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Matteo Messina Denaro

Matteo Messina Denaro (26 April 1962-25 September 2023) was a Sicilian mob boss and the head of the Sicilian Mafia in the Province of Trapani from 1998 to 2023, succeeding Vincenzo Virga.

Biography[]

Matteo Messina Denaro was born in Castelvetrano, Sicily, Italy in 1962, the son of local Mafia boss Francesco Messina Denaro. Matteo learned to use a gun at 14, murdering rival boss Vincenzo Milazzo and strangling his pregnant girlfriend to death. He became known as a ruthless playboy and womanizer who drove a Porsche sports car and wore a Rolex watch, Ray Ban sunglasses, and Armani and Versace clothing. In 1998, he became the local boss of Castelvetrano, and he took over the Mafia in the Province of Trapani on Vincenzo Virga's arrest in 2001. He consolidated Trapani's 20 Mafia families and 900 men into one organization under his control, making it Sicily's second most-powerful Mafia family after the Palermo clan. He played a prominent role in the terror campaigns of the 1990s, including bombings in 1993, for which he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in 2002. On Bernardo Provenzano's arrest in 2006, Messina Denaro struggled against Salvatore Lo Piccolo and Domenico Raccuglia to become Provenzano's successor. Lo Piccolo was arrested in 2007 and Raccuglia in 2009. In October 2021, Italian authorities launched a manhunt across Sicily, and Messina Denaro was arrested on 16 January 2023, exactly 30 years after Salvatore Riina's arrest. 100 soldiers arrested Messina Denaro as he visited a private clinic in Palermo for chemotherapy. He died of cancer in September 2023.

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