The sister of notorious Sicilian Mafia fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro has been freed from prison, sparking fears she will take control of his clan.
Patrizia Messina Denaro, 55, has long been considered the right-hand woman in the Borgata headed by her brother, who once claimed to have murdered enough people to fill a cemetery.
Messina Denaro was Italy’s most wanted man until his arrest in January 2023, which came 30 years and a day after the capture of the Mafia’s ‘boss of bosses’ Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, also after decades in hiding.
While on the run, he was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, including helping to plan, along with other Cosa Nostra bosses, a pair of 1992 bombings that killed Italy’s leading anti-Mafia prosecutors — Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
During those three decades on the run, Messina Denaro followed mafia tradition in communicating with relatives and affiliates via ‘pizzini’, small pieces of paper with orders and instructions, sometimes written in code.
Chief among them was said to be younger sister Patrizia, who was suspected of overseeing the secret communications network, maintaining contact between the boss and his underlings.
Notes found by investigators at the mob boss’s hideout included direct references to his sister, including sums of money for legal and personal expenses such as ‘4,500 Avv. Patrizia’ and ‘1,000 Pat’.
One investigator said of Patrizia: ‘To understand Matteo, you should meet his sister.
‘She is aggressive, determined and happy to use her surname to scare extortion victims. It was her first arrest, and although she didn’t say much, she was defiant and communicated with her eyes, which is a Sicilian thing.’
The eldest Messina Denaro sister, Rosalia, also fell under investigators’ spotlight during their quest to bring down the mob boss.
Rosalia was arrested in March 2023, and put on trial as prosecutors similarly accused her of covering up for her fugitive brother, managing his finances and helping him liaise with the outside world.
But she is still in jail, along with Messina Denaro’s nephew Francesco Guttadauro, leaving Patrizia as the clan’s natural successor.
Dubbed by the Italian press as ‘the last Godfather’, Messina Denaro is not believed to have given any information to the police after he was seized outside a private clinic in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
According to medical records leaked to the Italian media, he underwent surgery for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022 under a false name.
A doctor at the Palermo clinic told La Repubblica newspaper that Messina Denaro’s health had worsened significantly in the months leading up to his capture.
The son of a mafioso, Messina Denaro was born in the southwestern Sicilian town of Castelvetrano in 1962. He followed his father into the mob and at 15, was already carrying a gun. Police say he carried out his first killing when he was 18.
The Castelvetrano clan was allied to the Corleonesi, led by Riina, who became the undisputed ‘boss of bosses’ of the Sicilian mob, known as Cosa Nostra (Our Thing), thanks to his ruthless pursuit of power.
Nicknamed ‘U Siccu’ (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro became his protege and showed he could be just as pitiless as his master, picking up 20 life-prison terms in trials held in absentia for his role in an array of mob murders.
Messina Denaro went into hiding in 1993 as a growing number of turncoats started providing details of his role in the mob, but investigators believe he rarely wandered far from Sicily.
Police say he spent much of 2022 hiding in Campobello di Mazara, a town of about 11,000, a short drive from his mother’s house in western Sicily.
He never married, but was known to have had a number of lovers.
Messina Denaro wrote that he had a daughter, but had never met her. Italian media said the two saw each other after he was captured and that she had agreed to take his surname.
Despite his notoriety, prosecutors have always doubted that Messina Denaro became the Mafia ‘boss of bosses’, saying it was more likely that he was simply the head of Cosa Nostra in western Sicily.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
