ROCHESTER, N.H. — A Maine man charged with killing two men and a 10-year-old boy in Aroostook County last month will be held without bail in New Hampshire pending extradition proceedings, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Thayne Ormsby, 20, of Orient showed no emotion as he was arraigned on a fugitive-from-justice charge in Rochester District Court by video hookup from the Strafford County jail. He did not have a lawyer and did not enter a plea.
Additional Photos
An extradition hearing was scheduled for July 16 in Dover, where Ormsby was arrested Friday.
Ormsby is charged in the stabbing deaths of Jeffrey Ryan, 55; Ryan’s son, Jesse; and Jason Dehahn, 30, at Ryan’s mobile home in the northern Maine town of Amity, near the Canadian border. The three were last seen alive June 22; their bodies were discovered the next day.
Ormsby was arrested after police analyzed DNA and fingerprint evidence from a beer can and a cigarette butt in Ryan’s home.
So far, the only hint at motive for the crimes was Ormsby’s statement to Maine detectives that he killed Ryan because he thought Ryan was a drug dealer. Ormsby gave investigators no information about a motive for killing Ryan’s son or Dehahn, a neighbor of the Ryans.
A relative of one of the victims has suggested that Ormsby targeted Ryan for a different reason.
Dehahn’s brother, Jake, told the Bangor Daily News that Ormsby planned to move in with Jeffrey Ryan’s 16-year-old daughter and the girl’s mother in Weston, Maine, but Ryan told Ormsby to stay away from the girl.
Investigators are looking into relationships and other possible motives, said Bill Stokes, a deputy attorney general in Maine. For now, however, investigators declined to release further details.
“A lot of things will come out in court as we get him back from New Hampshire, if we have a bail hearing,” Stokes said.
After the killings, Ormsby went to the home in Weston and burned his bloodied clothes in the furnace, according to a statement he made to investigators. It’s unclear whether the girl or her mother knew he had been there.
At the time of the killings, Ormsby was living with Robert and Joy Strout in Orient. Investigators said the Strouts’ daughter is the mother of Ryan’s 16-year-old daughter and a longtime friend of Ormsby’s mother.
Robert Strout told state police detectives that he gave Ormsby a ride to Dover, N.H., after the killings because Ormsby had threatened him and his family.
Strout, who has not been charged, also said he drove Ormsby to a bog, where Ormsby threw a knife in the water. Maine State Police divers found the knife Saturday, authorities said.
A woman who answered the phone Tuesday at the home of Ormsby’s mother declined to comment and hung up.
John Frary, who hired Ormsby to work on his campaign for the seat in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in 2008, said Ormsby came from an unhappy home.
Frary, a retired college professor who lost his race, said Ormsby was one of three men, all of whom qualified as homeless, who were “live-in aides” during the race. He said Ormsby stayed on after the election but left in a huff after exchanging words over an overloaded washing machine.
“I knew a mixed-up, immature adult named Thayne Ormsby. The alleged murderer Thayne Ormsby is a complete stranger,” Frary wrote in an online newspaper, the Daily Bulldog.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story