See Update At End.
The people who come here and comment are a source of many of my thoughts. A new commenter Jamie wrote the other day and said: “So then they figure if they implicate Tsarnaevs in the Waltham murder, that will strengthen their case (interesting how the deaths are put at Sept 12, 2011 in all articles prior to the marathon bombing, but it becomes Sept 11 once Tsarnaevs are suspected):” He then referred me to this site which was the obituary of Brendan Mess, one of the three victims in the Waltham triple murder. That obituary noted that the death happened on September 12.
This piqued my interest. I’ve assumed the date was September 11. It seemed I read somewhere although I can’t find it now that we’ve been taught that Muslim terrorists like to use anniversary dates to conduct other attacks. For instance we had the September 11 Benghazi attack in Libya in 2012.
To me it would be significant if the triple murders took place on 9/11, then one could reasonably infer it was some type of Radical Muslim manifesto. Here is the logic that I assume the cops were following to tie Tamerlan Tsarnaev into the murders. Sometime before those murders Tamerlan had become radicalized as a Muslim. He suddenly had a desire to murder some Americans. The best time to start doing that would be on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2011 which fell on a Sunday.
I first had to see if Jamie was right that the news media was saying September 11 as the day of the murder. I found the Globe wrote: “The Waltham slayings, carried out on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — Sept. 11, 2011 — became a key focus for investigators, raising the possibility that Tsarnaev had turned to killing a year and a half before the Marathon bombings and opening the possibility that the attack could have been prevented if the case had been solved.” The Globe went on in the article to note: “Instead, the brutal slaughter of three fit young men on a day fraught with symbolism to Islamic extremists has prompted families of the victims to contact prosecutors recently about the possibility that Tsarnaev was involved.”
So Tamerlan had to find a victim or victims on “a day frought with symbolism” so he decided to murder a person who some say was his close friend rather than just arbitrarily murdering someone walking down the street. That’s a stretch especially for Tamerlan because he allegedly said he had no close friend in America and he finally found one. But let’s go on. Apparently Tamerlan had to make a bigger statement than just murdering his friend, he had to add a couple of others. These were Raphael Teken, and Erik Weissman.
Unfortunately for the theory if the murders happened on September 12 it has no symbolism attached to it.
So did the triple homicide happen on the 11th or 12th? The obituary noted he died on the 12th. A Boston Globe article on September 13 stated: “Three men were found dead in a house on a quiet side street yesterday, . . . “ On September 15 in another article the Globe noted: “The men were killed at Mess’s apartment Monday afternoon. The other two men did not live there. Authorities say the slayings were targeted, and they are seeking one or more suspects. They are awaiting autopsy results.A woman whom neighbors identified as Mess’s girlfriend found the three victims covered in blood around 2:30 p.m.
Mess’s girlfriend according to the articles expected him to pick her up at the airport and when he did not appear she went to the house and found the victims. So it’s pretty clear that the suggestion that the murders occurring on the tenth anniversary of September 11th is a fiction made up by the news media.
So how do we tie Tamerlan into the triple homicide if that theory is bust? And by that extension, how is Tobashev involved if Tamerlan isn’t?
Another reason to implicate him according to some articles is that Mess’s girlfriend (who has been identified as Hilda Eltilib) who discovered the bodies said she and her friends were surprised that Tamerlan didn’t show up to mourn Mess at the wake on September 18 or the memorial service on September 19. I’ve never heard of that as being indicative one way or the other of guilt. I know people who couldn’t show up at their friend’s wakes or funerals for many different reasons and never suspected they might have been involved in their death.
There is however another theory that came out quickly after the killing of Todashev to implicate Tamerlan. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Update: One person who commented here noted that the murders may have taken places on the night of 9/11. That is something that should be considered since I cannot exclude that possibility on the evidence that I have seen. If that is the case then there may be a 9/11 connection but I’d still doubt it because first, the idea behind memorializing an event is to make it known publicly which was never done here, that is the murders weren’t in anyway connected with 9/11/2001; and, it makes no sense for Tamerlan to be killing one of his closest friends. I still lean to a drug deal gone wrong.
