Feds say fugitive shot man in '77

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JERSEY JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

HOBOKEN - The old gang isn't seen much around Hoboken any more, thanks to the recent efforts of the FBI to nab the city's most notorious mobsters.

The latest arrest: Michael Coppola, 60, a reputed captain in the Genovese crime family, who was arrested Friday in New York City and charged in the 1977 killing of a mobster in Bridgewater.

Coppola was one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, and he'd been featured on "America's Most Wanted" several times. Investigators had searched for him in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida, Canada, Italy and Costa Rica.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Coppola could be seen in Hoboken social clubs meeting with the likes of Michael "Tona" Borelli, 69, of Fort Lee, a reputed made member of the Genovese crime family, Peter Grecco, 70, of Woodcliff Lake, and infamous mob rat Peter Caporino, 69, of Hasbrouck Heights, Hoboken police sources said yesterday.

Borelli and Grecco are facing prison time after a federal probe into gambling and other rackets in Hoboken and Jersey City. Caporino, who cooperated with the feds in that case to avoid jail time on a gambling charge in Hudson County, faces jail time himself, as authorities said he continued his criminal activities even after the feds told him to stop.

Caporino wore a wire for the FBI for years and made one recording of Borelli in the "Company K" social club on Jefferson Street, where Coppola used to hold court. When Genovese boss Tino R. Fiumara was in prison and Coppola was on the run, Borelli and Lawrence A. Ricci ran the Coppola/Fiumara crew, says a report 2004 by the New Jersey Investigation Commission. Ricci was found dead in a car trunk behind a Union County diner in December 2005.

With the help of Caporino, Borelli and Grecco pleaded guilty in April 2006 to operating an illegal gambling business. "The Fiumara/Coppola crew is one of the largest and most resourceful Genovese crews operating in New Jersey," the state report says.

Coppola is accused of gunning down Johnny "Coca Cola" Lardiere outside the Red Bull Inn on Route 22 in Bridgewater in 1977.

Investigators believe Coppola drew a silenced .22-caliber pistol and pointed it at Lardiere - but the gun jammed. Lardiere then sneered at the hitman, "What're you gonna do now, tough guy?"

Coppola then drew a second gun from an ankle holster and shot Lardiere five times, authorities said.

Nine years later, DNA evidence and an informant led the FBI to Coppola, but he disappeared.

Coppola has been listed at or near the top of the state Division of Criminal Justice's 13 most wanted fugitives since the list was drawn up five years ago.

Newhouse News Service contributed to this report.

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Alleged mobster hit man arrested

Man accused of killing Johnny 'Coca Cola' at Red Bull Inn caught in N.Y.

CELANIE POLANICK - Courier News Staff Writer - March 13

After more than a decade of searching, investigators have found and arrested the man wanted in the killing of Johnny "Coca Cola" Lardiere, who was gunned down at 2:34 a.m. on Easter Sunday in 1977 in the Red Bull Inn parking lot on Route 22 in Bridgewater.

Michael Coppola was arrested Friday in New York City and is being charged with first-degree murder. He will be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. today in state Superior Court in Somerville, in the chambers of judge Paul W. Armstrong.

Peter Aseltine, a press officer for the state attorney general's office, said through his secretary that the department will not comment on the investigation, other than to release the time and date of the arraignment.

Coppola, who is reputed to be the onetime captain of the Genovese crime family, disappeared from his Spring Lake home in 1996 after he was asked to submit a DNA sample in connection with the case.

His alleged victim was born Giovanni Larducci, but took the name John Lardiere. In Mafia circles, he was known as "Johnny Cokes" or "Johnny Coca Cola" -- some say it was because he wore Coke bottle-thick glasses when he was young or because he grew up near a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Lardiere, 68, was believed to be a lieutenant of Gerardo "Jerry" Catena, once known as New Jersey's top mobster, and reputedly was involved in loansharking and labor activities. He also was linked to the 1971 disappearance of Teamsters Local 945 president Michael A. Ardis.

