TONY Soprano is one of the most famous TV anti-heroes of all time – with fans having a love-hate relationship with the sadistic mob boss.

The Sopranos viewers watched as James Gandolfini’s character battled for control as the boss of the fictional North Jersey DiMeo crime family.

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And, despite the fact Tony committed some hideous crimes, including eight murders throughout the show’s six series, fans never stopped rooting for him.

But Tony was based on a real-life mob boss, Vincent Palermo, now 79.

Palermo married into the infamous DeCavalcante crime family, and was brought in on numerous murder plots throughout the years, working his way up to the top of the chain.

Like Tony, he was a Catholic, family man, with a heart, regularly driving his daughters to Brownies club, and also taking in a troubled teenager, becoming his godfather.

And, as The Sopranos celebrates its 25th anniversary today, we look at Palermo’s journey into the dark Mafia world, and how he eventually went into witness protection to live a new life as a strip-club owner.

Palermo was born in June 1944 to a traditional Italian American family in Brooklyn, New York.

He is often cited by critics, including in the 2006 documentary The Real Sopranos, as an inspiration behind show creator David Chase’s most famous character.

Palermo was one of seven children, with five sisters, and one brother, and was brought up Catholic, even serving as an altar boy during his adolescence.

It was a far cry from what his life would become, but, when he was 16, his father died.

Married into crime

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With his asthmatic mother bedridden, Palermo was forced to leave school and work two jobs to help support his family.

And that’s when he met his first wife, the niece of crime boss Sam DeCavalcante, who would change everything for him.

After marrying her in the early 1960s, he quickly became embroiled in her family’s life, as DeCavalcante took a shine to his nephew-in-law and began inviting him to visit his social club in Kenilworth, New Jersey. 

Palermo was unsure at first, having only ever been arrested for stealing shrimp from the Fulton Fish Market, where he worked, up until this point.

Regardless, he would toil away selling fish in the early morning hours and then hang out with mobsters on Sunday afternoons – although he was known to say very little, and would only speak to a few very close associates.

He also stayed away from mob-run social clubs.

But, as time went on, and as he and DeCavalcante’s niece had two children together, Michael and Renee, Palermo became more intertwined with the crime world.

He even began building business relationships with some of the other crime families, including a lucrative loansharking operation with the Gambinos, who were one of the “Five Families” dominating organised crime in New York City around that time.

He also became a close associate of the Genovese family – another of the “Five Families”.

£53,500 in debt

Although he’d become close to his first wife’s family, their marriage wasn’t to last – but his relationship with crime seemed to flourish.

By the 1980s, he was married to his second wife, an Italian-American woman named Angela, paying alimony to his first wife, and living in a huge waterfront mansion in Island Park, New York, with their two daughters, Danielle and Tara, and son Vincent Palermo Jr.

The house even had a 100-foot pier attached.

However, despite this perceived wealth, Palermo found himself $68,000 (£53.5k) in debt, owing money to a hospital, local doctors, and the federal government.

Gotti-ordered murder

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But it was September 11, 1989, when Palermo well and truly became part of the gang.

On that night, along with Anthony Capo and James “Jimmy” Gallo, he murdered former Staten Island Advance newspaper reporter and real-estate developer Fred Weiss, on orders from the DeCavalcante boss Giovanni “John the Eagle” Riggi.

And it was all orchestrated by the Gambino family’s infamous boss, John Gotti.

Weiss, along with two members of both the DeCavalcante and Gambino families, had purchased a vacant property in Staten Island, where they’d been illegally dumping large amounts of dangerous medical waste.

However, the two families started getting nervous, when local authorities uncovered the scheme and started investigating Weiss.

Gotti was worried that Weiss might rat on their plan to the police, in exchange for a lenient sentencing, so asked the DeCavalcante family to murder him to protect them all.

Doing as they’d been told, Palermo, Capo, and Gallo drove over to Weiss’ girlfriend’s house in New York, and shot him in the face as he got into his car to leave. 

Not long after, Palermo was appointed the family’s capo – a similar role to a military captain – and given his own crew of soldiers, while Riggi was sent to jail.

