 Nathan Barksdale, the former Baltimore gangster who inspired characters in "The Wire," died in a federal medical prison in North Carolina on Saturday. He was 54. His many books include "Legends of the Fall," which was made into a 1994 movie starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Barksdale presided over a lucrative heroin ring in the mid-1980s that authorities said controlled much of the drug traffic in now-demolished public housing such as the Lexington Terrace apartments and the George B. Murphy Homes. David Simon, who created "The Wire," said in 2014 that Barksdale did inspire aspects of certain characters, but was not specifically the basis for the Avon Barksdale character. He released a DVD that chronicled his life, in which he was interviewed by the actor Wood Harris, who played the Avon Barksdale character. "In real life he was one of the most notorious and resilient gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen," the narrator says. "He was a magnet for violence." In a series of on-camera interviews, Barksdale talks about his early days as a pickpocket in the projects and his progression into more violent crime. He was reportedly shot over 20 times and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee. Key characters on "The Wire," the gritty HBO drama set in Baltimore, included the drug kingpin Avon Barksdale and a dealer named "Bodie" Broadus. "There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," Simon said to the paper in 2013 
 
 "We mangled street and given names throughout 'The Wire' so that it was a general shout-out to the west-side players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character." The series did also feature a low-level dealer in the fictional Barksdale organization called "Bodie."
– Nathan "Bodie" Barksdale, the former Baltimore gangster who inspired characters in the HBO series The Wire, has died in a federal medical prison in North Carolina. He was 54. He was shot more than 20 times in his life and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee while running a heroin-dealing operation in Baltimore in the 1980s, but he died of natural causes on Saturday after a period of illness, a rep for the Baltimore City Health Department tells CNN. In a 2010 documentary on Barksdale's life, a narrator calls the ex-gangster "a magnet for violence" and "one of the most notorious and resilient gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen," per the Baltimore Sun. In 1985, he was convicted of torturing three people and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He later assisted an anti-violence program in Baltimore but was arrested again in 2014. He told a judge he was addicted to heroin and running a scam to get access to the drug. He was sentenced to four more years behind bars. "There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," The Wire creator David Simon said in 2014. "We mangled street and given names throughout The Wire so that it was a general shoutout to the Westside players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character." Characters on the show included drug kingpin Avon Barksdale and dealer "Bodie" Broadus.