As Michael (Mikey Cigars) Coppola sweats out DNA tests that could mean an indictment for a 1977 mob hit, the feds have ratcheted up the pressure on him, his family and his associates as they seek to tie him to a 2005 mob rubout, Gang Land has learned. 

Federal prosecutors have charged a longtime Genovese associate with providing Mikey Cigars the hideaway he used to evade the law for 11 years – a condo on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – in a new indictment that also raised the stakes for Coppola, his wife and their son. 

According to the expanded indictment, Philip (The Horse) Albanese was part of three separate criminal conspiracies that began with his purchase on January 28, 2000 of an apartment at 210 West 74^th Street “in which Coppola did, in fact, reside.” The plots ended with the fugitive capo’s arrest near the apartment last March 9. 

The Horse seemed to get a wonderful deal on the 11th-floor apartment. He bought it for $100,000 from a couple who paid $147,500 for it in 1987, according to transfer taxes paid on the two sales listed in real estate records obtained by Gang Land.  

“It was a steal,” laughed one real estate broker. 

Albanese, who sources say has “close ties” to imprisoned former acting boss

Lawrence (Little Larry) Dentico, (left) also obstructed justice when he told FBI agents he had no contact with Mikey Cigars in recent years, the indictment said. He was released on $290,000 bond secured by the deed to his Madison, N.J. home. 

The indictment charges The Horse, Mikey Cigars, his wife Linda, and their son, Louis (JR) Rizzo Jr. with conspiring to harbor a fugitive, to aid a federal offender, and to commit misprision of a felony. That rarely used statute – the first time Gang Land mentioned it in 19 years was in a May 3 column about a plea offer that Genovese capo Liborio (Barney) Bellomo turned down – makes it a crime to not report a crime.  

Like the late Lawrence Ricci – a family soldier killed in 2005 while he was on trial for labor racketeering – Dentico, 83, Coppola, 61, and Albanese, 63, are New Jersey-based gangsters aligned with capo Tino Fiumara. Fiumara, 66, a powerful racketeer with much sway on the New Jersey waterfront, recently relocated from the Garden State to Long Island.

On March 6, three days before his arrest, Coppola learned from an associate named Eddie Aulisi that Albanese (right) had been subpoenaed by a Brooklyn federal grand jury that was looking into Ricci’s murder, according to a transcript of a tape-recorded conversation obtained by Gang Land. Ricci’s body was found in the trunk of a car in Union N.J. in November 2005, about six weeks after he disappeared. 

“The Horse got served,” said Aulisi, explaining in coded discussion that the subpoena “wasn’t unexpected” but it arrived on a Sunday when his

lawyer was away, making it necessary for Albanese to learn the particulars of the subpoena from an associate. 

“He’s gotta go in front of the, ahhh, you know, the crew there… where they’re gonna give him immunity,” said Aulisi, a son of a Newark-based dockworker’s union president. Aulisi also kept Coppola up to speed on his waterfront rackets while he was on the lam, according to the transcript. 

It’s likely that Aulisi was correct about the grand jury’s intention to grant immunity to The Horse, and that Coppola’s arrest altered those plans. Sources say Aulisi and others are targets of a continuing grand jury probe. 

In court papers, assistant U.S. attorneys John Buretta and Taryn Merkl, who have told the trial judge they expect to lodge racketeering charges against Coppola and Rizzo, state that a court ordered wiretap picked up the father and son discussing the murder weapon in the slaying of Ricci (left). 

The prosecutors, as well as lawyers for Albanese, Linda

Coppola, and Michael Coppola, did not return calls, or declined to comment.

Rizzo’s attorney, Thomas Ashley, said he hoped to convince the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals at oral arguments next week that his 41-year-old client, who is not charged with any violence and has no prior convictions, should be granted bail as he awaits trial. 

