About Barry Pinto

Barry Anthony Pinto was born into an Italian- and Portuguese-American family on January 18, 1957. His parents, “Joe Sr.” and Monica Pinto were both life-long residents of Plymouth. Barry came from a large household, growing up with two sisters and two brothers. His father was a house painter — “hot dirty work” as he called it—and his mother was employed as a teacher’s aide at a local elementary school. They were both well-known in the community and Joe Sr. was a member of various social clubs.

We spoke to Barry’s older brother, Joe Jr., and he said that Barry was a real sweetheart—very generous—overly nice. He always had a big smile on his face. He remembered all of the animals that their family had growing up—goats, chickens, pigs, horses, even a raccoon.

Hunting was a big tradition for the boys in the Pinto household, and not only was Barry a good shot, he was considered the family’s good-luck charm. When he wasn’t hunting, shooting guns, or practicing archery, Barry could be found on the football field as a player.

In July 1975, his girlfriend, Ruth, 19, gave birth to their daughter Amy. Barry was 18 at the time and heading into his senior year. Balancing his roles as a student and young father, he graduated from Plymouth-Carver Regional High School in the spring of 1976, and around that time married Ruth. We connected with Amy, and she graciously shared some of her memories about her dad.

When Amy was still very young, Barry and his brother Kevin had borrowed money from their parents to purchase a second-hand boat. Barry’s dad, Joe Sr., said, “I’d rather see them out on the ocean, where there is a nice clean breeze, fishing for a living.” He hadn’t wanted his sons to follow in his footsteps as a painter. The 12-year-old lobster boat, that was named “North Star,” served Barry and Kevin well, and they spent their time checking traps and hauling in catch. Though lobstering can be a year-round job, peak season in Massachusetts runs during the warmer months, from May to November. In the winters, Barry worked as a plasterer for Pilgrim Plastering Co., applying finish to the interior and exterior of homes.

Joe remembered that Barry took care of his mom, too, buying her flowers all the time, and helped look after his elderly aunts—bringing them fresh seafood to enjoy.

But things between Barry and Ruth grew fraught, and they eventually split. Amy lived primarily with her mom, but she still saw her dad plenty. It wasn’t long before he had fallen in love with another woman: Dena Sears.

Dena Sears Pinto

Dena Marie Sears was born to Frank and Lena Sears of Manchester, Connecticut on July 12, 1958. She was raised alongside her twin brother, Dean, two sisters, and two brothers. She was valedictorian of her high school, graduating from Hartford Technical School in 1977.

In 1980, 21-year-old Dena moved two hours east with her parents, from Manchester, Connecticut, to Plymouth, Massachusetts. She found work there as a hairdresser at a local salon, Anthony’s Hair Odyssey. She had lived in the quaint, seaside village for some time in her childhood, and was drawn back to the community as a young adult. It was there, with the romanticism that only a coastal New England town could offer, that she met 23-year-old Barry Pinto, and the couple fell in love. They were married less than a year later on October 18, 1980.

In January of 1982, Barry and Dena were overjoyed to welcome a child of their own when their son was born. To protect his privacy, I’ll refer to him as Daryl. Dena stayed working at Anthony’s Hair Odyssey two days a week, but devoted the rest of her time to new motherhood.

That November, she and Barry purchased a fixer-upper on a small .2-acre lot at 4 Cherry Street Court in North Plymouth—in the same neighborhood Barry had grown up in—Barry’s parents still lived on the next street over, Grasshopper Lane. A fire had destroyed much of the home’s second story, and it had sat vacant for more than a year. They got it for a deal at $35,000, but the list of repairs was substantial. They had dreams of renovating the duplex, living in one unit and renting the other one out.

February 24th, 1983

It was a cold February morning when Barry’s sister’s husband, Kim, showed up to help with renovations—Kim was a carpenter and was helping Barry renovate. February 24th, 1983, was a Thursday, and it was 11:35AM when he pulled up in his vehicle.

The front entrance was still boarded up, a job for another day. He knew the couple primarily used the rear entrance in their typical comings and goings. So, he went around to the back of the house, where a stack of plywood leaned against the painted shingled siding of the home. Kim noted the couple’s two vehicles, the Lincoln Continental and a Ford truck in the driveway. Barry had bought his beloved Lincoln eight years prior, and the boxy car with its chrome grille was his pride and joy.

