Global Courant
Former head of Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra died in a hospital in central Italy after falling into an ‘irreversible coma’, Italian media say.
Italian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was captured in January after 30 years on the run, has died, according to media reports.
The ANSA news agency said on Monday that 61-year-old Messina Denaro died at L’Aquila hospital in central Italy after falling into an “irreversible coma” over the weekend.
The former head of the Sicilian mafia of Cosa Nostra was seeking treatment for colon cancer at the time of his arrest. He was initially held in a high-security prison but was transferred to L’Aquila Hospital in recent weeks when his condition deteriorated.
Messina Denaro had not requested aggressive medical treatment, ANSA reported, adding that medics had stopped feeding him after he was declared to be in a coma.
Messina Denaro, the son of a mafioso, was born in 1962 in the southwestern Sicilian town of Castelvetrano. He followed his father into the crowd and was already carrying a gun at the age of 15.
Police say he committed his first murder when he was 18.
The Castelvetrano clan was allied with the Corleonesi, led by Salvatore ‘the Beast’ Riina, who became the undisputed ‘boss of bosses’ of Cosa Nostra thanks to his ruthless drive for power.
Messina Denaro, nicknamed ‘U Siccu’ or the Skinny, became Riina’s protégé and showed he could be as ruthless as his master, receiving twenty life sentences in trials held in absentia for his role in a series of mafias -murders.
These include the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – crimes that shocked Italy and prompted a crackdown on the Sicilian mafia, as well as the 1993 bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan that killed ten people .
Messina Denaro was also held responsible for the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, 12, in an attempt to stop the boy’s father from testifying against the mafia.
The boy was held captive for two years and then murdered.
Messina Denaro, dubbed “the last godfather” by the Italian press, once claimed to have killed enough people herself to fill a cemetery.
He went into hiding in 1993, when a growing number of defectors began giving details of his role in the mafia, but investigators believe he rarely strayed far from Sicily.
He was caught on January 16 in the Sicilian capital Palermo, outside a private clinic for cancer patients.
Police said they tracked down the former mafia boss after receiving a tip that he was ill. They eliminated other potential suspects of a similar age and condition, in part by checking the nation’s health care system database.
According to medical data leaked to Italian media, he underwent surgery for colon cancer under an assumed name in 2020 and 2022.
Messina Denaro never married, but he was known to have a number of lovers.
He wrote that he had a daughter, but had never met her.
Despite his fame, prosecutors have always doubted that Messina Denaro became the mafia’s “boss of bosses,” saying it was more likely that he was simply the head of Cosa Nostra in western Sicily.
