One-time top Mafia fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro died in a hospital in L’Aquila on Monday aged 62. He was caught after 30 years on the run in a Palermo cancer clinic in mid-January.
Messina Denaro had been in hospital with advanced colon cancer for over a month. On Friday, he suffered significant bleeding and shortly after went into an irreversible coma. Doctors then suspended his nutrition.
Before losing consciousness Messina Denaro is reported to have met with family members, including the daughter Lorenza Alagna had in 1996 while on the run and never recognised.
She was at his deathbed together with one of his sisters and his niece Lorenza Guttadauro, who was also his defence lawyer.
Involved in dozens of murders
The Cosa Nostra superboss had been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders. They included the 1992 bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he has been condemned for the killing of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo. The young boy was the son of a mobster-turned-State witness. He was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996. Other crimes included bombings at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt 40 more in 1993.
Messina Denaro was idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma. He sealed his reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
The mafia boss once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed.
