By Steve Neavling
Convicted mobster Jerry Tillinghast, who wrote a book about his life after spending nearly 30 years in prison, has died.
He was 75.
The Providence Journal reports that Tillinghast had been battling several illnesses.
Tillinghast was an enforcer for the Patriarca crime family in the 1960s and 1970s and wreaked havoc in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He also was accused of participating in the infamous Bonded Vault heist in Providence in 1975.
He was later convicted of killing mob loan shark George Basmajian in 1978. He was arrested less than an hour later at a Providence bar.
When Tillinghast was 39 years old in 1985, he was stabbed in the neck in a maximum security prison.
In 2005, he was paroled.
While out of prison, Tillinghast wrote a book titled “Choices: You Make ‘em You Own ‘em” that was released in 2018.
