After being hospitalized for more than a month, the former head of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, Matteo Messina Denaro, died this Monday, September 25, at the age of 61, authorities reported. The man, arrested last January after being on the run since 1993, died in the hospital in L’Aquila, in central Italy.
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The “last boss of bosses” was considered Matteo Messina Denaro, former boss of the Sicilian criminal organization, known as Cosa Nostra, who died in the early hours of Monday, September 25, in a hospital where he was hospitalized after suffering from a terminal illness.
Local media reported that Messina Denaro was suffering from colon cancer, a disease that took him out of the maximum security prison where he was being held. The man was transferred to a hospital on August 8, amid rigorous security procedures.
His last hours were spent accompanied by his sister Giovanna, his niece and lawyer Lorenza Guttadauro, and his only known legitimate daughter, Lorenza, 27 years old, whom he saw for the first time last April when she went to visit him in prison, according to broadcast by the EFE agency.
In August, Messina underwent surgery for an intestinal obstruction and the surgery was successful, but his health conditions entered a phase of “continual worsening” due to cancer. In the last few hours, he had entered an irreversible coma, doctors said.
The mafia boss had left a will in which he asked as his last wish that his life not be extended with machines or medical treatments.
His death shocks the entire world, because he was the only person who knew the darkest secrets of the criminal organization he led and now he takes them to the grave.
A life dedicated to crime
Messina Denaro was born in the city of Castelvetrano, in southwestern Sicily, in 1962. His family history was marked by crime and organized crime. His father, “Don Ciccio”, was also a mafia boss and led the Trapani mafia.
According to the Italian Police, at the age of 15, he already carried a weapon and at the age of 18, he committed his first murder.
Known as “U siccu” (which means “the thin one” in the Sicilian dialect) or “Diabolik”, because he liked the well-known thief from the famous comic, Matteo Messina Denaro played a notorious criminal role within Cosa Nostra, rising within the hierarchical positions of the organization.
On January 16, 2023, Messina was arrested after spending 30 years on the run from justice and becoming the most wanted Italian criminal, as well as one of the most dangerous in the world. The authorities had been investigating his whereabouts since 1993.
During his arrest and subsequent judicial process, he never collaborated with the authorities. “I will never regret it,” he declared at that time and adhered to his position until his death.
For more than 30 years he was sought after all over the world. He was located in Barcelona, where he would undergo eye surgery, and other trips were documented, but “the godfather” resided, at least in recent years, in Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, just eight kilometers from his hometown Castelvetrano, surrounded by people who covered him for years and by the “omerta”, the mafia silence, of the rest of the population, according to the EFE agency.
When he was arrested, along with him, several people around him who protected him also fell into the hands of Justice. Members of his family, like his sister, or citizens who took care of his needs for years.
Some crimes attributed to Messina
One of the latest judicial investigations accuses him of being the person who organized the attacks that caused the death of two anti-mafia magistrates in 1992, Paolo Borsellino and Giovani Falcone, his wife, Francesca Morvillo, and eight escort agents.
In his record, he accumulated several life sentences for dozens of murders, among them that of little Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of the collaborator of justice strangled and dissolved in acid after almost two years of captivity.
With EFE and Reuters
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