Tamerlan Tsarnaev: So Many Questions Yet to Be Answered

Despite the news that the young Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is beginning to give up information to FBI investigators from his hospital bed, many things regarding the Boston terrorist bombing are shrouded in mystery. The sequence of biographical events in the lives of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, especially regarding their radicalization, are still very unclear.

One particular incident is still a gray area. This is the unexplained murder of an American, Brendan Mess, age 25, whom Tamerlan had introduced as his “best friend” to the owner of his boxing club and who was found dead with his throat slit and his body covered in marijuana in an apartment in the small town of Waltham, near Boston. Two other young men were also found dead: Erik Weissman, age 31, and Raphael Teken, age 37, both from Cambridge, on Sept. 11, 2011. At the time, a police officer had declared based on the crime scene evidence that the triple murder, which is still under investigation, was without a doubt premeditated and had been perpetrated by someone who knew the victims. Could Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who proved his ability to commit extreme acts of violence, have been involved? American newspapers are at any rate beginning to speculate, highlighting that the young Chechen boxer was not present at his friend’s burial, a friend he saw nearly everyday. They also point to his trip to Russia three months after the murder. One of his parents, Saïd Tsarnaev, based in Chechnya, mentioned in an interview with Agence France-Presse that Tamerlan did not want to go back to the United States after his six months in Dagestan and that his father had to force him to leave so that he could finish making a life for himself in Boston.