Boston-area investigators are considering a possible link between the dead suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings and the still unsolved murder of three young men, two of whom were Jewish, in 2011.
A spokesperson for the Middlesex County District Attorney told the Boston Globe on April 22 that prosecutors were pursuing new leads into an unsolved triple murder in the Boston suburb of Waltham following reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev knew one of the dead men.
Three men — Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken and Erik Weissman — were found dead in September 2011 in an apartment several miles from the campus of Brandeis University.
According to the Globe, Tsarnaev knew Mess well but did not attend his funeral despite once referring to him as his “best friend.”
Tsarnaev, 26, was killed last week in a firefight with police. His brother and alleged accomplice in the twin marathon bombings, Dzhokhar, 19, was apprehended by police April 19 and is being held under guard in a Boston hospital.
According to sources cited April 23 by the Associated Press, officials believe the brothers were motivated by an anti-American, radical version of Islam following the questioning of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who wrote his answers because he is wounded in his throat and unable to speak. He said he and his brother did not receive any direct financing from other governments or rogue groups overseas.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged April 22 at his bedside in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center with using a “weapon of mass destruction,” a charge that could bring the death penalty. — jta