GANGLAND BABYLON: What arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro means for Mafia

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Giuseppe Di Matteo was snatched off a Sicilian street in 1993.

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Two years later, his mutilated body was found dissolved in a vat of acid. He had been strangled to death.

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Di Matteo was 12 years old and collateral damage of Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro’s quest to silence the boy’s turncoat father.

Last Monday morning in Palermo, Matteo Messina Denaro — on the run for the last 30 years — was finally arrested while being treated for colon cancer.

Denaro, now 60, once boasted that he had “filled graveyards” with the bodies of mobsters — and ordinary citizens — who he believed had crossed him.

“I’ve read that he is sick. Well, I hope that he has a long life so he can suffer for as long as possible, the same suffering he gave to my brother. An innocent child,” said Giuseppe Di Matteo’s brother, Nicola.

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“What we want to know now more than anything, is how he managed to stay undiscovered for 30 years. Maybe now the truth will emerge.”

Queens University professor and internationally renowned Mafia expert Antonio Nicaso told The Toronto Sun that Denaro’s arrest is not only important from a justice perspective, but a cultural one, as well.

“He was one of the world’s wanted men and responsible for at least 60 murders, probably many more,” Nicaso said, adding that in addition to the Di Matteo boy, Denaro also was responsible for the bombing murders of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

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Those brazen murders shocked the entire nation. He was tried and sentenced to life in jail in absentia in 2002 over numerous murders, including those of the prosecutors.

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“But how can a man be on the run for 30 years? Obviously, he was very connected and supported by the people of the town where he lived,” Nicaso said.

The longtime underworld watcher said for decades, Italian law enforcement believed they could break the back of the ubiquitous Mafia with spectacular arrests. Not so, Nicaso noted, calling Denaro’s arrest “socially profound.”

Nicaso and others described Denaro as a vain, pompous, arrogant man who loved the high life and had a stable of mistresses.

“He lived his life as an overindulgent nabob with beautiful clothes, watches and women … always surrounded by beautiful women,” the academic told the Sun.

Denaro grew up in the Mafia and reportedly notched his first gangland murder when he was just 14. This is the culture from which this monster emerged.

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“Denaro’s father ‘gave’ him to the godfather of godfathers, Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina,” said Cyprien d’Haese, who directed World’s Most Wanted, a documentary about the mobster.

“Riina had started a war inside the Cosa Nostra. He killed 3,000 people in several years. He was the most violent of all the godfathers. People say that the father of (Denaro) was not killed and to say thank you, he gave his son to Riina as somebody who would work for him. It was an offering — as if the father was a subject of the king.”

The Mafia has close relationships to all parts Italian society, but particularly the bourgeois, professionals, politicians and businessmen, Nicaso added.

“In Sicily, the Mafia is so deeply ingrained in society that it dominates its grey areas,” said Nicaso. “People concentrate on the ‘crime’ part of organized crime when they should be focusing on the ‘organized’ part. That is what the Mafia is all about.”

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Steadily, though, rival mobsters in the N’dragheta have eased the Sicilians to the sidelines in the global organized crime picture.

“Denaro’s arrest marks the closure of a chapter. He is the last of that old group. It’s too early to write the obituary of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. But this marks a big cultural revolution from outside the Mafia. People are less afraid,” Nicaso added.

Cops traced Denaro when they discovered he was sick and compiled a list of every patient in Italy with colon cancer. A name came up at the clinic in Palermo that was not on the list.

The man walking into the clinic matched a recent photo composite. He did not resist arrest.

And when a crowd in the Sicilian city recognized Denaro as he was being led away, they reportedly broke into applause and raised fists towards the sky.

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Denaro reportedly spent most of his three decades on the run in the western part of Sicily where he was protected, hiding out on small farms. But his weakness for women was almost his undoing.

“He took so many risks to see his girlfriend, Maria Mesi,” d’Haese told the New York Post.

“He was interested in her and she was in love with him. Her parents could do nothing about it. But the police found out and began shadowing Maria,” he added. “It took the police months to realize that they met in a flat in front of her flat — his hideout was just a few feet away from where she lived.”

But as the years came and went, Denaro’s once formidable power was ebbing, usurped by younger mobsters.

“When you are a ghost for 30 years, it’s difficult to say, ‘Hey, I am still the boss.’ In a way, that is the price he paid,” d’Haese told the Post.

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