Messina Denaro, like Diabolik, a 'ghost' boss for thirty years

"Sooner or later we'll catch him." This promise has been reiterated over the years by interior ministers, investigators, and magistrates in their determination to end Matteo Messina Denaro's fugitive status.

The last prominent Cosa Nostra figure, aged 60, was arrested on January 16, but had disappeared immediately after the arrest of Totò Riina thirty years ago. Meanwhile, as forensic investigators aged his youthful image, his vast financial empire was dismantled piece by piece and confiscated.

This led to the deterioration of his chain of protection and funding and exposed the myth of a godfather who had unlimited power but lived a ghost life, although this did not prevent him from becoming a father twice.

Everything is known about his daughter: her name, her mother, and the choices that led her to separate her life from the heavy shadow of a father she perhaps never knew. She spent her childhood and adolescence with her grandmother, and later moved in with her mother, trying to escape the stress of searches, checks, and police raids.

 Very little is known about his son Francesco, born between 2004 and 2005.

Very little is known about the other son, except for some information leaked from wiretaps: his name is Francesco, like the old head of the family, and he was born between 2004 and 2005 in the area between Castelvetrano and Partanna, where Matteo Messina Denaro built his criminal and economic empire.

A relentless playboy with Ray-Ban sunglasses

Messina Denaro's attention was always focused on managing his time as a fugitive and protecting it with a group of supporters.

Behind this faded image lie legends: a great seducer of women, a lover of Porsche cars and gold Rolex watches, a video game fanatic, and a devoted reader of comics, especially Diabolik, from which he took his nickname, along with one of the appellations used by his closest followers, "'U siccu," meaning "head of water," suggesting an inexhaustible flow beneath the surface.

With his nicknames, Matteo Messina Denaro embodies the dual nature of a mafia boss capable of balancing tradition and modernity. The godfather of Castelvetrano has always moved between criminal ferocity and political pragmatism, often considered the heir to Bernardo Provenzano and especially to his father, Don Ciccio, another traditional boss who died in hiding in 1998.

His disappearance dates back to 1993, five years before the investigations into the massacres of those years. Despite this, before being involved in these investigations, Messina Denaro managed to elude justice through clever maneuvers, managing to escape arrest.

A price of one and a half million euros was placed on his head, and investigators tightened their grip on him to arrest him. Not even his family members were spared: his sister Patrizia was arrested and accused of extortion, his brother Salvatore, his brothers-in-law and even a nephew were implicated. Many of these were identified as front men, often above suspicion, and suffered repeated asset seizures.

 "I've killed enough people to fill a cemetery."

The "ghost" of Messina Denaro had been the subject of numerous arrest warrants and life sentences for mafia association, murder, attacks, and possession and transportation of explosives. His involvement has been implicated in some of the most serious crimes of the last thirty years, beginning with the 1992 massacres that killed Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

He himself boasted of having "killed enough people to fill a cemetery." However, despite his reputation as a ruthless man, doubts began to arise about his true ability to rebuild the unified structure of Cosa Nostra after the arrests of Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, given the ongoing process of fragmentation. A boss who brought Cosa Nostra into the new millennium, but who ultimately failed to avoid the fate of the old godfathers.