On the run for decades, convicted Mafia boss Messina Denaro dies in hospital months after capture

By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Italian state radio says that Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted mastermind of some of the Sicilian Mafia’s most heinous slayings, has died in a hospital prison ward, months after being captured. When Messina Denaro was arrested in January, he had been Italy’s No. 1 fugitive for years. Investigators had discovered he was being treated for cancer while using an alias and surprised him when he showed up at a Palermo hospital for chemotherapy. Rai state radio said he died early on Monday in a heavily guarded prison ward of a hospital in L’Aquila in central Italy. Among the crimes he was convicted of were two bombings in 1992 that killed Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors.