Out on bail with a history of murder and mayhem

Arthur J. Macrae and Albert Ortiz were sitting in a car eating hot dogs outside the New York Systems diner in Providence 's Olneyville Square when a middle-aged man walked by, stopped and turned to them.

"What the . . . are you looking at," the man said, pulling out a silver revolver with a 2-inch barrel, according to a police account of the incident.

Macrae and Ortiz, who were out celebrating St. Patrick's Day and had never before laid eyes on the man, responded that they weren't looking at anything in particular.

The man glared at them and walked up to the takeout counter. Then, he turned abruptly and fired at least four bullets into Macrae and Ortiz, seriously wounding both.

A month later, April 1985, police arrested Richard F. Gomes, an underworld figure with a fearsome reputation for violence, for the shootings.

Gomes, 55, of 7 Brook St., North Providence, has spent nearly 20 years behind bars. His convictions include desertion and mutiny while in the Army, assaulting a guard and a fellow inmate in prison and stabbing a man to death.

At the time of the Olneyville shootings, March 17, 1985, Gomes was free on bail, awaiting trial on charges of conspiring to murder two people to protect a drug ring with alleged ties to the New England organized-crime family of Raymond J. "Junior" Patriarca (see story on Page A-22).

After his arrest for attempted murder in the Olneyville shootings, Gomes was arrested three more times, on two drug-possession charges and a charge of receiving stolen property.

Yet, despite these arrests, his violent past and outstanding charges implicating him in attempts to kill four people, Gomes remains free awaiting trial. This is due to delays and faulty communication within the court system, a questionable bail ruling by a judge, and court guidelines that fail to define what constitutes a bail violation....