MIDDLESEX COUNTY, Mass. (TCN) — A 38-year-old convicted killer was recently indicted in the cold case deaths of a 54-year-old man in 2010 and a 30-year-old victim in 2012.
According to the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, on Nov. 29, 2010, Lowell Police responded to a report of a body under the Rogers Street Bridge, where they found Gary Melanson “sprawled over a collapsed tent with numerous visible wounds.” An autopsy determined he suffered blunt force injuries to his head, torso, and extremities, including fractured ribs, a collapsed lung, and an arm fracture. His manner of death was originally ruled to be “undetermined,” but prosecutors later said he had been beaten to death with a baseball bat.
According to the district attorney’s office, nearly two years later, on Aug. 2, 2012, Cambridge Police responded to a report of an unconscious man and found the body of Douglas Clarke, who was also known as “Rage.” Clarke was reportedly homeless and lived in the Harvard Square area. Investigators determined he had a “substantial concentration” of morphine, codeine, ethanol, and gabapentin in his system. Authorities initially ruled his death an accident.
Massachusetts State Police began investigating a separate case involving Kevin Lino, and in 2018, they learned about a possible connection between him and the deaths of Melanson and Clarke.
Lino and Melanson were reportedly both unhoused and lived in the same area near the Rogers Street Bridge when Lino allegedly beat Melanson to death with a bat “because he continued to light fires to warm himself after Lino had warned him not to do so.”
Investigators also uncovered evidence suggesting Lino allegedly poisoned Clarke by giving him a fatal dose of heroin. Lino and Clarke reportedly gathered by the Harvard Square MBTA station with a group of homeless people.
According to prosecutors, 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.” Following a confrontation with Clark, “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.”
According to the district attorney’s office and WCVB-TV, Lino is already serving life behind bars for a second-degree murder conviction in Suffolk County, and he is concurrently serving a 40-year sentence for a homicide out of Montana.
On Aug. 5, prosecutors announced that Lino was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Clarke and Melanson.
