Palermo police said Monday they had
arrested a 40-year-old Palermo teacher who they said was the
"umpteenth" lover of late Mafia fugitive superboss Matteo
Messina Denaro during his 30 year on the run.
Teacher Floriana Calcagno, 40, has been arrested on charges of
aggravated aiding and abetting and failing to respect a judicial
ruling.
She was arrested on the basis of jealous letters written by
another of the boss's ex lovers, teacher Laura Bonafede.
Prosecutors said Calcagno "played a key role" in helping Messina
Denaro evade capture.
Messina Denaro, 61, 'Cosa Nostra's last boss', died in September
2023 after being arrested in January 2023 while leaving a clinic
where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo.
During a search of medical records, investigators found the
names of 15 people they suspect Messina Denaro used for his
medical procedures.
Several people, including Messina Denaro's sister and several
women suspected of being his partners, including another
teacher, have been convicted for allegedly helping the mobster
to evade capture and maintain relations with
his men while he was a fugitive.
Messina Denaro was convicted for his involvement in dozens of
murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed
anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he was
convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old
son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and
dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious
sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt
40 more in 1993.
Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and
playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for
brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his
three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while
on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those
he had killed.
He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia",
not only around his fief at Trapani in western Sicily but also
around the rest of the island, Italian police have said.
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