Nearly murdered

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In 1995, the acting boss of the DeCavalcante family, Giacomo Amari, was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, which threw the family into chaos once more.

While still behind bars, Riggi was forced to restructure, but he decided to create a ruling panel to help Amari, in order to avoid a potential power struggle.

Palermo, along with Girolamo “Jimmy” Palermo (no relation) and Charles Majuri, were the three family members Riggi chose to promote.

But Majuri was apparently furious that he wasn’t simply appointed acting boss, and decided to murder the two Palermos in order to take effective control over the DeCavalcante family. 

However, he made a fatal error in not doing the job himself, asking Gallo to murder Vincent Palermo.

Gallo alerted Palermo to the plot, who decided to murder Majuri instead, recruiting Capo, Gallo and Joseph Masella to find and kill him. 

The three men couldn’t go through with the killing, but when they told Palermo they’d failed, he decided to call off the murder contract anyway, deciding Majuri didn’t actually pose a threat.

By the mid-90s, Palermo was the de facto boss of the DeCavalcante family, with Riggi reigning as boss in absentia from jail.

Amari eventually died aged 52 on June 14, 1997.

Informer brought downfall

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The start of Palermo’s downfall came the following year, when DeCavalcante associate Ralph Guarino was arrested for stealing $1.6 million (£1.3million) from a Bank of America inside the World Trade Center. 

To avoid a prison sentence of 20 years, Guarino agreed to work as an informant for the FBI, giving the agency insider information on the DeCavalcante family’s movements.

He was even ordered to give the family members mobile phones bugged with surveillance equipment. 

And when an opening in the family occurred, in October 1998, thanks to Palermo’s trusted lieutenant Masella getting killed in a hit, Guarino took his chance to become a fully fledged DeCavalcante member.

Unbeknownst to the family that he was working as an informer, Palermo promoted Guarino to Made Man, meaning he was officially part of the gang – and eventually managed to get Palermo arrested in 1999.

Facing charges and possible capital offences, Palermo agreed to be a government witness.

Confessing to murder

Palermo confessed to killing Weiss, as well as mobster Louis LaRasso – who’d been reported missing eight years earlier, when he failed to show up to his 65th birthday.

His body has never been found.

He also admitted to conspiring to murder figures including John D’Amato, a former acting boss of the family. He had been killed by Capo, with the help of Palermo and Gallo, in January 1992, after his girlfriend informed DeCavalcante capo Anthony Rotondo he was bisexual, and enjoyed swinging.

On orders from Rotondo, Amari and Gotti, Capo shot D’Amato four times, while he was sitting in the back seat of his car.

His body was never recovered.

As these murders and plots implicated many other DeCavalcante family members in various crimes, he and his family entered the federal Witness Protection Program.

Family man

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Despite all the horrific crimes he committed, Palermo was reportedly also a religious, family man – in shades of Tony Soprano’s dual life.

He regularly attended Sacred Heart Church in Island Park, New York, and there is a famous story about him taking in a troubled teenager named Richard, and becoming his godfather. 

It is said he allowed Richard to stay at his home every weekend for a year, so that he could study the Catholic sacraments in preparation for eventual baptism, Communion and Confirmation.

He also doted on his daughters, driving them to Girl Scout meetings, and often watching Annie with one of them.

And his eldest son Michael, a graduate of Fordham University, became very successful in a respected career, thanks to help from his dad.

He’s a licensed New York stockbroker, and was working as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs up until they went into Witness Protection.

Bankrupt strip club owner

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In September 2009, Palermo’s new life was revealed by the New York Daily News.

He was living in a gated mansion in Houston, Texas, under the name “James Cabella”.

Far from living a crime-free life, Houston Police discovered Palermo was back running strip clubs, and claimed he was using them to operate drug dealing and prostitution out of.

That following month, Palermo put his Houston mansion up for sale, with a starting price of $4 million, but he struggled to sell.

Meanwhile, in late 2011, Palermo was sued by the former owner of one of his strip clubs, claiming he had only paid him $5,000 of the $1.3 million selling price.

Then, in March 2013, Palermo declared bankruptcy, but eventually sold his mansion for $2.85 million, three years later.