While we don’t know the exact details of what happened next, I imagine it went something like this: Assuming Barry and Dena were both home, Kim gave a knock at the rear entrance. No one answered. He waited a moment, knocking again before pressing his ear against the door to listen more closely. Kim grabbed the spare key tucked under a loose brick on the back steps, and heard the slam of a car door. Looking out toward the street, he saw Barry’s friend, David Ricardo, hustling over with a quick wave. David explained that he was stopping by to pick up a battery for his boat, and the two men let themselves into the home.

The door unlocked with a turn of the key and there in the kitchen, Daryl sat in his playpen, his face reddened and tear-stained. They could smell the pungent odor of his soiled clothes from across the room. The dog darted between the men’s legs out into the yard as they moved through the kitchen and peeked their heads into the living room. There on the floor was the body of Barry Pinto, fully clothed and lying in a pool of blood. Dena’s lifeless body was slumped on the couch; she was still wearing her nightgown from the night before and was partially covered by a blanket. Kim and David quickly scooped Daryl out of his playpen, and rushed to get help. They drove to a nearby package store where they dialed the Plymouth Police dispatch.

Findings at the crime scene

The cop that first responded from Plymouth PD met Kim and David about a ½ mile away from their home at North Plymouth Liquor Mart on Court Street. They had the baby with them. The officer followed them in his cruiser to the house and entered through the back door. He, too, found Barry in the living room, laying on the floor face-up, partly behind a recliner. Dena was laying on the couch, with a blanket over most of her body with her head on a red pillow.

All the shades were drawn. The TV was on. A small lamp on top of the TV was on, too. A nightlight glowed in the kitchen. The house appeared very clean and orderly.

Police found that there were no signs of a break-in, and the rear entrance had been locked at the time of Kim’s arrival that morning. Police determined that the killer could have locked the door behind them on their way out without the use of a key—it was possible to secure the door without one. There were also no signs of struggle in the home—no broken glass, scattered items, overturned furniture, or indications that the couple had the opportunity to defend themselves against their killer.

Investigators found that they had died of gunshot wounds to the head. They collected five spent cartridges that they found in the living room. A gun cabinet was also located within the home and some weapons were recovered from it; Barry owned firearms and police began looking into the guns registered to him. Some boxes of .25 caliber ammunition were also found.

As they continued to inspect the bodies, police noted that they were both still wearing gold jewelry: Barry had a short gold chain around his neck, and his wife had several valuable rings on her fingers—an engagement ring and wedding band, gold earrings, a gold necklace, and two other gold rings with diamonds and other precious gems. Initial instincts told investigators that robbery wasn’t the motive.

Police descended next down into the basement, where they found a makeshift shooting range. They collected more spent shell casings from that area. The search of the basement also revealed some drug paraphernalia; drug-sniffing K9s were brought in, but located no additional drugs in the home. Police didn’t think that the cocaine had any connection to the murders; Barry’s brother Joe Jr. later said it was a very small amount, about a gram, and that Barry had purchased it for personal use while in Florida weeks earlier.

In speaking to police, one onlooker who was a nearby neighbor said that they hadn’t heard any gunshots—something that always struck Amy as odd.

The investigation begins/autopsies

That evening and into the following morning, autopsies were performed on both Barry and Dena. Medical examiner Dr. Gordon Robbins examined the bodies in Fall River, about 45 minutes southwest of Plymouth. He agreed with the earlier findings on the time of death, placing the murders between 8:00 and 9:00 PM. Dr. Robbins recovered two slugs from Barry’s body, one intact and the other fragmented. Entrance wounds in his right temple indicated that Barry had been shot once at close range and again from a distance. The wounds were approximately one and a half inches apart. Dena’s autopsy revealed that she had been shot three times on the left side of her neck and head, one bullet piercing below her ear.

The bullets recovered from their bodies were presumed to match the five spent shell casings that the police had recovered from the living room floor—all were .25 caliber.

Meanwhile, testing was conducted at the state police ballistics lab to compare the spent cartridges upstairs to those found downstairs at the makeshift firing range. By the following day, a match had been made—the gun used to shoot the couple in their living room had also been fired in the basement of the home.

One bit of information that has never been released is whether or not Barry had a .25 caliber handgun registered to him, and whether or not it was ever found.

Rumors spreads

Multiple media outlets began to speculate that the deaths may have been the result of a “drug deal gone sour.” The rumors were echoed in the Sunday Enterprise, where the theory was linked to an anonymous source close to the investigation. The article mentioned that area drug users and dealers were “being questioned closely about the murders.” Barry’s brother, Joe Jr., did his best to dispel these rumors, along with DA O’Malley, who reasoned that “any drug connection is purely speculative” and added that “it’s unfair to the family to point this out as a drug incident.”

