Sinatra Club

[vmw100475]

I recently read this book by Polisi....not the best book but not as bad as I thought it was going to be....gives a decent, ground level picture of the organized crime scene in East New York/Queens in the 60s and 70s with respect to the Fatico and Roberts Lounge crew....focuses a lot on Foxy Jerothe, who was the Gotti associated killed by Tommy Desimone...odd spelling errors (Tommy Agro is spelled as Argo)....has some interesting information on Michael Coiro, who was the Gotti crew's lawyer in the 70s and 80s (I think he got jammed up with the Gene Gotti/Ruggiero heroin case).

Anyway what was interesting is that Polisi talks a lot about his uncle, who was a Colombo associate who appears to have been associated with Sonny Franzese....in the book, Polisi mentions almost in passing that his uncle and "Sonny" (who I assume to be Franzese) had been involved together in robbing some banks.....I found it inteseting b/c of the theory that S. Franzese was later framed for the bank robbery conspiracy for which he ultimately got 50 years....as "proof" that his father was framed, Michael Franzese has said on more than one occasion his father was never invovled with robbing banks (the implication being SF was too high up the OC food chain to have needed to take such a risk)....however, Polisi seems to contradict this, making me question if SF's bank conviction was in fact legitilate after all....seems as though he was invovled in a number of bank heists.

[MichaelGiovanni]

Yeah but if you've seen the newsday documentary on Sonny Franzese they play a phone conversation where they talk to Sal Polisi and he claims he new all the players involved and he is adament that Franzese was framed.