Massachusetts convicted killer of homeless males charged with murders of two extra

A person already locked up for murdering homeless males in each Montana and Charlestown was arraigned for the homicide of two others in Lowell and Cambridge.

Kevin Lino, 38, previously of Lowell, was arraigned in Middlesex Superior Courtroom on two counts of first-degree homicide for the 2010 demise in Lowell of Gary Melanson, 54, and the 2012 demise in Cambridge of Douglas Leon Clarke, 30.

Clerk Justice of the Peace Daniel Flaherty ordered Lino to be held with out bail. Lino, who stands out with vital tattoos together with a star underneath his proper eye and a spiderweb throughout his brow, is subsequent due in courtroom on Oct. 3.

“These allegations demonstrate a violent pattern of behavior in which the defendant is alleged to have targeted and victimized some of the most vulnerable members of our communities,” Middlesex DA Marian Ryan mentioned. “These cases, not initially ruled by the Medical Examiner to be homicides, left the families and friends of Mr. Melanson and Mr. Clarke with little or incorrect information about what had happened to them.”

Lino was solely 23 years outdated when prosecutors say that he beat the “much smaller and older” Melanson to demise with a metallic bat after the older man continued to mild fires for heat of their encampment after Lino informed him to not.

“The defendant believed that the fires attracted attention from police and fire department personnel, and he did not want to draw such attention to the area,” based on a Middlesex District Legal professional assertion.

After getting tipped off by an nameless caller, Lowell Police discovered Melanson’s mangled physique atop a collapsed tent underneath the Rogers Road Bridge on Nov. 29, 2010. An post-mortem concluded that he had blunt affect accidents throughout, together with his head, and suffered fractures to his rib and left arm in addition to a collapsed lung. On the time, the medical expert listed his method of demise as “undetermined.”

Then on Aug. 2, 2012, Cambridge Police checked on a report of an unconscious man within the 900 block of Memorial Drive alongside the banks of the Charles River.

There they discovered the physique of Clarke, a homeless man who typically glided by the title “Rage.” He was discovered to have morphine, codeine, alcohol and gabapentin — an anti-seizure drug typically abused recreationally — in his system and his demise was deemed an “accident,” merely “a result of acute and chronic substance abuse.”

However in 2018, the Middlesex DA Chilly Case Unit found proof that these deaths have been no accident, they are saying, and recognized Lino as a suspect for the homicide of the 2 males.

Whereas investigating Lino for an unrelated matter, prosecutors say the unit uncovered particulars of Lino’s relations with the 2 males. Whereas Melanson had clearly been overwhelmed, Lino’s demise was much less apparent..

Prosecutors say that each Lino and Clarke lived as part of a homeless group that gathered across the Harvard MBTA station and that Lino “allegedly decided to take it upon himself to drive out heroin-using members of the group, including by assaulting many of them throughout the day.”

“After a confrontation with the victim, Kevin Lino allegedly resolved to punish the victim for his insolence by poisoning him and offered the victim a quantity of heroin that he knew would cause an overdose,” based on a DA assertion.

Middlesex DA Marian Ryan mentioned throughout a press convention final week that the allegations towards Lino — and two earlier homicide convictions — “demonstrate a very violent pattern of behavior, alleging a targeting of some of the most vulnerable members of the community.”

Lino had beforehand pleaded responsible to the murder of a homeless man in Montana in 2013 and in 2019 to the 2012 deadly beating of 45-year-old Normand Varieur in Charlestown.

Since 2019, Lino has been serving a life sentence for the Charlestown slaying and a concurrent 40-year-sentence for the conviction from Montana.