On September 11, 2011 — 10 years to the day after the deadly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center — three men were found murdered in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts, as WGBH reported. Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken were murdered so brutally, their throats slashed so deeply, that they were nearly decapitated. What’s more, it didn’t appear as if the murder was a robbery; thousands of dollars in cash were left behind, as was a significant amount of marijuana.

Initially, police didn’t have any suspects, although there were theories, one being that the men had somehow crossed a government agent and paid for it with their lives. Meanwhile, the girlfriend of one of the victims was believed to have not told investigators everything she knew.

Their murder was essentially a cold case — that is, until the Boston Marathon bombings. It was at that point that authorities began to connect some dots between the Waltham murders and the Tsarnaev brothers.

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