Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Suspect FBI Killed Involved In Triple Murder
Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev's direct role has been confirmed in a 2011 unsolved triple murder near Boston. According to a report fromCNN, Tsarnaev acted along with a fellow native Chechnyan who was recently killed by FBI officials.
Last week FBI officials announced that Ibragim Todashev was "about to sign a statement" admitting his role in an unsolved triple murder in Massachusetts before he was shot and killed by an FBI agent Tuesday night.
Two people with direct knowledge of the case told ABC News that as Todashev was being questioned by authorities concerning his ties with Boston bomber Tsarnaev, he "just went crazy" and suddenly attacked the agent. Todashev was apparently about to sign a confession connecting himself and Tsarnaev to a gruesome triple murder in Massachusetts in 2011.
"The agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing (Todashev) ... when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual," the FBI said after the attack. "The individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening â¨injuries."
Sources told CNN that the two suspects were involved in a drug ripoff, but killed the people so that they could not identify the men.
Tsarnaev, the alleged bombing mastermind behind the marathon attacks April 15, was an accomplished amateur boxer who began to train with one of the murder victims, 25-year-old Brendan Mess, in an attempt to possibly pursue a career in mixed-martial arts.
Officials say Tsarnaev and Mess lived relatively close to one another in a predominantly Russian neighborhood in Cambridge and Tsarnaev referred to Mess as his "best friend." However, in 2011, Mess and two other people, Raphael Teken, 37, and Erik Weissman, 31, were found dead in his apartment in the Waltham suburbs. Their heads were nearly decapitated with a sharp object and their mutilated bodies were bizarrely left covered with seven pounds of marijuana.That same day, authorities say that Mess and his two friends had ordered a delivery from a local restaurant at 8:54 p.m., but when a delivery woman showed up 20 minutes later, her knocks and cell phone calls went unanswered."There was no forced entry, it was clear that the victims had let the killer in. And their throats were slashed right out of an al Qaeda training video. The drugs and money on the bodies was very strange," said a Waltham investigator.
Law enforcement say that while drugs appeared to factor into the motive, the killer left both the marijuana and thousands of dollars in cash behind in the apartment.
Authorities are using DNA tests to connect the suspects with the 2011 murder.