Waltham Triple Murder Explored

By Karin Friedemann, TMO

Brendan Mess, who has been described as the best friend of Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was found murdered in his Waltham home with his throat cut and covered in marijuana.

Federal prosecutors quoted allegations that FBI agents had anonymously leaked to reporters months ago in a single sentence near the end of a 23-page court filing. 

“According to Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev participated in the Waltham triple homicide,” reads a motion by federal prosecutors filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.

But the prosecution offered no details about what Todashev allegedly said to the FBI, or why he was killed by an FBI agent during questioning in his Orlando home on May 22.

The 23-page document came as a response to a motion filed by Tsarnaev’s defense team, asking the FBI to turn over its files on Todashev, as well as records of FBI interviews with Todashev’s girlfriend, Tatiana Gruzdeva—who was deported after giving an interview to Boston Magazine.

Prosecutors are trying to stop defense lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from obtaining documents related to the elder Tsarnaev’s purported role in the Waltham slayings:

“Any benefit to Tsarnaev of knowing more about the precise ‘nature and extent’ of his brother’s involvement does not outweigh the potential harm of exposing details of an ongoing investigation into an extremely serious crime, especially at this stage of the proceeding.”

The government argued that according to the law they are only compelled to release the names of witnesses, not records of interviews with them. Quoting a previous ruling to prove their point, the prosecution wrote, “Once the Defendants are aware of the existence of such witnesses, the Defendants may attempt to interview them to ascertain the substance of their prospective testimony, or subpoena them if the Government does not intend to call them as witnesses at trial.”

The primary witnesses and suspects cannot appear at trial anyway because Todashev and Tamerlan are both dead.

Reniya, Todashev’s wife told TMO that her husband did not smoke marijuana and was not a close friend of Tsarnaev. He was in Atlanta at the time of the Waltham murders. Although she left the country after her husband’s murder, the FBI continues to harass her relatives living in the US.

Two Massachusetts state troopers assigned to investigate the Waltham triple homicide were on or near the scene of the Orlando FBI murder of Todashev. But Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Governor Deval Patrick have declined to investigate Todashev’s death and refused to require the troopers to talk.

Friends and relatives of three young men in Walham, who were first bludgeoned to death before their throats were deeply slit and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana, told the Boston Globe that they remain dissatisfied with the official information.

“The fact that they’re not being more forthcoming with us makes you wonder whether there’s more information out there,” said a friend of Teken, a Brandeis graduate who visited the Waltham apartment on the evening of the homicides.

“It upset me, obviously,” said another friend of Mess, referring to the court filing. “I think there’s way more to it.”

A paralegal who worked a legal office that once represented Mess told TMO that months before his murder, Mess had been arrested on drug charges and then quietly released. Then, he suddenly switched lawyers. Did he become an informant?

Was someone angry at them for ratting? Or was a government agent angry at them for not doing a good job of being informants? Were the same rogue agents who killed Ibragim Todashev in Orlando the same murderers who killed those 3 guys in Waltham?

Maybe even Tamerlan too, who according to some reports, died in police custody?!

The families and friends of the Waltham victims say they fear whoever committed the murders is still “out there.”

Weissman’s lawyer, Norman Zalkind, said Weissman was not attempting to negotiate a plea deal by informing on other criminal suspects.

“We were working out a very positive situation for Erik; he had a very good case,” Zalkind said, adding that Weissman was challenging the legality of the warrant used to search his apartment. “He wasn’t afraid of any significant problem.”

Both Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were small time marijuana dealers and users while Weissman and Mess are said to have had greater resources and business plans.

Christopher Medeiros told NPR that Mess and Weissman were trying to start a major growing operation. Medeiros, who described himself a close friend of Mess, said he believes the killings were drug-related. “The Friday before he died, (Mess) told me, ‘Listen, I’m getting ready to make this big move,’” Medeiros said. “And I think that’s what cost him his life.”

Were the murdered people planning to cut ties with their mafia drug suppliers in favor of growing marijuana for a recently-made-legal medical marijuana dispensary?

Two of the murdered people are half Jewish and possibly Israel connected. Teken’s father, Avi Teken, is the spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation in Newton, Massachussetts. The Russian Israeli mafia a.k.a. Homeland Security made a lot of money off the Boston Marathon bombing and wrestled more control away from local police by federalizing the crime as terrorism. Homeland Security agents may not want a real investigation into the Waltham murders because the drug dealers who were killed were (former?) Israeli agents. Or did the Israeli mafia have them killed?

Matt Connolly, author of “Don’t Embarrass The Family” about the history of the FBI, asks: “Who can believe this when the FBI after so long a time keeps stonewalling its reasons for killing Todashev. Why would you ever kill a man with such critical evidence?… We are left to think that this was an execution of him perhaps because he refused to implicate anyone in that murder.”

