28-07-2025
Alarm in Sicily as sister of feared Mafia boss is released
The sister of Italy's most notorious mafia fugitive has been freed from prison and returned to her home town in Sicily, prompting concerns she could inherit the legacy of a man accused of 50 murders who once boasted he 'filled a cemetery' single-handed.
Matteo Messina Denaro, the brutal Cosa Nostra boss from Castelvetrano, was a key figure in the 1992 assassinations of the anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, as well as the kidnapping of an 11-year-old boy who was held for two years before being strangled and dissolved in acid.
For three decades he was Italy's most wanted man, running his empire from hiding with the help of a network of loyalists. He was arrested in January 2023 and died in prison eight months later . During his long fugitive years, family members helped run his criminal operations, smuggling handwritten instructions to businessmen, corrupt officials and clan leaders.
