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.
Orange County Sheriff’s Office via Getty Images
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.
More than a decade later, we have yet to reckon with the Boston Bomber’s role in the Waltham murders.
I liked Erik Weissman. But that’s not why I devoted more than eleven years of my life to investigating this story, reporting on the murders for This American Life and Boston magazine, covering the bombing trial for The Daily Beast, creating and producing a three-part documentary for ABC News Studios and Hulu, and most recently authoring a book, The Waltham Murders.
The bombing coincided with a turning point in the widespread use of social media and the dissemination of misinformation. I’m a journalist. The truth matters. And seeking it has only felt more urgent over time. Especially as it became clear that I was the only one actually looking for answers.
The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office is led by Marian T. Ryan, the woman in charge of the officially unsolved murder case. Ryan insists that her office can’t comment on the bomber’s role in the crime or release any information because they are hot on the chase for other potential suspects.
But in effect, Ryan’s continued silence means that the Middlesex office has yet to be held to account for letting the Boston Bomber slip through their fingers.
Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images
According to my own reporting and that of The New York Times, before the bombing, multiple individuals provided homicide investigators with Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name. Investigators failed to question him. After the bombing, the Middlesex office orchestrated an interview in which Ibragim Todashev was killed shortly after he confessed–another death the Middlesex office has yet to address.
The office’s continued pattern of disinterest and/or inability to effectively pursue leads, before the bombing, in the immediate wake of the attack, and up until today is alarming.
In response to the new reporting in the book Ryan and the Middlesex office are pointing reporters to a trophy list of homicide convictions as evidence of their “unwavering commitment to or ability to solve complex cold cases.” But the Boston Globe recently found actual evidence, from an open unsolved murder, of a teenage boy, assigned to the Middlesex office, left in an abandoned Waltham building.
The DA does not appear to be actively pursuing any leads, as they claim. And yet, there could be accessories to the crime who are still alive.
For those close to the case, questions about Hiba are especially concerning.
Courtesy of Author
Even though Hiba was living with Brendan, she was married to a man in Richmond, Virginia, named Johnson Aimie Edosomwan Jr. (“Jay”). Throughout her relationship with Brendan, Hiba remained in communication with Jay. After the murders, she visited Jay in his home. His body was found two days later. Documents obtained via FOIA from the Richmond Police Department pertaining to Jay’s apparent death by suicide, reveal alarming questions about Hiba’s potential role in the Waltham murders. I obtained these records last year after producing the docuseries. The DA had these documents in 2011, but apparently never pursued these leads or made inquiries within the victims’ social circles.
For Erik, Brendan, Rafi, and other East Coast distributors of high-grade black market cannabis, 2011 was a year of upheaval and growing tensions. Brendan’s concerns also included his tumultuous love life.
Stories about Hiba spread fast. They reached me in the days immediately after the murders. Brendan had a girlfriend. They had a fight. She left town. She wasn’t supposed to return. She did not have a house key. She asked the landlord to open the door. The rumors Erik’s family heard were more explicit. The theory going around was that “Hiba hired someone to kill Brendan” and that Rafi and Erik just happened to be there, Erik’s mother, Bellie, told me.
After the bombing, theories about Hiba persisted among some of the victims’ associates, at times merging with conspiracy theories about the terrorist attack, reimagined to feature Hiba as some sort of highly connected criminal mastermind or agent.
Brendan was not Hiba’s first, nor her last, romantic partner to meet a violent end. And accounts of Hiba’s other dead lovers compounded the speculation that Hiba may have played a role in the Waltham killings.
“Later the qualities that once endeared Hiba to Brendan would exacerbate his friends’ suspicions. ”
On September 1, 2011, ten days before the Waltham murders, Hiba’s ex-boyfriend, Jahmare H. Smith, 33, was shot and killed in Henrico County, Virginia. A man named Jeffrey Runion was later convicted for the crime. Hiba had separated from her husband, Jay, but they remained legally married. Jay died in his Richmond apartment on October 7, 2011, a little less than a month after the Waltham killings. Investigators at the Richmond Police Department determined that Jay had died by suicide.
Five dead bodies in a five-week timespan, all somehow connected to Hiba.
Hiba also spoke of yet another murdered boyfriend. She allegedly told two individuals that a previous boyfriend had been killed in a home invasion.
