Matteo Messina Denaro, the fugitive
Mafia superboss arrested a year ago after 30 years on the run
and who died of cancer last September, was stopped at a police
checkpoint seven years ago but was not recognised by the
Carabinieri who checked his ID, Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De
Lucia, the man who caught him, said Thursday.
Denaro was caught while leaving a clinic where he was being
treated for cancer in Palermo on January 16 2023.
He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62 after
his battle with cancer.
Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens
of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed
anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he was
convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old
son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and
dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious
sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt
40 more in 1993.
Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and
playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for
brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his
three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while
on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those
he had killed.
He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia",
not only around his fief at Trapani but also around Sicily,
Italian police have said.
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