Notorious Mafia boss Salvatore 'Toto' Riina dies aged 87

"Toto" Riina was known as the Mafia "boss of bosses"

Notorious Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina has died from cancer, Italian media reports say. Riina, 87, former boss of the feared Cosa Nostra, was jailed in 1993.

He was serving 26 life sentences and is believed to have ordered more than 150 murders. Riina had been in a medically-induced coma and his family had been given special permission to visit him in the prisoners' wing of the hospital in Parma.


The mobster's eldest son, Giovanni, is serving a life sentence in jail. Riina was behind a series of mafia bombings in Rome, Milan and Florence in 1993, which left 10 people dead.

A year earlier, two anti-Mafia judges - Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino - were killed in Riina's "war against the state".