The three Mafia bosses were known as 'the three queens of Caltagirone'
They ran the clan's finances and had mentored its heir since he was young
Italian police arrested more than 100 mobsters in the massive raids
Prosecutors say weapons were also found, including two rocket launchers
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Three women running Sicily's 'Prickly Pear Lips' Mafia clan have been arrested in a massive police operation that netted more than 100 mobsters.
Officers claim to have wiped out the Laudani clan overnight after having detained members of the organisation at all levels, including the women bosses known as 'the three queens of Caltagirone'.
Named after a town in the area, the trio had ruled the clan with an iron grip, governing its financial matters and mentoring from a young age its heir.
Giuseppe Laudani was selected to run the clan when he was 17 after his Mafia boss father was killed.
However, he turned to the police and told how the three women, Maria Scuderi, 51, Concetta Scalisi, 60 and Paola Torrisi, 52, had raised him.
Known as 'the prince', Giuseppe Laudani described a world of violence and vendettas, with the women building power after his aunt Scalisi's life was saved by his father during an attempted assassination at the end of the 1980s.
And Torrisi, herself the daughter of a mobster boss who used to manage the clan's international drug trading, was still young when she began to organise couriers in the area around Mount Etna.
The arrested suspects were all wanted for Mafia association, extortion, drug trafficking and possessing illegal arms.
Of 109 arrest warrants issued Wednesday, 86 people were detained, 23 were already serving time in prison and six are still eluding capture, police said.
Laudani also snitched on his brother Pippo and half-brother Alberto Caruso, as well as his grandfather Sebastiano Laudini, 90, who had served time between 1986 and 2012 and is now back under house arrest.
According to prosecutor Michelangelo Patane, the clan, which had sought ties with the cocaine-running 'Nrangheta clan in Calabria, had a huge arsenal of weapons, including two rocket launchers.
The rocket launchers were intended for use in hits on several Sicilian magistrates but the plan was foiled when another informer told police the weapons were hidden in a garage on the slopes of Mount Etna.
The Laudani are believed to be behind a string of violent attacks in the 1990s, including the murder of a prison warden and a lawyer who had refused to be bought.
Police said they had been hampered in their investigations by local business owners, who either lied about being the victims of attempts to extort money from them or admitted the extortion but refused to help identify those responsible.
The Sicilian Mafia, known as 'Cosa Nostra' or 'Our Thing', was Italy's most powerful organised crime syndicate in the 1980s and 1990s, but has seen its power diminish following years of probes and mass arrests.
It also faces fierce underworld competition from the increasingly powerful Naples-based Camorra and Calabria's 'Ndrangheta.
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