mafia

Designer clothing, luxury perfumes and a fridge full of food: the Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro did not lead an austere life in the period before his arrest. Or, in the words of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: even in the last moments of his hiding, ‘the boss’ did not give up the pomp and circumstance.

This emerged from a search of an apartment in the Sicilian village of Campobello di Mazara, where prosecutors believe Messina Denaro has lived in recent months. In addition to expensive items, researchers also found restaurant receipts, as well as erection pills and condoms.

“He didn’t exactly lead a monastic life,” concludes one of the accusers.

In contrast to the items found, Messina Denaro’s presumably last home was modest and simple, on the ground floor of an otherwise unremarkable apartment complex. A man who lives on the first floor of the building says about Messina Denaro that he has seen him a number of times. “I greeted him and nothing else. He responded warmly.”

Other neighbors also describe the mafia leader as a friendly person. “He was a gentleman who said good morning and good evening, he always greeted,” one of them tells The Republic.

No resident claims to have recognized Messina Denaro as the fugitive leader of the cosa nostra, the Sicilian branch of the mafia. The 60 year old caponicknamed ‘the skinny’, was arrested yesterday in a private clinic in the Sicilian capital Palermo, where he was being treated for liver cancer, among other things.

He was not there under his real name: Messina Denaro was registered in the hospital as ‘Andrea Bonafede’. That is not a made-up name, but that of an actual person, who has since been charged with complicity. Bonafede also owned the apartment where Messina Denaro allegedly lived for the past few months.

The Italian carabinieri suspected for a while that Messina Denaro used another name, but they did not know which one yet. That changed when they found out that he probably had cancer, including through telephone taps of people from his network.

The name of the mafia boss never came up in the tapped conversations, but it was clear to the police that the callers were talking about Messina Denaro in general terms.

A search through, among other things, the medical records of male liver cancer patients in the age of the mob boss eventually led the researchers to the name Andrea Bonafede. Using phone records and CCTV footage, they checked where the real Bonafede had been on the days he had been hospitalized according to his file.

It turned out that the man had been home all this time.

Yesterday, the day on which a new treatment of ‘Andrea Bonafede’ was scheduled, the carabinieri struck. At the hospital, Andrea indeed turned out to be Matteo. According to the police, there was a watch worth 35,000 euros on the wrist of the wanted mafia leader and he reportedly did not resist his arrest. “I’m Matteo Messina Denaro,” he allegedly said when an agent asked him what his name was.

This is what the arrest looked like:

The question remains how Messina Denaro, whom the Italian police had been looking for for thirty years, could remain under the radar for so long. In Campobello di Mazara, where several thousand people live, he could walk the streets undisturbed, according to the researchers. “He had a normal life, went to the supermarket,” one of them said today.

The mayor of the Sicilian village, who says he has never seen Messina Denaro, doubts whether the mafia boss could really walk the streets carefree. “I rather imagine he moved around in cars of people who helped him and provided cover.”

Chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, who was in charge of the arrest yesterday, also thinks that Messina Denaro has been protected by others because of his high position in the mafia. According to the prosecutor, the 60-year-old mafia boss, whom he describes as “vain”, estimated the risk of being caught despite his position as low.

Too low, as it turned out yesterday. Messina Denaro, who has been transferred to a high-security prison in the Abruzzo region, is facing a life sentence, which he was previously sentenced to in absentia.