New England man charged by authorities in connection with the deaths of two men could be serial killer
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Kevin J. Lino, who is currently serving sentences for the murders of two men in 2012 and 2014, has been charged in connection with two additional murders from 2010 and 2012, leading media outlets to label him an alleged serial killer.
On November 29, 2010, 54-year-old Gary A. Melanson was found dead in a tent under the Rogers Street Bridge in Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell Police received a call from an anonymous individual reporting the body and quickly responded to the scene.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) performed an autopsy and noted several injuries to the limbs, head, and torso, which they determined were delivered by a blunt object. The victim suffered a collapsed lung, fractured ribs, and a fractured arm. The manner of death was ruled as undetermined.
On August 2, 2012, the body of an unconscious male was discovered along 975 Memorial Drive, on the bank of the Charles River. He was later identified as 30-year-old Douglas "Rage" Leon Clarke, a homeless man who had been living in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge at the time. His death was initially determined to be accidental due to chronic substance abuse, as evidenced by a toxicology report showing a cocktail of drugs, including ethanol, morphine, codeine, and gabapentin.
It was not until several years later that Kevin J. Lino became a suspect in the murders. The Massachusetts State Police were investigating a separate incident in 2018 when they identified Lino, then 23, as a person of interest in the Clarke and Melanson murders. They discovered that Lino had been living around the Rogers Street Bridge at the time of Melanson's death and that there had been a physical altercation between the two. According to police, the conflict began when Lino attacked Melanson for lighting a fire to stay warm. When Melanson ignored Lino's demands, police say Lino beat him with an aluminum baseball bat.
Police reportedly discovered that Lino had also provided Clarke with enough heroin to cause an overdose. The Lowell Police Department stated that Lino's motivation was "to drive out heroin-using members of the group, including by assaulting many of them throughout the day." According to the Boston Globe, Lino also urinated on at least one of his victims in what is believed to be a humiliation ritual.
Later that same year in Boston, another homeless man, Normand Varieur, was murdered as a result of blunt-force trauma. Lino would later be charged and convicted in that murder.
The following year, in January 2014, Lino moved to Montana, where he and another man named Kenneth Damien Hickman were involved in the severe beating of a fellow unhoused individual named Gilbert "Jack" Berry. Reports describe Berry as having gang symbols carved into his skin and cigarettes put out on his body. He was executed by Lino with a single gunshot to the head, and his body was disposed of in the nearby Clark Fork River. Lino was charged with homicide, and Hickman confessed to being part of the assault but not the murder. He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, and charges against him were dropped in return for his cooperation. Lino pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 40 years behind bars.
After investigators determined Lino was a suspect in Normand Varieur's murder back in Massachusetts, he was transported back and convicted of second-degree murder. By 2024, authorities had reclassified both the Melanson and Clarke deaths as homicides and attributed them to Lino. At this point, the DA began referring to Kevin J. Lino as a potential serial killer. Lino, who was already serving life behind bars, pleaded not guilty in the deaths of Melanson and Clarke.
The Boston Globe reported that in 2018, Lino wrote a letter to police regarding Melanson's death, which read in part:
"I beat him with a baseball bat, put out his fire, and threw him half inside his tent, and broke his tent to make it seem like he fell just in case he died. I beat the shit out of the man for 20 mins, or at least it felt like 20 mins, and left him to die in the cold winter night."
Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said of Lino in an August 2025 press release:
"This defendant is alleged to repeatedly and deliberately victimize some of the most vulnerable members of our communities, unhoused individuals. The actions alleged in these cases were not only violent and cruel, but inhumane. We recognize the pain and uncertainty endured by the families and friends of Mr. Melanson and Mr. Clarke, who have long awaited answers about what happened to their loved ones. It is our hope that today’s arraignments will bring them a measure of peace."
Now aware of Lino's M.O. and victim type, police are looking into other unsolved murders and cold cases in Massachusetts and Montana that may fit Lino's pattern of murdering homeless males between 30–50, who live in transient shelters or encampments, using torture, beatings, lethal doses of drugs, and shootings as methods.