ROME – Nearly two years after the death of fugitive mob boss and mass murderer Matteo Messina Denaro evidence of new crimes keep coming to light and most recently, Floriana Calcagno, 40, another of his secret lovers was arrested on Monday, police have said. 

 Messina Denaro died in September 2023 a few months after his sensational arrest in Palermo, while leaving a clinic where he was being treated for cancer. The Palermo Anti-Mafia unit requested and carried out the arrest of Calcagno, another of Messina Denaro’s former lovers who was a teacher and had been having a relationship with the fugitive until his capture. She was accused of aggravated aiding, abetting and procuring the evasion of Messina Denaro’s sentence. 

 The evidence is stacked up against Calcagno, after dozens of photos taken from video surveillance systems have ended up in the investigation documents. They show her both in the company of the mafia boss and Messina Denaro calmly driving down the street in his car. Last November, Laura Bonafede, another teacher-cum-lover of the infamous mob boss of Castelvetrano, was sentenced to 11 years and 4 months.

  Chief Prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, deputy Paolo Guido and prosecutors Piero Padova and Gianluca De Leo – contest, among other things, that Calcagno ensured Matteo Messina Denaro “logistical support and help as well as moral and material support, in the territories of Campobello di Mazara, Mazara del Vallo, Tre Fontane and as well as in other locations in the province of Trapani and secured him, a system of relay and escort with his own car and the possibility of moving from one municipality to another in a confidential manner.”

 According to police sources, Calcagno, in addition to being a teacher, is the niece of the mafia boss Francesco Luppino. Her husband, Paolo De Santo, ended up in prison for aiding another mafioso, Calogero John Luppino. Calcagno went of her own accord to the Prosecutor's Office on Jan. 21, 2023, just 5 days after the arrest of Messina Denaro. She then told the deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido, who had coordinated the investigation leading to the capture of the mafia boss, that she had only discovered the identity of Messina Denaro, whom she had been dating for months and with whom she had had a relationship, after his arrest. She claimed that he had introduced himself to her with the name of Francesco Salsi and that he was a retired anesthetist. The two, again according to Calcagno, met in 2022 in a supermarket in Campobello di Mazara.

 Calcagno, who was not under investigation at the time of her statement, said that, after seeing him again on a couple of occasions, at the supermarket and near the school where she worked, she had started a relationship with Messina Denaro, who then revealed to her that he was suffering from cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. Calcagno told the prosecutors that in that period she was experiencing a personal and marital crisis and that she had only gone once, in the autumn of 2022, to her lover’s house and that she had then only heard from him via messages and phone calls. But Calcagno’s role in the last two years of the boss’s fugitive status is completely different according to the Palermo prosecutors. 

 “These are absolutely false statements,” the prosecutors wrote. The woman self-reported her “acquaintance” with the mafia boss in the autumn of 2022. "The last time I saw him was during the October meeting at his home. He asked several times to see me again, but I denied it because the affair was starting to cause me stress, as it was a secret affair in a small town and I felt too that it was not something that made me feel good," said the accused. 

 "The investigations," the magistrates wrote, "actually found that the woman met the fugitive on other occasions, always in the hideout, even in the month of December." Calcagno,lying,"was evidently well aware of the importance of the meetings, all of which were concentrated in a narrow time frame, a sign that even in this phase, as well as in the summer, something relevant had to be delivered to the mafia boss." The accused also failed to mention the many meetings that she had with the boss in the summer.

For the magistrates, she is allegedly part of the complex and "narrow network of individuals totally subservient to the fugitive for the satisfaction of their personal needs". Thus, Calcagno's relatives, as the niece and wife of mafiosi, make it unlikely that she did not know the true identity of Messina Denaro. 

 According to the investigators, Messina Denaro and the woman, managed to live a normal life during their relationship, despite the mob boss being on the run. For example, they would go to a restaurant “two steps from the sea” which the fugitive booked by phone the day before. The video cameras, examined one by one by the investigators, filmed them in an Alfa Romeo along the main road from Petrosino to Mazara del Vallo. “Through another well-designed system, the fugitive picked up Calcagno from school and had the possibility of moving from one municipality to another and spending a good part of the day outside the hideout,” is stated in the precautionary measure.

 From the manuscript the notes found in the hideout, all of Messina Denaro’s parallel teacher-cum-lover Laura Bonafede’s jealousy towards Calcagno can be seen. “You say that Acchina helps you when she is able. But what is she able to do for you?” Bonafede wrote. Prosecutors wrote that “the highly incriminating note clearly implied that the fugitive had previously confided in Bonafede the role played by Calcagno in his protection system, a role that consisted of offering and working on 'things done for him.'”

 In another of many notes venting her jealousy towards the other woman, or in this case the other mafioso-nepotism-teacher, as it becomes clearer that Messina Denaro went for a certain type of woman, Bonafede commented “for now, if I think about Sbrighisi who passed by with that smug face, after having been with you, I would definitely have given her a beating”.

  Finally, in a text dated Dec. 30, 2022, Bonafede told the mafia boss that she had seen Calcagno leave the “key area” - the Campobello di Mazara hideout. “This time my mood has changed, that image changed my day. At around 11:40 I saw Handicap leaving the key area, upright like a pole and with a Louis Vuitton that you had definitely given her. Do you give away bags like a badge of honour? Fuck”, she said. 

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