
Matteo Messina Denaro's long record as a killer — turncoat mobsters said he'd boast of enough murders to fill a cemetery — greatly burnished his credentials among his peers as a major boss in the Sicilian Mafia.
After 30 years eluding capture while still running much of the Mafia's affairs, he was arrested Monday at a Palermo clinic, where the convicted mobster was receiving chemotherapy. But while he was hustled off early Tuesday to a maximum-security prison on the Italian mainland, his capture is hardly expect to bring the demise of the Cosa Nostra, thanks to the syndicate's more than century-old roots and rules.