The name of Matteo Messina Denaro makes Sicilians shudder. For 30 years, the mob kingpin wielded great power and wreaked decades of terror that resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people, despite never being seen in public after going on the run in the early 1990s.
The mobster who once bragged that he could “fill a cemetery with their victims”He is accused of ordering a series of kidnappings, murders (including that of a young pregnant woman), and bombings in Florence, Milan, and Rome against mob enemies.
His list of victims was long and his crimes horrific, including the murder of a traitor’s son, a 12-year-old boy named Giuseppe Di Matteo, whose father had testified about Falcone’s murder. The child he was kidnapped and held captive for 779 days before being strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
Italy: Matteo Messina Denaro, the most wanted capo of the mafia, was arrested
The Sicilian godfather, who was arrested Monday after 30 years on the run, is a ruthless killer whose violence fueled the bloody reputation of the Cosa Nostra mafia. Known as “Diabolik” after an Italian comic character, he was the undisputed leader of the mafia in the western Sicilian province of Trapani, but his power extended further afield, including to the capital Palermo, where he was arrested after decades of searching
Born on April 26, 1962 in Castelvetrano, in southwestern Sicily, Messina Denaro grew up in the heart of organized crime. His father, Don Francesco Messina Denarohe was the head of the local clan and her godfather, who attended her baptism, was also a member of the mob.
The young man rose rapidly through the ranks, eventually following in his father’s footsteps to become the boss of Cosa Nostra, his first run-ins with the law beginning in 1989, when he was involved in a bloody fight between two clans. He was accused that year of murdering Nicola Consalesowner of a hotel who complained to an employee about always having “to these gangsters underfoot”. Obviously, the employee was Messina Denaro’s mistress.
In 1992, he was part of a mafia group sent to Rome to try to kill the anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. the group finally was called by Toto Riina, the chief of the Corleonesi nicknamed “the Beast”, who proposed another approach. Falcone was assassinated in a car bomb near Palermo on May 23, 1992. A year later, Messina Denaro murdered Vincenzo Milazzo, head of the rival Alcamo clan, and his girlfriend, a pregnant young woman whom he strangled. The two bodies were buried in the field.
As head of the Castelvetrano clan, he allied himself with the Corleonesi clan, who were immortalized in the legendary “Godfather” movies.
After Riina was arrested in January 1993, Messina Denaro continued his strategy of all-out terror, providing logistical support for bombings in Florence, Milan and Rome that year, which killed 10 people and injured around 100.
Messina Denaro was out of public view in the summer of 1993, beginning what would be 30 years on the run from suspicion that he had apparently disappeared mob association, murder, robbery and possession of explosives. In 1994 and 1996, the statements of mobsters told by official witnesses shed some light on his role within Cosa Nostra, and In 2000, after a maxi-trial against the Sicilian mafia in Trapani, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment.
During his decades as a wanted man, Messina Denaro managed his affairs by communicating under the pseudonym “Alessio” through the pizzini system, where messages are left on small pieces of paper. Her parade and her activities during that time were the subject of intense rumors, including that she underwent plastic surgery to render her appearance unrecognizable.
In 2015, an Italian prosecutor who was following him, Teresa Principato, said that she had probably evaded capture for so long because she was protected “at a very high level”, but he did not say if he was referring to the mafia, politicians or institutions. “We have confirmation of his presence in Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Austria. He travels on very high-level business, and his return to Sicily is irregular and increasingly rare,” he told the newspaper. Il Fatto Quotidiano.
The keys to the capture of the last godfather of the Italian mafia
The telephone interceptions of relatives, the crossing of data on cancer patients and a false name, allowed the arrest this Monday of Messina Denaro, in an operation coordinated by the anti-mafia judges of Sicily and a specialized group of carabinieri and police who led one of the hardest blows to the Sicilian mafia.
According to the magistrates and experts from the Ros police force, it will be “a traditional investigation.” For at least three months, the researchers analyzed the intercepted conversations with the relatives of the bloodthirsty godfather of Cosa Nostra, who had been a fugitive for 30 yearssince he was sentenced to life imprisonment for several murders.
Between hints and jokes and despite the fact that the relatives knew they were under control, the investigators came to the conclusion that the “godfather of Castelvetrano” was seriously ill and that he had been operated on twice in the Sicilian cities of Marsala and Palermo. One of the two operations was carried out in the middle of the covid, so the information was registered in the central office of the Ministry of Health that archives the data on cancer patients.
By comparing the information obtained, the researchers decide to study all the patients and the list is narrowed based on age, sex and location. In the end, among the suspicious names was Andrea Bonafede, nephew of one of his most faithful allies, but a detail betrayed “u Siccu”, the skinny one, as his friends call him, because the real Andrea Bonafede found himself in another place instead of being in the operating room.
When on January 16, under that name, he attended a chemotherapy session at the Maddalena clinic in Palermo, the agents and the military were waiting for him and blocked him without problem. He was not armed and did not object to the arrest. “What’s your name?” they asked. “I am Matteo Messina Denaro,” replied the last godfather of Cosa Nostra after turning himself in to the carabinieri.
ds
You may also like
