Mafia Informant `Jimmy The Weasel' Had Fingered Numerous Mobsters

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

Fratianno, who became a talk-show regular, died Tuesday at his home in an undisclosed U.S. city where he was living under an assumed name, said his wife, Jean Fratianno. Phoenix FBI agent James Ahearn, who developed Fratianno as a government informant and witness, confirmed Fratianno's death yesterday.

The Italy-born 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.

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

"I thought that if I fight these cases and beat them, I'll get killed," said Fratianno, who had claimed the mob he called La Cosa Nostra had a $100,000 contract out on him.

In the 1980 trial that led to the racketeering convictions of five reputed Mafia figures, Fratianno casually admitted, as part of his graphic description of his 32 years in the mob, that he had committed five murders and participated in six others.

Life in retirement did not always go smoothly for the man who had once gambled in Las Vegas with Bugsy Siegel, lunched in Los Angeles with civic leaders and cavorted with fellow mobsters on the Sunset Strip.

He sued his hand-picked biographer of his first book, "The Last Mafioso," saying it contained false quotes. He blamed the second, "Vengeance Is Mine," for his being dropped from the witness program's payroll in 1987.

The Justice Department, noting it had spent nearly $1 million on the Fratiannos in 10 years, said any further payments might make the witness-protection program appear to be a "pension fund for aging mobsters