Keeping Score: Boston Marathon bombing, 10 years later

Good morning!
The 10th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing is two weeks from today on April 15, 2013, when Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev detonated two pressure cooker bombs near the finish line at 2:49 p.m. The blasts killed three and wounded 264, including 16 people who lost legs.

Three nights later the Tsarnaev brothers shot and killed MIT cop Sean Collier and hijacked a Mercedes HL350 which the police tracked into Watertown. A ferocious battle resulted in Tamerlan’s death and Dzhokhar’s eventual capture. He was tried and convicted in federal court and attorneys are appealing his death sentence.

“The Murders Before the Marathon” (Hulu) makes a convincing case the carnage would never have happened if authorities had solved a triple homicide in Waltham on Sept. 11, 2011. The three-part docuseries is produced and narrated by Susan Zalkind, who was fresh out of BU and writing captions for New England Cable News at the time.

Zalkind knew one of the victims, 31-year-old Erik Weissman, from her “stoner” days. “He was like a nice Jewish marijuana dealer. Erik was a good friend. He took me more seriously as a writer than I took myself.”

Weissman and his friends, 37-year-old Raphael Teken, and 25-year-old Brandon Mess, sold top-shelf bud. “If it was 10 years later, all three of these men would’ve owned dispensaries in Boston and be respected members of the community,” said Teken’s friend, Daniel Mastey. “[They were] the dispensary before the dispensary.”

“Cannabis culture was very different then,” added another friend, Adam Freed. “You could get busted by the cops, you could get robbed…”

And you could get killed.

Despite her blossoming crime-writing career, Zalkind said she wanted nothing to do with investigating how these three men she knew wound up dead with their throats slashed and their bodies covered with marijuana. “But in April, 2013, a series of events occurred which made it impossible for me to look away.”

Viewers get an overhead view of the finish line and watch a joyous day become a scene of murderous horror and mayhem.

“Who did this?” asks Zalkind. “Why? Where are they?”

For nearly a decade Zalkind covered the crime for Boston Magazine, The Daily Beast and This American Life, and has authored “The Waltham Murders: An Unsolved Homicide, A National Tragedy and a Search for Truth.”

The story began in 2002 when Chechen refugees Zubeidat and Anzor Tsarnaev arrived in Cambridge with their son Dzhokhar followed a year later by 16-year-old Tamerlan who enrolled at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. His ambition, according to the documentary, was to attend Harvard, own a Mercedes and win a gold medal for the U.S. Olympic boxing team.

His disillusionment with the American dream began in 2009, when he won the Golden Gloves heavyweight title at Lowell Memorial Auditorium but was disqualified from competing for the U.S. because of his nationality.

“His one dream totally dissolves,” says Zalkind, who contends that Tamerlan committed the murders to finance a trip to Dagestan. The Russians warned the U.S. he was becoming radicalized, but his name scrolled off the watch list before the marathon bombing.

Zalkind has little regard for Gerard “Gerry” Leone, the Middlesex County district attorney whose job was to solve the murders. “The way we do business, we move up the chain. It’s a cash and carry business,” Leone told a group of concerned Waltham residents. “Cases don’t go cold in Middlesex.”

“The police thought it was the work of the cartels trying to send a message,” says Zalkind. “They never set up a tip line. It did not lead the news, and it quickly disappeared from public awareness. A year later, they were still chasing leads and alluding to the victims’ drug use and poor decision making.”

She refused to believe it was a deal gone bad or a cartel hit. “The killers slit their throats. That’s not a ripoff crime. Guns are business, stabbing is personal. There are strong indications this was an ideologically motivated murder and that Tamerlan robbed these men to travel, seek out violent extremist groups and support himself while he plotted the bombing. That’s terrorism.”

Mess’s second floor apartment in Waltham was a “hangout spot” for friends, and on the night of Sept. 11, 2011, Teken and Weissman were over to watch the Patriots game. Two others arrived — Tamerlan Tsarnaev and a Russian national named Ibragim Todashev. Mess knew them from the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center where they trained together.

“Ibragim was a complete psycho,” ex-cop and bare knuckles fighter Sean “The Canon” Gannon tells Zalkind. “Every gym has one and Ibragim would be our number one, two, and three psycho. Just about anything would set him off.”

Six weeks after the marathon bombing, five FBI agents visited Todashev at his Orlando apartment and braced him until he confessed and wrote a statement. “But he doesn’t finish writing his confession,” says Zalkind.

Instead he flipped over a table, flung objects and attacked an agent who shot and killed him. “This was crazy,” says Zalkind. “This man in Florida has crucial information about my friend’s homicide and they kill him?”

The agent was subsequently cleared of wrongdoing.

Despite her convincing argument that Tamerlan Tsarnaev committed the murders with the help of Ibragim Todashev, the case remains open. Zalkind theorizes it’s first things first — execute Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and then put a lid on the Waltham murders.

Gerry Leone left the DA’s office in 2013 but after a brief stint with two law firms he’s back on the state payroll as general counsel to UMass president Marty Meehan.

“Leone’s had his snout buried in the public trough since 2017. Who knew?” wrote Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr.

Zalkind can’t conceal her contempt for the authorities’ failure to crack the case when it mattered. It was their job, she said. “Not me, not a friend, not an investigative reporter.”

Toward the end Zalkind interviewed Erik Weissman’s sister. “It’s been nine years,” she said.

Zalkind nodded and began to say, “If they investigated Erik’s murder properly…”

The sister finished it for her: “They could have prevented the bombing.”

SQUIBBERS: Tomorrow would’ve been Dick Radatz’s 87th birthday. The first great Red Sox closer was a 6-foot-8, 280-pound righthander who terrorized batters with his sidearm fastball. According to WFAN’s Suzyn Waldman, “It was Mickey Mantle who nicknamed him “The Monster.” … WFLX in Florida reports that tickets to the Final Four in Houston start at $60, the lowest price in 10 years and down from $239 in 2016. … You can take Hollywood’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and I’ll take the Yardbirds’ “Over Under Sideways Down.” … In February, Red Sox pitcher Nick Pivetta told the Boston Globe he was suffering from his third bout of Covid. “I haven’t been recovering the way I would like to,” he said. In 17⅔ innings this spring, Pivetta had a 6.11 ERA and batters hit .356 off him yet only dropped one spot to No. 3 in the starting rotation. … Paul Pierce told Dan Patrick he was shocked when he dropped to 10th in in the 1998 draft. “I was certain I’d be in the top five.” The Celtics took Pierce after the Bucks took Dirk Nowitzki ninth, then traded him quickly to Dallas. “How long can you keep a chip on your shoulder?” asked Patrick. “Umm, until all the coaches and general managers are fired.”

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com