Hey, you used to write fantastic, but the last few posts have been kinda boring… I miss your super writings. Past several posts are just a little out of track! come on!
Also remember, an amout of marijuana was sprinkled over the dead, who had thier throats cut. I remember reading the articles thinking, “..selling a bit of dope gets your head cut off? Usually amaters just get ripped off, this doesn’t sound right unless… Muslim killers on aniversary of 9/11….”
Rick:
You could be right but I disagree. Selling dope can be a dangerous operation. Now we will never know the answer. Just think how simple it all would have been if the FBI recorded its interrogation sessions. Now who will ever believe Todashev confessed? Had it not operated under the principle of hiding everything we may have actually had an answer. Now we never will know.
The significance of September 11:
“The last effort they [Muslims] made to destroy Christendom was
contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of
his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the
last years of the seventeenth century, only just over two hundred
years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the
Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that
ought to be among the most famous in history-_September 11, 1683. But
the peril remained, Islam was still immensely powerful within a few
marches of Austria and it was not until the great victory of Prince
Eugene at Zenta in 1697 and the capture of Belgrade that the tide
really turned_and by that time we were at the end of the seventeenth
century.”
From “The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed,” by Hilaire Belloc
(written in 1936).
Christopher Hitchens on the historical significance of September 11 pre-2001:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/03/september11.usa2
“I now think I can provide a more persuasive explanation, however. It was on September 11 1683 that the conquering armies of Islam were met, held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna.
Now this, of course, is not a date that has only obscure or sectarian significance. It can rightly, if tritely, be called a hinge-event in human history. The Ottoman empire never recovered from the defeat; from then on it was more likely that Christian or western powers would dominate the Muslim world than the other way around. In our culture, the episode is often forgotten or downplayed, except by Catholic propagandists like Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton. But in the Islamic world, and especially among the extremists, it is remembered as a humiliation in itself and a prelude to later ones. (The forces of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza once published a statement saying that they could not be satisfied until all of Spanish Andalusia had been restored to the faithful as well.)”
Henry:
Osama bin Laden in one of his earlier statements made reference to regaining the Spanish Andalusia. Hitchens is right dates mean a lot to zealots. In Northern Ireland on July 12 the Protestants march to celebrate the victory in the Battle of Boyne which took place in 1690 so it is easy to see how fanatic Muslims would remember that date of September 11. Although, there are other dates when Muslim forces suffered defeat at the hands of the Christians. The biggest Muslim set back occurred much earlier in the Battle of Tours in Octotber 732. In January of 1492 when the Muslims were forced out of Grenada their last stronghold in Spain. And then the Battle of Lepanto where the Muslim nave was defeated on 7 October 1571. I guess there are a lot of dates one can consider important in the Muslim/Christian war but from the Muslim point of view as shown by recent happenings it is still ongoing with the Christian forces attacking Muslims in at least six Muslim countries. I’m afraid it is going to be a long haul and don’t forget all those “sleeper cells” that we once heard were set up in the US.
Henry:
That’s good information. Thanks. I didn’t realize it was so recent that the Muslims were moving aggressively against others. Any good Muslim scholar should have known the significance of that date. That shows my lack of historical knowledge of the interactions between the Muslims and others. I’ll have to read Belloc’s book. I’ve been familiar with the name but not too familiar with his writings although I seem to remember having read one book he wrote. I went to Wikipedia to see if I could refresh my memory. I delighted in reading this description of him: “the impecunious Belloc walked a good part of the way from the midwest of the United States to her home in northern California, paying for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.” The book that I read which he wrote was “The Path to Rome.” I leave you with this quote from Belloc to ponder.
