Captured Matteo Messina Tenaro: How the Mafia Boss Hiding for Decades

For 30 years there was no trace of Matteo Messina Tenaro. A mafia boss accused of multiple murders seemed elusive until his capture earlier this week. How is that possible?

Living underground, under a false name, always on the run, coordinating the affairs of the mafia – this is the daily life of Matteo Messina Tenaro for the past 30 years. Meanwhile, more and more is being learned about what this life was really like.

Of course, Cosa Nostra’s last big boss changed housing and may have acquired aliases over the years. But it is doubtful whether he left his Sicilian homeland so backward. Better yet, experts suspect he left the area for business trips and vacations, and finally arrived on January 16. Arrest that.

Italian investigators found a house in the small town of Campobello di Mazara, not far from his Sicilian birthplace of Castelvetrano in the province of Trapani, which was his last residence. This confirms Giacomo di Girolamo’s assessment. The British “Guardian” quotes the author of Messina Tenaro’s biography, “The Invisible,” as saying: “If you ask where Matteo Messina Tenaro is, people will tell you that he is dead or that he is in the province of Trapani.” He was not one of the Mafiosi who went to Brazil or Northern Europe. “He did not have to build a bunker like the heads of the ‘Entrangetta in Calabria. He was protected in his territory.” The last godfather did not leave his home country in these years, tweeted journalist, writer and anti-Mafia activist Roberto Saviano, who himself is hunted by the Neapolitan Camorra and lives under constant police protection: “Like all bosses, he stayed. Exactly where, everyone knows, there to be seen. “

This computer-generated image in 2006 gave new impetus to the search for the Messina Tenaro.

(Photo: Image Alliance / IPA)

In the 60-year-old’s apartment on Via Tocelli, investigators secured expensive clothes, watches and other luxury items such as perfumes. No weapons were found in the two-storey building, but some documents, bank records and telephones were found, although papers were also removed before police arrived.

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For luxury and comfort

Born on April 26, 1962 in Castelvetrano, a small town in western Sicily, Messina Tenaro, who lived for the last time under the name Andrea Bonafede, exaggerated the lifestyle of his homeland and the comforts of his power. After the arrest, the Italian media gleefully recorded the elegant clothes worn by the mafia boss: a fur jacket lined with Brunello Cucinelli, trousers and boots in the same color, a python belt and a 36,000 euro Franc Muller watch on his wrist.

At the clinic where he was treated for cancer for at least a year, the staff were taken with a cultured and “polite man”. Mr. Bonafette was operated on and cared for there, and has since returned for follow-up care. Sometimes he brought gifts to doctors, nurses or other patients. He was also allegedly in possession of an official identity card and a tax number for false identification. Either way, no one would think there was anything wrong with him.

One almost forgets that behind this facade hides a cynical and dishonest man. So, next to the image of a handsome, old man, there is an image of a brutal mafia boss who has no value for individual human life. “You could build a grave with all the people I’ve killed,” he once told a friend.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment for dozens of crimes. Among them are brutal deeds: the man allegedly organized the bombings of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Porcellino in 1992, in which two mafia hunters and several comrades died. He also allegedly helped plan the kidnapping of little Giuseppe Di Matteo: the boy was held by Cosa Nostra for more than two years from November 1993 in different locations and in inhumane conditions. The mafia wanted to force his father not to testify in court. 779 days later, mafiosi strangled the boy before his 15th birthday and dissolved his body in acid. Italy was shocked by such a horrible incident.

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An entire network

Within the Mafia, these actions, however perverse they may seem, create a level of respect and fear that earns a boss. Messina Tenaro was able to draw a network of friendships and dependencies underground. According to mafia experts, this network includes not only members of the mafia or childhood friends and neighbors, but also presumably representatives of “respectable Italian society”.

Messina opened up new business areas for the Tenaro Mafia, for example renewable energies. Mafia funds flowed into Sicilian windmills. The name of entrepreneur Vito Nicastri continues to come up in this context, but he denies any links to the Mafia and was recently acquitted of a case involving the transfer of funds to Messina Tenaro. The other is from real estate tycoon Giuseppe Grigoli. When he was targeted by the judiciary, around 700 million euros in assets were seized. Also, the names of tourism entrepreneurs who run luxury resorts and golf courses not only in Italy are mentioned. So Massimo Tenaro should not have been short of shelter and money.

It is unfathomable that he could be arrested like that now. After 30 years of running. It has been speculated that the Messina denarius may have lost power and influence. Perhaps as a result of his cancer. A 60-year-old man’s medical examination revealed that his colon cancer was already well advanced. “His health is bad,” Vittorio Gebbia, head of oncology at the Maddalena Clinic in Palermo, told Italian newspaper “La Repubblica.” Maybe he was tired of playing hide and seek.

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