An Italian mafia “super fugitive”, Marco Di Lauro, has been arrested in Naples after over 14 years on the run.

Di Lauro, 38, was arrested without a fight on Saturday at a modest apartment where he lived with his wife in the city’s Chiaiano district, police said. He was sitting with his two cats and eating pasta when police arrested him in an operation involving around 150 officers.

The Naples police chief, Antonio De Iesu, told a press conference “unusual activity” had led police to the suspect, previously convicted of criminal association. Police found no weapons and a small sum of money in the flat.

An international arrest warrant was issued for Di Lauro in 2006, and he was one of Italy’s four most-wanted criminals, according to the interior ministry website. He is the fourth son of Paolo Di Lauro, the former boss of a clan of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.

Italian media said Marco Di Lauro was considered the second-most dangerous man in Italy, after the Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.

The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, tweeted his thanks to the police for the arrest of the “super fugitive”. The interior minister, Matteo Salvini, voiced congratulations for a “very important operation”.

The high-profile arrest was reportedly linked to the murder earlier in the day of the wife of a man linked to Di Lauro, Salvatore Tamburrino.

Tamburrino handed himself in for shooting dead his wife, Norina Mattuozzo, shortly before Di Lauro’s arrest. De Iesu refused to confirm or deny a link between the murder and Di Lauro’s arrest.

Di Lauro had been on the run since escaping a police swoop in 2004 known as the “night of the handcuffs”. An informant said in 2010 that Di Lauro was responsible for at least four murders.

Paolo Di Lauro has been in prison since 2005, and Marco had reportedly taken over running the much-weakened clan. At least 130 people were killed in a bloody power struggle after the Amato-Pagano clan split from the Di Lauro clan in 2004.

Marco Di Lauro, reportedly known within the family by the code F4 for “fourth son”, had nine brothers and one sister. All the brothers are now either in prison or dead, Italian newspapers reported.