“Our religion [Chrisitanity] is in peril, and who can be confident in the continued skill, let alone the continued obedience, of those who make and work our machines? … There is with us a complete chaos in religious doctrine…. We worship ourselves, we worship the nation; or we worship (some few of us) a particular economic arrangement believed to be the satisfaction of social justice…. Islam has not suffered this spiritual decline; and in the contrast between [our religious chaos and Islam’s] religious certitudes still strong throughout the Mohammedan world lies our peril.[“
the media is in cahoots with FEDS. One hand washes the other; The Media’s fed agit-prop and inside dope from the FEDS, the FEDs target the Media’s ideological enemies: namely Italian-Black-Irish Catholic/Christian Moderates/Conservatives from Boston. Cases in POint: Chuck Turner; BPD Ken Connelly; FBI J. Connolly; William Bulger (falsely hounded by FEDS?Congress); DiMasi?McDonough bankrupted/7-8years in prison over an alleged $65,000 pay-off. All men, and there are many more, had squeeky clean records until corrupt media/academia/FED types started hounding them to death. The Spy AGencies are out of control and the MainstreamMedia is cahoots with them. I’m glad I recently saw again the Sound of Music, Cabaret and C.P. Taylor’s Good, because something is rotten in America. As Steppenwolf sang during the Vietnam War when massive demonstrations were staged against corrupt FED policies: “There’s a MOnster on the loose; It’s got our heads into a noose; and it just sits there watching, watching the people, and the people just don’t understand . . . now we are fighting a war over there, you know no matter who wins, we just can’t pay the cost, ’cause there’s a monster on the loose . . . . ” Rather than tracking the jihadists, pushers, gangsters, the FEDS are wasting resources tracking Veterans with unblemished records on the chance that one in ten thousand may be vigilante. It’s a disgrace. The FEDS have disgraced the Nation.
Bill:
There’s a good article in the Globe yesterday about a congressman who returns to Congress after 32 years and sees how enormously it changed. As part of the article is this quote: ““They’re the most dysfunctional group of political leaders the United States has had since the 1850s,” says Keith Poole, a professor at the University of Georgia who helped develop the system to measure polarization in Congress. “All I can say is the country is in really deep trouble. Much deeper than people realize.””
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/05/27/representative-returns-house-after-three-decades-and-finds-eroded-traditions/U49Txz7dENOFLu1crHD6pN/story.html
These are troubling times and in times like this when those who are supposed to be in charge are quarelling all the time and can’t get anything done; and the president speaks a good line but doesn’t follow through; and when the Department of Justice is so out of control the president has to ask them to review their procedures in chasing after leakers, there is one agency that takes advantage of the confusion and lack of leadership and that is the FBI. That’s why we can experience the things we see. It is not just the Feds it is our total leadership, both parties, interested in enriching themselves and forgetting that they represent a nation.
I couldn’t read the entire article because the title sounded ridiculous to me. The FBI agent was now attacked with a sword in place of a knife. Of course this is according to FOX News’ confidential source! LOL
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/22442330/2013/05/28/source-friend-of-bombing-suspect-attacked-agent-with-sword
Question:
The article is full of holes. It only has Ma state police and one FBI agent at the meeting. It has the meeting taking place on the wrong day. Then it jumps into the fake story he had to write down the confession in his own hand when that is absolutely unnecessary. Then he has Todashev tipping over a table and knocking the FBI agent against the wall while mysteriously coming up with a Japanese Banzai ceremonial sword (nice touch adding the specific description) which appeared magically in his hand while the rest of the cops in the room twiddle their thumbs.
Here’s the best part. “Last week, the FBI said in a statement that Todashev initiated violent confrontation that resulted in his death, and last week, Ward’s sources said that Todashev attacked the agent with a knife and the agent was hospitalized with stab wounds to the head.
However, the source has since clarified saying the agents told investigators Todashev came at him with a large sword-like weapon. The agent was injured when the table was overturned and the agent’s head was smashed into the wall. The agent was hospitalized and received nine stitches in his head.” You get that – last week the source was wrong but this week he’s right. What will he be next week?
So you notice how Todashev never touched the agent. He never had stab wounds to the head as originally reported. Actually, when the table was overturned the agent’s head hit the wall and he got nine (more or less) stitches but in the meantime he pulled out his weapon and unloaded on Todashev.. Here’s the problem with all that. There were at least five or probably ten other cops in the same room. What did they do during all of this? The Fox article is written like no one else is there other than one FBI agent.
