The powerful godfather of the Sicilian mafia, Matteo Messina Denaro, captured in January after 30 years on the run, died in hospital in central Italy, the mayor of L’Aquila, where he was hospitalized, said on Monday.
The mayor of L’Aquila, in Abruzzo, a region east of Rome, Pierluigi Biondi, confirmed the death of the mafioso in hospital “following a worsening of his illness”, in a statement to the ANSA news agency which announced the news earlier.
Aged 61, Matteo Messina Denaro, who was one of the leaders of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, suffered from colon cancer for which he was treated while on the run. It was while going to a clinic in Palermo that the last great living Sicilian “capo”, wanted since 1993, was arrested.
This ruthless killer was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1992 assassination of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
After his arrest, he was transferred to a high-security prison in L’Aquila, where he continued to receive medical treatment.
In August, Messina Denaro was transferred to the detainee ward of the local hospital, where his condition had deteriorated in recent days.
This weekend, media reports announced that he had fallen into an “irreversible coma.” Doctors stopped feeding him and he asked not to be resuscitated, according to the press.
His arrest may have brought relief to his victims, but the mafia boss has always remained silent.
In interviews he has given since his arrest, Messina Denaro has even denied being a member of Cosa Nostra.
Funeral in preparation
After his disappearance in 1993, some thought he had gone abroad. He actually lived in a comfortable apartment near his hometown of Castelvetrano in western Sicily.
According to the residents of Campobello di Mazara, he went out in broad daylight to have a coffee at the local bar, order a pizza, do his shopping… He had false papers and pretended to be a doctor.
In 2015, prosecutor Teresa Principato estimated that if he had been able to evade the police for so long while traveling easily it was only because he was protected “at a very high level”, without however specifying the nature of this protection. “We have had confirmation of its presence in Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Austria,” she was surprised.
Daily life Corriere della Sera indicated that preparations were underway for his burial in the family vault, alongside his father, Don Ciccio.
The latter had been the head of the local mafia. He is said to have died of a heart attack while on the run, his body having been abandoned in the countryside, dressed for the funeral.
For years, investigators combed the Sicilian countryside for Messina Denaro, searching for hiding places and wiretapping her family members and friends.
It was by intercepting one of their conversations about the medical problems of a person suffering from cancer and eye problems that the investigators understood that it was the wanted mafia boss.
They used an Italian health system database to search for male patients with matching ages and medical histories and eventually stopped it.
In July, an Italian court sentenced him on appeal to life imprisonment for his role in the 1992 assassination of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
She thus confirmed the verdict pronounced in absentia in October 2020, when he was still on the run.