Italian police find poster of The Godfather in hideout of captured mafia boss

Italian police discovered a framed poster of The Godfather film in a hideout used by Matteo Messina Denaro, the mafia boss arrested in Sicily this week after 30 years on the run.

The poster was found in one of three properties associated with the real-life godfather that police raided this week in the town of Campobello di Mazaro.

In the classic film, Marlon Brando played Don Vito Corleone, the head of a mafia family from the Sicilian town of Corleone – which lies about 30 miles from Campobello di Mazaro.

Messina Denaro was arrested on Monday at a private clinic in Palermo where he was undergoing treatment for cancer.

The Cosa Nostra boss has multiple convictions in absentia for murder, including the killing of two high-profile anti-mafia prosecutors and the kidnapping of an adolescent boy who was strangled and dissolved in acid.

A diary found at one of the properties contains names and numbers which police and prosecutors are now scrutinising, in the hope of tracking down his lieutenants and business associates.

The documents could also shed light on who gave the convicted murderer protection during the three decades in which he evaded justice.

Police found large numbers of receipts which recorded the mafia boss’s outgoings and suggested that he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, spending around €10,000 on clothes, restaurants and other luxuries each month. They came across one restaurant receipt for €700.

They are reportedly looking for concealed spaces in which the mafia boss may have hidden “pizzini”, tiny pieces of paper which he used to communicate with his subordinates.

He avoided computers and mobile phones for fear of being intercepted and traced by the authorities who were hunting him.

Police are also searching for traces of DNA which could lead them to the mafia leader’s accomplices and contacts.

The 60-year-old is being held in a maximum-security prison in the city of L’Aquila in the Apennine mountains of central Italy.

Campobello di Mazara is about five miles from Castelvetrano, the town where Messina Denaro was born, confirming long-held suspicions that he remained close to his roots during his long years as a fugitive.

Italy’s mafia bosses often strive to imitate their fictional Hollywood counterparts.

Walter Schiavone, a prominent member of the Naples-based Camorra mafia, had a villa built in the 1990s that was based on the neoclassical palace owned by Al Pacino’s psychopathic character in the 1983 gangster film Scarface.

The €2 million villa was built in the town of Casal di Principe, which has been a stronghold of organised crime for decades.

Schiavone had little time to enjoy his creation – he was arrested in 1999 on murder charges and the villa was converted into a physiotherapy centre for the disabled in 2008.

Other gangsters have been found holed up in cleverly-concealed underground bunkers, with DVDs of The Godfather films among their possessions.

In 2012, a life-size bust of Al Pacino as Tony Montana was discovered in the home of an alleged drug lord during a raid on his house outside Naples.