No one saluted when Roger “Bear” Mariani’s flag-draped coffin was carried out of the funeral home Saturday morning in a cold rain, but it wouldn’t have seemed all that unusual if they had.
Mariani, a 61-year-old leader of the Hells Angels motorcycle club in Connecticut who was gunned down on I-95 last weekend, was, after all, a Vietnam War veteran who was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.
But it was the behavior of his biker comrades that gave the funeral its sense of deja vu. The spit-and-polish may have been missing but, like police officers who turn out in uniformed ranks when one of their own has been killed, leather-clad Hells Angels members poured into this coastline city from around the United States and abroad to say goodbye.
And with the stoicism of cops, at least 100 of them who couldn’t fit into the funeral home stood outside in the rain and wind, waiting to line up on their motorcycles and provide an honor guard for the hearse carrying Mariani as it wended its way through the streets to the cemetery.
“I like the respect they’re showing,” said Edgar Cortez, who stopped to take pictures of the Hells Angels with his cellphone camera, his young son, Ricardo, at his side. “Not too many people get a beautiful funeral like this.”
This being the funeral of a Hells Angels member, however, there were some important distinctions between Mariani’s mourners and those affiliated with a fraternal organization — starting with the fact that the group is considered a criminal organization.
No media were allowed into the Parente-Lauro Funeral Home, where a service was held, or even on the same side of the street, because police were afraid it would stoke the already evident hostility being shown by the group’s members.
Security for the funeral was also extraordinarily high because authorities were concerned about retaliatory violence in the aftermath of Mariani’s killing. State troopers were stationed along all the highways leading into and out of the city, and Bridgeport police lined up in front of the funeral home all morning.
Police officers also blocked every intersection along the 2-mile route to Mountain Grove Cemetery, allowing no other traffic on the same roads with the funeral procession.
Bridgeport Police Capt. Robert Craw said no incidents were reported.
“It went very smoothly,” he said.
Last Saturday, Mariani was among more than 20 bikers driving down I-95 in West Haven when one of them reportedly threw a wrench at a green sport utility vehicle with Florida plates just before shots were fired from the SUV, according to a police source. Mariani, a Stratford resident, was shot in the chest, but was able to pull his bike to the road’s shoulder.
Another Hells Angel, Paul Carrol, 37, of Bridgeport, was also wounded. He was treated at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
State police are investigating the shootings and no arrests have been made. One possibility is that a quarrel between the Hells Angels and their rival motorcycle club, the Outlaws, led to Mariani’s shooting. Police said it’s also possible that it was a random road rage incident.
Enfield police arrested two men believed to be Hells Angels members last week near the home of an Outlaws member. Police found a variety of weapons in the car in which the men were riding, along with pages from a state police training manual listing the names and addresses of Outlaws members.
The Outlaws have denied any involvement in the killing.
The Hells Angels were an active gang in Bridgeport during the mid-1980s, according to police, and they referred to themselves as the Nomads — a name still seen on their jackets and vests.
In 1985, a large crackdown resulted in the arrests and convictions of many of the club’s members, including Mariani, who was sentenced in 1987 to seven years in prison on a drug conspiracy charge. He was president of the club’s Bridgeport chapter in the mid-’80s.
In 1995, after he had served his prison term, Mariani went to work as a mechanic at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Stamford. He left that job about two years ago to become a loan officer in Naugatuck.
Mariani had a lifelong love affair with motorcycles, according to his obituary. He joined the Grateful Dead Motorcycle Club after returning from Vietnam and, in 1975, became one of the first members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club of Bridgeport. He is survived by his wife, Natalie, and a son, Dana.
Saturday, friends and bikers from chapters as far away as Nevada and South Carolina in the United States — and overseas, from Germany — gathered in front of the funeral home, but none were willing to be interviewed about the man they came to honor.
One biker, after being stopped by a reporter, said only, “He was a brother,” before walking away.
After the coffin was carried from the funeral home, and dozens of flower arrangements were loaded into the back of a pickup truck to be transported to the cemetery, Hells Angels members revved their bikes.
As the roar of the engines drowned out the sounds of the rain and the traffic from the nearby highway, the heat from scores of exhaust pipes hit the cold air and blanketed the bikers in an eerie fog.
Then they all rode away.
Information from an Associated Press story is included in this report.
