A reputed killer Genovese capo who had been hunted by the feds for more than a decade was finally nabbed – casually strolling on the Upper West Side – by an eagle-eyed rookie G-man, authorities said yesterday.
Michael “Mikey Cigars” Coppola, one of New Jersey’s most notorious criminals and sought in a ruthless 1977 mob hit, was quietly living out of an apartment in the tony neighborhood until Friday evening, when he was busted, sources said.
Investigators, acting on a tip, had been canvassing the area when the relatively new FBI agent suddenly spotted a pedestrian who bore a “remarkable likeness” to the elusive gangster on 74th Street near Amsterdam at around 5 p.m., said a source close to the probe.
After the man ducked into The New K.C. Market on the northeast corner, another investigator went in to get a better look at him, the sources said.
Coppola’s identity was confirmed, and as soon as he stepped out of the shop, investigators for the New Jersey attorney general nabbed him on the sidewalk, the sources said.
The entire incident – from when he was first spotted to his bust – occurred in as few as five minutes, authorities said.
“It was a good catch by the guy who first spotted Coppola, and it turned out to be right,” FBI spokesman Jim Margolin told The Post.
Coppola was arrested based on an outstanding federal fugitive warrant for his alleged role in the 30-year-old rubout of Johnny “Coca Cola” Lardiere.
The sensational bust closed a 10-year, international manhunt that had been featured on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted.”
During questioning by agents, detectives and New Jersey prosecutors, Coppola, 60, initially gave authorities a bogus name, one source said.
But even he couldn’t maintain his ruse for very long, finally acknowledging that he was who they were looking for, the source added.
Coppola is set for an arraignment hearing today in Somerset County, N.J., on state murder charges.
Coppola’s alleged victim, Lardiere, 68, was on an Easter furlough from prison April 10, 1977, when he was gunned down outside a Bridgewater, N.J., motel.
Nearly 20 years after Lardiere’s rubout, a mob informant fingered Coppola as having boasted about his role in his murder.
At the time, authorities demanded that Coppola turn over blood, hair and saliva samples for DNA testing and charged him with the murder.
But they didn’t hold him, and Coppola and his wife, Linda, soon disappeared, leading investigators on a manhunt through states such as Nevada, Pennsylvania and Florida and countries including Canada, Italy and Costa Rica.