Prison

How old do you have to before they let you out of prison because you're too old to be in prison? Apparently you can still be there when you're 100. The first hundred years really ARE he hardest.

Take John Franzese who has just passed away at 103. Mr. Franzese was a career gangster in New York who managed to be sentenced to prison once again when he was 94 to an eight-year sentence. His son Michael gave evidence for the prosecution as John was sentenced for the extortion of two Manhattan strip clubs. That a mobster extorted money from a strip club and lived to be sent to jail for it is a sure indicator of Mr. Franzese's durability. He was released from prison when he was 100 for health reasons.

Whether Mr. Franzese was the longest living member of organized crime is not known. They're just going to have to start keeping better statistics.

That Selwyn Raab's byline appears on the obit it itself another story. (We are never without stories.) Mr. Raab was a NYT crime reporter (now still with us at 85) who goes so far back that his byline appeared on the "Career Girl" murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, the 1963 case that sprung the 'Kojak' series with a lollipop-sucking Greek, Telly Savalas as the principle detective. "Who loves you baby?" Jesus.

I always appreciate the obituarist that includes a parenthetical phonetic pronunciation guide on how to pronounce the deceased's surname. When one of the Koch brother passed away we were  reminded the name is pronounced like "Coke," not like New York's former mayor, Ed Koch.

And so it is with Mr. Franzese, pronounced FRANCE-ease. This was very useful for me because growing up I used to hear Mr. Franzese's name connected with arrests and organized crime. I had a good friend in school who was John Francini (I never really knew the spelling, just guessing) whose father I knew couldn't be John Franzese because my friend's father worked as a manager at a Schrafft's restaurant. Schrafft's was so long ago they had a restaurant that was a Men's Grill; no women allowed. They also made boxed chocolates.

Before Mr. Franzese's release from prison when he was 100, he was the oldest prisoner in the federal prison system. Michael Franzese, who help convict his father, was himself a Columbo capo and was portrayed in the movie "Goodfellas." His father authorized a hit. but Michael is still with us at 68 and is now a motivational speaker.

If you're still breathing after all the things in his life, you do have the right to impart positive thinking.

At the end of the father's obit, Michael tells us:

"My father was a chameleon. At home he was a loving father and husband, but on the street, a hard-core guy who never had regrets, never would admit to any crime, never gave anybody up, never violate his Mafia oaths—a mobster all the way."

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And just days after Mr. Franzese's obituary we were treated to the obituary for another felon, Charles Friedgood, 99, who had been imprisoned for killing his wife and who was released in 2007 when he was 89, then the oldest prisoner in the New York State correctional system, having served 31 years of his 25-years-to-life sentence.

Charles Freidgood was a Great Neck, Long Island physician who was caring for his wife who had become seriously disabled after a stroke at 33. Dr. Freidgood administered Demerol to her to ease the pain, only to one day, either with malice or as a mistake, injected her with too much Demerol, only to see her pass away from it.

Intentional or not, once presented with a wife who was no longer breathing, he signed her death certificate and quickly rushed the body out of state for an immediate Jewish burial.  Five weeks later he boarded a plane at JFK with the intention of a rendezvous with a Danish nurse he had been having an affair with  since the '60s and with whom he had fathered two children.

I remember reading that the authorities boarded the plane that was about to go to Denmark and pulled Dr. Freidgood off. He had more than $450,000 of his wife's cash, negotiable bonds and her jewelry with him. Since Dr. Freidgood didn't complete his flight it is not known if he got a refund on his airline ticket. Even then, probably not.

The slammer is was, with parole after parole turned down. He was a precursor to Jean Harris, who was convicted of killing her lover Dr. Herman Tarnower, a Scarsdale diet doctor.

Any moral to the stories? Just as you're never too old to learn something, you're never too old to go to prison, and never too old to stay there.

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