The sister of notorious Sicilian Mafia fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro has been free of prison, sparking fears she is going to take control of his clan.
Patrizia Messina Denaro, 55, has long been considered the right-hand woman within 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 got here 30 years and a day after the capture of the Mafia’s ‘boss of bosses’ Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, also after many years in hiding.
While on the run, he was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, including helping to plan, together 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 many years on the run, Messina Denaro followed mafia tradition in communicating with relatives and affiliates via ‘pizzini’, small pieces of paper with orders and directions, sometimes written in code.
Chief amongst them was said to be younger sister Patrizia, who was suspected of overseeing the key communications network, maintaining contact between the boss and his underlings.
Notes found by investigators on the mob boss’s hideout included direct references to his sister, including sums of cash for legal and private expenses resembling ‘4,500 Avv. Patrizia’ and ‘1,000 Pat’.
One investigator said of Patrizia: ‘To grasp Matteo, it’s best to meet his sister.
‘She is aggressive, determined and completely happy to make use of her surname to scare extortion victims. It was her first arrest, and although she didn’t say much, she was defiant and communicated together with her eyes, which is a Sicilian thing.’
The eldest Messina Denaro sister, Rosalia, also fell under investigators’ highlight during their quest to bring down the mob boss.
Rosalia was arrested in March 2023, and placed on trial as prosecutors similarly accused her of covering up for her fugitive brother, managing his funds and helping him liaise with the skin world.
But she continues to be in jail, together with Messina Denaro’s nephew Francesco Guttadauro, leaving Patrizia because the clan’s natural successor.
Dubbed by the Italian press as ‘the last Godfather’, Messina Denaro shouldn’t be believed to have given any information to the police after he was seized outside a non-public clinic within the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
In response to medical records leaked to the Italian media, he underwent surgery for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022 under a false name.
A health care provider on the Palermo clinic told La Repubblica newspaper that Messina Denaro’s health had worsened significantly within the months leading as much as his capture.
The son of a mafioso, Messina Denaro was born within 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, generally known as Cosa Nostra (Our Thing), due to his ruthless pursuit of power.
Nicknamed ‘U Siccu’ (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro became his protege and showed he might 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 variety of turncoats began providing details of his role within the mob, but investigators consider he rarely wandered removed from Sicily.
Police say he spent much of 2022 hiding in Campobello di Mazara, a town of about 11,000, a brief drive from his mother’s house in western Sicily.
He never married, but was known to have had a variety of lovers.
Messina Denaro wrote that he had a daughter, but had never met her. Italian media said the 2 saw one another after he was captured and that she had agreed to take his surname.
Despite his notoriety, prosecutors have all the time doubted that Messina Denaro became the Mafia ‘boss of bosses’, saying it was more likely that he was simply the pinnacle of Cosa Nostra in western Sicily.
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