, I wouldn't categorize it like this, but did you categorize it in your heads as a code of honor?
Yes.
You justify it.
Hey, the ground is level.
We all understood what we were getting involved in.
You make a mistake.
One of the horrors of that life, and I will say it's a horror.
Your best friend walks you into a room.
you don't walk out again.
And obviously in my 20 years in that life, I've experienced that.
I know that's happened.
Well you've seen people be walked in a room by their best friend and it's to be killed.
Yes.
It's one of the horrors of life.
How do you trust anybody?
Well you don't.
You've got to be careful.
You don't trust anybody.
You've got to be careful because your best friend could be the one that leads you to your demise.
Do you trust anybody now?
I do, yeah.
How?
Well, I don't have to trust them.
They're not going to walk me into a room.
No, but you must constantly be thinking, wherever you go, that somebody one day may tap you on the shoulder.
It's what they would see as revenge for you breaking the code.
I know that that's a possibility, yes.
How does that feel?
You know, I don't dwell on it.
You know, I mean, I live my life.
I'm 72 years old.
I've lasted this long.
So, I mean, it's not like I dwell on that, but it's there.
I know it's a possibility.
And when someone puts a contract on your life, in your case, it was a boss, right, who did it?
And your father went along with it.
Does that contract ever get removed or is it an open contract?
Well, I think in my case, it was removed.
Number one, the boss is dead.
And the people that are there in that life now, they're not worried about me.
But don't get me wrong.
I don't thumb my nose in their face.
I can't go back to Brooklyn and say, hey guys, I'm moving back into the neighborhood.
I probably wouldn't last 40 years.
When you go to New York and Brooklyn in particular, how careful do you have to be?
I'm careful.
I watch where I go and who I associate with.
And do you ever get any trouble?
No.
I haven't had any issues in the 25 years since I've gone away.
I mean, I've heard things, you know, social media, people make threats on your life, but that's nonsense.
But no, I've never had anything seriously that I had to be concerned about.
How lucrative is it to have been a senior member of a Mafia 5 family?
I mean, at your peak, when you were a captain with 300 people under you, how much were you making?
Well, I devised a scheme along with a partner to defraud the government out of every tax on every gallon of gasoline.
We ran it for about eight years.
At the height of our operation, we were selling a half a billion gallons of gas a month, taking down 20, 30, 40 cents a gallon.
We were bringing in $7, $8, $9 million a week.
A week.
A week, yeah.
And how did that get distributed?
Well, obviously we had payroll, so to speak, but I would pay up to the family.
The boss got a piece of that.
I got a piece of it, and the people involved did.
These are huge amounts of money.
It was, yeah, very significant.
I don't think there was any bigger operation since the days of prohibition other than drugs.
Drugs are in another level, but it was...
Can you be a captain overseeing that number of people and actually for the length of time that...
How long were you a captain?
Well, I was made a captain at 80.
I got out of the life in 95.
So over a 15-year period, I mean, I know you've been asked this question many times.
Did you kill anybody?
I mean, to me, it would be ridiculous to assume you hadn't.
You can't be a mafia captain for that length of time in charge of that number of people and not kill people, can you?
The Accuracy of the Mob Portrayal 00:03:41
Well, Peter, let me put it this way.
You know, it's a violent life at times.
And if you're part of the life, you're part of the violence.
And yeah, as a captain, I was given an order, told what to do, I did it.
But you would personally kill people?
No, I didn't say that.
But I knew when it happened.
You would order people to be killed?
I didn't order it, but if I had to carry out a...
When you're being a bit, if you don't mind me saying, you're being a bit weasly with the words, because if the order came down, it was your job to make sure that order got executed literally.
People got killed.
People got killed.
How do you feel about that?
I don't feel good about it.
You know, Jordan Peterson asked me this question, and he said, Michael, if you had to commit an act like that, what would you do?
And I said, well, you know, maybe I stepped out of myself for a moment and then stepped back in later on.
Because, listen, murder is never pleasant.
You don't ever want to be involved in that.
And it's not something that I enjoy doing.
I mean, how dangerous a person were you in that period?
I wouldn't consider myself dangerous.
