The investigations continue into the network of accomplices who protected
Matteo Messina Denaro
in hiding .
The Carabinieri del Ros and the provincial command of Trapani arrested Emanuele Bonafede, nephew of the boss of Campobello di Mazara Leonardo Bonafede, and his wife Lorena Ninfa Lanceri for aiding and abetting and procured non-compliance with sentences aggravated by the mafia method.
The investigation was coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, the deputy Paolo Guido and the prosecutors Piero Padova and Gianluca De Leo.
The investigation shows that Lorena Lanceri would have been very close to Messina Denaro.
The military found numerous evidence of the relationship between the boss and Lanceri.
Messina Denaro, to hide her true identity, called her Diletta.
A photo of Matteo Messina Denaro smoking a cigar and holding a Cognac glass in his hand taken at the home of Emanuele Bonafede and his wife Lorena Lanceri, arrested today, is among the elements that frame the two spouses accused of aiding and abetting.
The photo dates back to a few years ago and shows only the body of the then fugitive whose face was specially cut off and was certainly taken in the living room of the couple's home.
The investigations
But how did the carabinieri understand that Diletta was Lorena Lanceri?
It all starts from the testimony of one of the patients with whom Messina Denaro, suffering from cancer, underwent chemotherapy at the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo and who had become a friend of the boss.
Interviewed on January 18 by the carabinieri, the witness recounts that Messina Denaro, known by her as Andrea Bonafede, had told her that he was having an affair with a girl named Diletta.
The fake Bonafede had also put the two women in touch via audio chat.
The patient has kept them and hands them over to the military of the Ros.
"Ah there's Diletta who has the covid, I passed it to her, I'm getting treatment, we're here at home together and Diletta greets you, in fact, now I'll pass her on to you by message", can be heard in one of the voice chats that Messina Denaro sends to
The audio from Diletta always sent to the patient follows: "I am here with the creature (referring to the boss) what he is making me go through not only transmitted the covid to me but in the end at least it makes me laugh because he is nice".
During the recording of the vowels (all sent from Messina Denaro's phone), however, Diletta's cell phone receives a call.
In the recording of the conversations, later listened to by the investigators, the ring is heard and the woman answers.
The analysis of the telephone cells reveals Diletta's identity to the military.
The moment the voice chats are recorded and the cell phone of the woman who is with the boss receives the call, the cell phones of Messina Denaro and Lanceri hook up to the same cells.
The two are obviously together.
And therefore Diletta is Lanceri.
Finally, in some messages that the godfather sends to his sister Rosalia, it is clearly understood how much Diletta means to him.
Recounting the hours following the surgery suffered in May 2021, the boss writes: "I was all wet with sweat, Diletta who washed my clothes twisted them and drops of water came out, she was speechless".
"There can therefore be no doubt about the centrality of the role of women - writes the investigating judge - to ensure the fugitive the widest emotional and relational comfort - in addition to logistical and welfare".
The link between the boss and "Diletta"
"The beauty of my life was to meet you, as if fate decided to make it up to you by giving me a gift in grand style. You are that gift".
These are the words written in 2019 in a note directed to Matteo Messina Denaro by a woman who signed herself Diletta.
The note, found at the house of the boss Rosalia's sister, concluded with "You are great even if you weren't MMD. Your beloved".
According to investigators, the real sender of the letter would be Lorena Lanceri.
The woman in communications with the boss would have used her code name to conceal her true identity.
"I think that any woman, having you next to her, feels special but above all you manage to make other men become nothing." She continued. "With you I feel protected, you make me feel good,
you make me smile with your jokes and i love your irony and your immense knowledge and intelligence.
Of course you also have many flaws, your stubborn precision .... but whoever loves you also loves your being like this.
You know, I love you and as I always say a good that comes from within.
I hope life gives you some serenity and I will do everything to help you".
The Messina Denaro network
The supporters of boss Matteo Messina Denaro's fugitive arrest by the Carabinieri del Ros rise to six.
Since the capture of the godfather, on 16 January, Giovanni Luppino, the driver who accompanied the chemotherapy boss to the La Maddalena clinic on the day of the blitz that ended his thirty-year fugitive, Andrea Bonafede, the surveyor who lent him his identity, his cousin of the same name, who allegedly provided Messina Denaro with the medical prescriptions necessary for his treatment, his brother Emanuele arrested today with his wife Lorena Lanceri and Alfonso Tumbarello, the doctor who prescribed drugs and analyzes Trapani godfather.
