Jimmy Chagra; Smuggler Linked to Judge's Death

According to court testimony, Mr. Chagra was in a Las Vegas casino before the trial and was brazenly complaining about Wood when someone pointed out Harrelson as a known hit man. Mr. Chagra, according to Cartwright, followed Harrelson into the men's room and offered him $250,000 to kill the judge.

Mr. Chagra initially denied involvement, but in July 1979 he told his brother Joe in a conversation the FBI taped that he had hired Harrelson to do the job.

Three months after Wood's slaying, Mr. Chagra was convicted on charges of operating a continuing criminal enterprise. Afterward, he skipped out on a $40,000 bond and became a fugitive for about six months. A month later, he was sentenced to 30 years on drug charges.

He was freed on parole in 2003 and was widely believed to have been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Mr. Chagra's sister, Patsy Chagra of El Paso, said in a phone conversation yesterday that he was not in the witness protection program at the time of his death. El Paso writer Richard Baron told the Associated Press that Mr. Chagra was living under the name James Madrid at a trailer camp in Mesa.

Survivors include seven children, Patsy Chagra said, but she did not know their last names.

Mr. Chagra's third wife, Elizabeth, was found guilty of delivering $250,000 to Harrelson to kill Wood. She was sentenced to 30 years and died in prison in 1997 of ovarian cancer.

His brother Joe was killed in a car crash in 1996.

"We were a good family -- that's what people forget," Joe Chagra told Cartwright shortly before his death. "But the real downfall of our family was the money. You can't know what it does until it happens to you . . . until everyone is chin-deep in millions."