After undergoing two surgeries this year, his condition worsened in recent weeks, according to the Italian media. He was transferred from prison, where had been undergoing chemotherapy, to an inmates’ unit of the San Salvatore dell’Aquila hospital. Authorities said an autopsy would be ordered to confirm the cause of death.
“[It’s a] full stop to a story of violence and blood, pain and heroism,” Pierluigi Biondi, the mayor of L’Aquila, 72 miles northeast of Rome, tweeted Monday. “The epilogue to an existence lived without remorse or regrets, a painful chapter of recent history that we cannot erase.”
Messina Denaro’s January arrest was heralded as a symbolic victory in Italy’s long struggle against the mob, and brought Sicilians out into the streets, spontaneously cheering and applauding the Carabinieri police. Messina Denaro was said to lead the Cosa Nostra, perhaps the best known of Italy’s three major crime syndicates, which also include the Naples-based Camorra and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta. Depicted in “The Godfather” movies and seen as central to the bloody mafia wars of the 1970s and ’80s, the Cosa Nostra’s criminal empire ranges from drug trafficking to newer, more creative rackets, including attempts to profit from alternative energy generation.
Messina Denaro — who’d hung “Godfather” and “Joker” posters in his living room — was known as a master of deception. He had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments at the clinic where he was arrested for more than a year, authorities said during a news conference after his arrest.
Messina Denaro was said to have been involved in the kind of brazen attacks that helped create the mythology behind the modern Italian mafia — including the killings of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Prosecutors say he also helped organize the operation to kidnap the 11-year-old son of a Mafia turncoat. The child was eventually tortured and killed; his body was dissolved in acid.
During his detention, Messina Denaro had undergone two surgeries for cancer complications, according to the ANSA Italian news agency. He never fully recovered from the second and had been kept hospitalized instead of being returned to prison. He was being kept sedated and was being treated for intense pain.
Luciano Mutti, director of L’Aquila’s San Salvatore Hospital’s Oncology Unit, said Messina Denaro had seemed determined to fight the cancer.
His care, however, had been challenging at times, given tight security.
“We had prison guards around all the time, as well as the ‘normal’ police, law enforcement agencies of all sorts — even the army,” he said in a phone interview with The Washington Post. “It was a tad complicated.”
He said Messina Denaro had stage four cancer but had remained “respectful” to health care providers until the end.
“He was the kind of person who would apologize if he hadn’t shaved,” he said. “I think in their world they have rules that are foreign to us.”
He met with family members, and reportedly recognized a daughter he had previously disowned, bestowing her with his last name, before losing consciousness. In his living will, Messina Denaro had refused aggressive treatment, and his food was cut off as he slipped into a coma Friday. He died shortly before 2 a.m. Monday, ANSA said.
Pietro Grasso, an Italian anti-mafia magistrate and politician who served as president of the Italian Senate from 2013 to 2018, called Messina Denaro’s death the end of a “life full of violence, schemes, mysteries. ”
“He’s been an important figure in the bloodiest time of Sicilian mafia: He’s played an essential part in every phase of the massacres from the decision to the organization to the moment they were carried out,” Grasso wrote in a Facebook post. He noted that Messina Denaro, even as his health worsened, had declined to “give some solace” to victims by offering details of his crimes.
“Cosa Nostra. won’t end today,” Grasso wrote. “Cosa Nostra changes, evolves, transforms, but remains the main obstacle for a Sicily and Italy free from the shackles of violence, blackmail, poverty.”
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