They are accused in various capacities of external competition in a mafia association, mafia association, aiding and abetting and procured non-compliance with the sentence.
It is clear from the investigations that Messina Denaro was constantly supported by several people during his hiding.
People "who, according to the prosecutors, allowed him to move around the area in relative safety, even making use of several cars, to access the indispensable treatments of the National Health Service in disguise, also thanks to diagnoses and recipes made in the name of Andrea Bonafede , and to buy under a false name (once again that of Andrea Bonafede) a house to be used as a hideout and a car".
The version of the arrested
After the capture of the boss Messina Denaro, on January 16, Emanuele Bonafede and his wife went to the carabinieri and said they had seen Messina Denaro on TV and recognized him as the man whom a family member had presented to him a few months earlier with the name of Francesco Salsi, a retired doctor.
But the spouses' version was denied by the videos recorded by a surveillance camera installed near a commercial establishment a few steps from their home in Campobello di Mazara.
The videos "covered" from 8.51 pm on 7 January to 9.12 pm on 23 January 2023 and therefore also the days immediately prior to the capture of the boss.
From the images it emerges that Messina Denaro went every day to the Bonafede home at lunchtime and dinner and stayed for several hours.
The video footage also often showed the presence of the fugitive's car, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, near the house of the two suspects.
"After all, it was a matter of hospitality that undoubtedly had significant costs for a not particularly wealthy family - reads the precautionary measure issued by the investigating judge - a family which therefore is completely unreasonable to think that it may have assumed full livelihood of an unknown retired doctor".
Finally, in the images, the husband and wife are shown as they leave the house cautiously to check for the presence of any policemen or carabinieri and then give the go-ahead to the guest who only then, making sure that there was no danger, left the house .
an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, near the house of the two suspects.
"After all, it was a matter of hospitality that undoubtedly had significant costs for a not particularly wealthy family - reads the precautionary measure issued by the investigating judge - a family which therefore is completely unreasonable to think that it may have assumed full livelihood of an unknown retired doctor".
Finally, in the images, the husband and wife are shown as they leave the house cautiously to check for the presence of any policemen or carabinieri and then give the go-ahead to the guest who only then, making sure that there was no danger, left the house .
an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, near the house of the two suspects.
"After all, it was a matter of hospitality that undoubtedly had significant costs for a not particularly wealthy family - reads the precautionary measure issued by the investigating judge - a family which therefore is completely unreasonable to think that it may have assumed full livelihood of an unknown retired doctor".
Finally, in the images, the husband and wife are shown as they leave the house cautiously to check for the presence of any policemen or carabinieri and then give the go-ahead to the guest who only then, making sure that there was no danger, left the house .
The correspondence with Laura Bonafede
There was a "very intense" correspondence between Matteo Messina Denaro and Laura Bonafede, daughter of Campobello boss Leonardo Bonafede and wife of lifer Salvatore Gentile.
It emerges from the investigation.
The discovery stems from the discovery to the godfather of Castelvetrano of a letter-diary written by a person who signed himself with the pseudonym of "cousin" to protect his true identity and was directed to Messina Denaro.
At first the carabinieri do not know who the "cousin" is, but then they discover a pizzino written on January 14, two days before the arrest, by the boss himself.
In the pizzino Messina Denaro replies to a previous message from "cousin".
"We met up close and even talked. - wrote the mafia boss to the
interlocutor - you must have found me aged and tired (…) I was pleased to see you and talk to you, I tried to keep the situation under control but I didn't see anything dangerous, of course we have to see what the cheese slicer thought, because he knows you and knows what type you are, he knows me by sight as a customer but knows nothing, of course now that he has seen me talking to you he will be curious to know who I am.
"The term "cheese slicer" makes the military suspicious, who remember that in the Campobello di Messina Denaro hideout there was a receipt from the Coop dated 14 January. At that point they acquire the internal images of the shop and see Messina Denaro in front of the salami counter talk to Laura Bonafede. It is the turning point in the identification of "cousin"