Mob suspect nabbed: Tip from local informant led to capture

Toms River mobster, killer, and federal songbird Thomas Ricciardi's tunes continue to delight prosecutors and confound those with whom he once shared the vow of "omerta," silence.
Information Ricciardi provided more than a decade ago led to the arrest Friday of reputed Genovese mob capo Michael Coppola in Manhattan.

Coppola, who vanished from his Spring Lake home in 1996, was wanted in connection with the killing of John "Johnny Coca-Cola" Lardiere outside a motel in Bridgewater in 1977.

"America's Most Wanted," which took part for years in the search for Coppola, gave an account of Lardiere's murder.

"What are you going to do now, tough guy?" it reported Lardiere asking Coppola before pulling the first of two guns to shoot him to death.

Ricciardi said Coppola told him what happened, and repeated the question, in a face-to-face discussion of the killing, according to "America's Most Wanted's" account of the slaying.

Police said Lardiere died to keep him from talking about mob control of garbage hauling businesses.

His murder came five years after Ocean County authorities say Lardiere got a grim warning to keep his own mouth shut about what he knew of the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of organized crime.

On July 2, 1972, Lardiere's wife, Carolyn, 52, was sitting in their summer home at 170 Sutter St. in Silverton.

It was hot and when she reached for her favorite drink, a bottle of Fresca, to quench her thirst and cool her off.

Within minutes she was on the floor screaming. The Fresca, a Coca-Cola product, was laced with a massive dose of arsenic.

The Coca-Cola connection was not lost on Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Thomas F. Kelaher. A month later he said several reluctant witnesses, including Lardiere himself, were brought before a grand jury, but no one was ever charged with her killing.

Police said Carolyn Lardiere's murder was a warning to her husband to honor the code of omerta.

The 65-year-old Port Newark gambling figure and member of the Genovese mob had been held for 11 months at Yardville Youth and Correction Center for refusing to answer questions about organized crime before the State Commission of Investigations although he had been given immunity from prosecution.

Police said they had no indication Lardiere was about to cooperate with them, and credited mob speculation for the hit on his wife.

The mobster did not believe them when they told him how his wife died.

Lardiere's lips were sealed for good in 1977 when he was shot five times in the parking lot of the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater, several hours after he left prison on an Easter furlough.

Lardiere was described by police at the time of his wife's slaying as a soldier in the Newark rackets and an associate of gangster Gerardo "Jerry" Catena.

Police said in 1977 they believed Lardiere's slaying, gangland style, was designed to silence him and serve as an example for others who might ignore the mob's code of silence.

Ricciardi was branded a "rat" by mobsters after he flipped and became an informant for the government as he faced a lifelong prison term for the murder of a Toms River gambler and organized crime figure, Vincent James "Jimmy Sinatra" Craparotta.

Coppola, called Mikey Cigara, Silma, and Little Mike by his associates, was fingered for his alleged involvement in the murder by Ricciardi, the Toms River heartthrob and mob button man who, in 1995, facing a mandatory 30-year prison term, became a government witness.

He was facing life in prison with no parole for 30 years for after a jury convicted him of taking part in the 1984 beating death of Craparotta in a dispute over which mob family would get tribute from Craparotta's nephews. They owned a video poker machine manufacturing company in Lakewood.

Craparotta was beaten to death with golf clubs in a Route 9 used car dealership.

After long and celebrated trial, Ricciardi, then 42 and living on Vermont Avenue, was convicted of killing Craparotta.

The prospect of long prison terms loosened his tongue and he traded what he knew and a willingness to testify against those he knew it about for a reduced prison term and protection from the mob.

Ricciardi escaped a life term too, getting 30 years for the Craparotta murder after admitting he was involved in eight other slayings as well.

It was what he told police about Coppola and Lardiere's killing that led to an arrest warrant for him in August 1996.

Police learned he was in Florida in 1993 but could not find him.

Their luck improved in New York Friday night, when they nabbed Coppola. He is scheduled to appear in court in Somerset County today to make his first New Jersey appearance following his arrest.