Court: Tsarnaev pal offered Waltham slays testimony
Classmate knew of ‘jihad’ acts
A college classmate of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev offered to testify against him to federal prosecutors about his brother Tamerlan’s involvement in a triple murder in Waltham, according to stunning court documents just unsealed.
Dias Kadyrbayev, 24, may have hoped to testify against his pal as leverage.
Six days before Kadyrbayev pleaded guilty in 2014 to charges he obstructed the investigation of the 2013 Patriots Day terrorist attack, prosecutors informed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team that Kadyrbayev had divulged through his attorney he’d “learned in the fall of 2012 from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was involved in the Waltham murders,” and that Tamerlan “had committed jihad” in Waltham, the documents state.
On Sept. 11, 2011, Raphael Teken, 37, Erik Weissman, 31, and Tamerlan’s friend Brendan Mess, 25, “were bound, their throats were cut, and at least one of them had marijuana sprinkled over his body,” federal prosecutors stated in a followup motion that persuaded U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. to bar any mention of the triple homicide at Dzhokhar’s 2015 terrorism trial.
Dzhokhar’s lawyers argued they wanted jurors to hear about “the brutality of those murders” to show Tamerlan — killed in a firefight with Watertown police that ended with Dzhokhar running him over with a carjacked SUV — was the dominant force in plotting the bombings that killed three race spectators and led to the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier.
Approximately one month after Dzhokhar’s arrest and Tamerlan’s death, a friend of Tamerlan’s, Ibragim Todashev, was fatally shot by FBI Special Agent Aaron McFarlane in Florida after confessing he, too, was involved in the Waltham slaughter. Todashev was killed in his home when he charged McFarlane and Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Curtis Cinelli with a 5-foot pole.
The Waltham killings remain officially unsolved by the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
Kadyrbayev was released from prison in August after serving 6 years for removing a backpack, laptop, fireworks and other incriminating items from Dzhokhar’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. All but the laptop were later recovered from a New Bedford landfill.
He has since been deported to Kazakhstan.
Dzhokhar’s new legal team is scrambling to meet a Dec. 19 deadline for filing his first appeal to overturn his death sentence.