Who was Frank Salemme aka Cadillac Frank? Former mafia boss dies in prison 

On Tuesday, December 13, former Patriarca family boss Frank Salemme died in a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri.

Salemme, also known as "Cadillac Frank," was incarcerated on murder and racketeering charges at the time of his death. He is primarily known for his involvement in the Boston underworld, where he ran the Patriarca mafia family from 1991 to 1995.

As per the Washington Post, Frank Salemme was arrested in 1995 for attempting to extort a film crew. He was charged with racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking, conspiracy, and crossing state lines for criminal activity. He was sentenced to 11-years in prison on the racketeering charges, following which he testified against members of the criminal underworld in exchange for a shorter sentence.

As providing State's testimony breaks the codes of Italian mafia organizations, the move officially ended Salemme's criminal career and association with the Patriarca group. In 2018, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for a 1993 cold case murder. He was incarcerated for the homicide at the time of his death.

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The life of Frank Salemme: Criminal history, arrests, and more explored

As per US Attorney Fred Wyshak, Salemme began operating as a hitman for the Patriarca crime family in the early 1960s, allegedly murdering approximately eight people at the time during a Boston gang war involving several Irish and Italian gangsters.

Salemme said he shot several people on orders from Patriarca family higher-ups, who were supporting one of the Irish gangs involved in the conflict.

In 2003, as he testified before the Congress, he admitted to killing associates of the Hughes and McLaughlin criminal clans. He said:

"The Hugheses, the McLaughlins, they were all eliminated, and I was a participant in just about all of them, planned them and did them."

The Boston Globe reported that in the late 1980s, Frank Salemme rose up in the hierarchy of his criminal organization after Patriarca boss Jerry Angiulo was sent to prison for racketeering.

Using his connections with the now deceased Whitey Bulger, a powerful Boston crime boss at the time, Salemme became the de facto head of the Patriarca.

In 1995, he was indicted on racketeering charges along with Boston underworld figures James 'Whitey' Bulger and Steven 'The Rifleman' Flemmi. Fox reported after Salemme's arrest, he discovered that both Bulger and Flemmi had secretly been FBI informants. This reportedly led the former mob boss to become an informant himself.

By 2018, Frank Salemme was living under an assumed identity in Atlanta, where he had been placed in a witness protection program to shield himself from his former associates. However, while on the program, Salemme was arrested once more for the 1993 cold case murder of Boston gangster Steven Disarro.

Salemme's death, which came four years after the 2018 murder of Whitey Bulger, closes another chapter for the Boston underworld.