He served as underboss of the Colombo family from 1963 until 1967, when he was sentenced to 50 years in prison for orchestrating a number of bank robberies across the country.

After six months, his family returned with Franzese to their home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where his father ran a bakery.

[5] In 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted to the U.S. Army, but was discharged later that year classified as "psychoneurotic with pronounced homicidal tendencies".

[4][5][6] Court papers accused him of committing rape against a waitress in 1947, but he was never arrested in relation to the crime.

He was also a regular at the Copacabana and met such stars as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. on a frequent basis.

Rupolo was shot and stabbed several times before his feet were attached to two concrete blocks and his hands tied before being dumped into Jamaica Bay.

[13] However, on March 3, 1967, Franzese was convicted in Albany, New York of masterminding a series of four bank robberies across the country in 1965, and was finally sentenced to 50 years in prison at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, by judge Jacob Mishler in 1970, after several denied appeals.

Franzese also suggested wearing a hairnet during the murder so as to avoid leaving any hair strands at the crime scene that could be DNA analyzed.

[20] On June 4, 2008, Franzese was indicted along with other Colombo mobsters on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, robbery, extortion, narcotics trafficking, and loansharking.

[34] While married, John had gotten Cristina Capobianco, a 16-year-old cigarette girl at the Stork Club in Manhattan, pregnant with his son Michael Franzese.

[34] After the mob allowed John to divorce his first wife, Grillo disappeared, and he married Capobianco.

[36] However, in 1971, shortly after his father had been sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery, he decided to drop out of college to help his family earn money.

[37] His younger son, John Franzese Jr., was a Colombo family associate before becoming an FBI informant.

[38] In 2019, Franzese Jr. met with his father at the nursing home where he resided and reconciled with him; John Jr. had previously voluntarily left the Witness Protection Program.

[4][40] He was buried on February 28, at St. John Cemetery following his funeral at Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.