Playboy, gamer, godfather: Matteo Denaro, the last great boss of Cosa Nostra

In Italy, the head of the Cosa Nostra mafia group, Matteo Messina Denaro, who was called the Devil and the last godfather of Italy, has died. The head of Cosa Nostra died at the age of 61. During his lifetime, he received a life sentence in absentia for several murders, the 1993 Milan, Rome and Florence bombings, as well as other crimes.

Matteo Messina Denaro, nicknamed "Diabolik" (in honor of the anti-hero of a popular comic book in Italy), has been successfully hiding from the authorities since 1993. The representative of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra was the last "great boss" (capo dei capi) of this powerful criminal organization to remain at large and was ranked sixth on the list of the 10 most wanted criminals in the world.

Denaro's most notorious crimes are the murder of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, as well as the torture of an 11-year-old boy Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of mafioso Santino Di Matteo. According to Denaro himself, he could “fill a whole cemetery” with the bodies of his victims. In addition, the mafioso was involved in racketeering, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

Matteo Messina Denaro was born on April 26, 1962 in the city of Castelvetrano, in the province of Trapani, Sicily. From birth, the boy found himself in the family of the Sicilian mafia, because his own father Francesco was a mafioso, and then the head of the “family” of the Sicilian city of Castelvetrano. And the godfather of the future “godfather” was Antonino Marotta, a “man of honor.” And already at the age of 14, Matteo knew how to masterly handle weapons.

Matteo began his criminal career at the age of 18. He was officially listed as a bodyguard for the local D'Ali family, but in reality he was an "official on special assignments." Messina eliminated opponents of the D'Ali family, forced others to carry out their will, and carried out individual assignments related to money and real estate. During one assignment, he met Toto Riina, the leader of the Sicilian mafia.

For the first time, the “violent young man with the habits of a mafia boss” came to the attention of the carabinieri and the prosecutor’s office in 1989, when witnesses pointed to him as one of the participants in the bloody showdown between the Accardo and Ingoglia clans. And he committed his first proven crime in 1991, when, on his orders, Nicola Consalesa, the owner of the hotel, was killed. The businessman’s fault was that he complained to his employee (who was Messina’s mistress at that time) about the mafia from the Denaro clan.

Even in those days, Matteo stood out for his chic lifestyle, preferring expensive clothes, fashionable accessories and openly walking with his chosen ones through the streets of his hometown, which made him radically different from other representatives of Cosa Nostra. Another hobby of Diabolik, atypical for a mafioso of this rank, was computer games. They say that at his villa there were rare slot machines with his favorite “Donkey Kong 3” and “Seiken Densetsu 2” installed, on which he could “hang” for more than an hour.

In 1992, the future leader of Cosa Nostra participated in the murder of Vincenzo Milazzo, a competitor of his father and the head of the Alcamo gang. A few days after this, Matteo strangled Milazzo's companion Antonella Bonomo. She was three months pregnant.

Another of Denaro’s most brutal crimes was the murder of 12-year-old Sicilian Giuseppe Di Matteo. In 1993, a child was kidnapped by a group of criminals. They wanted to force the boy's father, Santino, a former mafioso who eventually began collaborating with the Italian authorities, to remain silent and not give up Cosa Nostra secrets. The child was held captive for 799 days. In 1996, he was strangled and his body was dissolved in acid.

Another murder - May 23, 1992. Five tons of TNT wiped out an armored car driving along the highway in Palermo. In the car was a 53-year-old Italian lawyer, official Giovanni Falcone, who became a symbol of the fight against the mafia. Together with him was his wife, who also worked as an investigator, and three bodyguards. No one survived. A crater four meters deep was formed at the site of the explosion.

Matteo Messina Denaro succeeded in the family business, building an illegal multi-billion dollar empire in the waste management, wind energy and retail sectors. He had a reputation as a Mafia playboy, ladies' man and lover of luxury, mainly expensive Porsche sports cars, Rolex Daytona watches, Ray Ban sunglasses and signature clothing from Giorgio Armani and Versace. According to rumors, he did not disdain cohabitation with underage girls.

Matteo's hedonistic lifestyle made him an idol and role model among young mafiosi and radically distinguishes him from such traditional Cosa Nostra leaders as Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and others who adhered to conservative family values.

During the 30 years that Mateo was on the run, he was very careful, and the carabinieri had practically no leads to his whereabouts. For some time it was believed that Denaro left Italy altogether and settled in one of the Latin American countries.

Despite the image of a “playboy,” Denaro was never married or had a family, but it was his love of love that became one of the reasons for his capture. One of his mistresses named Maria was arrested in the mid-90s for aiding the mafia and, thanks to a message found in her possession from the head of Cosa Nostra and two reply letters, it was possible to figure out that Diabolik was hiding near his hometown and had no intention of leaving native land.

It was then revealed that he needed regular medical care - the thunderstorm of businessmen suffered from severe myopia from birth, and also had kidney problems, which would sooner or later require regular hemodialysis.

As a result, the “boss of bosses” was arrested on January 16 in one of the private clinics in Palermo, where he had been undergoing anonymous treatment for a year under the fictitious name Andrea Bonafede (a common online pseudonym in Italy). Denaro was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he spent nine months in prison, much of it in the prison hospital, where he continued his treatment for cancer.

In August 2023, he was transferred from the maximum security prison in L'Aquila and admitted to the city hospital of San Salvatore because his health had deteriorated and was "incompatible" with the strict prison regime. The mafioso, suffering from colon cancer, was in a coma for the last days and died without regaining consciousness.

The mayor of L'Aquila, Pierluigi Biondi, confirmed Denaro's death. On the social network X (formerly Twitter), the head of the city called the death a mafioso

In addition to his own crimes, Denaro was also considered the final keeper of the secrets of the entire Cosa Nostra. According to many informants and prosecutors, he had information and names of people involved in several of the most notorious crimes of the mafia.