Henry Hill, Mobster Portrayed In 'Goodfellas,' Dies
Madalit Del Barco Reports
Henry Hill sits in the dining room of the Firefly restaurant in North Platte, Neb. in 2005. Nati Harnik /AP hide caption
Henry Hill sits in the dining room of the Firefly restaurant in North Platte, Neb. in 2005.
Nati Harnik /APHenry Hill, the mobster whose life became world famous after it was chronicled in the film Goodfellas, has died at a Los Angeles hospital after a long illness.
NPR's Mandalit Del Barco filed this obituary for our Newscast unit:
Madalit Del Barco Reports
"The story of Hill — how he worked for a New York mafia family, murdering enemies and burying bodies — was first chronicled in the book Wiseguy.
"The book became a movie in 1990, directed by Martin Scorcese.
"After turning into an informant, Hill spent more than a decade in the federal witness protection program.
"'For a lot of years I was the poster boy for the FBI,' Hill said last year in an interview with Lakeshore Public Radio. Hill said some of his former colleagues sought him out wanting to get into the entertainment business.
"'I probably had half a dozen guys come to me with scripts and treatments. Made guys. Made guys,' he said.
"Hill wrote his own memoir about his life as a made man in the mob and after."
Hill was 69. We'll leave you with a longer excerpt of that Lakeshore Public Radio interview; Hill was talking about a mob bust at the time: