The Mystery Woman at the Heart of an Unsolved Triple Murder

Eighteen months before Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother carried out the Boston Marathon Bombing, Tamerlan murdered three young men in Waltham, Massachusetts on September 11, 2011. Tamerlan was a boxer, and his primary accomplice in the Waltham murders was a Chechen MMA fighter, Ibragim Todashev, he knew from the gym.

Together they pistol-whipped, hogtied, and tortured Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken, and Erik Weissman, stole their money, and slit their throats. The evidence of their involvement in this horrific, dramatic, carefully plotted crime is overwhelming.

The victims were marijuana dealers who had gathered to watch a Sunday night football game. Brendan Mess had a purple belt in jiu-jitsu, went to the same gym as Tamerlan and Ibragim, and rented the Waltham apartment where he and his two friends were killed. Raphael Teken also lived in Waltham, he came from an Israeli family and was the son of a local Jewish spiritual leader. The third victim, Erik Weissman, was a mild mannered cannabis connoisseur—and a friend of mine. Hibatalla K. Eltilib (“Hiba”) had been Brendan’s girlfriend. She left the state after a violent argument. Brendan told his friends she was gone for good. But Hiba returned to find the bodies the next day, leaving a trail of bloody footprints–and unnerving questions.

Read more at The Daily Beast.