What we know about the chilling penthouse double murder in South Boston
The Boston area was shaken over the weekend by the news of the gruesome killing of two local beloved doctors in their luxury South Boston apartment Friday night.
Dr. Richard Field, 49, and Dr. Lina Bolanos, 38, were found dead with their throats slit and their hands bound. Officials told The Boston Globe that there was blood on the apartment walls, and the suspect had written “a message of retribution” on the wall. Upon encountering Bampumim Teixeira, 30, inside the apartment, police shot and injured the suspect, who was taken into custody.
New details of the crime emerged on Monday when Teixeira was arraigned on two counts of murder and held without bail from his hospital bed at Tufts Medical Center. And in a press conference Monday evening, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley pushed back on some of the initially reported details.
The crime
- According to Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney John Pappas, Field’s last text message Friday night was a plea for help to a friend, saying there was a gunman in the apartment. Conley said Monday that it was the friend who alerted the police. According to Boston police, local units responded to a report of a person with a gun at the South Boston apartment building around 8:38 p.m.
- When police officers arrived at the 11th-floor apartment around 8:45 p.m., they discovered a set of keys on the floor in front of the apartment door, Pappas said. After knocking and getting no response, police used the keys to open the door.
- Inside they encountered Teixeira, who was dressed in dark clothing and wearing dark-colored gloves, in a “darkened” hallway, according to Pappas and Conley.
- Officials initially said that Teixeira opened fire at police, who fired back, wounding Teixeira in his left hand, abdomen, and leg. However, Conley said Monday that the statement that Teixeira “fired on Boston police officers” was “inaccurate” and attributed the incorrect information to “a very chaotic scene” in the aftermath of the murder.
- Conley also said a replica firearm or BB gun was found at the scene, but that Texeira was not holding the gun when police shot him. A knife was also found at the scene, he said.
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Teixeira warned police, as he was apprehended, that there was “another individual” in the building who would open fire. For that reason, Conley said police sent in a SWAT team, which discovered the bodies of Field and Bolanos. “I can confirm that as a result of statements that Mr. Teixeira made after he was apprehended, the police sent in their SWAT team, they swept the building, secured the building, and found no other persons in the building,” he said.
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A black backpack filled with jewelry – presumably belonging to Bolanos – was found inside the apartment door in a “remarkably conspicuous” area, Pappas said.
- Conley said they had no evidence for why the defendant allegedly attacked the couple in their own home.
- Additionally, Conley said that some of the details in the “graphic and disturbing” reports about the crime scene were “flatly, incontrovertibly wrong.” However, he said he was unable to immediately correct them because of the ongoing investigation and trial.
The scene
- Field and Bolanos reportedly lived together on the 11th floor of the Macallen Building — “one of Boston’s newest luxury residential buildings,” according to the Globe — located at 141 Dorchester Ave. in South Boston. Located just across the street from the Broadway MBTA station, the apartment building opened in 2007.
- According to the Globe, apartment prices in the Macallen range from $525,000 for a studio to $1.1 million for two bedrooms. Monthly rents go from $2,000 for a studio to $5,500 monthly for two bedrooms.
- The sleek building boasts loft-style apartments, a rooftop swimming pool with “stunning unobstructed views of the city,” a movie screening facility, a private gym, and an underground parking garage. When the Macallen Building opened in 2007, it won a gold rating for energy efficiency.
- WCVB reports that the penthouse where Field and Bolanos lived sold for $1.9 million in 2013.
- Several Macallen residents described the building as secure and said the 11th floor was only accessible with a key. “The elevators wouldn’t even open the door for you without a key. So there’s no access unless someone lets you in,” Jack Fu told WCVB.
The victims
- The couple was engaged to be married, the Globe reported. In a photo posted on what appeared to be Bolanos’ personal Facebook account in April 2015, they posed for a picture together wearing heart-shaped sunglasses.
- Field was a doctor at North Shore Pain Management, which has offices in Woburn and Beverly. According to a statement from the practice, he was a “guiding vision” and “instrumental in the creation” of the clinic in 2010. Previously, he was an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist at Beverly Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, his former employer said.
- Bolanos worked as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear’s main campus, adjacent to Massachusetts General Hospital, in the West End. She was also an instructor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, according to her employee biography. She had previously been a fellow at Tufts Medical School. In a statement to media outlets, Mass Eye and Ear CEO John Fernandez said Bolanos was an “outstanding pediatric anesthesiologist and a wonderful colleague, in the prime of both her career and life.”
- In 2014, Bolanos participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in a video posted to Massachusetts Eye and Ear’s official Facebook page. She was wearing a T-shirt that read: ‘Keep Calm and Let the Anesthesiologist Handle It.’ Before she was drenched by a garbage can full of ice water, Bolanos told the camera: “This is a good cause. Hopefully we can get funds for research and one day find a cure.”
The suspect
- Bampumim Teixeira, a 30-year-old Chelsea resident, was held without bail. His eyes remained closed during the arraignment, but he mumbled and nodded his head.
- His ex-girlfriend told the Globe that Teixeria was a former security guard and had just finished a nine-month sentence for two bank robbery-related convictions.
- A Suffolk County District Attorney spokesman told the Boston Herald that Teixeira admitted to robbing the same bank on Summer Street in Boston twice, once in 2014 and once in 2016. According to the Herald, he would have finished his sentence on April 14.
- His ex-girlfriend told the Globe that Teixeira said he was born in Guinea-Bissau and raised in Cape Verde by an aunt, with whom he moved to the Boston area. Before moving to Chelsea, Teixeira had lived in homeless shelters and in Cambridge, she said.
- As investigators try to pin down a motive, law enforcement officials have told media outlets that it is believed that Teixeira, Field, and Bolanos knew each other, though they have not specifically said how. “[For] someone to come here, go up to the 11th floor, to the penthouse, we got to believe that somehow there was some type of knowledge of each other,”Boston Police Commissioner William Evans initially told reporters, according to WCVB. However, Conley also walked back that assertion Monday. “There is no evidence whatsoever at this stage to conclude that this defendant had a personal relationship with Dr. Bolanos or Dr. Field,” he said.
- Teixeira’s girlfriend told the Globe that he texted her “out of the blue” on April 22 and said he didn’t plan on living for long, but would never hurt anyone.
