Forty years after the body of Kingston teenager Tracy Gilpin was found in Myles Standish state forest, a Plymouth County jury this week will decide whether Michael Hand was her killer.
With no DNA evidence, no witnesses and no forensics linking Hand to the murder, prosecutors will rely almost entirely on Hand’s own statements to police and to the testimony of another inmate while he was being held in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.
Hand, now 69, is accused of dropping a 73-pound rock on the Gilpin’s head in October 1986 and covering her body with leaves near the entrance to the state forest.
Hand, who lived in Kingston at the time of Gilpin’s murder, has been held without bail since his arrest in 2018.
Prosecutors allege Hand killed the 15-year-old because she rejected his sexual advances and made fun of his uncircumcised penis.
It wasn’t until 2018 — when Gilpin’s sister Kerry was head of the Massachusetts State Police — that a renewed investigation led to Hand.
Hand’s lawyer, Craig Tavares, alleges investigators failed to run down other possible leads in a rush to solve the decades-old case.
in 2018, after a witness told police that Gilpin and others had gathered at Hand’s house the night of her death, investigators traveled to North Carolina, where Hand had moved.
In interviews with police, Hand gave several rambling and sometimes contradictory statements. He denied any involvement and blamed Henry Meinholz, a Kingston man who was convicted of raping and killing 13-year-old Melissa Benoit in 2000.
But at one point, Hand said he followed Gilpin into the forest that night and may have accidentally killed her, according to court documents.
He told police that while at his house, Gilpin had rubbed his leg and made sexual advances, but he rebuffed her “because he was ashamed of his uncircumcised penis.”
On Monday, a neuro psychologist is expected to testify Hand may have made incriminating statements because an old brain injury left him with cognitive issues and susceptible to police coercion, according to Tavares.
The jury, which is sitting in Brockton, will also have to weigh the credibility of Wilfred Dumont, a career criminal, who alleged Hand confessed to him while they were both inmates at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in 2018.
Dumont came forward after reaching out to the DA’s office in March 2018. He offered to provide information about Gilpin’s death in exchange for help with own case. He was serving an 18-month sentence out of Hingham District Court for violating his probation.
Hand told him he killed Gilpin because she made fun of his uncircumcised penis,” he said during his March 17 court appearance.
That made him “angry, angry very angry,” Dumont testified.
He said Hand told him “he had followed her … and forced her into a car at gunpoint” and then took her to “some park,” which he later learned was Myles Standish Forest.
He allegedly told Dumont “he dropped a rock on her head.”
But Tavares alleged Dumont made up the story — including an allegation that Hand had a gun — because he was angling for a reduced sentence in his own case.
He eventually won his freedom, Tavares alleged, because of his cooperation in the Hand case.
Dumont acknowledged writing judges and politicians including Donald Trump, Governor Charlie Baker and then attorney general Maura Healey, asking them to investigate the Hingham probation department, which he alleged wrongly found him in violation of his probation from a breaking and entering case.
But his letter writing campaign, he asserted, had nothing to do with his testimony at Hand’s trial.
He cut a bizarre figure in court — wearing a Harley Davidson jacket, a purple shirt and a flowered tie — and repeatedly dabbing sweat off his face. He answered many questions with a single word — “absolutely.”
When Tavares asked him if he was the same Wilfred Dumont convicted of breaking and entering in the nighttime for a felony and malicious destruction of property— Dumont said “Yeah. That’s not the only one. There’s probably 25 or 15 more.
“I admit to all that,” he added. “That doesn’t change what’s going on here.”
The jury will likely hear closing arguments on Monday and begin their deliberations shortly after.
If the jury finds Hand, who was indicted in May 2018, guilty of first-degree murder, he faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.