Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested on Monday 16 January 2023, at a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, after three decades on the run, Italian paramilitary police said.
Messina Denaro was captured at the clinic where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, said Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police force’s special operations squad.
He was the last of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for decades eluded capture.
The mafia boss was sentenced to life imprisonment, in absentia, for the massacres of 1992, which cost the lives of judges Falcone, Borsellino and Morvillo and the 8 police officers of the escorts Montinaro, Dicillo, Schifani, Loi, Cosina, Li Muli, Catalano and Traina, but also for the 1993 attacks in Milan, Florence and Rome. Believed to be responsible for dozens of murders, he killed little Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of the repentant Santino, by strangling him and dissolving him in acid after almost two years of captivity.
Matteo Messina Denaro died on Monday 16 January 2023 in a hospital prison ward, several months after being captured as Italy’s No. 1 fugitive and following decades on the run. The heavy police detail that had been guarding his hospital room moved to the hospital morgue, following the death of Messina Denaro at about 2 a.m. Doctors had said he had been in a coma since Friday.