By David Harry

Staff Writer

The brother-in-law of a purported motorcycle gang leader killed in a shootout Tuesday faces a court date Monday on charges he interfered with the early morning federal raid in Old Orchard Beach.

Kate Simmons of the Maine Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday that 58-year-old Thomas Mayne was shot as agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tried to serve him an arrest warrant and execute a search warrant at his Sandy Circle home.

An affidavit filed by ATF Special Agent John Kaufman said Kenneth Chretien, who lived at a home on Sandy Circle near the Scarborough-Old Orchard Beach town line, refused to comply with demands to surrender after the raid in which Mayne was killed. 

Glen “Andy” Anderson, special agent in charge of the ATF Boston field office, said a special response team was trying to serve the warrants when someone fired at them from inside the house just off Ross Road near Mill Brook. The raid was conducted as part of a 12-count indictment against 27 members of the gang, including four with ties to Maine chapters.

Two men and two women were in the home at the time of the raid, according to Simmons. Old Orchard Beach tax records show Mayne, Chretien and Mayne’s wife, Diane, as owners of the home. In his affidavit, Kaufman said Chretien and an unidentified woman emerged from a basement at the home after the shooting, and two methods of non-lethal force were used against Chretien before he was subdued.

Mayne was sought on charges of conspiracy to violate the racketeering influenced and corrupt organizations act, commonly called RICO charges; and conspiracy to commit violence in aid of racketeering.

In the indictment, Mayne, nicknamed “Tomcat” was named as treasurer and past enforcer of the Maine chapter of the Outlaws, and alleged to have shot and injured member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang outside a Hell’s Angels clubhouse in Canaan on Oct. 8, 2009.

The indictment said Mayne and Michael “Madman” Pedini, also allegedly a member of the Maine Outlaws chapter, seriously wounded rival the gang member in an attempt ordered by club president Jack “Milwaukee Jack” Rosga. Rosga was also named in the indictment.

John Hageman, a spokesman from the ATF Public Affairs Office in Washington, D.C., said he did not know of other raids Tuesday that turned violent as agents sought to round up alleged gang members.

Anderson said the scene was being investigated first by the Maine Attorney General’s Office because of the use of deadly force during the raid. Sandy Circle forms a loop beginning and ending at Ross Road near Mill Brook and just south of the Old Orchard Beach-Scarborough boundary.

Ross Road was closed Tueday to through traffic and residents coming from the area preferred not to comment on the record about what they had seen, heard, or knew of Mayne.

One person who lived close by said they heard gunshots before police escorted them to vehicles so they could leave the area.

“It was very scary,” the resident said, adding they had avoided contact with Mayne, his wife and her brother over the last few years.

The indictment called the Outlaws a “highly organized criminal enterprise with a defined, multi-level chain of command,” and detailed a pattern of violence against club members who broke rules and members of rival gangs including the Hell’s Angels, Desperados, Renegades and Diablos.

Also named in the indictment as members of the Maine Outlaws chapter are Thomas Benvie, charged with the same offenses as Mayne; and Joseph Allman, listed as a past president of the Maine Outlaws chapter. Benvie, a Sanford resident, was to appear Thursday in federal court in Portland for a detention hearing.

Allman is alleged to have run down a member of a rival motorcycle gang in Ossipee, N.H., in June 2005.

The indictment said Outlaws members would often ally themselves with gangs, including the Pagans, to fight rival gangs. Outlined in the indictment are accounts of a racially motivated beating against a black man in Fredericksburg, Va., in November 2008 and the kidnapping of an undercover sheriff in Tennessee in December 2009.

Kelley declined to comment on whether Mayne was known to local law police for any incidents or charges, and said visitors and residents of Old Orchard Beach should not be overly concerned about the presence of motorcycle gangs in town.

“The problem exists wherever you go,” Kelley said.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219