You know, look, in that life, we're all capable of doing what we needed to do.
If we weren't, we wouldn't be part of that life.
But was I a guy that wanted to go around killing people?
Was that a first course of action?
There were guys that would do that.
That was their first thought.
It wasn't for me.
I want to show the clip from Goodfellas.
Now, you're portrayed by Joseph Bonner in this.
Let's have a look.
And then there was Pete the Killer, who was Sally Balls' brother.
And you had Nikki Eyes.
What's okay?
And Mikey Francesi.
Well, that's you.
You're Mikey Frances.
But that wasn't your family.
No.
It was another family.
It was another family.
Obviously, I think I read a story.
You took your wife to see that movie.
Yes.
And very quickly, she said, tell me this is not what it was like.
And you ended up leaving the cinema, right?
Tell me about that.
Well, you know, my wife, she's not into all of this.
She didn't want to know about it.
She didn't want to, you know, she didn't study it or anything else.
And so I took her to see Goodfellas.
But she knew you'd been in the mafia.
Well, she knew it, yes.
She knew it.
And she knew I was out of the life.
But I said, honey, let's go see the movie.
I'd just gotten out of jail.
I said, a little nostalgic.
I knew all those guys.
I knew Henry well.
I knew Jimmy Burke well.
So we go, and, you know, it starts out very graphically.
And so she looks at me and she says, is this what your life was really all about?
Because my wife didn't have knowledge.
She was from Anaheim, California, a young girl.
And I said, come on, honey, it's a movie.
They make things up, you know.
Well, no sooner I say that than this scene comes up and she looks at me and I said, come on, let's go.
Because I was surprised that he put me in the movie.
And I didn't know how much more he was going to put of me.
You didn't know you were in the movie.
No, I had no idea.
Until he saw it.
Yeah, I had no idea.
The movie, like The Godfather, I mean, they're incredible films.
But like I say, they paint a glamorous picture.
Did you recognize really much of reality?
I mean, you knew Henry Hill, you knew some of the others in there.
And I watched The Offer, which was the Paramount series.
Yeah, based on the making of The Godfather.
And there's that scene where Joe Colombo gets shot and he dies from the injuries many years later.
I was 12 steps away.
I was going to ask you, you were right there, right?
It's a dramatic scene.
Yeah.
How much of those movies from everything you've gleaned is true and how much is just movie stuff?
Goodfellows was pretty accurate.
I mean, the way it was portrayed was pretty accurate.
Donnie Brasco, pretty accurate.
Cassino, pretty accurate.
You know, the Gotti movie with Armand DeSante and Anthony Quinn, HBO, very accurate.
Glamour vs. Reality in Crime Stories 00:15:32
So, you know, they always take a little liberty, you know that.
But they were pretty accurate depictions of that life.
Yeah.
John Gotti became a sort of movie star mobster.
You know, the Teflon Dahl and the smart suits, everything else.
You knew Gotty.
Yes.
Did he make a big mistake?
I mean, it's the key thing for any mobster to remain under the radar.
He made a mistake.
I mean, obviously, you can't thumb your nose in the face of the government.
They're going to get you at one point in time.
That's who John was.
I mean, it caught up with him, obviously.
But him, Joe Colombo, the same thing.
You know, Joey thought he was doing the right thing, but you can't put yourself out there.
You know, you're signing your own death warrant at that point.
You end up in prison.
And you end up doing, I think, 29 months in solitary.
That's a long time to be on your own.
What was that experience like to endure?
I mean, there's no other way to describe it.
It was very difficult.
I'm not going to lie about that.
I saw a lot of bad things happen with guys that couldn't handle it.
I'm dead set against it for young people.
It'll destroy them mentally and emotionally.
But you literally never fraternize with anybody else.
Yeah.
No, you can't.
You're in your own cell, and you're never around anybody else.
Even when you had yard time, they're supposed to give you five hours a week.
You're in a cage by yourself.
So you're never around anybody.
For 29 months.
29 months and seven days.
You count the days when you're in.
What did you think about in that time?
To me, I developed my faith during that time.
I was into my Bible.
