The real Goodfella: Meet former Mafia boss Michael Franzese as he prepares to share his remarkable story at Yorkshire talks

After the colourfully-named Pete the Killer and Nicky Eyes, it’s the turn of Mikey Franzese, eyeballing the camera and rasping: “Tell that guy, yeah, I want to see him,” before the shot moves on to the next Mafioso, Jimmy Two Times, so-called because he says everything twice. Michael Franzese smiles at being name-checked.

Apart from Franzese, all the people in the bar are dead – murdered, mostly – or in prison for what remains of their lives. He, on the other hand, is a contented 71-year-old father of seven and grandfather of six who turned his back on the Mafia, for whom he made hundreds of millions of dollars by scamming the US government out of petrol taxes, and lived to tell the tale, despite having a contract put on his life for betraying the mob.

Franzese is telling his story of being a Mafia boss in Yorkshire next month, speaking at events in Bradford and Hull as part of a British tour. It’s quite a life – growing up in Brooklyn as the son of a high ranking Mafioso who inducted him into the mob, rising through its ranks, being dubbed the “Mafia Prince” and “the Yuppie Don” by the US press, and then jailed, where he found God and renounced crime to work with young offenders instead.

Over Zoom from his home in California, Franzese still looks and sounds every inch the Goodfellas tough guy. Dapper in black, with a deep, commanding voice and broad New York accent, it’s easy to visualise him running his 300-strong crew of mobsters for the Colombo crime family during the 1970s and 80s until he was caught. “I’m not glamourising my former life,” he said. “It’s a destructive life, it’s a terrible life for families, I’ve experienced that for myself, but I’m here to tell it like it is. There is an intrigue with my former life. People like to know what it was all about.”

He acknowledges that films and television shows such as The Sopranos feed a continuing public fascination with the Mafia, with its mix of glamour and ruthlessness – which is underlined by the 841,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.

“We had influence right into the White House, so when you have that kind of power, people are attracted to it. The Mafia in America survived and prospered for well over 100 years under some very extreme conditions, and a result of that there is an intrigue with it all around the world.

“Maybe it’s because of the way people carried themselves, maybe because we were such a structured organisation, maybe because we had such an impact. Even law enforcement came after us in such a big way because we were so high profile. You come after Mafia guys and put them in jail, your career is going to go on a rise.”

For all its perceived glamour of sharp-suited mobsters adhering to a code of honour, the Mafia’s history is a vicious, blood-sodden chronicle of murder, violence and extortion and Franzese was at its heart after becoming a fully-fledged member – or “made man” – and taking the oath of silence in October 1975.

He steps carefully around the direct question of whether he killed anybody. “I didn’t make any deals with the government, I don’t have immunity, but I will tell you this. It’s a violent life and if you’re part of the life you’re part of the violence. There’s no escape. It’s not a pleasant part of the life, it’s not things that I enjoyed. A lot of my former associates were murdered.

“It’s a tough life. If you’re a made guy in that life and you die of old age and you die free, you’ve really accomplished something. It’s a treacherous life to navigate, no question. I have never ordered anybody killed. You can’t. The only one who can order a killing in that life is the boss of the family. Because of the movies people think that every day was to commit an act of violence, to kill somebody, to baseball-bat somebody.

“That’s not true. When you take that oath it’s an oath of omerta, an oath of silence and non-betrayal. You can never admit that the life exists and you can never betray the life by talking about it, or by becoming an informant. The oath doesn’t say you’ve got to lie, steal, murder. That’s not it.

“Is it part of that life? Yes. Do some people engage in it more than others? Yes. The problem is that I saw people die for the wrong reasons. There’s a lot of politics in that life, there’s a lot of treachery, so it’s not all about loyalty and respect. That’s the ideology you have going in, but then you find out different.”

Franzese decided to do the unthinkable – he walked away from the Mafia and its lifetime oath of loyalty, having become a born-again Christian in prison with the encouragement of his wife, Camille. “I spent almost three years in solitary, 24/7 in a six by eight feet cell, and the first night I went back in, it was a prison guard that handed me a Bible because he knew it was a difficult night for me, and that started my journey.”

His associates were murderously enraged, and the FBI informed him that he was a marked man. Unlike other former Mafiosi who became informants and helped jail associates, Franzese did not. “It was difficult. There is no blueprint to walk away from that life. Usually if you walk away, you’re in a witness protection programme or you’re dead.

“It’s a violation and when I did walk away, there was a contract on my life. Two things happened in my favour. Number one, I didn’t put anybody in prison. Number two, I just outlasted everybody. Everybody is dead or in prison. They’re all gone.”

Only Franzese remains to tell the stories of the real-life Goodfellas. And he uses them to divert young gang members away from the life he led. “Everybody looks at the Mafia as the biggest gang in the world, so when I speak I have a lot of credibility with them.

“Then when I give them the message of how damaging and destructive their street life is and how they’re going to end up in prison for the rest of their life, or one of their best friends is going to put a bullet in their head, they get it.”

Michael Franzese will be talking about his life at events in Bradford, at the Valley Parade Stadium, on July 7 and in Hull, at the Hilton Hotel, on July 23. Further details and tickets from www.michaelfranzesetour.com