Last night TMZ reported that Henry Hill, the mobster played by Ray Liotta in the 1990 movie "Goodfellas," died in Los Angeles. He was 69.



TMZ quoted Hill's girlfriend Lisa Caserta, who said he had been sick for a long time, and that his heart gave out.



Hill, an associate of the Lucchese crime family from Brooklyn, was
depicted in Nicholas Pileggi's 1986 book "Wiseguy," the basis for Martin
Scorcese's "Goodfellas."

One infamous Hill quote lifted from the book and featured in the
movie, which also starred Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and
Paul Sorvino:

"At the age of 12 my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a
wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better than being President of the United
States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world."

CBS News
today also quoted Caserta, Hill's partner and manager, as saying that
he "went out pretty peacefully, for a goodfella." She said he recently
suffered a heart attack.

After being arrested on drug charges in 1980, Hill entered the
witness protection program in exchange for his testimony against other
mafia figures as an FBI informant. Just a few years later he was
dismissed from the program, having racked up other drug arrests, as
Entertainment Weekly notes..