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Pagans figure to be extradited to Philadelphia

He walked into court in an orange prison jumpsuit, his shackled feet and girth giving him the gait of a sumo wrestler.

Steve "The Gorilla" Mondevergine at his extradition hearing Friday in the Gloucester County Courthouse in Woodbury, N.J. (Photo by Andy Ritchie)
Steve "The Gorilla" Mondevergine at his extradition hearing Friday in the Gloucester County Courthouse in Woodbury, N.J. (Photo by Andy Ritchie)Read more

He walked into court in an orange prison jumpsuit, his shackled feet and girth giving him the gait of a sumo wrestler.

With no supporters sitting behind him and no attorney at his side, Steven "Gorilla" Mondevergine - the man once feared as the baddest biker in Philly - was all manners and mousiness when he appeared Friday morning in a Gloucester County courtroom for an extradition hearing.

"I don't have my glasses, but I'll just go with whatever it is," he quietly told Superior Court Judge Walter Marshall, when the judge asked if he had read the extradition paperwork.

After more routine questions, Marshall then ordered Mondevergine, who is wanted in Philadelphia on attempted-murder charges in a 2008 case, extradited here within 10 days.

Mondevergine, whose many tattoos (including one on his right shoulder blade reading "Gorilla Warfare" that was visible through his thin shirt) belied his cowed demeanor, turned to smile at reporters as deputies led him back to a holding cell.

Mondevergine was arrested at his mother's Washington Township, N.J., house Wednesday in the January 2008 shooting of former Pagans president Timothy "Casual" Flood at the Pagans headquarters on Torresdale Avenue near Disston Street.

The Flood case might not be Mondevergine's only problem. In the coming months, Mondevergine's arrest is expected to be rolled into a federal indictment stemming from a joint FBI-police investigation of motorcycle-gang violence, a law-enforcement source told the Daily News.

According to the source, a federal grand jury has been looking at the 2005 murder of Timothy "Thinker" Wood, the attempted firebombing of the Hells Angels chapter in West Philadelphia and other conflicts between the Pagans and Angels and among the Pagans.

On Jan. 31, 2008, Flood was chairing a meeting of Pagans from the Northeast and began bad-mouthing Mondevergine and other Pagans, according to biker and law-enforcement sources.

Mondevergine walked in, and a fight erupted, sources said. Mondevergine allegedly shot Flood in the knee and stabbed him in the back.

"Any you got a problem with that?" Mondevergine barked before leaving, according to biker and law-enforcement sources. A source close to the investigation said Mondevergine didn't intend to kill Flood, but to make an example of him.

Flood was one of 54 members and associates of the Pagans indicted by federal authorities in January for alleged involvement in a gambling scheme.

The Flood shooting, meanwhile, isn't the only incident that federal authorities are probing, according to sources.

Aside from dozens of skirmishes between the Pagans and the Hells Angels, which set up their first chapter in the city in 2003, investigators are still looking into the Jan. 14, 2005, murder of Wood, 36, one of four Pagans who patched over to the Angels.

A barrage of bullets riddled Wood's truck as he drove on the Schuylkill Expressway near the Vare Avenue exit. One slug struck Wood in the head, and his pickup veered into a chain-link fence in front of Taz Motors on the Vare Avenue exit near New Hope Street.

Mondevergine had once vowed to retaliate against Wood and the three other former Pagans who joined the Angels. He believed that at least one founder set him up to be shot nine times outside his South Philadelphia home in 1999, sources previously told the Daily News.

Mondevergine survived the assassination attempt, and in November 2000 he shot at a man who was a suspect in the shooting. He was arrested and served 23 months of a 27-month federal sentence.