Suspect in Gilpin slay deflects blame
Tries to pin girl’s death on Henry Meinholz
More than three decades after Col. Kerry Gilpin’s 15-year-old sister was brutally murdered, the state’s top trooper sat in a courtroom and listened as an elaborate tale was laid out blaming the killing on a notorious Bay State child killer.
Michael Hand, a portly, bespectacled man who lived near the Gilpins’ Kingston home when Tracy Gilpin was murdered in 1986, confessed to inadvertantly dropping a 73-pound rock on the teen’s head and said the girl had kissed him and made sexual advances by rubbing his upper leg in his bedroom, according to an affidavit filed in court.
“Mr. Hand stated he did not have any further physical contact with Tracy because he was embarrassed of his uncircumcised penis and Tracy would laugh at him,” the affidavit said.
Hand tried to blame Tracy’s murder on killer Henry Meinholz, saying he saw her with Meinholz the night she went missing, a prosecutor said yesterday in Brockton District Court, where Hand, 61, was ordered held without bail.
Meinholz raped and killed his 13-year-old neighbor, Melissa Benoit, in 1990 before burying her in his Kingston basement. Meinholz, who died in 2000, was ruled out as a suspect in Tracy’s murder, authorities said. Kerry Gilpin — a tireless crusader in finding justice for her sister — was comforted by family as a prosecutor described the grim details.
Investigators were led to Hand in North Carolina, where he has lived for the past decade, after a woman recently told authorities about a gathering at Hand’s Kingston home the night the teen disappeared, according to the affidavit.
Tracy Gilpin was last seen alive about 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 1, 1986, leaving a Cumberland Farms about a mile from her home. Her body was found Oct. 22 at Myles Standish State Forest, buried under some debris, with no pants on and her underwear partially pulled down, prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said.
A 73-pound boulder was on her face, Sprague said, and she died of massive skull fractures.
Hand told investigators he knew the teen from the neighborhood, used to live with her aunt and admitted Tracy Gilpin was at a small gathering at his home, but said it was weeks before she disappeared, the affidavit said.
Authorities say he changed his story when he was asked for a DNA sample and claimed he saw her in a car with Meinholz the night she disappeared. He then told an elaborate tale of following the car and joining Meinholz in the woods where the dead girl was found.
He said Meinholz came out of the forest with a shovel and tarp. He said Meinholz told him to go into the forest and touch a rock in the clearing. Hand said his blood wound up on the big rock because he had scratched it. He said he had seen a cheek in the ground.
During another interview, Hand said he had rebuffed Tracy’s sexual advances at his house. He said he had picked up the rock, turned to Meinholz, dropped the rock and later saw it on the girl’s head.
Investigators are awaiting Hand’s DNA results.