Bernard Pagano, 82, Suspected ‘Gentleman Bandit’
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Bernard Pagano, a maverick Roman Catholic priest who was accused and then cleared of a string of armed robberies by a suspect called the “Gentleman Bandit,” died August 1 at 81.
Pagano was suspected of committing nine armed robberies in Delaware and Pennsylvania in early 1979 in which a polite middle-aged man pulled a gun on store clerks and demanded money.
A woman who claimed to have been Pagano’s lover gave police photographs of him because he looked a lot like the composite drawings of the suspect.
During his trial in Delaware in 1979, several eyewitnesses said the lanky priest, then 53, was responsible for the robberies. In an intensely-followed trial, Pagano drew attention for his cavalier attitude and playing racquetball during a break in the trial.
Then, in a dramatic turn, Ronald W. Clouser, a man from the Philadelphia suburb of Brookhaven, Pa., showed up with a lawyer and admitted that he was the real Gentleman Bandit.
The case was dropped and prosecutors apologized. Some law enforcement officials, still believe that Pagano was responsible for some of the robberies.
A 1981 made-for-TV movie, “The Gentleman Bandit,” sympathetically retold Pagano’s ordeal.
Pagano, the associate pastor at St. Mary’s Refuge of Sinners in Cambridge, Md., at the time of his arrest, had once ruffled the feathers of church higher-ups when he entered a charity wrestling event as “The Mad Monk.”
He moved to New Jersey, where he was an advocate for people wrongly accused of crimes and a parish priest at St. Mary of Mount Virgin Church in New Brunswick.
