BOSTON BOMBER POSSIBLY LINKED TO MURDER OF FRIENDS WHOSE THROATS WERE SLIT

Murder victims authorities are possibly linking to Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Authorities are investigating whether Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev had killed before — as part of a two-man slay team that slit the throats of a close friend and two others in 2011. Cops were tipped off to the possibility after people who knew Tsarnaev began speculating he might have been involved in the unsolved triple murder.
The chilling chatter started the same day that Tamerlan and his brother, Dzohkhar, were identified as suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Massachusetts authorities are probing whether Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a police shootout last week, had a role in a 2011 triple murder.

“We weren’t looking into it before, but we’re looking into it now,’’ a law-enforcement source told The Post of the potential link between Tamerlan and the murder of his best pal, martial-arts trainee Brendan Mess, and two others.
An unidentified relative of one victim suggested to the Boston Globe that Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, also may have played a role in the homicides. The relative said victims’ kin had urged authorities to take another look at the case after the bombings.
A spokeswoman for the Middlesex County, Mass., District Attorney’s Office, confirmed that the DA is considering the possibility of at least Tamerlan’s involvement as a new “lead.”
“I can’t comment that there is any connection, but we’ll look at any new leads that come in,” said DA rep Stephanie Guyotte.
She wouldn’t say whether Tamerlan previously was a suspect in the 2011 killings.
The renewed attention to the case came after a Tamerlan associate, “Ray,’’ told the Web site Buzzfeed, “A few of my friends, without even speaking about it beforehand, have all been thinking” that Tamerlan played a role in the slays.
Tamerlan died in a shootout with cops Friday.
The 26-year-old, who had hopes of being a US Olympic boxer, had been extremely close to Mess, 25. Theytrained together at a local gym, and also were fans of a hip-hop group.
On Sept. 12, 2011, Mess’ girlfriend found him and two Cambridge men — Erik Weissman, 31, and 37-year-old Raphael Teken — dead in Mess’ Waltham pad.
The relative of one of the victims told the Globe he believes they were killed the day before — the 10th anniversary of 9/11 — because, “They all stopped using their cellphones’’ at 8 p.m. that day.
The fact that marijuana was found around the men had at least initially led cops to suspect the killings were drug-related. There was no forced entry, which suggested they knew their killer or killers, too.
Two unidentified men were seen at the apartment before the slayings.
Ray told Buzzfeed that when he was questioned by cops after the murders, they told him that Tamerlan may have been with Mess on the day of the killings or the previous night.
Ray said he and Mess’ other friends found it odd that Tamerlan failed to show up at either Mess’ funeral or memorial service — and now find that absence extremely suspicious.