As police continue to unravel the killings of two beloved Boston doctors, investigators are trying to answer a pivotal question: Did Bampumim Teixeira – the 30-year-old man accused of carrying out the crime – know his victims personally?
A Boston police report cited by the Associated Press reveals that Teixeira worked at the complex where Richard Field, 49, and Lina Bolanos, 38, lived, but authorities have made contradictory statements about whether the accused killer and the victims were familiar with one another.
An email sent by the complex’s management and obtained by People this week confirms that Teixeira briefly held a concierge position at the building sometime before 2016, deepening suspicion that he may have known his alleged victims.
Establishing a link between the suspect and the couple would help authorities uncover a potential motive for the killings, which took place Friday.
“If someone would come here and go up to the 11th floor of a penthouse, we’ve got to believe there was some type of knowledge of each other,” Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told reporters this weekend, according to People.
And yet Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley told reporters Monday that “there is no evidence whatsoever at this point” that proves Teixiera knew Field and Bolanos, People reported.
In its email to residents cited by People, the building’s management told residents that it was “severely restricted” from offering more information about the crime because of the police investigation but was trying hard to “strike the appropriate balance.”
“This is an incredibly difficult time for our entire community,” the email added, according to People. “We are all doing the best we can to help our fellow residents and staff through this, while giving the authorities the space they need to do their jobs.”
When Boston police entered an 11th-floor penthouse apartment Friday night, they found a gruesome scene: the bodies of a man and a woman bound at the hands, their throats slit and blood on the walls of the luxury condominium. The killer had left cut-up photos of the couple and a message of retribution.
That message has fueled speculation that the two doctors, who were engaged to be married, knew their attacker.
Teixeira has been charged with two counts of murder and pleaded not guilty to each count. He was arraigned on two counts of murder at Tufts Medical Center in Boston on Monday afternoon as he lay in a hospital bed with his eyes mostly closed.
A judge standing beside Teixeira – a 30-year-old from Chelsea, Mass. – entered two not-guilty pleas for the deaths of Field and Bolanos.
During the arraignment, NBC News reported, Teixeira nodded “only slightly in response to questions.”
He was ordered to be held without bail, authorities said. If convicted, the maximum sentence Teixeira would face is life in prison without the possibility of parole.