LEWISTON – Jean-Paul Poulain, a French cabaret singer known for his showmanship on stage and his sometimes sad moods off it, was shot and killed Tuesday night in Augusta.

The 62-year-old singer died in an ambulance as it raced to the Augusta airport, where a helicopter was waiting to fly him to a Lewiston hospital, The Associated Press reported.

Corey Swift, 18, and Mathiew Loisel, 21, were arrested early Wednesday, only hours after the shooting at Poulain’s School Street, Augusta, apartment, the AP reported.

Loisel told detectives he shot Poulain because the victim had taken sexual advantage of him a few months ago.

In an interview with WGME-TV, Loisel said he pulled the trigger. “But it was like my finger moved without my mind thinking,” he said.

Swift and Amanda Bechard, 22, were quoted in state police affidavits as saying Loisel told them that he wanted to rob Poulain. Loisel told Bechard that Poulain had money in Swiss bank accounts and that he was going to make him transfer the money.

Tuesday night, Loisel showed up at Bechard’s apartment with a handgun and demanded that Swift accompany him to Poulain’s house.

Swift told police that Loisel shot Poulain in the chest and hid the handgun under a nearby shed. Detectives later recovered the gun from the site.

Loisel’s lawyer, David Crook, said his client suffered from “long-standing mental health issues” and asked for a mental health evaluation.

An autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday at the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

Word of the shooting spread through Maine’s Franco-American community, where Poulain was a beloved performer.

“He lived the part,” said Ed Boucher, who produced Poulain’s first album. He was tall, handsome and spoke impeccable French. “When he was on stage, his love songs would have tremendous emotion.”

Poulain had been featured at the Franco-American Heritage Center and in events at Bates College, the Lewiston Ramada and the defunct Festival de Joie.

In Augusta, he helped create the Bastille Festival and had both a radio show and a public access TV program.

Off stage, his life seemed sad. He suffered from bouts of depression and even had a run-in with police.

Poulain grew up in Augusta as one of 14 children in a French-speaking household.

“Jean-Paul’s father sang opera along with French and Irish ballads,” according to his Web site, http://www.jean-paulpoulain.com/. “His mother sang French traditional and French-Canadian folkloric tunes to him, at a very young age. The love affair with French and singing began at age five when Jean-Paul found himself on stage singing a duo with his father; he has been singing ever since.”

Though he achieved prominence in New England, he never found national fame.

He performed at venues in the U.S., Canada and France, but he remained a local entertainer. He might have been more successful in a big city such as New York or Chicago, where his talents might have found bigger venues, said Boucher, who lives in Lewiston.

As it was, Poulain had to work day jobs in banks and elsewhere. He never married. Sometimes he would become a kind of recluse, hiding away from people for months at a time, Boucher said.

In 2002, the singer talked publicly about being molested by a Catholic priest when he was a boy. He criticized the church hierarchy for failing to protect children, who were “easy prey,” he said.

In 2005, Poulain was arrested with another man in connection with a heist at a Farmington pawn shop, Greenlaw’s Collectibles.

In January of this year, he pleaded guilty to theft by receiving stolen property and was sentenced to five years in prison. The sentence was suspended. And he was starting two years of probation.

In recent weeks, he’d begun reaching out to revive his career.

In February, he called Lewiston-native Harry King, who produced two CDs for Poulain.The singer wanted to go back in the studio to work on an all-English CD.

“I had the perfect song for him,” King said. “It’s called ‘The King of Hearts,’ and it is about Jean-Paul’s life.”

The song is about a performer.

“On stage, his job is to keep people in love,” said King, who wrote the song himself. The music stays upbeat as the song describes life on stage.

It mirrored Poulain on stage.

“He wasn’t just a local guy who sang,” King said. His talent was bigger than that.

“He put feeling into his music and his songs,” said Rita Dube, the executive director of the Franco-American Heritage Center. “He could captivate an audience.”

However, like King’s “King of Hearts,” Poulain was a different person off stage.

King’s song gets slow and melancholy as it describes the performer when the show is over.

“When everybody leaves, it’s lonely,” King said. “That was Jean-Paul, too. He was the king of hearts.”

Staff writer Dan Hartill and The Associated Press contributed to this report.