Wanted for three decades by all the police forces in Italythe powerful godfather of Sicilian Mafia Matteo Messina Denarowhere he died in prison at the age of 61, he was a ruthless killerits last representative old guard of Cosa Nostra.

“With the people I have killed with my own hands, I could fill a graveyard”this gun enthusiast had bragged to a friend, according to his statements published in Italian press, which built the image of this murderer who committed his first homicide at the age of 18.

It was called Diabolikfrom his name criminal protagonist of a well-known Italian comic of which he himself was a fan. He was sentenced to six life sentences and was the undisputed leader of Cosa Nostra in the Trapani province of western Sicily, although his authority extended as far as Palermo.

Born on April 26, 1962 in Castelvetrano, he has been immersed in organized crime since his childhood: his father, Don Cicho, is the leader of the local gang and is esteemed by the “capo dei capi” Salvatote (Toto) Riina (1930 -2017), of Corleone’s boss, the so-called “beast” for his stiffness. Mateo will also form close ties with Toto Riina.

In 1992, he is in the group of executors whom Toto Riina sends to Rome to assassinate the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. Eventually, the team is called off and Riina will carjack Falcone on May 23 near Palermo.

This important decision is taken with the consent of the other godparents, among them O Messina Denaro, who in 2020 will be sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for his involvement in the murder.

Denaro’s austerity has nothing to envy Toto Riina: in July 1992, after participating in the murder of Vincenzo Milazzo, leader of the Alcamo faction, he also strangles his wife, three months pregnant.

Along with the biographies of Putin and Hitler

As faction leader of Castelvetrano, this myopic man with thick glasses is the staunch ally of the Corleonesi faction, where went down in cinema history with the movie “The Godfather”led by Toto Riina, in its bloody war against the Italian State.

After Riina’s arrest in January 1993, Messina Denaro continues the strategy of absolute terroroffering practical support to the organization at the same time of the attacks in Florence, Milan and Rome, with ten dead and around a hundred injured.

“He was the last to implement Cosa Nostra’s strategy of violence and attacks (…) and the murder of Falcone and Borcellino. He belonged to the leadership group that decided all these murders,” explained Roberto Saviano, a Neapolitan journalist and author specializing in the Mafia, at the time of his arrest.

Faced with a minefield of judicial investigations for organization and gang within the Mafia and a long series of murders, Denaro disappears in the summer of 1993 and continues to run his crime empire from the shadows.

In November 1993, he is one of the organizers of the kidnapping of little Giuseppe Di Matteo, to pressure Santino’s father to recant his testimony about the murder of Judge Falcone. After being held hostage for 779 days, Diabolik and Co. give her up order to kill the 12-year-old child by strangulation. His body then dissolves into acid.

In 1994 and 1996the depositions of repentant mobsters allow his role in Cosa Nostra to be clarified. In 2000, after the colossus trial against the Omega brand Mafia in Trapani, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment.

During the years he was wanted by all the Italian police, he managed his affairs through the pizzini, of the short messages written on slips of paper that mobsters love so much. In addition to the biographies of Putin and Hitler, paraphernalia from the movie “The Godfather” were found in his hideout, such as an Al Pacino poster, a tape with Marlon Brando and another with a mobster smoking and the phrase “The Godfather is I”.

In 2015, prosecutor Teresa Principato said the fact that he was on the run from the police for so long and could move easily was because he enjoyed protection “at a very high level. But he did not elaborate on the type of that protection. “We had confirmation of his presence in Brazil, Spain, Britain, Austria…”the prosecutor had declared in surprise.

His fortune from the drug trade, gambling, and renewable energy sources is valued by Italian media at several billion euros.