East Lyme police press racketeering charges related to string of burglaries

East Lyme police have brought racketeering charges against the two men accused of burglarizing homes throughout the state and keeping the stolen goods at a local storage facility.

Patrolman Mark J. Comeau and Det. Donald Marr served Bernard E. McAllister during his scheduled court appearance in New London today with an arrest warrant charging him with eight burglaries and with collaborating with Mark Missino in a criminal enterprise. The police are expected to serve Missino with a similar warrant during an upcoming court appearance.

The police accuse the two men of burglarizing eight unoccupied homes north of Interstate 95 between Feb. 28, 2008, and April 4, 2010. In bringing the racketeering charges, they allege that each of the burglaries is interrelated, shares the similar purpose of monetary gain, targets similar victims (residential homeowners) and shares a common method of commission.

McAllister, 41, of Lisbon and Missino, 44, of Waterford have been held in state prison since November 2010, when East Lyme and state police discovered a storage facility packed with stolen items. The police spent months cataloging the stolen goods and working with law enforcement authorities throughout the state.

The men are accused of burglarizing homes in Clinton, East Lyme, Glastonbury, Groton, Guilford, Hebron, Madison, New Canaan, North Branford, Stamford, Wallingford, Westbrook and other towns in state police jurisdiction. In November, a federal grand jury indicted the two men on charges that they possessed 17 stolen firearms.

In the East Lyme burglaries, police said all of the homes were unoccupied and were located north of Interstate 95, and all of them were entered by use of a prying type of instrument, such as a screwdriver, according to the affidavit.

The police found similar sneaker prints at five of the eight crime scenes and recovered stolen property from five of the burglaries at the storage facilities. In two of the burglaries, a white four-door car, similar in appearance to the Nissan Maxima later recovered from the storage facility, was observed. In two of them, the police found a honeycomb pattern glove print.