I had my wife send me books on various faiths.
So to me, it was a spiritual awakening in a big way.
What did it teach you?
What changed in you?
Well, when you become a person of faith, you know, your whole mentality changes, you know, both your mind, your heart, and everything else.
And, you know, I had nothing but time on my hands.
But there are many members of the mafia that have got faith.
I mean, there's a lot of Catholics in the mafia, right?
I mean, Godfather III is all about that fusion between the mafia and the papacy and so on.
I mean, it's unusual not to be a man of faith in the mafia, isn't it?
No, no.
I mean, they don't go together.
You can't be a person of faith and believe in God and trust in God and be committing crimes and being in a pattern of sin every day.
They don't go together.
So you may call yourself a Catholic, but are you really a Catholic?
You may call yourself a Christian, but are you really a Christian?
You can't be living in a pattern of crime and sin and claim to be a person of God.
Did you have, for want of a better phrase, a come to Jesus moment while you were in that solitary?
I had a come to Jesus many moments.
Was there one that really, for you, crystallized, I've got to get out of this and move to a different life?
To me, the first night they locked me up in the hole.
I'd already done five years, violated my pro.
They throw me back in.
The feds were mad at me.
You're never coming out of prison again.
We're putting a new case on you, the whole bit.
The first night was really the worst night of my life because it was the first time, Pierce, when I said, I lost everything.
I'm going to lose my wife.
I'm never going to see the street again.
41 years old.
I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a six by eight cell because I had people who are going to hurt me too.
I had people on both sides at me.
And it was a prison guard that put a Bible in the cell and I started reading the book of Proverbs.
And my first enlightening moment was a verse that I came across, Proverbs 16, 7.
When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, even his enemies are at peace with him.
And it was kind of the enemy's part that got me.
And then, you know, it's always if you look in a mirror, you know, I married a Christian girl trying to do the right thing, but I said, who am I kidding?
I'm still a mobster.
And it was kind of that moment that I had to start to really face myself and say, what is this really all about?
And it was what put me on my journey to really discover spiritually what God was all about.
And are you still very spiritual and religious now?
Absolutely.
It defines your new life.
Yes.
Which has been, it's not a new life.
It's been a life for a long time.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the last 25 years, absolutely.
A lot of mythology swirled around the mob, including people like Frank Sinatra and others.
And I know you encountered the rat pack on your travels.
In fact, Sammy Davis Jr. appeared in the movie of yours.
What was the truth about Sinatra and the mob?
A friend, you know, but he wasn't controlled by the mob.
See, there's a difference.
You can have relationships.
You could be friends.
You could do favors.
It doesn't mean they control you.
And, you know, that's it.
Oh, he was controlled by the mob.
No, he wasn't.
If he was asked to do a favor, he would do it.
You know, in turn, we did him favors.
You know, his son once appeared in a club out in Long Island that I had, you know, a relationship with.
First night he's in there, he couldn't draw anybody.
So they called me up.
Michael, we need some help.
So I filled the place for the next couple of days, did him a favor.
So in turn, he would do us a favor.
We didn't control him.
And that was true of a lot of these.
I mean, when you see the favors in The Godfather, some of them can be pretty unpleasant favors.
Did he ever have to perform an unpleasant duty?
Not that I know of.
No.
Did you meet him, Sinatra?
Many times, yeah.
What was he like?
Great.
I mean, I enjoyed him.
I mean, I always felt with Sinatra.
He kind of exuded a bit of a mob air himself.
Yeah.
You know, I know a restaurant in Beverly Hills he used to go to a lot.
And some of the guys there told me some stories that made my hair stand on it about what Sinatra got up to there, yeah.
You know, people, I remember one, he told me a story.
I never managed to verify it.
You may know that he turned up at his favorite restaurant.
Some guy had shot the place up an hour before.
Sinatra asked for the address.
Had he left one when he made the booking or a phone number?
He had.
And he said, I'll take care of that.
And he came back a few weeks later, so you'll never see that guy again.
Now, I don't know if that's true, but is it plausible?
Is it plausible?
Yeah.
Possibly, yeah.
He had those relationships, yeah, definitely.
