Supreme Court decision allows early release of former Mongols biker

Brotherhood & Betrayal — GET YOUR COPY NOW AND SEE WHAT ALL THE BUZZ IS ABOUT

Richard Mathews was convicted in 1993 of planting pipe bomb that maimed an unintended target instead of the man who expelled him from the Mongols biker gang

SAN DIEGO —

By the time Richard Glen Mathews maimed an Imperial Beach man with a pipe bomb in May 1991, he’d already shot at least three people during his lifetime.

He was cleared the first time he killed someone when it was ruled self-defense. The second time, he was convicted of first-degree murder and imprisoned. Then shortly after being paroled, he shot and wounded a fellow biker over a drug money dispute, prompting his expulsion from the Mongols Motorcycle Club, an outlaw biker gang.

In retaliation for his Mongols patch being pulled, Mathews and another man built a pipe bomb packed with steel balls and planted it outside the home of James “Fat Man” Rivera, then the president of the Mongols’ San Diego chapter. Early the next morning, 59-year-old James Wilson, who was not involved in the motorcycle gang, picked up the bomb while collecting aluminum cans.

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