Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted murderer and high-ranking gangster in Sicilian Cosa Nostra who evaded capture for 30 years, has died in a hospital in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, where he had served maximum time. secure prison. He was 61.
Mr Messina Denaro was treated for cancer for years and fell into a coma that doctors said on Friday was irreversible. The Italian news agency ANSA reported early Monday that he had died.
Mr Messina Denaro was arrested in January while waiting to undergo chemotherapy at a private clinic in Palermo. He used a false identity and investigators discovered he was being treated for cancer when they found a piece of paper containing his medical history rolled up in the leg of a chair at his mother’s home in Castelvetrano, Sicily.
Because he wasn’t being treated under his real name, they used National Health Service data to identify and narrow down the number of patients with similar conditions.
Despite operating in the shadows, Mr. Messina Denaro topped Italy’s most wanted fugitives list for decades. His ability to confuse investigators during a persistent, if frustrating, mission to find him added to his aura of invincibility.
“La Cattura” (“The Capture”), a recently published book about the hunt for him written by Maurizio de Lucia, the chief prosecutor in Palermo, calls Mr. Messina Denaro “one of Italy’s greatest mysteries.” He was, Mr. De Lucia wrote, “the gangster who brought Cosa Nostra in Sicily into a new era, within a criminal system that unites many segments.”
In 2020, Mr. Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia for his role in the high-profile murders of two of Italy’s top anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, and for deadly bombings the following year in Milan, Rome . and Florence, which prosecutors say were part of a Cosa Nostra strategy against the state.
He was also given a life sentence for his involvement in the kidnapping and death of the 12-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat after the boy was strangled and his body dissolved in acid, and in the death of a police officer.
Lirio Abbate, an investigative journalist, has also written a book about Mr. Messina Denaro. In that book, “U Siccu,” published in 2020, Mr. Abbate said that Mr. Messina Denaro had confided to a friend that he could make “a cemetery” of all the people he had killed or had killed.
What little is known about Mr. Messina Denaro comes through the testimonies of mafia defectors and arrested gangsters, as well as from court records, police reports and rumors. Before his arrest, investigators had little information: a 1988 recording of his murder testimony and a handful of photos of him as a young man.
Nicknamed U Siccu (Sicilian for slim), Mr Messina Denaro is said to have had a taste for fast luxury cars which he could not indulge in for fear of being caught. According to an investigator, he was wearing a watch worth more than 30,000 euros (about $32,000) when he was arrested. Police also found designer clothes and expensive perfumes in his last hideout, an apartment in southwestern Sicily where Mr. Messina Denaro had been living under an assumed name for several years.
He told the investigators who caught him that he had spent the last few years living mostly out in the open, “a tree in the middle of a forest,” thinking he was less likely to be caught. If anyone knew he was Italy’s most wanted mafia boss, they wouldn’t have said a word to the authorities.
He was said to be a ‘fimminaru’ or playboy, and books and articles about him recounted his conquests in Italy and abroad. Some women paid a high price and ended up in prison for supporting his life as a fugitive. Mr. Abbate noted in his book that the philandering Mr. Messina Denaro had broken with the “family values of the traditional mafia.”
He is believed to have traveled extensively during his years on the run, establishing links with criminal groups in Europe and America. “He was everywhere and nowhere,” Attilio Bolzoni, a veteran Mafia reporter, wrote after the arrest. “A ghost.”
Mr. Messina Denaro had taken his place at the Cosa Nostra table when his father, who also had ties to the mafia, became a fugitive after his own legal troubles. In 1991, the son attended an infamous meeting where prosecutors believe the Sicilian mafia families decided to wage war against the central government by wrapping up the high-profile murders and bombings of the early 1990s.
His rise within the echelons of organized crime was made possible by his ties to the Corleonesi crime family, which was led by Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the so-called boss of all bosses, who is said to have regarded him as a son.
When a Mafia turncoat linked Mr. Messina Denaro to several murders in 1993, he went underground. But he maintained a tight grip on his territory, the western Sicilian province of Trapani, where he acquired assets in legitimate businesses including travel agencies, supermarkets and alternative energy companies.
He communicated with employees through letters and handwritten messages that he avoided writing personally and demanded that they be burned once read. Experts said he was protected by a large network of associates who feared and respected him, and by locals who looked the other way.
Hundreds of people who helped him avoid arrest or profited from his financial dealings have been jailed over the years, including friends, relatives and top business associates. Nearly €10 billion of his assets and shares in various companies and businesses seized over the years were just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to Mr De Lucia.
Piero Grasso, a former national anti-Mafia prosecutor, said Messina Denaro was “very loved, because he was considered a benefactor in his territory” – a dynamic that helps explain why he was able to remain under cover for so long.
By the time he was arrested, he had accrued several life sentences. He spent his last months in prison, in court and being treated for cancer. He was scheduled to attend a single-trial hearing this month.
Mr. Messina Denaro was born on April 26, 1962 in Castelvetrano, a rural town in western Sicily, the fourth of six children. His father, Francesco Messina Denaro, known as “don Ciccio,” was the boss of a local crime family and died in 1998 while on the run. His mother, Lorenza Santangelo, was a housewife.
He grew up on an estate belonging to a wealthy local family and attended a technical school in the area but did not complete high school, according to Mr. de Lucia’s book.
Information about survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. de Lucia wrote that during interrogations after his arrest, Mr. Messina Denaro had continued to deny that he was part of the mafia or took part in the killings.
Yet his violent streak started early.
“He was shooting at the age of 14,” Mr. Abbate wrote. “Killing at the age of 18. At the age of 31, he planted bombs in the north. This is what we know about him, a boy with undeniable criminal skills.”
However, Mr. Messina Denaro maintained his innocence to the end; during an interrogation in February he described himself as a “stateless farmer.” “I used to work in the countryside,” he said, lamenting that he had lost his place of residence and his property. “I had possessions, but you took them all away.”