You see how things are slowly changing thanks to the friendly media market ready to accept any rumor that helps the FBI.
Maybe, the score was bigger than you think? Tody and Tam might have thought they were being clever, leaving the five grand. If they took fifty plus they’d just might consider it as insurance. The whole 911 scenario is too pat.
Chechen zips give Boston boys a taste of the old country, seems more likely.
Khalid:
You may be right = Boston writes that the girlfriend said he had a lot of money stashed in the apartment. Here’s the question, why not take all? Who would want to take only part and leave five grand behind? The cops would find out from the girlfriend there was a lot more there so the idea you’d throw the cops off the trail of the murderers by leaving some doesn’t quit hold up. Maybe there wasn’t more than 5 grand, or if there was the murderers took it and didn’t see the 5. It sounds like the murderers were planning a hit. They’d already made the deal to sell X amount of product of X amount of dollars. When they showed up they wanted to see the dough, ray, mi. Mess produced the cash, they produced the weapon to freeze them and then executed each one, took the money and fled. I don’t buy the 9/11 linkage to Tamerlan or Tamerlan coming in to rip off his friend. It probably wasn’t the Chechens who did it but some Mafia or Russian OC guys looking to pick up some cash from the American boys who think they can deal with some of these vicious criminals who know nothing other than death and destuction..
I don’t know if it was done or not but aren’t there tests done during an autopsy which determines the time of death?
Question:
Yes, autopsies can give an approximate idea of the time of death. Crime scene guys doing forensic investigations can also make a good estimate. One of the important things as Boston pointed out is the cell phone activity as compared to what was normally done by these guys. If all their cell phones go down at 9:00 pm and there is not activity afterward, then that points to the beginning of the action. Autopsy information, blood flow patterns, etc would also help establish the time. I’m sure the DA’s office has a pretty good idea of the time.
Yes, the bodies were found on Sept. 12. So are you just dismissing reports from family members that communication with the three murdered men stopped before 9PM on 9/11/11 and the report from Gerry’s Italian Kitchen that the men ordered food to be delivered but didn’t answer the door or phone when the delivery person arrived?
From the Boston Globe http://tinyurl.com/ca5rpp7
“The death certificates of two of the victims — Brendan H. Mess, 25, and Rafael M. Teken, 37 — say they were killed on Sept. 12, the day that Mess’s girlfriend reportedly discovered the bodies of the three victims and ran screaming from the two-family house where they had gathered.
But a relative of one of the victims told the Globe he is certain they were killed on the evening of Sept. 11, because he was texting one of them about a Sunday night football game between the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys when communication suddenly stopped, at about 8:15 that evening.”
From the Waltham Patch http://tinyurl.com/nmeqj8g
“According to the report, the last time anybody heard from the victims was around 8:54 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2011, when somebody used Weissman’s cell phone to order food. The female delivery driver went to the Harding Avenue home, but nobody answered the door or answered Weissman’s phone.”
Do you really believe these murders were carried out in broad daylight on the afternoon of 9/12/11? The perpetrators would have had blood all over them. I got the impression from the Middlesex DA’s statements at the time that they believed the murders had happened during the previous night.
Actually, I’m not sure why the date is that important. The Tsarnaevs don’t seem to have been very organized criminals. If they were involved it seems more likely the motivation had to do with drugs. There was certainly a lot of drug-related activity in Waltham and Watertown at the time–there were two massive drug busts, one in late May of 2011 and another not too long after the murders in late October of 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/pxlqoxw
http://tinyurl.com/ogxq6f9
Thanks for covering this story on your blog. Your discussion of how the FBI operates is especially helpful.
Boston:
You bring up some good points that I did not know about that may or may not be true.
