Italian Carabinieri ROS arrested fugitive mafiosi Matteo Messina Denaro, aka ‘The Devil,’ inside a bar in Palermo, Sicily on Monday

Messina Denaro, 60, had fled to the bar after police swooped on a private hospital in Palermo where the wanted mafia boss had gone for a cancer check on Monday morning 

The mobster then fled on foot to a nearby bar

Messina Denaro, was sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino

He has been on the run for 30 years and was considered Sicily’s Cosa Nostra top boss even while a fugitive

Police in 2022 said Messina Denaro was still able to issue commands, running the mafia in the area around western Sicily, despite his long absence from public appearance

Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro’s 30-year bid to evade justice came to a dramatic end Monday after the Italian ‘Godfather’ was finally arrested, but not without one last attempt to outrun the law.
Messina Denaro, head of the notorious Cosa Nostra gang and nicknamed ‘The Devil’ following a string of brutal murders, was captured when armed police swarmed a private medical facility in Palermo, Sicily, where he was undergoing treatment.

The 60-year-old had tried to outrun the police officers on foot and pushed his way through a series of hospital doors – but he only made it as far as a bar that was part of the same building where he had been seeing doctors for colon cancer checks.
As the officers cornered the now frail mafia boss, Messina Denaro meekly gave them his name before they bundled him into a waiting black minivan in front of shocked patients and medical staff.

Images circulated today of the feared Mafia boss, who has not been seen in public for three decades, sitting in a police van wearing a brown leather shearling jacket, a white skull cap and his trademark tinted glasses shortly after his arrest. 
Denaro, who heinous record includes having a 12-year-old boy strangled and his body dissolved in acid, was taken to a secret location by police immediately after he was taken into custody.

A much feared trigger man who reportedly, once boasted he could ‘fill a cemetery’ with his victims, Messina Denaro was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.
For a mafia boss who evaded arrest for over 30 years, it was his frequent visits to a private clinic that led to his arrest.

Messina Denaro had been sitting in the private clinic waiting to see a doctor for colon cancer tests when he was surrounded and chased by a swarm of armed police officers.
A member of staff who asked to remain anonymous told local media: ‘He’d been coming here on and off for about a year. He’d had an operation a few months ago and was back for more tests and chemotherapy.
‘When I turned up for work this morning at 6am it was all quiet and then he arrived to do his Covid test.
‘A few minutes later a police officer wearing full body armor as if he was going to war came in and said he was looking for a patient.
‘He said to remain calm and that armed officers were on every floor of the clinic. We had no idea who he was or what his background was.
‘The guy actually managed to get out and ran into a local bar but they tracked him down and that’s when all hell broke loose.’

Messina Denaro, head of the notorious Cosa Nostra gang and nicknamed ‘The Devil’ following a string of brutal murders.
He was sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in 1992 in the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

The mafia boss, who comes from the small town of Castelvetrano in Sicily, also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed ten people the following year.
In another 1993 cold-blooded felony, Messina Denaro helped organize the kidnap of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo in an attempt to blackmail his father into not giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say.
Messina Denaro is believed to have become the ‘boss of bosses’ following the death of Salvatore ‘The Beast’ Riina in November 2022. Messina Denaro was the last of three longtime fugitive top-level mafia who had evaded capture. 

As news of his arrest spread across Palermo, local residents emerged to applaud and shake the hands of the Italian paramilitary police officers involved in the operation. 
The residents were seen cheering and wiping away tears as they felt a wave of relief that Messina Denaro, who had coordinated years of terror in Italy, had finally been detained.
Messina Denaro, who called himself Andrea Bonafede (meaning, ‘Goodfaith’), had tried to run from the private clinic and hide but was caught by the police officers.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as ‘a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the mafia’.
Messina Denaro faces multiple life sentences. He was sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in 1992 in the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. 
The mafia boss, who comes from the small town of Castelvetrano in Sicily, also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed ten people the following year.

The residents were seen cheering and wiping away tears as they felt a wave of relief that Messina Denaro, who had coordinated years of terror, had finally been detained.
In 1993, Messina Denaro helped organize the kidnap of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to blackmail his father into not giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say.
The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in a vat of acid.

Aftermath of mafia bombings in Italy in the1990s

Messina Denaro had been number one on Italy’s most-wanted list but the only known photo of him dated back to the early 1990. A new e-fit was created in 2014 with the help of an informant.
Police said in September 2022, that Messina Denaro was still able to issue commands around the running of the mafia in the area around the western Sicilian city of Trapani, his regional stronghold, despite his long disappearance.
In 2015, police discovered he was communicating with his closest collaborators via the pizzini system, where tiny, folded paper notes were left under a rock at a farm in Sicily. 

Messina Denaro also used a five-year-old girl, Attilio Fogazza’s young daughter, to run secret handwritten messages between himself and other mafia top dogs. 
Fogazza, who himself is on a murder charge, said in 2016 that Messina Denaro’s second-in-command Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Scimonelli approached his daughter to send the messages.
The right-hand man had taken his daughter for an ice cream and put the messages inside her jacket and backpack. 
The daughter and the rest of Fogazza’s family have been living in a secret location under police protection while he cooperates with the prosecutors as they attempt to bring down the ‘boss of bosses’ in the Italian mafia scene.    
Fogazza ran a car dealership in south-western Sicily and decided to collaborate with Palermo investigators after he was arrested last December for the murder of Salvatore Lombardo in 2009, who was killed after he stole a van from Scimonelli.
‘One day my daughter said Uncle Mimmo had taken her for a gelato and put the messages inside her jacket and her backpack,’ Fogazza told prosecutors in Palermo.
Messina Denaro’s arrest on Monday came 30 years and a day after the January 15, 1993, capture of convicted ‘boss of bosses’ Salvatore Riina in a Palermo apartment after 23 years on the run.

Messina Denaro went into hiding in summer that year, as the Italian state waged a crackdown on the Sicilian crime syndicate following the murders of Falcone and Borsellino.
Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano set the record for the longest time on the run. He was captured in a farmhouse near Corleone, Sicily, in 2006 after 38 years as a fugitive.
Once Provenzano was in police hands, the hunt turned to Messina Denaro.
That all three top bosses were ultimately arrested in Sicily will not surprise Italy’s police and prosecutors. Police have long said that such bosses rely on contacts and the loyalty of fellow mobsters and family members to move them from hideout to hideout, supply basic essentials, and operate under a code of silence known as ‘omerta.’