Leaving the godfather to follow God the father: successor generation conversion in a mob family

Abstract

How does conversion happen when one is part of a family involved in organized crime? We consider this question through in-depth study of the Christian conversion of the “Yuppie Don”, Michael Franzese. The paper begins with a review of religion, spirituality, and conversion literatures and the emerging area of family business research. Drawing on the posthumous published testament of a former member of the Bonanno crime Family, a brief overview of the history of “La Cosa Nostra” is then presented. Next, we review the life history of former Colombo Family “made man” Michael Franzese with special focus on his conversion experience. Using Lewin’s three-stage process model of change, we reflect on Franzese’s conversion experience. The paper concludes with discussion of the limitations of this effort and also identifies avenues for further research on spiritual individuation in family enterprises.

Keywords:

• intergenerational
• conversion
• organized crime
• mafia

Acknowledgments

This author gratefully acknowledges the support received for this research from the Stu Clark Fellowship Program in Entrepreneurship at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada) and the Toft Visiting Professorship of Family Business at the Center for Family Enterprise and Ownership in Jönköping International Business School (Jönköping, Sweden). The author also wishes to thank Gary Abromovitz for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. The capitalized word “Family” refers to crime families, while the uncapitalized “family” refers to conventional family-of-origin.

2. www.myronjtaylor.com.

3. For example, see “Worship with Michael and Camille Franzese” (1 April 2012), www.austinbaptistchurch.com/Arena/default.aspx?page=3325&eventId=731 [Accessed on 31 March 2012].

4. For example, see “Former mafia boss Michael Franzese sounds warning over match-fixing” (9 June 2009), www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/5517996/Former-mafia-boss-Michael-Franzese-sounds-warning-over-match-fixing.html [Accessed on 31 March 2012].

5. For example, see “Escape From the Mob” (15 September 2010) http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/escape-mob-11650226 [Accessed 31 March 2012].

6. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088044/.

7. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091351/.

8. www.westwoodhillschristianchurch.org.

9. An update may be of interest here – most recently, the 93-year-old Sonny was sentenced, yet again, to an eight-year sentence for extortion and also ordered to pay $116,000 in restitution to two Manhattan strip clubs (Daily Mail Reporter 2011, Succession 1). While he will probably die in prison, he is technically eligible for parole again in 2018 at the age of 100.

10. See, http://www.mormonwiki.com/Mario_Facione.

11. Levinson (1996) subsequently undertook a parallel study on the adult female life cycle, which observed some important gender-based differences.