Police Reveal Possible Link Between Marathon Bomber and Unsolved Triple Homicide in Waltham, MA

From Boston.com:

Waltham police have stepped up their investigation of a 2011 triple homicide where a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was brutally murdered, according to a relative of one of the victims who was interviewed by the Globe.

The relative said Sunday that police have renewed the investigation at the request of victims’ relatives who believe Tamerlan, and perhaps his younger brother, Dzhokhar, played a role in the homicides. Authorities have said the victims all had their throats slit.

Stephanie Guyotte, a spokeman for the Middlesex district attorney’s office, said, “We’re eager to pursue any new leads of information. It has been reported he knew one of the deceased victims. It remains an open and active investigation.”

Previously, investigators had said that Brendan Mess, 25, along with Erik Weissman, 25, and Raphael Teken, 37, were killed on Sept. 12, 2011, in Mess’s apartment on Harding Street, a quiet residential street in Waltham. They also said they believed drugs were involved.

But the relative interviewed by the Globe said the murders took place the evening before, on Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The relative said he knew this because he was texting one of the victims about a Sunday night football game between the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys when communication with the victims suddenly stopped at about 8:15 that evening.

“The three of them were definitely killed on Sept. 11,” the relative said. “They all stopped using their cellphones at about eight o’clock that night.”

Homicidal maniac