[FC3] cron being killed off

[Harry Putnam]

I've seen no traffic here about this so maybe its a foible in local
config but something keeps killing off cron.  
It runs a while but next thing I know some regular jobs aren't
happening and checking shows:

  sudo service crond status
 Password:
  crond dead but pid file exists

What might cause this situation?

My F3T1 install is not fully updated due to the perl problem recently
but I see no update for cron related stuff.  At least nothing with
`cron' in the name.  A `yum list updates' doesn't show any.

Has anyone else seen this with FC3?