Hell-bent

Peace between the mob and the Pagans may have spared Philly.

by Jim Barry



Revved up: The Hells Angels are usurping influence in Canada.

Four weeks before Joey Merlino and his crew were found guilty of racketeering, the president of the South Philly chapter of the Pagans motorcycle gang pleaded guilty in federal court to firing two shots at a man in South Philadelphia.

But the two incidents have more than timing in common.

Police say the victim of the assault was a member of a notorious drug crew called the Tenth and O Gang. Pagans had attacked other members of the Tenth and O Gang in the past, after they refused to pay a mob street tax.

Steven "Gorilla" Mondevergine, a 45-year-old weightlifter and ex-Philly cop, runs the Pagans in South Philly. Underworld sources say that, in the beginning, there was a "simmering rivalry" between the Mafia and the motorcycle gang run by Mondevergine.

But Ralph Natale and Joey Merlino reportedly brokered an alliance between the two gangs. According to federal agents, the Pagans went to work for the mob, extorting money from bar owners, small-time crooks and drug gangs for the Mafia.

A former associate of Ralph Natale characterizes the Pagans as "big, tough guys."

"When they walk into a club, even the other criminals are intimidated," this source says. "The Pagans are all over the East Coast — they run hookers, porno rings, drugs and extortion rackets. And they have no problem with murder when they have to use it."

Even so, the Pagans are bush league when compared to the Hells Angels. The Hells Angels are the biggest outlaw biker gang in the world, operating in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

"The Pagans don’t want to go to war with the Hells Angels and they don’t want to compete with them," this former Natalie associate says.

In the mid-1990s, the Pagans learned that the Hells Angels were scheming to expand criminal operations into Philadelphia, local mob sources say. Natale reportedly promised the Pagans that he’d keep the Hells Angels out of Philly. And when he did just that, the Pagans owed him "big-time."

Natale controlled the Pagans by acting as their protector, a friend of Natale’s explains.

Law enforcement experts claim there is a close relationship between the Bonanno mob and the Hells Angels. And another former Natale associate confirms that, as boss of the Philadelphia Mafia, "Natale went to New York to negotiate a deal with the Bonanno crime family."

Nobody in New York or Philly wanted "a Canada situation," this friend says.

He is referring to a long-time war between the Hells Angels and a rival biker gang in Canada that has left 160 people dead and 170 injured since it began in 1994.

Many of the Hells Angels are French-Canadian, and have allegedly worked alongside Mafia crime families in Quebec and Ontario. "There is an ongoing relationship between the mob and the bikers in Canada," says author and organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso.

"For years the bikers worked with and for the mob," says Jack Boland, a reporter for the Toronto Sun who covers the biker wars.

"We had a wholesale casket salesman shot dead last year. He was a member of the Toronto mob," Boland says. "At this funeral, some members of a Hells Angels-affiliated biker club showed up to pay their respects."

Boland speculates that the power structure of the local underworld is shifting and the mob’s power is waning. Many Canadian organized crime experts say that bikers are more influential than the mob in many parts of Canada.

"For years, the authorities in Toronto insisted that the Hells Angels were a problem specific to Quebec, a Montreal phenomenon," Boland says.

But last year, four smaller biker clubs from Toronto banded together, traveled to Quebec, and were initiated into the Hells Angels. Now the Hells Angels are "all over" Toronto, he says.

A Toronto businessman with friends in the local Mafia says the mob is on edge about the Hells Angels presence in town. In 1997, the alleged acting boss of the Toronto’s mob, John Papalia, was gunned down by a mob assassin who police suspect was working for a Mafia family from Sicily. In short order, Papalia’s capos in both Toronto and Niagara Falls were also gunned down.

Toronto’s Musitano crime family is allegedly backed by a powerful Mafia family from Sicily and is considered powerful and lethal. The Sicilians who back the Musitanos are part of a Mafia family that operates worldwide. Those Sicilians may be considered scary, but the Hells Angels make even them nervous.

The Hells Angels’ Toronto clubhouse looks more like a bunker. Located in the warehouse district of the city, it is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a 12-foot concrete wall.

The giant steel door is painted with the phrase "Bada Bing" — the name of the strip club and Mafia clubhouse in the HBO mob series, The Sopranos. No one answered the door when a reporter knocked and rang the buzzer. But a surveillance camera on the top of the building captured the visit on tape.

Last week, the biker war in Canada claimed two more victims when a Hells Angel and a rival biker were gunned down in Quebec.