I may be wrong if what those newspapers report is correct. If so I’ll make the correction but I’m not ready to do that just yet but I will make an update to my blog to indicate that I may be incorrect. The information concerning the actual use of the cell phones is in the hands of the Middlesex DA who can determine when was the last time the phones were used which would be a relevant piece of information.
We don’t necessarily know for sure about the phones since the people who are quoted are all unidentified. The person who talked to the Globe asked not to be identified because she agreed with other relatives that they would not talk to the news media yet she is breaching the agreement. ABC which was copied by the Waltham paper also gives unsourced information and puts a call at a little before 9:00 pm and a delivery that did not get completed 20 minutes later and the phone not being answered.
I figured the girlfriend had contact with Mess that morning is she was flying in and expected to get picked up at the airport. I suppose her evidence will be important as to when she last spoke to him. We had a murder of two people in a drug deal in Westwood in Norfolk County where the persons were suffocated with duck tape so I figured it was not so much a memorial to 9/11 but a drug deal and as I indicated I can’t see Tamerlan leaving any money behind.
I agree there would have been a ton of blood around if three people had their necks cut. But that does not necessarily mean the nasty deed was done at night. Thanks for the information.
The girlfriend told the Globe she spoke to Brendan Mess on the night of 9/11/11 in the early evening, but was not able to get him later that night. She didn’t speak to him on the morning of the 12th. She also said that Mess had much more than $5,000 stashed at his apartment. Both of the men living there were dealing large amounts of drugs. Mess also had a gun, which was missing after the murders. If the bullets from the gun that killed Sean Collier match Mess’ gun, we’ll really know something, but, tellingly, that tidbit hasn’t been leaked. Here’s a link.
http://tinyurl.com/nttfk48
Boston:
Again thanks for the information. I’ve updated my original post to add the idea that it might have happened on 9/11. I agree if the bullet matched his gun that would be conclusive but without his gun how is there going to be a comparison made; unless his gun was found on Tamerlan or his brother. If both of the men were big drug dealers and Mess told a friend that he was expecting to do something big, it feels to me like a drug type killing. I’m not saying right now that Tamerlan had nothing to do with the murder since I’ve had no access to the evidence. Here’s my problem though. Why would Tamerlan want to kill his friend? If Tamerlan wanted to kill someone on the anniversary of 9/11 why murder one of the few guys that you hang around with? He could have killed any number of strangers if that was his goal. It’s just my gut tells me it’s not him but some of the bigger drug guys. One question, have you read anything about any of the deceased being a government informant. I thought somewhere I read that one of them may be. You are much more on top of this than I am so if you’ve heard that let me know. Again, thanks for straightening me out on the date.
Death certificates are issued by md pathologists who understand rigor mortis and other evidence of the approximate date of death. The absence of telephone communications may mean they were held hostage or were being held at gunpoint and told not to answer calls or knocks on doors or were zonked out on barbiturates or had voluntarily ceased communications for a myriad reasons people don’t answer their phones. The Death Certificate gives an approximate time of death, and it is issued by an expert in times of death. My hunch: they were killed in the wee hours of September 12, the death certificate probably indicates a time of death about 8 to 12 hours before the bodies were found.
Smarten up: there doesn’t have to be a lot of blood on the killers, who could have walked out of an apartment in broad daylight having done a little self-cleaning of themselves.
Bill:
That’s a good explanation of the time period and the way the things may have happened. One of the problems with trying to ascertain when they were murdered is that we don’t have the information that you spelled out. Maybe some day we’ll have it to look at but with the two persons Tamerlan and Todashev dead; like with the case of Amy Bishop, we don’t ever get to see the evidence and the DA can announce the case is closed and those two guys did it. The overall acceptance of the secrecy of parts of law enforcement is shown in these cases we have been discussing.
You’re right Matt, I found a couple of articles which stated the murders occurred on the 12th.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/09/12/three-dead-bodies-found-in-waltham-apartment/
Question:
That’s an interesting article because the police have two suspects in mind. I wonder who they were. I don’t think they were Tamerlan and Todashev. But wouldn’t it be something if they were the suspects, what a bag of worms that would open up.