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Convicted mob boss John "Sonny" Franzese is so old, he knew Frank Sinatra in his heyday. He's so old, his recent extortion trial became nap time — even when his turncoat son took the witness stand against him.

But a federal judge decided Friday that Franzese is not so old that he can avoid prison.

Franzese, 93, was sentenced to eight years in prison for extorting Manhattan strip clubs and a pizzeria on New York's Long Island.

The jailed Franzese appeared alert while sitting in a wheelchair in federal court in Brooklyn. But when asked if he wanted to speak, he managed only a fragmented mumble: "I never got a fair ..."

Federal prosecutors had sought at least 12 years behind bars for the underboss of the Colombo crime family — in effect, a life term. To bolster their argument, they had an FBI agent testify Friday that Franzese bragged about killing 60 people over the years and once contemplated putting out a hit on his own son for becoming a government cooperator.

"For him to die in prison is not an inappropriate response to the life he's led," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina Posa.

Defense attorney Richard Lind argued that because of Franzese's advanced age and array of chronic illnesses, a long sentence was pointless. He labeled the talk of gangland carnage "pathetic boasting."

Sentencing a nonagenarian wasn't easy, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said. But he also said he needed to send a message that "you can never escape the consequences of a lifetime of organized crime."

The sentencing was the latest chapter of a criminal career dating to the Great Depression.

Franzese's first arrest, for assault, came in 1938. Prosecutors say he was kicked out of the Army four years later after displaying "homicidal tendencies."

In 1947, court papers say, he raped a waitress in a garage. In 1966, he beat a murder charge accusing him of killing a rival and dumping the body — cement blocks chained to the feet — into a bay.

Franzese was convicted in 1967 in a bank robbery, sent to prison and paroled in the late 1970s. Though never convicted of another crime, authorities say he rose to second in command of the Colombos, one of New York's five Italian crime families.

According to Mafia lore, Franzese was a big spender and a regular at the Copacabana nightclub, where he hobnobbed with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. He also once had a stake in the classic porn film "Deep Throat."

But in court papers, the government said Franzese's true legacy was something more akin to "Goodfellas."

The main reason Franzese dodged arrest in other murders is that he became good at making bodies disappear, the papers said. Investigators caught him on tape in 2006 describing his favorite recipe for that: Dismember victim in kiddie pool. Cook body parts in microwave. Stuff parts in garbage disposal. Be patient.

"Today, you can't have a body no more," the latest court papers quote him saying. "It's better to take that half an hour, an hour, to get rid of the body than it is just to leave the body in the street."

The FBI arrested Franzese in a mob takedown in 2008. A jury found him guilty last year on racketeering and other charges last year.

At trial, prosecutors used John Franzese Jr., a former Colombo associate turned paid informant, to help convince jurors that his father's frail appearance was deceiving. The defendant briefly dozed off when his son began testifying.

"I'm not talking about my father as a man," Franzese Jr. testified. "I'm talking about the life he chose. ... This life absorbs you. You only see one way."

 

One day after mourning a bubbly 9-year-old slain during the attempted assassination of a congresswoman, residents and fellow jurists gathered Friday at the same Tucson church to remember a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge John Roll, whose legal career spanned 40 years, had stopped by a supermarket meet-and-greet for Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday when he was shot and killed, along with five others. Authorities say the shooter, 22-year-old Jared Loughner, was targeting Giffords, who was wounded along with 12 others. Giffords' husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, posted a message on Twitter Friday saying "GG" was "improving each day."

Security was tight at the funeral Friday morning as U.S. marshals checked the IDs of those entering the parking lot. Four big coach buses brought dozens of judges who knew Roll over the years, and many who came did not get in.

"He was just a tremendous person, everyone respected him," said Michael Massee, 48, who served as a law clerk for Roll in U.S. District Court in Tucson from 1994 to 1996. "In his previous career, he had been a prosecutor mostly, but even the defense attorneys I knew respected him and had no fear of appearing before him because you knew, like an umpire, he would call the strikes and balls fairly."