And the Colombo family in particular, he was very tight with.
He was, yeah.
He performed at a lot of the Italian American Civil Rights League galas that we had, and he was close to Joe Colombo, close to my dad.
How did you get Sammy Davis in your movie?
Did me a favor.
He wouldn't accept any money.
I gave him a gold watch.
That was it, you know, just did me a favor.
Why are these people all doing you such favors, Michael?
Is it because they think you're going to kill them?
No, I don't think he was worried about that.
You know, just respect.
Listen, we were...
I mean, I would probably do you a favor.
You've not even been in the mob for 30 years, right?
Yeah.
Just because I, why wouldn't I?
I mean, you know, that's the atmosphere that mob people have around them, right?
You know, Pierce, you know, a lot of people think that we had a strong arm, everybody.
A lot of people just wanted to be around us.
You know, we...
Well, because they found it exciting.
They found it exciting.
We took care of them.
Maybe they can get a little advantage.
You know, who knows?
But it wasn't everybody think we had the arm on somebody and we forced them to do things.
You know, a lot of times, a guy like Sinatra, we want him to succeed.
Number one, he's Italian.
You know, that meant something to us.
We want him to succeed.
You know, we weren't looking to hurt him.
Dean Martin, not so friendly.
No, he wasn't, he was more standoffish.
But I knew him.
I met him a couple of times.
But did he just not really want to go there?
Yeah.
And nobody forced him to at all.
Do you ever hang out with your old mates from the mob?
No?
Yeah.
Any of them?
No.
Would you ever, or would you see that as dangerous?
I would, but they're all gone.
They're all dead or in prison.
There's nobody around from my former life of any meaning.
Maybe some of the younger guys, but no.
They're all gone.
Would you, if you'd stayed in, would you be dead by now?
I would be dead or in prison for the rest of my life.
You've got to understand something with me.
Number one, from the moment I got into the life, I had a bullseye on my back from law enforcement.
I mean, I was arrested 18 times.
I had seven indictments, two federal racketeering cases.
I went to trial five times.
So from the minute I got into that life, I was a target.
So it was just part of my life.
I mean, I grew up in it, and then it came on to me.
So if, and then we had a big war in our family.
And while I was in the hole, we went to war.
I think 13 guys got killed.
18 guys became a foreman.
63 guys went to jail.
You don't survive that.
So it was one way or the other I was going down.
Are the five families still going?
Yeah.
And are they still as active as they used to be?
Not the same.
You know, the golden...
You don't really hear much about the mafia anymore.
You don't.
Is that deliberate?
They understood if you put your head above the parapet like Gotty, it's just a recipe of disaster.
It's deliberate in that regard and because they're not as active as we once were.
The golden years of that life, if you want to call it that, from the early 50s, late 40s, early 50s to the mid-80s when they started killing everybody off with the Racketeering Act.
But before that, that's when we had a lot of power and a lot of control.
After that, things changed.
When you try and book a table in a restaurant in Brooklyn, what happens?
Now?
Yeah.
I don't have any trouble.
You use your own name?
Yeah.
Do you get a good table?
Yeah.
I bet you do.
Interestingly, Rudy Giuliani.
I mean, you probably don't need my help, but if you ever do just let me know.
I'll probably think twice about using your name, Michael.
No, they'll treat you well.
Rudy Giuliani was your sworn enemy for a long time.
In fact, partly responsible for you ending up in prison.
And yet you end up not only making up with each other, but he ends up writing a forward to your book.
It's a bizarre twist.
How did that happen?
A friend of ours put us on a radio show together maybe a year and a half ago.
And Rudy said, he said, Michael, I've been watching you for 30 years.
He said, I tried to put you away for life.
I've been watching you for 30 years.
I think your conversion, your redemption is legitimate.
And I said, well, thank you.
I said, because it is.
And I don't want to say we're friends, you know, but my publisher said, well, you asked him to write the forward to your book.
I said, well, that's a little bit too much, but I'll ask him.
And he wrote it.
He wrote a good one, really good.
He, ironically, is now facing potential imprisonment himself.
How do you feel about what's happened to him?
I don't feel good about it.
