(Editors note: Cape Wide News is pleased to present a new feature for our readers, The “Cold Cape,” a series by reporter Krysta Lubold. The “Cold Cape” will be a regular installment looking at some unsolved and some eventually solved mysteries on Cape Cod. Our first article investigates the still-unsolved “Man in the Dunes” killing and the Kerry Mello murder, which was eventually solved. There are many unsolved mysteries on Cape Cod and we’re looking forward to what Krysta digs up. If you have a cold case you’d like us to investigate, message us on our Facebook Page.)
SANDWICH – The summers on Cape Cod, though crowded with tourists, are coveted and illustrious.
The same rings true for other coastal New England towns after the Plague of Winter washes away, the drear of March and April subside and the book ends of Memorial Day Weekend and Labor Day Weekend bring the signs of better, longer, and warmer days in-between.
The moniker of The Cold Cape reminds us that even when the warmth of equinox blazes on, we witness human nature at its coldest. The plights of these two men whose narratives are tied to the New England waters in the most gruesome and brutal fashion.
Succumbed to death in similar manner – while one’s earthly departure and identity still clouded in mystery; the other’s reckoning is locked away for decades across the state border. Geographically, these men may have died an hour and five minutes from one another and took place a little more than a year apart. These stories prove just how carefree Summer could be if it wasn’t always so cruel.
Gina Kirwin left for work August 10th, 2015. Her boyfriend, Kerry, had been there upon her departure, but when she arrived home around midnight that evening, he was gone. As someone with daily contact with his mother Priscilla, for him to stop communication was considered worrisome – searches raged on for months.
Family pleas on Facebook, flyers begging the public to come forward if they knew of any information that could bring Kerry home “IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!!!!” the bottom of a flyer read. Still as I read those words, I could feel desperation and agony riddled through each typed letter.
Nine days later, a fishing vessel dubbed “TNT” was a little more than a mile south of the harbor entrance in Westport waters when they found a dismembered body. The fishermen found it wrapped in a tarp or bag and consequently police were called in and the body recovered by Harbormaster Richie Earle.
Now, I could not find the reason why in my research, but the Cape Cod Medical Examiner’s office retained the body despite it being found in Westport. Shortly after, a mere two days later August 21ST, 2015, a pair of severed legs washed up on Goosewing Beach in Little Compton, Rhode Island.
Speculation whirled at the time that this was in fact the remains of Kerry Mello. Law Enforcement ran the DNA through CODIS “Combined DNA Index System” but Law Enforcement remained mum.
At the time, the Cape Cod Medical Examiner’s office was strangely no stranger at all to the idea of a John Doe.
In fact, it was on June 4th just a year earlier in 2014 that there had been two men walking along the parking lot near the beloved Boardwalk in Sandwich when they noticed a blue metal dolly nestled in the dunes in beach grass just beyond the jersey barrier.
On the dolly was a duffel bag and in the bag was that of human remains, tarped, and wrapped in a t-shirt. On top of the peculiarity of finding a dead body on one of Cape Cod’s most picturesque landscapes, what was much worse was that like the body in Westport, this one had also been dismembered.
Arms, legs, head all gone. Sadly, for this man – we didn’t see a family’s public outcries. So, most of his story both before and after death, remains an unknown. For the Man in the Dunes as he is named still, we wonder what his real name was.
His identity hidden away in the heart of someone truly vile and malevolent. In an interview with WCVB news, State Trooper Matt Lavoie, says of the circumstances surrounding the case, “It was right out in the open. It was easy for someone to find, so either they were rushed, or they specifically did that to maybe send a message, which is probably why we haven’t had anyone come forward at this point”.
Law enforcement officials shortly after discovering the body thought the t-shirt, a promotional tee for a company out of Cranston, Rhode Island would be the big lead in the case. When it turned out the shirts had been distributed 6 years prior, the lead went cold.
The man’s limbs were removed in such a way as to intentionally get rid of any semblance of tattoos that could be matched to in a law enforcement database. Aside from the t-shirt, the only thing left to try to identify the victim was a 4-inch scar on the victim’s abdomen from a hernia surgery, a procedure that in 2014 nearly 350,000 Americans received that year.