According to Brendan’s high school friend, Ray Filmore, Brendan found Hiba’s complicated past alluring. Brendan was fixed on having a certain lifestyle, Filmore explained. He was drawn to things that were dangerous. Later the qualities that once endeared Hiba to Brendan would exacerbate his friends’ suspicions.
Suspicions about Hiba appear to be shared by law enforcement, according to two Waltham city councilors and records pertaining to Jay’s death obtained from the Richmond Police Department via FOIA.
The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, the office in charge of the officially unsolved triple homicide, insists that the case is still open and investigators are looking into the “potential involvement of additional undisclosed person or persons in connection with these homicides.” The office did not respond to inquiries pertaining to Hiba and Jay. But according to a 2018 GBH News report quoting anonymous law enforcement sources working with the office, “Investigators believe that she knows more than she’s let on.”
But I too have had my share of dark luck and there are reasons to be skeptical about law enforcement’s veiled claims and stated reasons for keeping this case open.
Perhaps Hiba is a victim of circumstance many times over. It’s not a crime to lie to a journalist. The Middlesex office could be using allegations about Hiba as a shield–an excuse to keep this case open, say nothing, and avoid accountability.
“The killers scattered $5,000 cash around the scene of the crime, but they also robbed the victims of an estimated $100,000.”
And yet discrepancies in the account Hiba provided me regarding her apparent motives, movements, communications, violent arguments with the victims, corroborated allegations of her involvement in a series of complex robberies, eye-witness accounts of her behavior after finding the bodies, attempts to sell the victims’ belongings for profit, disturbing accounts of her actions and financial transactions detailed by her late husband, Jay, as well as Jay’s documented and partially corroborated allegation that Hiba attempted to frame him for the Waltham killings, are troubling. This was a carefully planned crime. All three victims appear to have been targeted–especially Rafi whose home was also robbed the night of the murders. And yet, neither Rafi nor Erik would have visited Brendan’s apartment if Hiba was home.
We all have our types. Hiba apparently preferred men who allegedly sold drugs and also allegedly partook in robberies. She dated risk-takers who lived dangerous lives, so it’s not as surprising that a handful of these men met a violent end as it would be if she liked to date, say, dentists.
Courtesy of Author
Hiba insisted that speculation about her role in the murders is unfounded. “I’m still trying to deal with all of those deaths at the same time,” she said in a 2014 Skype interview. “I feel like I’m being punished because people around me died,” she said. She said she was not a James Bond villain, as others have described her to me, and she had “no involvement” in the Waltham crime. She doesn’t understand how anyone could think that she might. What could possibly be the motive for doing something like that? she asked me. “There is no way that I could ever imagine that happening, let alone orchestrate it.”
Later I would learn of three separate accounts, from three different individuals, alleging that Hiba and Jay had in fact successfully orchestrated a series of complicated robberies prior to the Waltham killings. In two of the alleged robberies they recruited accomplices. In another, a victim was pistol whipped. One of the accounts is supported by police records obtained from the Richmond Police Department via FOIA.
The killers scattered $5,000 cash around the scene of the crime, but they also robbed the victims of an estimated $100,000.
But I knew none of this when Hiba first shared her concerns with me over Skype in 2014. Before the call, Hiba emailed me from her home in Khartoum, Sudan where she said she was volunteering her time on charity boards and working with disabled people and orphans.
I had been trying to reach her for months after hearing concerning accounts from more than a dozen individuals close to the Waltham crime. I detailed some of the substantiated reporting about Hiba in a Boston magazine cover story about the murders. Hiba emailed me immediately after the article went live.
She wanted to clear some things up. She is a victim. She thanked me for my conscientious, objective reporting. But she said she’d loved Brendan, and he’d loved her. He was her angel, and she knew that he was with her at all times. She was devastated by his murder, and after he was killed, she lived in fear—she could have been there.
Regarding the questions about her trip to Miami and her unexpected return, she said that Brendan had known she was coming home. In fact, she tried to get back earlier and would have been there the night of the killings had she been able to obtain a ticket.
She appreciated my diligence. “Without knowing you, I admire you,” she wrote. But she wanted me to leave her out of my reporting. The other journalists didn’t care about the truth like I did, and accounts about her were based on “NO FACTS and NO EVIDENCE.” My reporting was “more dignified than that,” and she cautioned me not to stoop so low as to include her in any future stories.
Courtesy of the Weissman Family
She asked me to look at the situation on the flip side: What if she is innocent?
I thought the 2014 interview…