Italian police on Monday arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country's most wanted mafia boss, who had spent 30 years on the run.
Messina Denaro is accused of being a ruthless killer whose violence characterized the bloody reputation of the Cosa Nostra mafia.
"With the people I have killed, I could fill a cemetery", he is said to have boasted, he writes Al Jazeera, the Telegraph reports.
The phrase is impossible to confirm, but speaks to the legend surrounding it.
Known as "Diabolik" after an Italian comic character, he was the undisputed leader of Cosa Nostra in the western Sicilian province of Trapani.
But his power extended further, including the capital of Sicily, Palermo, where he was arrested.
Messina Denaro is a fan of Rolex watches, designer clothes, comic books and video games and has a reputation as a playboy.
He once appeared on the cover of an Italian magazine wearing dark glasses, looking like a rock star, but his list of victims is long and the crimes he is accused of are horrific.
What is he accused of?
Born on April 26, 1962, in Castelvetrano in southwestern Sicily, Messina Denaro grew up in the heart of organized crime.
His father, Don Ciccio, was the head of the local clan - while his godfather, who attended his baptism, was also a member of the group.
His first clashes with the law began in 1989 when he took part in a bloody war between two clans.
He was charged that year with the murder of Nicola Consales, a hotel owner who complained to an employee that he always had "these little mobsters on his feet."
Unfortunately, the employee was the lady of Messina Denaro.
In 1992, he was part of a mafia group sent to Rome to try to kill the anti-mafia judge, Giovanni Falcone.
The group was eventually commanded by Toto Riina, the Corleone boss known as "The Beast", who decided on a different approach.
Falcone was killed in a car bomb near Palermo on May 23, 1992.
Messina Denaro himself was ruthless throughout his career.
In July 1992, after allegedly taking part in the murder of Vincenzo Milazzo, head of the rival Alcamo clan, he is accused of strangling his partner, who was three months pregnant.
Both bodies were buried in the village.
As head of the Castelvetrano clan, he was allied with the Corleonesi clan, which was 'immortalized' in The Godfather films.
After Riina was arrested in January 1993, investigators say Messina Denaro continued his strategy of brutality, providing logistical support for bombings in Florence, Milan and Rome that year - which killed 10 people and injured around 100 others. .
A court heard that in November 1993, he was one of the masterminds of the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, then 12, whose father had given evidence about Falcone's murder.
In one of Cosa Nostra's most notorious incidents, the boy was held for 779 days before he was drowned and his body dissolved in acid.
How did he elude capture for so long?
Messina Denaro disappeared from public view in mid-1993, beginning what would be 30 years on the run from charges including "mafia association", murder, theft and possession of explosives.
In 1994 and 1996, statements by mobsters who later acted as state's witnesses shed some light on his role within Cosa Nostra.
In 2000, after what is known as the Maxi trial against the Sicilian mafia in Trapani, which convicted hundreds of defendants, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment, Telegraph reports.
As a wanted man, Messina Denaro managed his affairs by communicating under the pseudonym "Alessio" through the "pizzini" system, in which coded messages were left on small pieces of paper.
His whereabouts and activities during that time were the subject of intense rumours, including that he had undergone plastic surgery to alter his appearance.
He had many sources of income, from drug trafficking to gambling, both in Italy and abroad.
In 2015, an Italian prosecutor searching for him, Teresa Principato, said he was likely to have evaded capture for so long because he was protected "at a very high level".
She did not say whether that meant Cosa Nostra, politicians or institutions.
"We have confirmation of his presence in Brazil, Spain, Britain, Austria," she told the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano at the time. "He travels on extremely high-level business and his return to Sicily is irregular and increasingly rare."
In 2020, some of Messina Denaro's associates were arrested, "shrinking" the net around the boss.
And in October of that year, he was again convicted in absentia for his role in Falcone's murder.
How was it caught?
Carabinieri General Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police force's special operations squad, said Messina Denaro's health helped investigators find and capture him.
The fugitive was taken into custody after being captured while at a medical center.
On the run for three decades, Italian police arrest the most wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro
"It all led up to today's date when he was supposed to come for some tests and treatment" at the clinic, Angelosanto said Monday.
Authorities did not say what he was being treated for, but he was taken into the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo, a medical facility with a reputation for treating cancer patients, and Italian media said he had been receiving treatment for a year.
During an evening press conference, authorities indicated that Messina Denaro's treatment may continue in a hospital prison ward.
Investigators said he was unarmed and dressed like a typical clinic patient, although he was wearing a watch worth at least 30,000 euros.
"He didn't resist at all," Carabinieri Colonel Lucio Arcidiacono told reporters. /Telegrafi/
