Former head of the Cosa Nostra Sicilian mob died in hospital in central Italy after slipping 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, in keeping with media stories.
The ANSA information company mentioned on Monday that Messina Denaro, 61, died within the L’Aquila Hospital in central Italy after slipping into an “irreversible coma” over the weekend.
The previous head of the Cosa Nostra Sicilian mob was in search of remedy for colon most cancers on the time of his arrest. He was initially held in a maximum-security jail however transferred to the L’Aquila Hospital in current weeks when his situation worsened.
Messina Denaro had requested no aggressive medical remedy, ANSA reported, including that medics had stopped feeding him after he was declared to be in a coma.
The son of a mafioso, Messina Denaro was born within the southwestern Sicilian city of Castelvetrano in 1962. He adopted his father into the mob and at 15, was already carrying a gun.
Police say he carried out his first killing when he was 18.
The Castelvetrano clan was allied to the Corleonesi, led by Salvatore “the Beast” Riina, who turned the undisputed “boss of bosses” of Cosa Nostra because of his ruthless pursuit of energy.
Nicknamed “U Siccu” or the Skinny One, Messina Denaro turned Riina’s protege and confirmed he could possibly be simply as pitiless as his grasp, selecting up 20 life jail phrases in trials held in absentia for his function in an array of mob murders.
These embrace the 1992 killings of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – crimes that shocked Italy and sparked a crackdown on the Sicilian mob, in addition to bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993 that killed 10 individuals.
Messina Denaro was additionally held chargeable for the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, 12, to attempt to dissuade the boy’s father from giving proof towards the mafia.
The boy was held for 2 years after which murdered.
Dubbed by the Italian press as “the final Godfather”, Messina Denaro himself as soon as claimed to have murdered sufficient individuals to fill a cemetery.
He went into hiding in 1993 as a rising variety of turncoats began offering particulars of his function within the mob, however investigators consider he not often wandered removed from Sicily.
He was caught in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, on January 16, exterior a personal clinic for most cancers sufferers.
Police mentioned they honed in on the previous mafia boss after receiving a tip that he was sick. They weeded out different potential suspects of an analogous age and situation, partly by checking the database of the nationwide well being system.
Based on medical information leaked to the Italian media, he underwent surgical procedure for colon most cancers in 2020 and 2022 beneath a false title.
Messina Denaro by no means married however was identified to have a lot of lovers.
He wrote that he had a daughter however had by no means met her.
Regardless of his notoriety, prosecutors have all the time doubted that Messina Denaro turned the Mafia “boss of bosses”, saying it was extra seemingly that he was merely the pinnacle of Cosa Nostra in western Sicily.