Mafia legend arrested after three decades on the run – here’s where he was caught

Italy’s police have arrested the Cosa Nostra mafia boss, who has been on the run for nearly three decades, prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said on Monday, CNN reported.

Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive since 1993 and Italy’s most wanted man, was detained while undergoing treatment at a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, de Lucia told the publication.

He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison in 1992 for his involvement in the murders of two anti-mafia prosecutors and was suspected of involvement in dozens of Mafia-related murders.

Messina Denaro was convicted of the deadly bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome in 1993 and the torture and murder of the young son of a mafia operative turned state witness overseeing the Cosa Nostra racketeering, illegal dumping, money laundering and drug dealing, BBC News reported.

He earned the nickname “Devil” and once said that he could “fill the graveyard” with his victims.

Messina Denaro is considered the head of the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra and has been on the run since 1993.

Despite avoiding the police for decades, Italian officials say he was still issuing commands as early as last year. pic.twitter.com/Dt8dBP8ull

— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 16, 2023

“We now know that Messina Denaro was treated for cancer, so she is quite ill,” University of Essex criminology professor Anna Sergi told BBC News.

“That’s why people say that someone in the underworld decided that he was no longer needed,” Sergi said.

“This means that he was probably still part of a structure in which there is an exchange of favors between the mafia and the state, and where a person can be abandoned in exchange for something,” she said.

According to BBC News, Messina Denaro is believed to have the full details and names of the participants in some of Cosa Nostra’s most notorious crimes.

Authorities arrested his mafia mentor and 23-year-old fugitive, Toto Riina, in 1993.