The boss Matteo Messina Denaro, the last leader of Cosa Nostra, is dead to the L'Aquila hospital after a long agony that lasted a few days. By Friday he had entered irreversible coma due to chronic intestinal obstruction.
Messina Denaro, 62 years old, had one severe form of colon cancer, diagnosed while he was still at large at the end of 2020. His illness was instrumental in his capture, as it attracted the attention of the authorities and the Carabinieri of the ROS together with the Palermo Prosecutor's Office. “You took me for my illness, without it you wouldn't have taken me” said the newly captured boss.
After his arrest, he underwent chemotherapy at the L'Aquila super prison, where he had a medical unit adjacent to his cell.
Messina Money had been arrested on January 16th, after evading arrest for over 30 years.
9 months of therapies and interventions
The boss's clinical picture had appeared critical from the beginning. A team of oncologists and nurses at the Abruzzo hospital constantly followed the patient. Over the course of 9 months of detention, the mafia boss of Castelvetrano suffered two surgeries due to cancer-related complications.
He never recovered from the last one, so much so that the doctors decided not to send him back to prison, but to treat him in a maximum security room in the hospital, treating him with pain therapy and then sedating him.
No therapeutic fury
Friday, following the wishes expressed in living will of the boss, who had refused aggressive therapy, the power was cut off and the boss was declared in an irreversible coma. In recent days, the health management of the ASL of L'Aquila has begun to plan the phases following the death of the boss, including the delivery of the body to the family, which is represented by Lorenza Guttadauro and Lorenza Alagna.
The last meeting with the family
Before losing consciousness, the boss had a meeting with some family members and he recognized his daughter Lorenza Alagna, born during his hiding and never before recognized. The girl who had had her first meeting with her father in prison in April, was present alongside her together with one of the mafia boss's sisters and her niece Lorenza Guttadauro, who is also the boss's defense lawyer, in the last days of her.
No to religious funerals
In the last will, found in a pizzino during the searches of the Ros, Messina Denaro wrote about not wanting a religious service because he believed they were conducted by sinful and corrupt individuals. “I reject any religious celebration because it is made up of unclean men who live in hatred and sin. If God exists then it is certain that he did not excommunicate me, precisely because he is God. The men who say they represent him excommunicated me. God forgives."
However, a religious function already declined bySicilian episcopate which he always has denied this ritual to the mafiosi. For reasons of public order, the Trapani police headquarters has planned a quick and discreet burial ceremony, probably at dawn, in the Castelvetrano cemetery. The family chapel is already ready to welcome the body of the boss, who will rest next to his father Francesco, known as "Don Ciccio" Messina Denaro, mafia boss of the province of Trapani in the late 80s, who died of a heart attack while on the run. The function will likely be recorded on video for investigative purposes.
Matteo Messina Denaro leaves still leaving many questions unanswered. On his head he carried several life sentences, inflicted for at least fourteen murders and massacres. However, until the end, he maintained that he had never been part of the mafia and that he had only learned of his existence through the newspapers. His only goal, he said, was to accumulate money.
The boss has kept his fortune a secret, refusing to reveal where he had hidden his money, how he had invested it and through whom. To the judge's question, he replied: “If I have something, I don't say it; that would be stupid." Secrets, therefore, destined to remain secrets.