Matteo Messina Denaro liked designer clothes. He loved video games and had a taste for luxury foods. He was also a ruthless killer who once claimed to have murdered enough people to fill a cemetery.
“:”Italian investigators knew a lot of things about mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro. He liked wearing designer clothes, expensive sun glasses and Rolex watches, he loved video games and had a taste for luxury foods. He was also a ruthless killer who once claimed to have murdered enough people to fill a cemetery. What they didn’t know was where he was. But on Monday, after 30 years on the run, the most wanted mafioso in Italy was finally captured , seized in a private clinic in the Sicilian capital Palermo after police found out he was receiving treatment there for cancer. “It is a day of celebration when we can tell our children that the mafia can be beaten,” said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who flew straight to Sicily when news of the arrest broke, underlining the importance of the capture. Messina Denaro was born in the southwestern Sicilian town of Castelvetrano in 1962, the son of a mafioso. He followed his father into the mob and at 15 he was already carrying a gun. Police believe he carried out his first killing when he was 18. Anti-mafia author Roberto Saviano on trial for calling Italy PM a ‘bastard’ The Castelvetrano clan was allied to the Corleonesi, headed by Salvatore “the Beast” Riina, who became the undisputed “boss of bosses” thanks to his ruthless pursuit of power. Nicknamed “U Siccu” (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro became his protégé and showed he could be just as pitiless as his master, picking up 20 life prison terms in trials held in absentia for his role in an array of mob murders.