However, there is no question about Tsarnaev’s ties to Mess, who had reportedly recently moved to Waltham from Cambridge at the urging of Mess’s girlfriend, Hibatalla Eltilib, according to friends and relatives of the victims who spoke with the Globe.

There has been much speculation about the slashing murders, described as near-beheadings, and the 9/11 date of the murders, to link them with some kind of jihad movement. However, the only people that celebrate 9/11 are radical Zionists. Muslims do not generally consider themselves guilty of 9/11 nor do they consider themselves the primary victims of 9/11, so it is unlikely for any real “jihadi” to commemorate this date.

There was no religious friction between Tamerlan and his half-Jewish friends, who used to cook halal meals for him after he stopped drinking alcohol. Mess’ girlfriend told detectives and reporters that the men were even once roommates. It is reported that Tamerlan never stopped smoking marijuana, at least up to the time of the murders. He was possibly selling and Mess may have been his supplier. His brother Dzhokhar is known to have continued selling and smoking pot even after the Marathon bombings.

Tamerlan and Mess spoke a few days before the murders. The Sudanese girlfriend Eltilib claimed that, during that conversation, Mess expressly invited Tamerlan to drop by because the three men would be watching football on that night.

Authorities never investigated Tsarnaev in connection with the killings until friends and family of the victims began calling Waltham police and federal authorities to report a possible link, after Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar, were publicly identified as the suspected Marathon bombers. Friends and relatives of the victims, in hindsight, said police should have examined the relationship between Hibatallah Eltilib and Tsarnaev.

Although friends knew Tsarnaev to be Muslim, they did not consider him to be an extremist. Eltilib, by contrast, was outspoken about her Islamic beliefs and disdain for many American values, friends said. Eltilib has since returned to Sudan.

“She and Tam got really close and became friends,’’ said a friend of Mess, Tsarnaev, and Eltilib. “This was closer to Brendan’s death. They would share stories of their distaste for American culture. She was extremely aggressive and violent and had this radical way of thinking.’’

The speculation about “jihadi” motivations for the killings would of course be expected, but the victims were emotionally close to their Muslim friends in a tender way, so if there is any suspicion of “revenge” one would also have to suspect the Israeli drug mafia punishing these half Jews for getting too close to Muslims.

I would also suspect the Sudanese girlfriend of being an agent for two reasons. One, the Boston Jewish community was heavily involved in promoting the overthrow of Sudan, and had lobbied heavily for mercenaries who were taxpayer funded, trained in Massachusetts and sent to Sudan to fight for the “freedom” of South Sudan along with a very heavily funded “Save Darfur” campaign that involved the Israeli government.

Second, this Sudanese girlfriend was known to make jihad-related statements on a regular basis, even though she smoked pot and had a boyfriend. This is classic entrapment behavior. It is also very odd how the FBI and police tried to sweep the murders under the rug and forget about it, rather than fully investigating, until the public started pressuring them to look into a Tsarnaev link.

The savage 2011 murders, which unfolded “on a quiet dead-end street on a balmy night,” remain shrouded in mystery. Mess and his friends Weissman and Teken, had ordered dinner from Gerry’s Italian Kitchen 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. Neighbors reportedly said they did not hear any signs of trouble – even with open windows – and there was no forced entry.

Gerry’s Italian Kitchen became a focal point again on April 24, nine days after the Marathon bombing, after investigators found emptied out fireworks tubes in a Planet Aid charity donation bin in their parking lot.

In May, 2011, eighteen other people were arrested on drug, extortion, and money-laundering charges after a year-long federal investigation and sting operation in the Waltham area. Even a former Watertown police officer was charged with interfering with the investigation by tipping off a Watertown man, Safwan Madarati, about the ongoing investigation. Madarati was involved in distributing marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, and Oxycodone in and around Watertown.

This was a huge operation that involved bringing in marijuana from Canada and storing it in warehouses in “Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and other states” for distribution. One such storage warehouse was in Waltham. Madarati was also said to be involved in collecting debts using violent methods, including hiring someone to shoot out the windows of Cristofori Jewelers in Newton, Massachusetts, an Israeli stronghold.

In October, 2011, a month after the Waltham murders, there was a major drug bust in Waltham that involved a former Watertown City Councillor, Gus Bailey. The Boston Globe reports:

“A former Watertown councilor was arrested this week and charged with trafficking marijuana at his Waltham warehouse, where police found 1,062 pot plants and 300 pounds of loose cut marijuana, worth around $2 million, along with $20,000 in cash, according to authorities.”

15-47