Matteo Messina Denaro dead – Sicilian Mafia boss, 61, who inspired The Godfather dies in hospital after years on the run

SICILIAN mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who spent 30 years on the run before his arrest in January, has died.

The 61 year old – responsible for heinous crimes that shocked Italy and the world and inspired The Godfather – had been suffering from cancer.

As Denaro’s health had deteriorated in recent weeks, he was transferred from his maximum security prison to hospital.

The mafia don, who fronted up the notorious Sicilian “Cosa Nostra” group, once boasted to have murdered “enough people to fill a small cemetery.”

Following his reign of terror, he was convicted of numerous murders, bombings and attacks on other mafia groups and the civilian population.

The so-called “Boss of Bosses” is believed to have been behind the murders of two anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.

At the time of his death he was serving a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks which killed ten people in Florence, Milan, and Rome in 1993.

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