Matteo Messina Denaro, a 61-year-old mafia boss suspected of being one of the instigators of the massacres of Capaci on May 23, 1992, and Via D'Amelio on July 19, 1992, in which judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were murdered, passed away during the night. After thirty years of evading prosecution, he was apprehended by the carabinieri del Ros in Palermo on January 16, while en route to a private facility for chemotherapy. The Trapani mafia chief died in the San Salvatore hospital in L'Aquila, where he had been admitted for an operation on August 8. He'd been unconscious since Friday. He was heartbroken by the disease that had forced him to drastically alter his absconding in 2020. Considered one of the world's most dangerous mass murderers, among his final requests in a "pizzino," he requested that the funeral not be held in church: "I refuse any religious celebration because it is made up of unclean men who live in hatred and sin," he wrote. Before being hospitalized, the boss was in the San Salvatore hospital in L'Aquila's ward for prisoners.