At the time of his murder, Lardiere, whose last known address was in Maplewood, was being held at the Clinton Reformatory for Women -- now called the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Union Township, Hunterdon County -- for refusing to testify before the State Commission of Investigation, a body begun in 1969 to investigate organized crime and corruption.

According to Anthony Bruno, a regular contributor to Court TV's "Crime Library" and author of several crime-related books, Lardiere wasn't known for keeping his mouth shut. The man "got under people's skin," Bruno said in 2005. A year after Lardiere was incarcerated, his wife died of arsenic poisoning.

During his more than five-year stay at the Clinton reformatory, one of the people Lardiere irritated with "his big mouth and in-your-face personality" was Ralph "Blackie" Napoli, a captain in the Philadelphia-based Bruno family, who was also sentenced for refusing to testify before the State Commission of Investigation, Bruno said.

On Sunday, April 10, 1977, Lardiere was granted a 26-hour furlough to observe the Easter holiday, along with Napoli, of Fairfield, and fellow accused mobster Louis Manna of Jersey City. Lardiere borrowed a car from a friend and arranged to meet a prostitute at the Red Bull Inn, Bruno said.

When he arrived outside his motel room, a man came out of the shadows and called out Lardiere's name. According to Lucchese crime family member-turned-informant Tommy Ricciardi, Michael Coppola was standing there, holding a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol fitted with a silencer.

Bruno, who interviewed several investigators and Mafia informants about the murder, said what followed has been talked about in New Jersey Mafia circles since then:

Coppola aimed the gun at Lardiere and squeezed the trigger, but the gun jammed.

Lardiere laughed and then, according to Bruno, said "the mocking words that would make him famous":

"What're you gonna do now, tough guy?"

The hitman answered by discarding the .22, rolling up his pants leg and pulling out a .38-caliber revolver from an ankle holster. Lardiere was shot five times -- twice in the head.

Police launched an extensive search for Napoli and Manna to warn them of the shooting, but neither man could be found until the end of the weekend, when both showed up at 9 p.m. and returned promptly to prison.

When Ricciardi entered the federal Witness Protection Program and testified for the state in 1996, the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office reopened the case. In the evidence vault, investigators found two items that had been discovered at a nearby U-turn on Route 22: an ankle holster and a baseball cap with several hairs in it.

With new DNA technology available, authorities believed they could now link Coppola to the 17-year-old murder. But instead of arresting him, investigators served him notice to appear in court in Somerville to give blood and saliva samples.

That was a big mistake, said Paul Smith, a retired supervising state investigator for the New Jersey Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau, in 2005.

Smith served Coppola the papers at his Spring Lake home. Coppola never showed for his scheduled appearance on Aug. 13, 1996 before a judge in state Superior Court, Somerville, and went on to be listed as the state Division of Criminal Justice's "Number One Most Wanted Fugitive."

In 2003, investigators in Florida received tips that Coppola was hiding out in the southwest region of the state and released a computer-generated photograph in hopes that local residents might recognize him, but investigators were unable to find him.

Coppola is believed to have communicated with his organized-crime contacts in New Jersey while he was a fugitive. In 2003, two reputed mob members pleaded guilty to conspiracy for communicating with Coppola between August 1996 and April 1999.

Investigators began recording phone conversations between him and former mob contacts, including his former prisonmates, and the investigation continued. No details were available about how investigators found Coppola.

Bridgewater police investigated the Lardiere murder at first, but gradually handed pieces of the investigation off to the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office, then to the U.S. District Attorney's Office, then to state and federal agents, Bridgewater police Chief Richard Borden said.

"We were not aware that this investigation was going to occur -- we essentially handed off the case years ago," he said. "Obviously, this became part of a much bigger investigation on organized crime. I think every police officer and investigator who worked that investigation is retired now."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Celanie Polanick can be reached at (908)707-3137, or at cpolanick@c-n.com.

http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... =/20070313/NEWS/703130301

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