A medical certificate to be able to enter the sports facilitiesthe same day that the same patient was issued an access card for a chemotherapy session. An anomaly, especially if one considers that the document is in the name of Andrea Bonafedethat is the alias used by Matthew Messina Money in the last part of his time on the run. The person who signed the certificate on July 7, 2021 was Alfonso Tumbarellodoctor of the Cosa Nostra boss, arrested on January 16, 2023 and then killed by a colon cancer in September of the same year.
A document produced by the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office at the hearing of the trial of the doctor, accused of external competition in mafia association and ideological forgery, for having “personally visited” Messina Denaro and having signed 137 requests for specialist visits, chemotherapy treatments and drug prescriptions in the name of Bonafede, the alias used by the mafia boss. cancer treatments were the trail followed by investigators to put an end to a period of hiding that had begun almost thirty years earlier. The historic arrest took place just as Messina Denaro was arriving at the nursing home The Magdalene for a chemotherapy session. Treatment that began in 2021 after two operations. After having, in fact, discovered the colon cancer in November 2020, the former red primrose of Castelvetrano was operated on November 13, 2020 at the hospital in Mazara del Vallo. That operation was followed oncological visits in Trapani to finally arrive in La Maddalena where he was operated on for liver metastases on the following 5th May, that is, two months before the certificate.
It is July 7, 2021 when Tumbarello declares having visited him: “It is certified that on the basis of the clinical examination (i.e. the patient’s visit, ed.) and the personal and family history collection reported negative, does not currently present any conditions, clinical signs and/or symptoms that contraindicate the attendance in the community and sports facilities”. A very unusual formula, in fact, to allow entry into the gym of Andrea Bonafedea man Tumbarello knew well, according to the reconstruction by the prosecution. The doctor, on the contrary, claimed not to know Messina Denaro and to have prescribed tests and operations believing he had done it for Bonafede. A reconstruction that also leads to another Andrea Bonafede, a cousin of the same name and 6 years younger: it was he who went to Tumbarello’s office for collect requests and certificates on behalf of the alleged cancer patient. “I was convinced he was my patient, Andrea Bonafede,” the doctor said during the trial, in which he is being defended by lawyers Joachim Sbacchi e Joseph Pantaleo. Justification questioned by the Palermo prosecutor’s office, represented today in court by the PM Gianluca Of Leowho requested the acquisition of the medical certificate signed by Tumbarello. The document certainly attests to the “clinical examination”, or the medical visit that would have allowed him to deduce the suitability to frequenting sports centres in Bonafede.
An element that could weigh down the defendant’s position for a trial that is now in its final stages. Arrested on February 7, 2023, just under a month after the boss’s capture, Tumbarello was released from prison after 5 months of detention. While the trial began on January 24 before the Court of Marsala, presided over by Vito Marcello Saladino. The Order of Physicians of the province of Trapani is also a civil party to the trial, in addition to the municipalities of Campobello of Mazara and of Castelvetranothe Anti-racketeering and Anti-usury association of Trapani and the association “Antonino Caponnetto”.
During the investigations coordinated by the head of the prosecutor’s office, Maurizio DeLuciathe Carabinieri del Ros also found a request from Andrea Bonafede to make his medical records secret. A form signed after Messina Denaro’s first colon surgery on November 13, 2020: the goal was to make the card disappear from the computer system. This is a request that any patient can make but is unknown to most. However, this possibility was known to Andrea Bonafede, under whose identity Matteo Messina Denaro was hiding.
Many were the doctor’s prescriptions after the discovery of the tumor and the first surgery: on January 11, 2021 Tumbarello prescribed Bonafede a global body thymoscintigraphy (Pet) at the “PO ambulatorio di Mazara del Vallo”, on January 28, 2021 the DNA mutation analysis with polymerase chain reaction and the extraction of DNA or RNA (nuclear or mitochondrial) was requested, performed at the Casa di Cura “La Maddalena”. On February 1, the DNA test was requested. A series of requests signed by Tumbarello until a few days before his retirement, in December 2022. Among these, this certificate signed on July 7, 2021, the very day of the chemo session, to allow Andrea Bonafede access to sports facilities, also appears today.
