Prelude to the Boston Bombings: Islamic Ritual in the Waltham Triple Murder

The following by Dawn Perlmutter is reposted here with permission of the Middle East Forum:

Prelude to the Boston Bombings

by Dawn Perlmutter
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2013, pp. 67-77
http://www.meforum.org/3618/boston-bombings-prelude

Dawn Perlmutter

On September 11, 2011, three lifelong friends—Brendan Mess, age 25, Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37—were brutally murdered in Mess's apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts. The graphic crime scene was discovered in the early afternoon of September 12, 2011, by Mess's girlfriend, who ran screaming from the apartment. The victims had been dragged to three different rooms and killed there.

Their bodies had multiple stab wounds; their throats were slit from ear to ear with such force that they were nearly decapitated, and their mutilated corpses were covered with drugs and money. In addition to the seven pounds of marijuana found on their bodies, $5,000 in cash was left at the scene. Two of the three victims were Jewish, and several sources have identified all three victims as such.[1]