Death of the last Godfather

Mob boss caught after three decades on the run dies at 61

- ANDY LINES

A RUTHLESS Mafia boss dubbed the Last Godfather who is accused of murdering 50 people has died.

Matteo Denaro was head of the notorious Cosa Nostra in Sicily. He was Italy's most wanted man with detectives spending 30 years hunting him before he was arrested in January.

The gangster who has died aged 61 after a long illness - once boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims.

He is also said to have dissolved the body of a boy in acid.

Denaro was known as the Cosa Nostra's last "secret keeper" as many informants and lawyers believed he held all the information and names of those behind several of the most high-profile Mafia crimes.

He was jailed for life, in his absence, in 2002 for crimes including involvement in the 1992 assassination of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Local media said he fell into an irreversible coma on Friday at a hospital in the central Italian city of L'Aquila.

He had requested not to be given any aggressive medical treatment.

L'Aquila mayor Pierluigi Biondi confirmed Denaro's death in the early hours of yesterday morning "following a worsening of his illness".

Biondi said his death "puts the end to a story of violence and blood".