Police are looking at ‘mounting evidence’ that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were involved in an unsolved triple murder in Massachusetts in 2011.
Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman and Raphael Teken were found murdered in Waltham on Sept. 11, 2011 with their throats slit and their bodies covered with marijuana. Tamerlan and Mess were once roommates and did boxing and martial arts training together, according to ABC News.
The three had ordered dinner, at 8:54 p.m., but when a delivery woman arrived twenty minutes later there was no answer at the door and no one answered a call to Weissman’s cell phone, from which the order was placed.
The bodies were discovered the next day. Former Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said at the time that the murders were “graphic.” Other investigators called it perplexing.
Roughly seven pounds of marijuana was dumped on the bodies and $5,000 in cash was left behind. Neighbors said they did not hear any signs of trouble – even with open windows – and there was no forced entry.
In a 2011 interview, Leone said investigators theorized there had been more than one person at the scene of the murders based on “many factors,” but no suspects were identified.
From there the case went cold, until photos of the Boston Marathon suspects were released and family and friends of the Waltham victims recognized them and remembered Tamerlan’s strange behavior after the murders. He did not attend his friend’s funeral and vanished from the martial arts gyms where the men had sparred together.
Cell phone records put the brothers in the area at the time of the murders, according to ABC News.
