A New England serial killer has been unmasked — however he doesn’t seem like linked to rampant rumors within the area sparked by the invention of over a dozen lifeless our bodies.
Kevin Lino, 38, was charged in August for the homicide of two Massachusetts homeless males in 2012 and 2014 whereas he was already serving time for the murders of two others throughout the US.
“Mr. Lino is a serial killer,” mentioned Middlesex County DA Marian Ryan, whose workplace introduced the newest prices after new proof got here to gentle.
“The Division of Justice defines a serial killer as somebody who has taken the lifetime of two people in separate conditions,” Ryan instructed Boston 25 Information. “On this case we’ve got already convictions in two. We’ve now introduced prices in two extra.”
Lino’s new prices come as web sleuths and fearful New Englanders have speculated a killer was preying within the area after the our bodies of greater than a dozen girls had been discovered since March in largely wooded areas throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine.
Police have dominated out the notion that one particular person is liable for these deaths — noting a lot of the victims died in vastly other ways, which is uncharacteristic of serial killers.
Lino allegedly first killed in 2010 by beating 54-year-old Gary Melanson to demise with an aluminum baseball bat at a Lowell, Massachusetts homeless encampment, prosecutors mentioned.
The killer allegedly turned enraged when Melanson refused to place out a campfire he was utilizing to heat himself, and bludgeoned him to demise with the bat.
Lino was 23 on the time, and Melanson was “a lot smaller” than him, in response to prosecutors.
Then two years later, Lino was amongst a gaggle of homeless individuals who hung across the Harvard Sq. subway cease when he determined to drive the heroin customers of the group out of the realm.
That marketing campaign concerned “assaulting a lot of them all through the day,” and when 30-year-old Douglas Leon Clarke stood as much as him Lino allegedly “resolved to punish him for his insolence,” prosecutors mentioned.
Lino allegedly gave Clarke a shot of heroin that was too robust — often called a “scorching shot” — which he knew would trigger demise.
And people are simply the newest murders of which Kino is accused.
He’s already serving a life sentence plus 40 years for the slayings of two different homeless males, together with Norman Varieur in Charlestown in 2012 and Jack Gilbert Berry in Montana in 2014.
“It’s a serial homicide, however it’s not the form of predatory killer that we usually consider after we discuss serial homicide,” Northeastern College Criminologist James Alan Fox instructed Boston 25.
However, consultants assume the person whose face is roofed in terrifying tattoos reveals that “darkish triad” of persona varieties — psychopathy, narcissism and manipulative Machiavellianism — typically present in serial killers.
“I imagine he’s a really harmful, harmful particular person. So, I feel he’s a serial killer for certain,” mentioned Montana journalist Travis Mateer, who hung out with Lino as a homeless counselor in Missoula.
Mateer believes Lino is even liable for the vanishing of one other homeless man, Monte Swanson, who knew Lino in Missoula.
And prosecutors are additionally open to the concept there is likely to be extra deaths on Lino’s fingers.
“We proceed to analyze that,” mentioned DA Ryan. “We by no means surrender on these instances. We don’t neglect about them, and we keep open to different data.”
Lino pleaded not responsible to his newest prices of first diploma homicide.