I think what they're doing to Trump and anybody around him is just horrible.
You know, look, Pierre's.
In a way, they're going after Trump and all his associates the way they went after the mob.
I mean, people do think there's a parallel.
Yeah, well, listen, it's obvious to me that the party in power is weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after their enemies.
Can't have that.
That's what's happening with Trump.
Terrible.
Are you a fan of Trump?
I support him as president, absolutely.
That wasn't quite the question I asked you.
I guess I am a fan because I would love to see him be our president again.
He was a good president.
When he got very angry with me, actually, we fell out.
We've fallen back in.
He called me last week, but we fell out when somebody gave him a list of things I'd written about him, including calling him behaving like a mob boss.
He took particular exception that I had said he behaved like a mob boss.
But sometimes he does have that swagger about it.
What's wrong with that?
I mean, if it's a...
Quite a lot, actually, Michael.
I mean, you may not think there's anything wrong with it, but for most people, behaving like a mafia mob boss is not a compliment.
Well, you would take it as one.
You know what?
You know how many people tell me, I wish the mob was running the country right now?
That's how it's switched over?
And I said, well, they actually are.
You just don't realize it.
Right.
And I mean the real mob in the White House.
But no, look, Trump, I don't care what anybody says about him.
I'm not interested in the nonsense that's around him.
I'm interested in what he did as president.
He was a good president.
His policies were great.
And the country was in good shape when he was there.
That's what I care about.
You ever met him?
A long time ago.
He probably wouldn't remember, but I met him in a club with Roy Cohen at the time, who represented a bunch of guys.
And what did you talk about?
It was quick, you know.
Hello, Donald, how are you?
You know, that was it.
Did he know who you were?
He probably did, because if he didn't at that time, I'm sure Roy said, you know who that is, yeah.
Andrew Tate is an interesting character.
You're friends.
Yeah.
So you actually said this about me and Andrew Tate.
You gotta love the way he controls a room whenever he gets into the room.
The guy is intelligent.
He's quick on his feet.
He rattles things off.
He's got such command of information.
He sits down with Piers Morgan.
Now, Piers Morgan, one of the best out there, and he's brutal.
He doesn't hold back.
He comes after you.
He's not taking it easy.
But Andrew sat down with him, and I'm telling you, he controls the room even with Piers Morgan.
Now, I would take a slight issue with that, Michael, as you would expect.
Good compliment, because I believe that.
Yeah, but I know what you mean about Tate.
He's a very charismatic guy.
A lot of people love him.
A lot of people hate him.
We don't know the truth about these charges he's facing.
We'll have to see how that all plays out.
What do you think about his influence on young men in particular?
Because I know lots of mothers who are very concerned about what they see as a bad influence, particularly his, as they say it, misogynist views about women.
What do you think of him?
Well, you look, I think Andrew could be abrasive at times.
I don't agree with, look, I have a wife and five daughters, and my wife, anybody, I'll tell you, I put her up on a pedestal.
My daughters are all very independent.
So when you see Andrew Tate say women should stay at home, they shouldn't go out to work, the man should be in control of them, they shouldn't even go out without his permission.
When you hear him say all that stuff.
I don't agree with that, okay?
I think I understand what he's saying.
He wants to be the man in the house.
He wants to be the provider, the protector.
I agree with all of that.
Yes, I don't agree that she has to stay in the house and just be a housewife.
No.
I mean, if my wife wanted to work, she could work.
As a matter of fact, she does work.
She works with me.
But I think his message to young men is vital because I think there's been such a feminization of men, especially in our country, that it's terrible.
I mean, it's affecting our military.
It's affecting...
I mean, I have five daughters that say, Dad, I can't find a good guy.
You know, and they mean it.
You know, and we see what's happening, so we need men to...
Has it crossed your mind that that might be because they don't want to meet daddy or upset daddy's daughter?
Well, it could be, but in some cases it is.
But no, I mean, look, I support his message to young men to be men.
And like I said, I think a lot of the things he says are taken out of context because people do hate him, you know, because of what he says.
But I support by just how widespread his influence is.
I would say one in five people that come up to me are young men who want to talk about Andrew Tate.
