Messina Denaro's 'sutler' gets 13 yrs in jail
Woman romantically linked to late fugitive superboss gave aid
ROME, 12 January 2024, 13:34

APalermo preliminary hearings judge (GUP) on Friday sentenced to 13 years and eight months in jail a woman who acted as 'sutler' or food and aid provider to late superboss Matteo Messina Denaro during his 30-year flight from Italian justice.
The woman, Lorena Lanceri, who for years looked after Messina Denaro during his fugitive period, was convicted of external complicity in mafia association.
Her husband, Emanuele Bonafede, was sentenced to six years and eight months for aiding and abetting and procuring.
Lanceri was romantically linked to 'the Sicilian mafia's last godfather', who died in a hospital in L'Aquila in September aged 62 after a battle with cancer.
Messina Denaro's long spell on the run ended when he was caught in a Palermo cancer clinic on January 16 last year.
Messina Denaro had been 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 but also around Sicily, Italian police have said.