Suspect in murders of Boston doctors had fake gun, prosecutor says
Richard Field paid $1.9 million in 2013 for his penthouse condo in the Macallen Building in South Boston, where he lived with his fiancee, Dr. Lina Bolanos. (macallenbuildingcondominiums.com)
WASHINGTON – The district attorney in Boston has refuted key information that the Boston police commissioner initially disclosed about the murders of two doctors in their penthouse.
Commissioner William Evans had said late Friday night – shortly after the two anesthesiologists were found dead – that police shot suspect Bampumim Teixeira after he fired on officers as soon as they entered the South Boston condo. Evans later said that the victims must have known their killer or killers because a key was required to access the 11th-floor condo.
But in a news conference on Monday, Suffolk County District Attorney Paul Conley called Evans’ statements that Teixeira, 30, shot at responding officers from a dark hallway “inaccurate.”
Conley said there was no exchange of gunfire – and, indeed, that Teixeira was not even found with a real gun.
Instead, Conley said, police found a BB gun or a “replica gun” inside a backpack in the condo.
Conley blamed the blunder on a “very large and chaotic” crime scene and said police officers were responding to reports of an armed intruder. Dr. Richard Field, 49, had sent a text to a friend that a gunman was inside the condo, where he lived with his fiance, Dr. Lina Bolanos, 38. The friend called police as well as personnel at the front desk, who also called 911, according to police.
The condo at the 140-unit building is approximately 2,025 square feet, according to real estate records.
“The officers believed that this assailant either pointed or fired a weapon at them, in this dark hallway, and as a result they discharged their own firearms,” Conley said.
“I want to be clear that we are not drawing any negative connotations or conclusions to the propriety of these actions at this stage,” the DA said. “We are simply informing the public in order to correct the record.”
Police spokesman Lt. Detective Michael McCarthy told the Boston Herald that Evans made it clear the information he gave at the scene was preliminary.
“It was a crazy scene, and the commissioner was relaying information that was relayed to him,” McCarthy said. “As any investigation moves forward, preliminary information then becomes secondary information once we learn additional facts.”
But at Teixeira’s bedside arraignment on Monday afternoon at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney John Pappas repeated the misinformation. Pappas said police shot Teixeira, 30, in the abdomen, leg and hand after he fired at them.
Police also are backing away from their earlier assertion that Teixeira likely knew the victims.
Conley said Monday that there is “no evidence whatsoever” at this point to conclude that Field or Bolanos had a personal relationship with Teixeira. Conley also said there is no evidence “to explain why he would attack them so viciously in their own home.”
Teixeira’s former employer has confirmed that he previously worked as a security guard at the luxury complex where the couple was slain.
Palladion Services, which provided security and concierge service at the building, said in a statement released Tuesday that Teixeira worked for the company from October 2015 to April 2016 after passing a reference and background check. “He worked at the Macallen property for approximately three weeks, more than one year ago,” according to the statement, which did not specify why his employment ended.
Last September at a plea hearing, Teixeira pleaded guilty to larceny for robbing the same Boston bank twice – last July and in 2014 – netting a total of $812. The charges were reduced from two counts of unarmed bank robbery. He was sentenced to 364 days in prison and received credit for 78 days served. It is not clear when he was released.
The sentence of less than a year allowed Teixeira, an immigrant from Wst Africa, to keep his green card and avoid deportation. Federal law stipulates that immigrants who commit an aggravated felony for which the prison sentence is at least one year may be deported. Teixeira’s 364-day sentence was one day short of the minimum.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that it has “no legal role in this case at this time” but will monitor Teixeira’s criminal case.
This story was republished with permission from Talk Media News.
Regina Holmes has more than two decades of experience as a journalist –editing and reporting for news dailies including the Miami Herald, Newsday and the Baltimore Examiner.