Amy was recently able to get records from Plymouth PD that detailed exactly what was found, and it was quite a shock to her.

According to the police reports, this is what was found in the basement: a clear plastic bag containing a white powder presumed to be cocaine; a 12” X 16” mirror and a smaller 2” mirror with white residue; a straw with white residue; a razor with white residue; a triple-beam scale with 6 assorted gram weights; 2 empty plastic bags; and a ledger.

Many of these items suggest that Barry and/or Dena were users of cocaine, but the scale, the gram weights, the empty bags, and the ledger suggest that they may have sold some as well.

In speaking with Barry’s brother, Joe Jr., he was quick to point out that it was the 80s and that cocaine usage was widespread.

Meanwhile, ballistic experts had identified powder burns on the pillow where Barry’s head was resting, which confirmed that the gun had been fired at close range. The “treatment and position,” of Dena’s body also led investigators to suspect that she may have known the killer. Could the person or persons responsible be closer to the investigation than anyone could’ve imagined?

Justice for Barry and Dena Pinto

Now, it has been 41 years since Barry and Dena Pinto were murdered in cold blood.

Is their killer, or perhaps killers, still roaming free, perhaps in the seaside community of North Plymouth they so loved? What was the motive behind the brutal shooting? And where did the gun wind up? With the shell casings from the scene of the murder having been matched to the casings in the shooting range in Barry’s basement, we know this much: the gun had been fired in the home before that fateful night that ended two lives. Whether the killer had taken a moment of opportunity to reach for the gun, or planned to use it all along, is still unknown.

The weight of unsolved questions rests heavily on the shoulders of Barry and Dena’s surviving family and friends. I can’t help but think of Daryl and the hours of terror as he cried in his playpen, mere feet from the scene of his parent’s brutal homicide and the subsequent trauma he faced as a result. Or Amy, across the country in Seattle, unaware that she would never see her father alive again.

In an interview nearly three decades after the murders, she said, “It’s just not right. Their [killer or] killers are out there, free, living with their families, and we have no answers.”

If you have any information about the murder of Barry and Dena Pinto, please call the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Case Unit at 1-855-627-6583 (855-MA-SOLVE). Please share this story. Sometimes you just have to ask the right question to the right person at the right time.

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Murders of Barry and Dena Pinto. To continue Barry and Dena’s story and listen to the full episode with Amy’s interview, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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Sources For This Episode

Mentioned in this episode: Justice For Tracy Gilpin

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Athol Daily News, Boston Globe, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Enterprise, Independent Voice, Kingston Reporter, Old Colony Memorial, Patriot Ledger, Plymouth Bulletin, The Enterprise, and the Waltham News Tribune, here.

Written by various authors including Bernadette Beck, Betsey Lehman, Claire Clancy, Dennis Randall, Dennis Tatz, Jim Schuh, Ken Johnson, Maggie Mills, Mary Whitfill, Michael Frisby, Neal Thompson, Peggy Hernandez, Rich Harbert, Rick Bowers, Robert Sears, Stephanie Chavez, Steve Marantz, Steve Yarmalovicz, and Suzanna Colonna.

Other Sources

Plymouth Police Incident Report, dated 2/24/83

'27 years and no answers' (Wicked Local), 2/25/2010, by Rich Harbert

'Maureen Pinto' (Legacy), 11/20/2012

'Plymouth Carver High School - Pilgrim Yearbook (Plymouth, MA) - Class of 1981' (E-Yearbook.com), 8/11/2017

'Barry Anthony Pinto' (Find a Grave), 8/17/2017

'Dena Marie (Sears) Pinto' (Find a Grave), 8/17/2017

'Double homicide - 4 Cherry St' (Facebook), 10/8/2019

'New deck of cards highlights South Shore unsolved cases, missing people. Here are their stories.' (The Patriot Ledger), 2/10/2022, by Mary Whitfill

'Monica P. Pinto' (Legacy), 10/19/2022

'Barry Anthony Pinto' (Ancestry), 1/1/2023

Interviews

Special thanks to Barry’s daughter, Amy, and Barry’s older brother, Joe Pinto, for sharing their memories with us.

Credits

Research, vocal performance, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Research, photo editing, and writing support by Byron Willis

Research by Amanda Connolly

Writing by Kimberly Clark

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.