On this day‬ in 1972 Gerlandino Messina was born. In 2010 he was captured after being on the most wanted list since 1999 for Mafia association and murders (which included a police officer in 1992).

He is also the son of Giuseppe Messina, a Mafia boss of Porto Empedocle, who was rubbed out on July 8, 1986 by the Grassonelli clan.

In revenge, six members of the Grassonelli were taken out on September 21, 1986, in the Porto Empedocle massacre.

In 2012 he was sentenced to 9 years for illegal possession of firearms.

Born on this day in 1972, Gerlandino Messina emerged from one of Sicily's most bloodsoaked criminal dynasties, his life shaped almost entirely by the brutal codes and savage vendettas of the Sicilian Mafia. Growing up in Porto Empedocle, a coastal town in the province of Agrigento, Messina was steeped in the culture of Cosa Nostra from his earliest years, a world where loyalty was measured in blood and betrayal carried an automatic death sentence.

His father, Giuseppe Messina, served as the Mafia boss of Porto Empedocle until his violent end on July 8, 1986, when members of the rival Grassonelli clan murdered him in a calculated power move. Gerlandino was just a teenager when he lost his father, but in the Sicilian underworld, such losses were not mourned quietly. They were avenged. On September 21, 1986, six members of the Grassonelli clan were slaughtered in what became known as the Porto Empedocle massacre, a swift and merciless response that announced the Messina faction had no intention of surrendering its position. The massacre underscored the relentless cycle of retribution that had defined Sicilian organised crime for generations, echoing the same territorial bloodletting that had driven the original Sicilian emigres to bring their traditions across the Atlantic, eventually laying the foundations for the American Mafia that figures such as Lucky Luciano and the bosses of the Five Families would come to dominate.

Gerlandino Messina himself went on to become a fugitive of considerable notoriety. Placed on Italy's most wanted list in 1999, he was sought in connection with Mafia association and multiple murders, including the killing of a police officer in 1992, a crime that elevated the urgency of his capture considerably. For over a decade he evaded authorities, a testament to the deep networks of silence and complicity that Cosa Nostra cultivated across communities in southern Sicily. His run finally ended in 2010 when law enforcement tracked him down after eleven years in the shadows. Two years later, in 2012, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for illegal possession of firearms, adding another chapter to a legal saga that reflected the long arm of Italian justice slowly tightening around the old Mafia structures.

The story of Gerlandino Messina serves as a stark reminder that the Sicilian Mafia's grip on its members begins at birth and rarely loosens, leaving behind a legacy of inherited violence that entire communities have struggled for decades to escape.