{"id":1504984,"date":"2022-06-06T09:04:28","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T13:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1504984"},"modified":"2022-06-06T09:05:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T13:05:12","slug":"what-happened-to-the-mafia-as-a-rusty-barrel-reveals-a-body-ex-mobsters-recall-blood-soaked-glory-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-happened-to-the-mafia-as-a-rusty-barrel-reveals-a-body-ex-mobsters-recall-blood-soaked-glory-days\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened To The Mafia? As A Rusty Barrel Reveals A Body, Ex-Mobsters Recall Blood-Soaked Glory Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhat-happened-to-the-mafia-as-a-rusty-barrel-reveals-a-body-ex-mobsters-recall-blood-soaked-glory-days%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1504984&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><em>For much of the last century, the American mafia controlled industries, kept police, judges, and politicians on its payroll and literally got away with murder. But somewhere in between Don Corleone\u2019s version of La Cosa Nostra and Tony Soprano\u2019s, the once-powerful organized crime syndicate lost its grip on power. In a three-part investigation, The Daily Wire looks at what the mob once was, how it was brought down, and how it may be back on the rise.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When a group of boaters went to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/dead-man-talks-mob-experts-offer-three-identities-for-body-washed-up-in-lake-mead\">Lake Mead near Las Vegas<\/a> on a sunny Sunday last month, they couldn\u2019t have known they were about to muddy the waters around the most enduring of all mafia mysteries: What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?<\/p>\n<p>On a sandbar newly exposed due to a drought dropping water levels to all-time lows, they spied a\u00a0man\u2019s decomposed body stuffed in a barrel. It had all the hallmarks of\u00a0an old-fashioned mob hit, and when police said the man\u2019s shoes indicated he had likely been shot sometime between the mid-\u201970s and early \u201880s, mob mavens did the math:\u00a0Hoffa disappeared in July, 1975.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m relatively sure it was not Jimmy Hoffa,\u201d laughed former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, 82, who represented mobsters as a defense attorney before serving three terms running Sin City.<\/p>\n<p>While the gruesome discovery, which is being investigated as a homicide, may not shed light on the fate of the legendary Teamsters union boss, the drama and subsequent speculation underscored America\u2019s fascination with La Cost Nostra, even if the glory days of the mob have receded like the waters of Lake Mead.<\/p>\n<p>But when was the mafia\u2019s golden age?<\/p>\n<p>Bobby Luisi was a made man, a <em>caporegime<\/em>, in the Philadelphia mafia. In 1999, Luisi was arrested and charged with cocaine distribution and served 14 years in federal prison. Luisi recalls growing up in Boston\u2019s Little Italy in the 1960s, when the mafia ruled the streets and being part of it meant power, money, and responsibility. It stayed that way in the 1970s, as he joined the life and was eventually tapped to lead the\u00a0Boston crew\u00a0of the City of Brotherly Love\u2019s Bruno-Scarfo family.<\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-391394\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bobby Luisi, Philadelphia mob capo (YouTube screenshot)<\/p>\n<p>But the mafia began to crumble in the 1980s, he said, when the feds finally broke the spell of the oath of omert\u00e0.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the government came out with witness protection, that ruined the mob,\u201d Luisi told The Daily Wire.\u00a0\u201cYou know, look at me. I was getting indicted for three murders. Wiseguys, guys that I come up with, they were all ratting on me. They turned me into a rat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michael Franzese, who was once a powerful capo in the Colombo family before serving time and renouncing the life in his 1992\u00a0autobiography, \u201cQuitting the Mob,\u201d said the mafia\u2019s zenith lasted from the 1950s through the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s when we exercised the most control and when we had the biggest presence and the most success in this country,\u201d Franzese told The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-391387\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-391387\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1321328283-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Franzese\" width=\"300\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1321328283-300x231-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1321328283-749x576-1.jpg 749w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1321328283-768x590-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1321328283.jpg 1024w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-391387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Franzese in a Manhattan office, 1985. (Jim Cummins\/Newsday RM via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-391391\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-391391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-142516562-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Franzese\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-142516562-240x300-1.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-142516562-461x576-1.jpg 461w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-142516562-768x960-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-142516562.jpg 819w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-391391\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Franzese arrives at federal court. (Dennis Caruso\/NY Daily News via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>The groundwork for that gilded age was lain during the 1920s and 1930s, and bought with blood and bribery, added Franzese,\u00a0who was a pre-med student when his father, John \u201cSonny\u201d Franzese was an underboss in the Colombo crime family. He joined the mob in 1971, four years after his father was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring the days of Prohibition, you had massive corruption among law enforcement and politicians,\u201d said Franzese.\u00a0\u201cGo back to the days of Al Capone. There was massive corruption and it was massive money that came into mob coffers. That\u2019s how the organization got built.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Franzese proved his worth to the family by excelling at sophisticated fraud schemes, and knew future Gambino boss John Gotti in the 1970s, when both were making their mafia bones. Franzese estimated he earned $8 million a week in his prime, before going to prison on conspiracy charges in 1986. He was released in 1994.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-391389\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-391389\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-644663374-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Michael Franzese\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-644663374-300x200-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-644663374-864x576-1.jpg 864w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-644663374-768x512-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-644663374.jpg 1024w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-391389\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michael Franzese mugshot, 1993. (Oklahoma County Sheriff\u2019s Department\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>One of the men who got Franzese locked up is Edward McDonald, who\u00a0led the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn in the 1980s. McDonald\u00a0investigated some of the most high-profile organized crime cases in the country and even\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oaUDNrtr9ow\">played<\/a> himself in the seminal mob movie \u201cGoodfellas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> \u201cDon\u2019t give me the babe in the woods routine, Karen,\u201d was the iconic line McDonald delivered, speaking to the wife of mobster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta.<\/p>\n<p>In 1985, McDonald and other law enforcement officials helped prosecutors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For much of the last century, the American mafia controlled industries, kept police, judges, and politicians on its payroll and literally got away with murder. But somewhere in between Don Corleone\u2019s version of La Cosa Nostra and Tony Soprano\u2019s, the once-powerful organized crime syndicate lost its grip on power. In a three-part investigation, The Daily &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":1898508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1504984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1504984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}