The disease, more than anything else, took the life of fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro, nicknamed “The Devil,” who was considered Italy’s most wanted man before his arrest on Monday, Reuters reported.

Messina Denaro, 60, was caught outside a private clinic in Palermo with an accomplice. Sources in the court said the thug had been visiting the clinic regularly since undergoing cancer surgery last year.

Illness “is one of the events in a person’s (fugitive’s) life that forces them to come forward,” Palermo prosecutor Paolo Guido said at a press conference.

After receiving a tip that he was ill, police zeroed in on Messina Denaro after eliminating other potential suspects of a similar age and illness, in part by checking the National Health System database.

The investigation was “relentless, constant and progressive,” said General Pasquale Angelosanto of the ROS special unit of the Carabinieri national gendarmerie.

He added that over the years, the Carabinieri had arrested more than 100 of Messina Denaro’s alleged accomplices, including his sister and other family members, and confiscated assets worth around €150 million, effectively undermining his support network.

Cops didn’t even need handcuffs for Diabolik

In the end, the man known as “U Siccu” (the skinny one) or “Diabolik” (an Italian comic book character) did not resist and did not try to escape, Palermo’s chief prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said.

“We caught a very dangerous fugitive without violence, we didn’t even have to use handcuffs,” he said.

Officers found a well-groomed man who appeared to be in good condition with a luxury watch worth €35,000. Messina’s police records showed Denaro wearing a brown fur-lined jacket, glasses and a brown and white wool hat.

Even though police and magistrates didn’t know what Messina-Denaro looked like, other than computer images based on photos from a decade ago, it was immediately clear they had arrested the right person.

“Looking at him, there was nothing to confirm, he was the one we expected to find,” said Colonel Lucio Arcidiacono, another head of the special unit of the Carabinieri police.

Denaro was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the 1992 murder of prominent mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

He also faces life in prison for his role in the following year’s attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 people.

Last September, Italian police said Denaro was still giving orders for mafia activity in the western Sicilian city of Trapani, an area still considered its regional “bastille” despite his long absence from the public sphere.

Matteo Messina Denaro, arrested almost two years after his lieutenants

Denaro, known by the nickname “Diabolik”, gained a reputation as a brutal killer after killing a rival mob boss in Trapani and strangling his girlfriend, who was three months pregnant.

He became the boss of Cosa Nostra after the capture of Bernardo Provenzano in April 2006 and Salvatore Lo Piccolo in November 2007.

Denaro’s arrest comes after Palermo police arrested 22 Cosa Nostra members believed to be linked to him in February 2021.