The rise and fall of Edwin Wilson, a former CIA agent and businessman who died Sept. 10 at 84, has all the makings of a spy thriller. The “ice-man” of the CIA, a nickname TIME reported in 1981, Wilson made a mint setting up businesses as covers for the agency’s dealings and was accused of arranging the killings of prosecutors, witnesses and his own wife. Convicted of shipping explosives to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and scheming to murder federal prosecutors in 1983, Wilson went from a life in luxurious villas to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. Then in 2003, Wilson obtained documents that proved he was working with the CIA when he sold the explosives to Libya. After 22 years in prison, he was released in 2004.
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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com