WOBURN – Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, Lowell Police Superintendent Gregory Hudon, and Cambridge Police Commissioner Christine Elow announced today that Kevin J. Lino, 38, a former resident of Lowell, has been indicted for two separate acts of First-Degree Murder: the killing of Gary A. Melanson, 54, who was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat under the Rogers Street Bridge in Lowell in 2010; and the killing of Douglas Leon Clarke, 30. Clarke was initially believed to have died of an accidental overdose by the Charles River in Cambridge in 2012, but he was actually allegedly given an intentionally fatal dose of heroin, sometimes referred to as a “hot shot,” by the defendant after a dispute.
On the afternoon of November 29, 2010, Lowell Police received an anonymous phone call reporting a body under the Rogers Street Bridge. Upon arrival they located Gary Melanson’s body sprawled over a collapsed tent, with numerous visible wounds. An autopsy conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) concluded he had suffered blunt impact injuries to his head, torso and extremities, including fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and a fracture of his left arm. His manner of death was initially ruled to be “undetermined.”
Two years later, on August 2, 2012, Cambridge Police received a call of a man apparently unconscious in the area of 975 Memorial Drive, on the bank of the Charles River. Upon arrival police located the body of Douglas Leon Clarke, 30, who often went by the name “Rage”. Mr. Clarke was known to police as being unhoused and living in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge at the time of his death. Toxicological examination of the victim’s blood revealed the presence of a substantial concentration of morphine, as well as codeine, ethanol and gabapentin (an anticonvulsant medication). His manner of death was recorded as an “accident,” a result of acute and chronic substance abuse. There was no evidence at that time that the death had been intentional.
In 2018 while Massachusetts State Police were working on an unrelated investigation involving Lino, police learned about Lino’s possible involvement in two homicides. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit, in collaboration with state and local police, were subsequently able to establish probable cause that Kevin J. Lino, then 23-years-old, and Gary Melanson were both unhoused and staying in the same area near the Rogers Street Bridge when the defendant allegedly attacked Gary Melanson because he continued to light fires to warm himself after Lino had warned him not to do so. 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. After the victim allegedly ignored the defendant’s order, the defendant rushed the victim, who was much smaller and older than the defendant, and struck him repeatedly with a metal baseball bat.
Evidence also determined that the defendant, then 25-years-old, poisoned Douglas Leon Clarke by allegedly intentionally giving him a quantity of heroin of sufficient strength to cause a fatal overdose. At the time of the murder the defendant and the victim were both part of a group of unhoused individuals who gathered by the Harvard Square MBTA station. The defendant 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.
“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. 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. When I created the Cold Case Unit, I made a commitment to re-examining existing evidence and to exhausting every possible option to bring answers to families. In this case, through painstaking investigation and the development of new evidence, we were able to uncover the truth behind the deaths of Gary Melanson and Douglas Leon Clarke,” said District Attorney Ryan.
Kevin J. Lino, who is currently serving a sentence on an unrelated case out of Suffolk County, has been indicted for two counts of First-Degree Murder and will be prosecuted in the Middlesex Superior Court. His arraignment will be scheduled in the coming weeks.
This case was investigated by the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit, Massachusetts State Police Detectives assigned to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, and detectives from the Lowell and Cambridge Police Departments. The prosecutor assigned to this case is Assistant District Attorney David Solet, the Chief of the Cold Case Unit. The assigned Victim Witness Advocates are Dar’ya Matkovska and Arianne Dubina.
Watch the press conference here.
Since 2021 the Cold Case Unit has solved more than a dozen major felony cases, including:
• 1971 murder of Natalie Scheublin, 54, in Bedford, MA;
• 1980 murder of Katharina Reitz Brow, 48, in Ayer, MA;
• 1991 murder of Patricia Moreno, 17, in Malden, MA;
• 1992 murder of Michelle Miller, 29, in Cambridge, MA;
• 2000 aggravated rape of a minor female, 13, in Cambridge, MA;
• 2009 murder of Charline Rosemond, 23, in Somerville, MA;
• 2010 murder of Gary A. Melanson, 54, in Lowell, MA;
• 2012 murder of Douglas Leon Clarke, 30, in Cambridge, MA;
• 2013 aggravated rape of a woman, 22, in Acton, MA;
• 2015 murder of Ashlee Berryman, 21, in Everett, MA.