Don’t get Denaro confused with Deniro. Viewers have long been obsessed by mafia movies and shows. But while we quote lines from The Godfather or The Sopranos, it’s worth noting that real mafia stories are rarely as entertaining as the ones on the screen. They’re usually just chronicles of pathetic, murderous monsters who get caught through painstaking, often boring, police work. And so it was with the capture of Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s most-wanted mob boss, who was finally caught after 30 years on the run—although he was basically running in place as he was arrested in Palermo. He wasn’t going to the mattresses. He was going to the doctor. Investigators finally caught Messina Denaro when he was being treated for cancer. “The homes of Messina Denaro’s relatives were wiretapped.They must have been aware that their conversations were being listened to, and so only talked about ‘people with cancer’ and ‘cancer surgeries’ in generic terms. Yet that was enough to tip investigators off – especially due to longstanding rumours that Messina Denaro was sick. These intercepts, combined with monitoring of internet searches on Crohn’s disease and liver cancer by Messina Denaro’s associates, led the Carabinieri to assume the Mafia boss was seeking treatment. They then gathered the details of all male cancer patients born in 1962 near Trapani, in western Sicily. Investigators zoomed into their lives, narrowing down the search to 10 suspects, then five.” BBC: How Mafia boss was caught on a visit to a clinic.