'Boss of bosses', ‘last godfather’... Italian mafioso Matteo Messina Denaro dies after ‘in coma’ reports

The infamous Italian mafia figure Matteo Messina Denaro, who spent three decades evading capture, has passed away, media reports said on Monday (September 24). This comes after reports that the "boss of bosses" was in a coma and no longer being fed. The Italian police arrested the country’s most-wanted mafia boss in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, in January this year.At the age of 61, Messina Denaro was grappling with cancer when he was apprehended in January. His health deteriorated in recent weeks, leading to his transfer from a maximum-security prison in central Italy to a hospital.

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According to ANSA, Denaro had explicitly requested not to receive aggressive medical treatment. Subsequently, medical professionals ceased feeding him after he was deemed to be in an irreversible coma.

Convicted of heinous crimes

Throughout his criminal journey, Messina Denaro was convicted of numerous crimes, including his involvement in the planning of the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. It was part of a series of crimes that sent shockwaves across Italy and prompted a crackdown on the Sicilian mafia.

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He was also held responsible for bombings in Rome, Florence, and Milan in 1993 that claimed 10 lives, in addition to orchestrating the kidnapping of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo to dissuade the boy's father from testifying against the mafia. Tragically, the young boy was held captive for two years before being murdered.

'The Last Godfather'

Referred to by the Italian press as "the last Godfather," Messina Denaro was captured outside a private health clinic in Palermo, Sicily, on January 16. Leaked medical records revealed that he had undergone surgery for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022 under a fake name.

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Born in 1962 in Castelvetrano, southwestern Sicily, Messina Denaro followed in his father's footsteps, becoming involved in the mafia at a young age. By the age of 15, he was already carrying a gun, and he committed his first murder at 18.

In 1993, as informants began revealing details of his mafia activities, Messina Denaro went into hiding. However, investigators believed he rarely strayed far from Sicily. In 2022, he was thought to have spent much of his time in Campobello di Mazara, a town in western Sicily, near his mother's residence.

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