
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 1, 1993                   TAG: 9307010067
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`JIMMY THE WEASEL' DIES

Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno, a longtime Mafia hit man and mob boss before turning FBI informant with a contract on his own head, has died peacefully in his sleep. He was 79.

Fratianno, shoot-and-tell author and talk show regular, died Tuesday at his home in an undisclosed U.S. city where he was living under an assumed name, his wife, Jean Fratianno, told the Los Angeles Times.

Phoenix FBI Agent James F. Ahearn, who developed Fratianno as a government informant and witness, confirmed Fratianno's death Wednesday.

Fratianno said her husband had suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Ahearn, who had kept in touch with Fratianno and had seen him a few months ago, said Fratianno had suffered a series of strokes.

Fratianno, after spending much of his adult life in the mob, turned government witness in 1977, traveling the country to testify against fellow mobsters and becoming the highest-paid participant in the history of the federal witness protection program. For the most part, he was able to live quietly with his wife, whom he married shortly before getting out of the mob.

But his two books, "The Last Mafioso" and "Vengeance is Mine," brought him bursts of attention throughout his retirement, as did his occasional appearances on television talk shows and periodic attempts on his life. Both books were ghostwritten, and Fratianno claimed never to have read either of them.

Indicted in 1977 on charges related to the car-bombing murder of a Cleveland racketeer, Fratianno later told a jury he began considering testifying for the government out of fear for his safety.

In return for his testimony, he pleaded guilty to the charges but served just 21 months of his five-year sentence.

"They tell you when you come in, you come in alive and you go out dead," Fratianno said of his initiation into the Los Angeles branch of the mob in the late 1940s.

"I don't let stress bother me," he said in 1987. "I think that's very important in a man's life, in anybody's life. Stress will age you quicker than anything. And I just try to take it easy."

Keywords:
NEWS OBIT

by CNB