BOSTON, Aug. 15, 2018—Six years after Normand Varieur was beaten so badly that he died in a Boston hospital, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced the indictment of a Montana man for his murder.

The Suffolk County Grand Jury yesterday returned an indictment charging KEVIN LINO, 31, with first-degree murder for the 2012 assault that caused Varieur’s death at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Lino is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence following his July 22, 2015, conviction for deliberate homicide in Missoula County, Montana. Suffolk prosecutors will seek to extradite him to Massachusetts to face the new charges in Suffolk Superior Court.

“If Mr. Varieur’s killer believed no one would care about a homeless man’s murder, then he was badly mistaken,” Conley said. “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 badly injured and unresponsive near the dock at Paul Revere Park in Charlestown on the afternoon of May 21, 2012. He was transported to MGH with a serious head injury and other trauma and died four days later. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma and the manner to be homicide.

In the weeks, months, and years that followed Varieur’s death, investigators continued to seek information, evidence, and witnesses, whether among the people in the area’s homeless community or those who use it for fishing and dogwalking. Over time, those efforts led to Lino – sometimes known as “Phoenix” – who by 2017 was in prison in Montana for killing a homeless man in that state. Members of the Suffolk County State Police Detective Unit traveled there late last year to interview Lino, at which time he allegedly made admissions regarding Varieur’s homicide corroborated by independent evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Julie Higgins of the DA’s Homicide Unit led the grand jury investigation that resulted in yesterday’s indictment. Lino’s arraignment has not yet been scheduled.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.