Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: May 17, 1997


Mr. Fox, who retired from the F.B.I. after 31 years in 1994 and was an executive vice president for the Mutual of America Life Insurance Company, became ill on May 9 at the office, his assistant, Marie Aleman, said. He died of complications from sepsis, according to a statement from his family.

Mr. Fox built his career tracking down Chinese and Russian spies in San Francisco and Chicago, but it was the World Trade Center investigation in 1993 that thrust Mr. Fox onto the national stage.

Affable and avuncular, Mr. Fox appeared regularly on television , explaining the progress of the investigation. ''The whole world was watching, and the whole world was reassured by him,'' said Raymond Kelly, the New York City Police Commissioner who worked with Mr. Fox after the bombing. ''He really did break the biggest terrorist case to reach America.''

As for Mr. Gotti, the crime boss was legendary for eluding conviction and won the nickname the ''Teflon don.'' In 1992, Mr. Gotti was finally found guilty of murder, racketeering and other charges after Mr. Fox's agents secretly recorded him at his headquarters in the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy and also persuaded Mr. Gotti's chief lieutenant, Salvatore Gravano, to testify against him.

On the day of the conviction, Mr. Fox proclaimed, ''The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro, and all the charges stuck.''

Mr. Fox was a master of the sound bite: ''Another day, another don,'' he said after another Mafia figure was arrested in 1993.

James Monroe Fox was born in Chicago. His father was a bus driver and his mother a factory worker. He said was a bus driver and his mother a factory worker. He said his father named him after Jimmy Foxx, the baseball star of the 1930's and 40's. After attending Augustana College, he received his law degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana. He did not take the bar exam, though, and joined the F.B.I. in 1963.

Early in his career, Mr. Fox, who studied Chinese and became fluent in Mandarin, did counterintelligence work in Chicago's Chinatown, then tracked Soviet spies. His personality served him well, colleagues said. ''Jim was great at getting into people's minds, winning people over, developing sources; he knew how to approach them, talk to them,'' said Richard F. Green, a retired F.B.I. agent who worked for Mr. Fox on the ''Russian squad'' and remained a friend for 25 years.

In 1975, he moved to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, where he worked in the Soviet and antiterrorist sections. From 1977 to 1982, he served in San Francisco, and in 1984 oversaw the F.B.I.'s security operations at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In 1987, the F.B.I. director, William Sessions, named Mr. Fox to head the New York office.

He ran the office for six often turbulent years and received praise internally for his leadership skills. ''He was certainly somebody who brought a lot of order to something that was at least initially very chaotic,'' said Lewis Schiliro, who heads the F.B.I.'s criminal division here. ''He tended to have a very calming influence on things.''

His public presence endeared him to his staff as well because ''he was a good communicator of their accomplishments to the outside world, and that was important,'' said James K. Kallstrom, who now heads the F.B.I.'s New York office.

Mr. Fox was a popular figure in Manhattan. At Hurley's, a restaurant in Rockefeller Center, , he would sit at a table near the windows and bang on them whenever he saw someone he recognized on the street. ''Jim could not go anywhere without having friends meeting him, or knowing him or striking up conversations,'' said the owner, Adrien Barbey.

Mr. Fox's willingness to make himself available to the press backfired in late December 1993. Just weeks before his scheduled retirement, Mr. Fox was suspended by the F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh, for what the F.B.I. called ''inappropriate comments'' about ''a pending prosecution.'' Mr. Fox had given a televised interview about the bombing at a time when a judge in the trial of 15 men who were charged with plotting to blow up the center had ordered officials involved to maintain silence.

Mr. Fox was devastated by the action, his friends say, and he received support from close to 1,000 friends and associates at a retirement dinner the next month.

Ed Kenney, an F.B.I. agent who later joined Mutual of America, said Mr. Fox kept on his office wall a passage he heard from his own father: . ''My father always told me, 'Find a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life.' ''

A memorial service is set for Wednesday at 10:30 A.M. in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church at 7 West 55th Street in Manhattan.

Mr. Fox is survived by his wife, Elaine, of Carmel Valley, Calif.; two daughters, Tracey, of Sacramento, and Sandy, of Kennewick, Wash.; a sister, Pat Owsley of Shelbyville, Ill., and two grandsons.

Photo: James M. Fox (Steve Berman)