Meanwhile, there is a small ray of hope for Coppola. New Jersey prosecutors have yet to file results of a comparison between DNA in saliva taken from Coppola 12 weeks ago and DNA samples from hair retrieved at a 1977 murder scene, (right) fueling speculation that they may be inconclusive, and derail the state’s efforts to prosecute him for the murder of John (Johnny Cokes) Lardiere. 

Reached by Gang Land, New Jersey deputy attorney general Mark Eliades declined to say whether the testing was being done by the FBI, which did the DNA analysis of the crime scene hairs in 1996 after Coppola became a suspect, or at the state police lab, as a prosecutor told the Star-Ledger in April. 

Eliades insisted, however, that prosecutors had not yet received the test results, stating: “We were told we should have them shortly. The minute we do, we will notify the court.” 

The indictment of Philip Albanese was “inevitable,” according to the tape-recorded wisdom of wiseguy Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato (left) that was heard this week at the re-trial of former acting Bonanno boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano.

The Horse’s indictment was destined by his mention in a Gang Land column in May, according to insight gleaned from a November 20, 2004 jailhouse phone call from Bruno to his wife, Cathy Burke, the daughter of legendary Queens gangster James (Jimmy The Gent) Burke. That’s what did Vinny Gorgeous in, Bruno opined in analyzing Basciano’s arrest by the feds the previous day.

“This was inevitable,” said Indelicato. “Something’s gotta come out of these things when they write about you. Especially when Jerry Capeci writes about you. You know you’re dead after that.”

Gang Land pleads guilty to having written about The Horse and Vinny Gorgeous (right) in the weeks before they were indicted, but is innocent of any wrongdoing where Bruno is concerned. Each time he’s been nailed by the feds since 2001 – twice for parole violations and once for murder – it came with no prior mention in Gang Land.

Mob scion Anthony Colombo, (left) who was acquitted of racketeering in February, copped a plea bargain last week to settle extortion charges that were left hanging when jurors were unable to reach a verdict at his trial. The 62-year-old mobster, who has been confined to his home since his indictment three years ago, faces 12 to 18 months in prison, according to sentencing guidelines. But he could get less. 

Shortly before his trial, the only other wiseguy among 19 defendants in the case, Gerard (Green Eyes) Clemenza, who had also been confined to his home since 2004, copped a plea deal to loansharking that called for 18 to 24 months, according to the guidelines.  

At sentencing, to the joy of lawyer Nicholas Kaizer and the consternation of assistant U.S. attorney Jason Halperin, Manhattan Federal Judge Naomi Buchwald gave Clemenza (right) eight months, in part, she said, because the government had overstated allegations of violence against Clemenza that caused him to be confined to his home as he awaited trial. 

Meanwhile, Chris Colombo, the outspoken, youngest son of slain Mafia boss Joe Colombo, who was convicted of gambling counts he admitted at his trial but got a hung jury on racketeering and extortion charges, told Gang Land he plans to press the issue at a November retrial. He faces anywhere from 12 to 30 months for the gambling raps.

Colombo, who gave the feds fits when he turned his not-so-strict house arrest conditions into a nice pay day playing himself in an hour-long HBO spoof called  –  what else?  – “House Arrest,” said simply: “They made me an offer I could refuse.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and with a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.02, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

The best of Gang Land is available in a book store near you. Or you can pick up a copy of "JERRY CAPECI'S Gang Land: Fifteen Years Of Covering The Mafia" at a special low price from the Godfather of online booksellers, Amazon.com.

The 330-page oversized book includes an index and eight pages of photographs. It is sure to contain a few of your favorite columns, as well as some you may have missed during Gang Land's lengthy run that began in 1989 in The New York Daily News and continues today online and in The New York Sun.

The book's 125 columns chronicle the New York Mafia landscape from John Gotti's heyday in 1989 as the swashbuckling Dapper Don to the remarkable day in 2003 when Gotti's longtime rival Vincent (Chin) Gigante gave up his Daffy Don routine and confessed to having put on a crazy act for three decades.

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