Former mobster John Franzese’s journey to Indianapolis and forgiveness
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — It’s a story straight out of Hollywood: a former mobster living right here in Indianapolis, placed by the FBI under a different identity.
That is, until he had to make a choice: continue to hide or be honest about who he was. His story is one of crime, addiction and forgiveness.
“If you really think about it, we were predators,” John Franzese said.
John Franzese is the son of notorious New York City mob boss Sonny Franzese.
“I didn’t become an informant to get out of jail,” John Franzese told News 8 when talking about his days in the witness protection program.
He was placed in Indianapolis in the mid-2000s after testifying against Sonny Franzese in court.
“My family will never call me Matt. To them, I’m all John; I’m always John,” John Franzese said.
But his friends here in Indianapolis know him as Matt Pazzarelli, the name he chose when entering the witness protection program back in 2006.
“Oh sure, there’s a lot of people who might want to kill me, that hate me, that’ll never understand it. I think I have a few family members that I understand their feelings,” John Franzese said.
His decision to cooperate with the FBI came after living a life of crime as well as a long battle with drug and alcohol addiction.
“We prayed on anyone and anything we thought we wanted and used any types of means to take from what others worked for to make ours,” John Franzese said.
It was a desperate desire to stay clean that made him do the unthinkable: wear a wire and testify against his own father.
“I was like, I either have stand on one side of the fence or the other, and I thought a lot about what people would think and I thought about what I would think, and the decision and I made the decision. I love my dad, I love him as a man. I think he made the wrong choice, and I choose to do whatever I could to stop that choice,” John Franzese said.
This is the first of five stories, and this one is just scratching the surface. Future stories will take a closer look at John Franzese’s addiction and recovery, his days in the mob and why he decided to leave witness protection.