It was not until this past May that Parabon Nanolabs out of Reston, VA had used their groundbreaking SNAPSHOT technology to compose a sketch of the Man in the Dunes. It’s hard to process that at some point in 2015, the Cape Cod Medical Examiner had at least two cases of dismembered bodies with no names to attribute.
With the help of Phenotyping and Genetic Data Mining, we had an image of what the Man in the Dunes may have looked like before he succumbed to his gruesome fate. Taken from Parabon’s website, SNAPSHOT is described as “using deep data mining and advanced machine learning algorithms in a specialized bioinformatics pipeline.
Parabon — with funding support from the US Department of Defense — developed the Snapshot Forensic DNA Phenotyping System, which accurately predicts genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background, even individuals with mixed ancestry” (taken from Parabon NanoLabs: Engineering DNA for Next-Generation Therapeutics and Forensics (parabon-nanolabs.com)
In October of 2015, Kerry Mello’s car was discovered in Boston and in January of 2016, law enforcement officials confirmed the fears of Mello’s family. The body found in the Westport waters was indeed that of 36-year-old Kerry Mello.
In April 2016, four arrest warrants were carried out for Jamie Barriera, Albert Barriera, Graig Bustillo, and Francisco Concepcion. Rhode Island State Police executed arrest warrants and the men were charged with murder; conspiracy to commit murder; and mutilation of a dead human body. WPRI 12 reports that the men allegedly murdered Mello over stolen marijuana and killed him at the Barriera home where they dismembered his body with a handsaw before subsequently dumping his remains from their boat in Warwick waters before then driving Mello’s car to Boston to divert Police attention.
At their sentencing, Priscilla Mello questioned the killers — “Did he ask for mercy?”. In his obituary, Kerry’s family describes him as someone who loved making people laugh with his “quick wit”. Among these traits, his family described him as a total family man. A father of three to Deja, Kerry Jr and Liliana and brother to six siblings (four brothers and two sisters). His family described him as a “Master Griller” and having an incredible fashion sense.
I wonder about these cases and what the obituary for the Man in the Dunes may read someday. I’m hopeful for a lot, but justice for this unknown man and his killer(s) at large is especially important in the age where justice for men of color is controversial and fleeting.
I realize the connections between Cranston between these two cases, how both African American men were discarded – but only one of their cases ever saw justice. It’s important to remain vigilant in our curiosity for righteousness and yet in 2021 it’s easy I’ve found to pretend that bad things only happen to other people in other places.
In an interview with Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe didn’t think the killing and disposal was meant as someone sending a message.
He reminds me that law enforcement is working tirelessly and I don’t doubt that for one second. I think there’s only so much they can accomplish without the help of the public. As I was driving over the bridge the other day, I pulled off Route 6 off the exit formerly known as “2” down Route 130.
Weaving through the quaint main drag in Sandwich, I was reminded of what a wonderful place this is to have grown up. I went down Tupper Rd through the little neighborhoods past the Drunken Seal and entered the parking lot and I veered at the area where they found the Man in the Dunes body almost 7 years ago.
I wondered what an odd place if you were trying to dump a body quickly. As the clock on my car read 5:02pm as I was first getting off the exit, it now read 5:14pm which if you’re going the speed limit is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to get from point A to point B.
I just question why an out-of-towner would take the time to go through downtown Sandwich, through the quiet neighborhoods and roads of Town Neck Beach just to dump a body in Sandwich’s most bustling landmarks during peak season.
It’s purely conjecture, of course but it’s an important question to ask. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, safe place to grow up that’s for sure. I was lucky to have a great family, like many other Sandwich residents, it’s a family-oriented place. I recognize the privilege in that fact.
I know if I went missing tomorrow there would be a community and family looking for me much like Mello’s family did and that’s probably what ultimately helped lead to his arrest. Some of the others are not so lucky.
I think of Kerry Mello, how his life was cut short and how if he hadn’t had such a connected home life, his case may never have gotten solved much unlike the Man in the Dunes. I hope to learn his true name someday, his fate and that maybe we were wrong to assume that the “bad stuff always happens in other towns, to other people”. Maybe, perhaps, it’s time to start looking a little closer to home.
By Krysta Lubold, Cape Wide News
