Montana Man To Be Arraigned In Boston Slaying Of Homeless Man

CHARLESTOWN, MA — Six years after Normand Varieur was beaten so badly in Charlestown he died days later, a Montana man is set to be arraigned Monday on a first-degree murder charges.

The Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted Kevin Lino, 31, with first-degree murder for the 2012 assault that caused the homeless man's death.

“If Mr. Varieur’s killer believed no one would care about a homeless man’s murder, then he was badly mistaken,” Conley said in a statement this August ahead of the indictment in August. “Suffolk prosecutors and State Police detectives worked every lead they developed in this case and never gave up on solving it. Some homicides can be solved in days and others may take years, but we never, ever abandon them.”

State troopers found Varieur injured and unresponsive near the dock at Paul Revere Park in Charlestown on the afternoon of May 21, 2012. First responders transported him to Massachusetts General Hospital with a serious head injury and other trauma. He died four days later. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma and the manner to be homicide.

Following Varieur’s death, the scope of the investigation included people in the area’s homeless community and those who used the Charlestown dock area for fishing and dog walking. That led them to Lino – sometimes known as “Phoenix," according to the DA's office.

Lino, also homeless at the time, is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence following his July 22, 2015, conviction for deliberate homicide of another homeless man in Missoula County, Montana.

Members of the Suffolk County State Police Detective Unit traveled there late last year to interview Lino. There, police said Lino "made admissions" regarding Varieur’s homicide corroborated by independent evidence. Suffolk prosecutors sought to extradite him to Massachusetts to face the charges in Suffolk Superior Court.

Varieur worked many years for Westinghouse of Newington, N.H. as a crane operator, he later moved to Chelmsford and was employed as a heavy machinery operator, according to his obituary.

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Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch Staff