By David Amoruso for Gangsters Inc.

Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro passed away today. He was 61. The elusive Mafioso was viewed as the last man to know the people on both sides of the law involved in some of Italy’s most heinous and profitable crimes. He took those secrets to the grave – in true omerta fashion.

For three decades, Messina Denaro was one of Italy’s most wanted fugitives after going on the run in 1993. By then he was already a legendary figure in Cosa Nostra. He boasted he could fill a cemetery with the people he’d killed. His murders and violent acts caught up with him in court though.

He was found guilty of involvement in the 1992 murder of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino; the deadly bomb attacks in Milan, Florence and Rome one year later, which cost the lives of 10 people; and the slaying of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the teenage son of Santino, a Mafioso who decided to become a government witness and testify against his former colleagues about the murder of Falcone in which he participated.

The boy was kidnapped, tortured, and held captive for 2 years before he was finally killed. Afterwards, his body was placed in a drum filled with acid, effectively making him disappear forever.

In absentia, Messina Denaro was tried and sentenced to life in prison in 2002.

While a fugitive, he continued running his criminal business. He gave orders to underlings and coordinated operations with other bosses and families. He oversaw large-scale criminal activities such as fraud, construction, drug trafficking, illegal waste dumping, and money laundering. But he also struggled after being diagnosed with cancer.

Authorities turned up the heat and arrested scores of his close associates and relatives. With each bust, they chipped away another protective layer around the mob boss. Until they finally arrested him on January 16 of this year as he went to a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, to receive chemotherapy to combat his illness.

Eight months later, on Friday September 22, he slipped into a coma at a hospital in L’Aquila after undergoing several surgeries for colon cancer. He never opened his eyes again and died a few days later on Monday. His death comes as no surprise and is somewhat of a downer to authorities and all of Messina Denaro’s victims who would like to have seen him do time for his crimes.

After 30 years on the run, living his life and committing untold more crimes, the man known as “Diabolik” only did eight months in prison as punishment for his life in the underworld. He was protected for a long time and his capture seems to have come as he himself knew he only had months to live.

It’s as if the game was rigged and Messina Denaro or his friends of his and his friends in higher places made a deal of some sort. Or maybe this is just an example of life being unfair. Evil men don’t always get punished the way they deserve. Good does not always come to those who deserve it. Life is life. Until someone puts two bullets in it or strangles it and drops it in a bath of acid.