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A New England serial killer has been unmasked — but he doesn’t appear to be connected to rampant rumors in the region sparked by the discovery of over a dozen lifeless bodies.
Kevin Lino, 38, was charged in August for the murder of two Massachusetts homeless men in 2012 and 2014 while he was already serving time for the murders of two others across the US.
“Mr. Lino is a serial killer,” said Middlesex County DA Marian Ryan, whose office brought the latest charges after new evidence came to light.
“The Department of Justice defines a serial killer as someone who has taken the life of two individuals in separate situations,” Ryan told Boston 25 News. “In this case we have already convictions in two. We’ve now brought charges in two more.”
Lino’s new charges come as internet sleuths and fearful New Englanders have speculated a killer was preying in the region after the bodies of more than a dozen women were found since March in mostly wooded areas across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine.
Police have ruled out the notion that one individual is responsible for those deaths — noting most of the victims died in vastly different ways, which is uncharacteristic of serial killers.
Lino allegedly first killed in 2010 by beating 54-year-old Gary Melanson to death with an aluminum baseball bat at a Lowell, Massachusetts homeless encampment, prosecutors said.
The killer allegedly became enraged when Melanson refused to put out a campfire he was using to warm himself, and bludgeoned him to death with the bat.
Lino was 23 at the time, and Melanson was “much smaller” than him, according to prosecutors.
Then two years later, Lino was among a group of homeless people who hung around the Harvard Square subway stop when he decided to drive the heroin users of the group out of the area.
That campaign involved “assaulting many of them throughout the day,” and when 30-year-old Douglas Leon Clarke stood up to him Lino allegedly “resolved to punish him for his insolence,” prosecutors said.
Lino allegedly gave Clarke a shot of heroin that was too strong — known as a “hot shot” — which he knew would cause death.
And those are just the latest murders of which Kino is accused.
He is already serving a life sentence plus 40 years for the slayings of two other homeless men, including Norman Varieur in Charlestown in 2012 and Jack Gilbert Berry in Montana in 2014.
“It is a serial murder, but it’s not the kind of predatory killer that we generally think of when we talk about serial murder,” Northeastern University Criminologist James Alan Fox told Boston 25.
Nevertheless, experts think the man whose face is covered in terrifying tattoos exhibits that “dark triad” of personality types — psychopathy, narcissism and manipulative Machiavellianism — often found in serial killers.
“I believe he is a very dangerous, dangerous individual. So, I think he is a serial killer for sure,” said Montana journalist Travis Mateer, who spent time with Lino as a homeless counselor in Missoula.
Mateer believes Lino is even responsible for the vanishing of another homeless man, Monte Swanson, who knew Lino in Missoula.
And prosecutors are also open to the idea that there might be more deaths on Lino’s hands.
“We continue to investigate that,” said DA Ryan. “We never give up on those cases. We don’t forget about them, and we stay open to other information.”
Lino pleaded not guilty to his latest charges of first degree murder.
English (US)