Sicilian godfather Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run, is a ruthless assassin whose violence fuelled the bloody reputation of the Cosa Nostra Mafia.
“With the people I have killed myself, I could fill a cemetery,” he is said to have boasted.
The phrase is impossible to confirm but speaks to the legend that surrounds him.
Known as Diabolik, after an Italian comic character, he was the undisputed leader of the Cosa Nostra in the Trapani province of western Sicily.
But his power extended further, including to the capital Palermo, where he was arrested.
A fan of Rolex watches and designer clothes — as well as comicbooks and video games — he had a reputation as a playboy, and was once featured on an Italian magazine cover in dark glasses, looking like a rock star.
But his list of victims was long and his crimes horrific, not least the murder of the teenage son of a turncoat.
The boy was kidnapped and held captive for two years and his body then dissolved in acid.
Born on April 26, 1962, in Castelvetrano, in southwest Sicily, Messina Denaro grew up in the heart of organised crime.
His father, Don Ciccio, was the head of the local clan and his godfather, who attended his baptism, was also a member of the mob.
His first run-ins with the law began in 1989, when he took part in a bloody struggle between two clans.
– Ruthless –
He was accused that year of murdering Nicola Consales, a hotel owner who complained to an employee of always having “these little mafiosos under our feet”.
Unfortunately, the employee was Messina Denaro’s mistress.
In 1992, he was part of a mob group sent to Rome to try and kill anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.
The group was eventually recalled by Toto Riina, the Corleone boss dubbed “the Beast”, who decided on another approach. Falcone was murdered in a car bomb near Palermo on May 23, 1992.
Messina Denaro himself was ruthless throughout his career.
In July 1992, after taking part in the murder of Vincenzo Milazzo, the head of the rival Alcamo clan, he strangled the latter’s partner, who was three months pregnant.
The two bodies were buried in the countryside.
As head of the Castelvetrano clan, he was allied to the Corleonesi clan, who were immortalised in the legendary “The Godfather” films.
After Riina was arrested in January 1993, Messina Denaro continued his strategy of all-out terror, providing logistical support to bombings in Florence, Milan and Rome that year, which killed 10 people and wounded around 100.
In November 1993, a court later found, he was one of the organisers of the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, then 12, whose father had given testimony about the murder of Falcone.
In one of the most notorious Cosa Nostra incidents, the boy was held for 779 days before being strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
– Protected –
Messina Denaro had disappeared from public view in the summer of 1993, beginning…
