By Crispian Balmer
ROME – Italian investigators knew a variety of issues about mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
He preferred carrying designer garments, costly solar glasses and Rolex watches, he beloved video video games and had a style for luxurious meals. He was additionally a ruthless killer who as soon as claimed to have murdered sufficient folks to fill a cemetery.
What they didn’t know was the place he was.
However on Monday, after 30 years on the run, probably the most needed mafioso in Italy was lastly captured, seized in a personal clinic within the Sicilian capital Palermo after police discovered he was receiving remedy there for most cancers.
“It's a day of celebration after we can inform our kids that the mafia could be crushed,” stated Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who flew straight to Sicily when information of the arrest broke, underlining the significance of the seize.
Messina Denaro was born within the southwestern Sicilian city of Castelvetrano in 1962, the son of a mafioso. He adopted his father into the mob and at 15 he was already carrying a gun. Police consider he carried out his first killing when he was 18.
The Castelvetrano clan was allied to the Corleonesi, headed by Salvatore “the Beast” Riina, who turned the undisputed “boss of bosses” because of his ruthless pursuit of energy.
Nicknamed “‘U Siccu” (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro turned his protege and confirmed he might 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.
Particulars of his crimes emerged within the many courtroom hearings.
Police say he was closely concerned within the planning of the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – crimes that shocked the nation and sparked a crackdown that led to Riina’s arrest in 1993.
He was additionally held answerable for subsequent bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993 that killed 10 folks in an apparently failed bid to drive the federal government to halt its struggle on the Sicilian mob, know as Cosa Nostra (Our Factor).
He was additionally discovered responsible of serving to organise 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 earlier than he was strangled and his physique dissolved in acid.
HOARDS OF MESSAGES
Messina Denaro went into hiding in 1993 as a rising variety of turncoats began offering particulars of his function within the mob. He communicated with different mafiosi through “pizzini”, small items of paper typically written in code distributed by messengers.
A mass of those notes was present in 2006 when police caught Bernardo Provenzano, who had led Cosa Nostra after Riina’s arrest. In a letter to a contact, Messina Denaro stated he couldn’t consider how careless Provenzano had been.
“After I obtain a letter, even from relations, I reply as rapidly as doable and instantly burn the one which arrived,” he wrote.
He by no means married, however was identified to have various lovers. Denaro wrote that he had a daughter, however had by no means met her. He's additionally believed to have a son, however little is thought about him.
As police repeatedly swept Sicily searching for clues about his whereabouts, extra correspondence emerged exhibiting they have been coping with somebody who noticed himself very otherwise to the way in which he was portrayed by his foes.
“I solely care about being a good man, I've made equity my philosophy of life and I hope to die a good man,” he wrote in a letter dated Feb. 1, 2005, present in an deserted hideout.
He quotes the bible and French author Daniel Pennac, amongst others, and laments the actual fact he had little formal training.
In an eavesdropped recording from jail, Riina is heard complaining about his one-time protege, apparently perturbed by information he was investing in wind farms and angered he hadn’t taken cost of the mafia, like he had.
“The one man who might do one thing as a result of he was straight… didn’t do something,” Riina informed a fellow inmate.
Regardless of his notoriety, prosecutors have at all times doubted that Messina Denaro turned the “boss of bosses” after Provenzano’s seize, saying it was extra seemingly that he was merely the top of Cosa Nostra in western Sicily.
Nonetheless, the actual fact he managed to flee arrest for therefore a few years confirmed he had a fierce, loyal following.
Whispers surfaced final yr that he was significantly ailing and prosecutors lastly appear to have situated him because of the actual fact he wanted common remedy at a Palermo clinic.
“We've not gained the struggle, we now have not defeated the mafia however this battle was a key battle to win, and it's a heavy blow to organised crime,” Prime Minister Meloni stated.
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