Michael Hand was found guilty of killing 15-year-old Tracy Gilpin in Myles Standish State Forest on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after the crime.
Hand was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a Plymouth County Jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in the 1986 murder of the Kingston teen.
Tracy Gilpin was 15 when she left a party in the Rocky Nook section of Kingston to buy cigarettes on Oct. 1, 1986. She was headed to a nearby Cumberland Farms.
The clerk who was working at the store told Boston 25 News they remember two things; Tracy talking to someone in a Jeep outside in the parking lot and Tracy using a payphone.
At about 11 p.m., the clerk asked Tracy if she needed a ride home, but she declined.
Tracy didn’t come back. Several weeks later, a woman walking her dog in Plymouth found Tracy’s body. Medical examiners ruled that she died of massive brain trauma from a blow to the back of her head.
Hand was arrested in North Carolina for Tracy’s homicide in 2018.
Tracy is the sister of former Mass State Police Colonel Kerry Gilpin. The family has been hoping for years for an arrest and offered a reward for information that helped solve the murder.
“Our family has not, nor will we ever, recover from what this monster did. We are forever changed,“ Kathy Gilpin, Tracy’s mother, told Boston 25 News. ”Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Tracy, remember her smile and wish that I would wake up from this nightmare, and she would still be here with us."
“Nearly 40 years after she was taken from us, Tracy finally has the justice she deserves, and our family can now begin the healing process,” Kathy Gulpin added.
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