Nathan "Bodie"[1] Barksdale (1961[2] – February 13, 2016) was a Baltimore, Maryland, stick up kid dramatized in the HBO series The Wire, although the extent to which any of the show's characters or plot lines are based on his life is disputed.
[3] Barksdale's name appeared in the Baltimore Sun's 1987 series Easy Money: Anatomy of a Drug Empire,[3] written by David Simon, who went on to be the creator, executive producer, and head writer of The Wire.
[5] However, in his director's commentary to the first episode of The Wire, Simon says: "We tend to mix the names up … but it’s our kind of back-handed homage to the reality of West Baltimore.
In addition to the name and the boxing background, for example, in Easy Money, Simon claims that Marlow Bates and Timmirror Stanfield were rivals of Barksdale's.
In his later years, Barksdale worked for the city Health Department in Baltimore, in the Safe Streets program and counseled young people to help them avoid his mistakes.
However, during that time, the Baltimore Sun reports: "Barksdale said he had lapsed back into heroin addiction and had been running a scam to feed his habit.
"[1] In 2014, Barksdale was "ensnared in a Drug Enforcement Administration wiretap investigation", and after pleading guilty was convicted and sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison.