Forensics May Link Both Tsarnaevs to 2011 Murders

Sources tell ABC the evidence is mounting
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 10, 2013 12:44 PM CDT
Forensics May Link Both Tsarnaevs to 2011 Murders
This combination of undated file photos shows Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.   (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young, File)

One of the separate storylines that emerged after the Boston bombings is that police were looking at Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a possible suspect in a grisly triple-murder involving one of his old boxing friends in 2011. (On Sept. 11 of that year, as a matter of fact.) So how goes the case? ABC News reports that both Tamerlan and Dzhokhar are now potential suspects, based on unspecified "forensic hits" cited by its anonymous sources. Cell phones records also suggest the brothers were in the vicinity the day of the murder.

Definitive DNA testing is apparently still under way, however, and the rest of the case amounts to a mishmash of admittedly thin circumstantial evidence: Friends thought Tamerlan was acting strange after the murder of his friend, for instance. One other tenuous link: The brothers may have worked as deliverymen for the pizzeria where the victims ordered their last meal (the employee who tried to deliver the order that night says no one answered the door). The store denies it, but acquaintances of the brothers remember differently. Investigators took a bin from the store nine days after the marathon bombing when a driver noticed it contained discarded fireworks; the gunpowder had been removed. Whether it all ties together will apparently take some time to figure out. (More Tamerlan Tsarnaev stories.)

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