Roll's three sons were among the pallbearers, and family members and two federal judges gave readings, according to a program for the funeral. The service was to end with the song "When Irish Eyes are Smiling."

Dignitaries including Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, and former Vice President Dan Quayle were to attend, said Adam Goldberg, a spokesman for the fire department and the event. Quayle brought a handwritten message from former President George H.W. Bush, who appointed Roll to the bench in 1991, Goldberg said.

The security stood in contrast to another funeral at the same church the day before for the youngest shooting victim, Christina Taylor Green.

Most of the nation had never heard of Green before the tragedy Saturday, but Roll, 63, had attracted death threats and become a lightning rod in the state's immigration debate after his ruling in a controversial border-crossing case two years ago.

For the dark-haired third-grader's funeral, 2,000 mourners packed the church and hundreds more — including dozens of children — lined both sides of the street outside for more than a quarter-mile to show their support. Hundreds of motorcycle riders from all over stood guard. More than a dozen residents were dressed as angels and some mourners dressed in white placed candles alongside the road leading to the church.

On Friday, an hour before Roll's funeral, cars lined up for nearly a mile, waiting to enter church grounds, but the streets around the church were mostly empty except for media, about a dozen mourners outside the church and a strong showing of patrol cars and SWAT officers in all-green uniforms.

Tucson resident Mary Kool, 58, came to both services, wearing white Friday and carrying a red rose.

"I feel like it's important to support all the families and let them know Tucson cares," she said. "We are so devastated. We need to get together somehow and stop the violence."

Roll, 63, was heralded as a stern but fair-minded judge on the bench, and as a fun, family-loving man outside court. The father of three was Catholic and attended daily Mass. He had just come from a service when he stopped by the local Safeway to see Giffords, by some accounts to thank her for her support in addressing the issue of a federal judge and court shortage in Arizona.

Roll died on a Saturday full of mundane errands, but he was no stranger to death threats and controversy during his years on the federal bench.

Two years ago, Roll presided over the case of 16 illegal immigrants who had sued border rancher Roger Barnett, saying he threatened them at gunpoint, kicked them and harassed them with dogs. Barnett argued that the plaintiffs couldn't sue him because they were in the U.S. illegally, but Roll upheld the civil rights claim and allowed a jury to hear the case.

The panel eventually awarded the illegal immigrants just $73,000 — much less than the millions sought — but the case was a flash point in a state that struggles to curb crossings at its border.

Roll received death threats was under around-the-clock protection while hearing the case.

"It was unnerving and invasive ... by its nature it has to be," Roll told the Arizona Republic in a mid-2009 interview.

He said he followed the advice of the Marshals Service to not press charges against four men identified as threatening him.

Roll also had taken a leading position in pressing for more courts and judges to deal with the dramatic increase in federal cases caused by illegal immigration. A week before his death, he declared a judicial emergency in southern Arizona as the number of federal felony cases more than doubled, from 1,564 to 3,289, the Los Angeles Times reported.

He asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency declaration extending the time to bring felony defendants into court from 70 days to 180 days, the paper reported.

Roll was an Arizona Court of Appeals and state trial court judge from 1987 to 1991. He worked as a city, county and federal prosecutor from 1973 until his appointment to the bench. He also worked for two years as a bailiff in the Pima County courts in the early 1970s.

A Pennsylvania native, he earned undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Arizona and an advanced law degree from the University of Virginia. He was an avid golfer and was heavily involved in his church, St. Thomas the Apostle. He is survived by his wife, Maureen, three sons, and five grandchildren.

Friends and family described a fairly mischievous child who was sometimes sent to the principal's office. Roll's older brother, Ed, said the extended family spends each Father's Day together at a lake.

Roll walked his two basset hounds around the neighborhood every morning, and seemed inseparable from his wife, said George Kriss, 70, who came to the service Friday but didn't get in.

"They were always together, walking the dogs, when the grandkids were with them," Kriss said.