John 'Johnny Cokes' Lardiere, a 68-year-old male, met a violent end in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, April 10, 1977. He was on a 26-hour furlough from the Clinton Reformatory for Women, where he was being held for contempt of court after refusing to testify before the State Commission of Investigation regarding organized crime. The furlough was intended to be a brief respite, but it proved to be his last taste of freedom. Around 2:30 a.m., in the parking lot of the Red Bull Inn on Route 22 in Bridgewater, New Jersey, his life was cut short in a brazen mob-style execution.
The moments leading up to his death have become the stuff of underworld legend. As Lardiere was getting his suitcase from his car, a man emerged from the shadows. This man was later identified by an informant as Michael 'Mikey Cigars' Coppola, a reputed soldier in the Genovese crime family. Coppola allegedly brandished a.
22 caliber pistol equipped with a silencer and pulled the trigger, but the weapon jammed. Seeing the gunman's failure, Lardiere is said to have taunted him with the now-infamous words, 'What're you gonna do now, tough guy?' Unfazed, Coppola reportedly reached for a. 38 revolver from an ankle holster and fired multiple shots, killing Lardiere on the spot. A Bridgewater patrolman who was nearby was the first to arrive at the scene, finding Lardiere's body on the pavement with the key to his motel room still in his hand.
For nearly two decades, the murder of Johnny Cokes remained unsolved. However, in 1996, a Lucchese crime family member-turned-informant, Thomas Ricciardi, implicated Coppola in the killing. When the FBI sought a DNA sample from Coppola in connection with the investigation, he vanished from his Spring Lake home and became a fugitive, even earning a spot on the state's most-wanted list. For eleven years, Coppola remained on the lam, but his time as a fugitive came to an end on March 9, 2007, when he was apprehended by the FBI in a Manhattan apartment.
Following his capture, Michael Coppola was indicted on federal racketeering charges, which included the 1977 murder of John Lardiere. The trial brought forth the dramatic details of the parking lot execution and the underworld whispers that had surrounded it for years. Despite the informant testimony and the narrative of the crime, Coppola was ultimately acquitted of Lardiere's murder in 2009. He was, however, convicted of other racketeering offenses. The brazen killing of Johnny Cokes Lardiere in a motel parking lot remains an infamous chapter in New Jersey's mob history, a story punctuated by a defiant last question that has echoed through the decades.
