A coded note hidden in a chair leg was the clue that led to the arrest in January of Italy’s most wanted Italian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
Police found the note during an undercover operation at the home of his sister Rosaliaa month before his arrest in Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
Rosalia Messina Denaro was also arrested on Friday on the Italian island.
His 60-year-old brother was a fugitive for 30 years and is believed to have evaded justice with the help of his family.
He is accused of being “the boss of all bosses” of the mafia and head of the Cosa Nostra mafia syndicate. In 2002 he was tried and sentenced in absentia to life in prison for a series of murders.
His arrest occurred on January 16 at the gates of a private clinic in Palermo, where he had been receiving cancer treatment under a false identity.
More than 100 troops participated in his arrest.
Known as “Fragolone”
Rosalia Messina Denaro, 67, also known as Rosetta, was arrested on Friday in Sicily accused of belonging to the mafia.
Italian police released his 57-page arrest warrant document detailing some of the circumstances that led to his brother’s capture.
The warrant reveals that the police found a note inside the leg of an aluminum chair at Rosalía’s home, in the town of Castelvetrano, in the west of the island, while she was trying to place a listening device inside it during an operation carried out out in December.
The agents photographed the note, which at first appeared to be a tangle of words, signs and letters, and placed it back where they found it.
The note was actually a pizzinoa small piece of paper written in code, used by Messina Denaro to communicate with his family and affiliates.
Analysis showed he was referring to a man’s battle with colon cancer, and police turned their attention to Messina Denaro after finding no other family members had received a similar cancer diagnosis.
The “historic result of the capture… had its origin in a note, imprudently keptthough hidden, by Rosetta,” a judge wrote in the court order.
According to police, he communicated with his brother using the code name “fragolone“, or “big strawberry”.
The warrant described Rosalía as a woman with “origins and traditions inspired by a rock-hard orthodox mafia culture.”
The text explains that it is being investigated by being part of a mafia organization and committing crimes while belonging to it, helping his brother avoid numerous jail terms, helping him continue in his role as head of the organization, and making sure other members of the organization could contact him while he was hiding from the authorities.
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