What does that tell you?
Well, it tells me.
Yeah, it tells me that they're hungry for someone who isn't going to demonize young men in the way they feel they've been demonized.
Mutual Respect Amidst Violence and Death 00:07:44
I think there's no doubt about that.
I just have a real problem when he goes off on his misogynist rants.
I have a daughter too.
I just think it's very kind of Dickensian, that kind of chat, you know?
He doesn't need to do that.
He is abrasive at times, and I think the way he says things rubs people wrong.
But the overall message, I think, is important, and it's a good one.
You spent some months in the same prison that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in.
What do you think happened to him?
There's two schools of thought.
He hung himself or he was murdered.
Not only did I spend time in that prison, I spent time on that tier.
Right.
Okay, so I was in lockdown there.
There's no way, in my view, that he could have committed suicide.
I mean, all those things happening at one time, the cameras are gone, the guards fall asleep.
It doesn't happen.
When I was in there, they were watching me 24-7.
You know, they always knew what was going on.
You think he was killed?
Yeah, I do.
By who?
You know, that's another question.
Was it a guard?
Did they let somebody in there?
Who knows?
I mean, in some of the autopsy reports, there are, you know, that said that there's no way that he hung himself.
No way.
So I don't believe that he committed suicide.
When you were in general population as a prisoner, as a well-known member of the mob, was it like we saw in Goodfellas with Pauli with his kitchen and everything else?
But was there any of that?
I mean, did you get special treatment?
Never to that extreme.
The special treatment we got is if we had Italian guys or guys we knew in the kitchen, we'd eat a little better.
We'd made sure the gods ate a little bit, but never bringing things on the outside like that.
No.
No way.
That's fantasy.
Did anyone else ever try and attack you or did the mob have a kind of invisible fence around them?
I never had a problem.
But did anyone in the mafia or was it?
Oh, my God, he got beat up in prison.
Right, so it did happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
In prison, you can't, it doesn't matter who you are, especially if you're in a high security, you can't throw your weight around with guys that are doing life that have nothing to lose.
You're going to respect them or you're going to pay for it.
How old are your daughters now?
My oldest is 45.
My youngest is 25.
So with all of them, they must have reached a stage at some stage of each of their lives where they've wanted to look you in the eye and say, hey, Daddy, what did you actually do in the mafia?
They've never approached me with that.
Really?
No.
They never did.
You know, I don't, I think they just dealt with it differently.
Like, you know, some of them had trouble because of that.
I do all the time I did in prison.
But they don't exploit it either.
They don't like brag about it or talk about it.
Nothing.
But they're not curious.
I mean, do they never ask you, did you kill people?
No.
They never asked me that.
Would you tell them the truth if they asked you?
No.
Really?
I wouldn't discuss it with them.
Why would you ask me that?
I mean, if my dad had been in the mafia, I'd probably ask him the question.
Maybe because I've never seen that.
But I have two boys, too.
And have they asked you?
No.
Really?
No.
So you've got seven kids and none of them have ever asked you that question.
I think they might assume, but they never asked me.
And what about your wife after you came out of that?
She never asked me.
She never asked you?
No.
Even when you went to Goodfellows and she saw what was going on.
Look, my wife is very bright, very smart.
I think she knows what she assumes, but she doesn't want to hear it from me.
Why?
Do you ever worry about that scene in Godfather 3 where Pacino says they suck me back in?
No.
I have no desire.
I'd have to be out of my mind, Pierce.
I mean, I wouldn't last number one on either way.
I mean, you look and sound a bit like Pacino in Godfather 3.
That's why I'm asking you.
He's about that age in the movie when he gets sucked back in.
Something happens, and he feels himself...
Every time I think I'm out, they pull back.
Yes.
No.
Never happened.
Nothing could persuade you back in.
Nothing.
What ever happened?
Nothing.
No.
I have no desire.
None whatsoever.
What do you think of the new trend of mob wife clothing?
We see it a lot.
Emily Radachowski, Courtney Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez.
Yeah, it's mob fashion.
It's back in.
I mean, my daughter actually.
Looking at some pictures.
