A 13-year-old Cambridge cold case that casts light on violence among the unhoused now has a suspect, said Middlesex district attorney Marian Ryan and Cambridge police commissioner Christine Elow at a Tuesday press conference.
An unhoused man, Douglas Leon Clarke, 30, was at first 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,” the officials said.
The suspect in what is being charged as first-degree murder is Kevin J. Lino, 38, a former resident of Lowell – who also faces a count of that charge in the killing of Gary A. Melanson, 54, another unhoused man. Melanson was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat under the Rogers Street Bridge in Lowell in 2010, and Lowell police commissioner Gregory Hudon was at the press conference in Woburn with Ryan and Elow for the announcement.
Update on Aug. 27, 2025: Lino was arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court on two counts of first-degree murder for the 2010 and 2012 killings. Clerk Magistrate Daniel Flaherty ordered he be held without bail until Oct. 3, when a scheduling hearing is held.
Cambridge police got a call Aug. 2, 2012, of a man apparently unconscious around 975 Memorial Drive, on the bank of the Charles River, and found the body of Clarke. Often going by the name “Rage,” Clarke was known to be living in the Harvard Square area at the time.
Tests of his blood showed a “substantial concentration of morphine, as well as codeine, ethanol and gabapentin,” an anticonvulsant medication, the officials said Tuesday. The death was recorded as an “accident” – a result of acute and chronic substance abuse.
Massachusetts State Police working on an unrelated investigation involving Lino in 2018 led to the possibility of his involvement in the death of Clarke and another man two years earlier – Melanson, found Nov. 29, 2010, under the Rogers Street Bridge in Lowell.
“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,” Ryan said.
Police there got an anonymous phone call reporting a body – and Melanson sprawled over a collapsed tent, with numerous visible wounds. An autopsy found injuries to his head, torso and extremities, including fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and a fracture of his left arm.
Lino, then 23, and Melanson were unhoused and staying in the same area. Officials say Lino attacked Melanson because he continued to light fires to warm himself after Lino had warned him not to, believing the fires attracted attention from police and firefighters. When Melanson ignored Lino’s order, the defendant rushed the much smaller and older Melanson and hit him repeatedly with a metal baseball bat.
Two years later, Lino and Clarke were part of a group of unhoused people who gathered by the Harvard Square MBTA station. Lino took it upon himself to drive out heroin-using members of the group, including by assaulting them, police said. After a confrontation, Lino allegedly resolved to punish Clarke for insolence by poisoning him; he offered Clarke a quantity of heroin that he knew would cause an overdose, officials said.
“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,” Ryan said.
Lino is serving a sentence on an unrelated case out of Suffolk County. These indictments will be prosecuted in Middlesex Superior Court, with an arraignment scheduled in the coming weeks, Ryan said.
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