World’s Most Wanted: Where Mafia Boss Matteo Messina Denaro Is Now

What happened to Matteo Messina Denaro, the mafia leader featured in World’s Most Wanted? Directed by Cyprien D’Haese and Caroline Du Sant, the fifth and final episode of the Netflix documentary series, which released in August 2020, explores the life and times of the current “boss of all bosses.”

As detailed in World’s Most Wanted, Denaro was born into a Sicilian crime family, and rose to power during the late ’90s. The subject has been a fugitive since 1993, due the bombing deaths of mafia investigators Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. “The Sicilian” is described as “a bit cross-eyed” by friend Giuseppe Fontana in World’s Most Wanted, and anti-mafia director Rocca Lo Pane reveals that authorities don’t have any audio recordings of the mafioso’s voice.

World’s Most Wanted ultimately reveals that Denaro remains a fugitive in the present. In December 2013, his sister Patrizia was arrested but refused to offer any information about her brother. Denaro’s second cousin Giuseppe Cimarosa appears in Netflix docuseries, and discusses the consequences faced after his late father Lorenzo turned on Denaro. World’s Most Wanted ends without any current updates on the subject’s whereabouts, but suggests that his presence is felt all throughout Italy, and certainly within Trapani.

There haven’t been any major revelations about Denaro since World’s Most Wanted premiered. An informant reportedly spotted the mafia boss in 2014, which led to a new “e-fit” showing that Denaro had gained weight and now has a receding hairline. Aside from that, the Netflix documentary subject hasn’t been seen, reportedly because of the betrayal from his right-hand man, the aforementioned Cimarosa. With nobody left to trust, Denaro now operates his empire in hiding.

In December 2014, Italian authorities reportedly seized Denaro’s olive grove assets in Trapani. Three years later, a massive search was conducted in his hometown of Castelvetrano. Due to Denaro’s overwhelming influence in Trapani, he reportedly receives protection from the Provenzano and Graviano clans. For some historical context, Bernardo Provenzano was a Sicilian “boss of bosses” who was head of the Corleonesi, a crime organization based in Corleone, Sicily; the inspiration for the focal family in The Godfather movie franchise.

After Povenzano’s 2016 passing, the new “bosses of bosses” was Denaro’s mentor, Salvatore “Totò” Riina, who orchestrated the aforementioned murders of the Sicilian investigators Falcone and Borsellino. Riina passed away in 2017, which is why Denaro is now viewed as the new head of the Italian mafia. In World’s Most Wanted on Netflix, the official episode title describes the subject as “Cosa Nostra’s Last Godfather.”

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Q.V. Hough
(1892 Articles Published)

Q.V. Hough is a senior writer at Screen Rant. He’s also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert.com and Fandor.

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