I mean, do you like the look?
I liked it, yeah.
My daughter actually did some, she does some modeling of things, and she actually did a couple of little ads recently.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with me.
When you, I mean, you've written about this, done many interviews.
When you look back at that whole period of your life, what's your main takeaway from it all?
Whether I have regrets, you know, the main takeaway?
Do you have regrets?
I do.
What are the regrets?
You know, I think some of the things I've witnessed, I mean, I had a best friend that was murdered.
I saw a lot of death, Pierce.
A lot of people that I knew that I liked are no longer here.
And some of them I think shouldn't have died.
How many people will be talking?
Oh, God.
Well, I'll give you a little example.
Fortune Magazine wrote an article in 1986, 50 biggest and wealthiest mob bosses in the country.
Huge article.
Half the magazine.
They featured six of us.
I was one of the six.
They had a chart with the 50 of us on there according to rank and wealth and power.
I was number 18, youngest guy on a list.
Five behind Gotta.
He wasn't boss yet.
But out of that list of 50, which was silly, silly list, today, some 30 odd years later, 48 of them are dead.
Really?
Yeah.
Number 49, still in prison.
He's older than me.
And I'm the only one alive and free.
So one's incarcerated.
The others all dead.
They're dead.
And were they all killed?
Some were murdered.
Some died in prison.
A few died naturally.
But most of them were either murdered or died in prison.
So do you feel lucky that you got out?
Blessed.
Yes.
I always say this.
If you're a made member of that life and you die of old age and you die free, you've really accomplished something.
It's a very, very difficult and treacherous life to navigate, to make it all the way through.
Tough.
Did you ever meet anyone like Brando, Pacino, Jimmy Khan, any of that?
You met them all.
Yeah.
Really?
Oh, I never met Brando.
No.
Okay.
I met De Niro.
Yeah.
Chas Palmateri, a good friend of mine.
I met a bunch of the guys.
What was De Niro like with you?
He was great.
Respectful.
Yeah.
And Chas Palmateri and him are very close.
Chas is like my buddy.
We're friends.
So I met a bunch of them.
I mean, during this filming of The Godfather, I was there the whole time.
That was my era with Joe Colombo.
So I met Lenny Montano, who played Luca Brazzi, who was a good friend of mine, Jimmy Kahn, all those guys.
I liked them all.
Was there a mutual respect in a weird way?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I'll tell you this.
I'm on trial with Giuliani, basing a couple hundred years.
And what's his name for the Frankie Valley happened to be in the courthouse?
So he comes into the courtroom, right?
And he's right behind me.
And we break, and the jury's being let out, but they see Frankie Valley, right?
Wow, Frankie Valley, boy, I love Sam.
So he comes over and he hugs me, right?
And we're talking, we're chatting, we're hugging.
I'm watching the jury.
They're watching him.
I get acquitted in that case.
And one of the jurors says to me, anybody that Frankie Valley loves, we're never going to put in prison.
So you have Frankie Valley to thank.
Frankie Valley Saves a Touring March 00:01:02
Absolutely.
Does he know that?
I told him that afterwards, yeah.
What did he say?
He laughed.
He said, well, I'm glad that helped you out.
Yeah.
Michael, it's fascinating to talk to you.
I mean, there's not many people from the mob that A, talk publicly, or B, who get out and completely change their lives.
You know, you're married with seven kids.
You've got, as you say, a very blessed second half of your life.
And I appreciate you coming on.
Well, thank you.
And I'm going to be back here on tour.
Yeah, you're doing a touring march.
It starts March 10th.
March 15th.
March 15th here in London.
I hope if you're in town, you come as my guest.
Where are you performing in London?
Oh, gosh.
I forget the name of the book.
We'll find out.
We'll put them online.
And we're doing about 12 dates all through the UK and very excited about it.
Last time I was here in 22, I didn't realize I had such an audience here in the UK.
And the people who were... British people are fascinated by the mob.
They're fascinated.
And you don't get to talk to people.
I've never interviewed anyone off the mob before.
And it is fascinating.
We have a lot more.
Hopefully we'll do it again.
Well, it's good to see you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
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