Death in Prison

Top Italian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro died in custody just eight months after his arrest. Messina Denaro was transferred from his maximum security prison into a prison ward of a hospital where the 61-year-old slipped into an irreversible coma and died. At the time of his arrest, in January this year, he was being treated for colon cancer and his condition reportedly worsened since the arrest.

His death marks the last of the generation of the 1980s and 1990s Italian mafia bosses.

Who Was Matteo Messina Denaro

Messina Denaro had been on the run for thirty years as Italy’s most wanted man before he was captured in Sicily. He was a senior figure in the Cosa Nostra mafia, one of the most powerful Italian organised crime groups, aka Sicilian Mafia. The group, and Messina Denero specifically, were responsible for a number of high-profile killings, including senior state prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, during the 1990s. Messina Denaro was also involved in the planning of numerous deadly bombing in 1993 in Rome, Florence, and Milan.

Despite Cosa Nostra’s power eroding, Messina Denero since then lived thirty years on the run before his capture where he still held power within the criminal group.