The former mayor of Castelvetrano Antonino Vaccarino, 76, died of cardiac arrest in the Covid ward of the Catanzaro hospital , where he had been transferred from prison due to the worsening of his health conditions after contracting Covid.

The freemason Vaccarino was involved in mafia affairs, freemasonry, espionage, he ended up in prison again in April 2019. Vaccarino collaborated with the secret services, entertaining an epistolary relationship with the fugitive mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro through code names: he called himself "Suetonius", Messina Denaro "Alessio".

The goal would have been to have the mafia boss captured, but the operation was not successful. The former mayor was also awaiting a review process for an old drug trafficking conviction and the 2019 Sentence Appeal process.