The 61 year old – responsible for heinous crimes that shocked Italy and the world and inspired The Godfather – had been suffering from cancer.
As Messina Denaro’s health had deteriorated in recent weeks, he was transferred from his maximum security prison to hospital.
The mafia don, who fronted up the notorious Sicilian “Cosa Nostra” group, once boasted to have murdered “enough people to fill a small cemetery.”
Following his reign of terror, he was convicted of numerous murders, bombings and attacks on other mafia groups and the civilian population.
The so-called “Boss of Bosses” was charged with the 1992 murders of two anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He was also responsible bomb attacks which killed ten people in Florence, Milan and Rome the following year.
On January 16 after decades on the run, Italy’s most wanted mobster was arrested during a daring police raid.
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