Matteo Messina Denaro, the infamous Italian Mafia figure who spent three decades escaping arrest, died Monday (September 24), according to media reports. This follows claims that the “boss of bosses” was in a coma and was not being fed. In January of this year, Italian authorities nabbed the country’s most sought mafia lord in Palermo, Sicily. Messina Denaro, 61, was being treated for cancer when he was caught in January. In recent weeks, his health deteriorated, prompting his relocation from a maximum-security jail in central Italy to a hospital.
Messina Denaro was convicted of various crimes throughout his life
According to ANSA, Denaro specifically requested that he not be subjected to severe medical treatment. After he was determined to be in an irreversible coma, medical personnel stopped feeding him. Messina Denaro was convicted of various crimes throughout his life including his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. It was one of a string of atrocities that shook Italy and triggered a crackdown on the Sicilian mafia.
He was also held responsible for the explosions that killed ten people in Rome, Florence, and Milan in 1993, as well as orchestrating the kidnapping of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo to prevent the boy’s father from testifying against the mafia. Sadly, the young child was imprisoned for two years before being murdered. Messina Denaro, known in the Italian press as “the last Godfather,” was apprehended outside a private health clinic in Palermo, Sicily, on January 16. According to leaked medical records, he had colon cancer surgery in 2020 and 2022 under a false name.