Mafia's brutal new leader

THE recently arrested head of the Mafia has appointed as his successor a trigger-happy playboy who has been on the run for 13 years.

The promotion of Matteo "Diabolik" Messina Denaro, 43, was revealed in a letter written by Bernardo Provenzano, the 73-year-old former "boss of all bosses", who was seized by police two weeks ago at a farmhouse near Corleone, in Sicily.

"Matteo, the head of the Mafia will be you," Provenzano wrote a week before he was discovered.

It is not certain that the instructions were received.

Denaro, who once boasted that "I filled a cemetery all by myself", was born in western Sicily and by 14 had learned to use a gun. He later sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival gang leader and strangling his pregnant girlfriend.

His nickname "Diabolik" comes from a comic book, and he is an icon for the younger Mafiosi.