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Calvin
L. CARNES Jr.
A.K.A.: "The Graveside killer"
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Rap - Robbery
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders:
December 13,
2005
Date
of arrest:
May 11,
2006
Date of birth:
August 8,
1986
Victims profile: Jason Bachiller, 20; Jihad Chankhour,
22; Edwin Duncan, 21; and Christopher
Vieira, 19
Method of murder:
Shooting
(9mm handgun)
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Status:
Sentenced
to four consecutive life terms in state
prison
on June 20, 2008
Hearing marks final chapter for one of Boston's
cruelest crimes
By John R.
Ellement - The Boston Globe
June 21, 2008
A 21-year-old
Dorchester man was sentenced yesterday
to four consecutive life terms in state
prison for the 2005 slaying of four men
in a Dorchester basement recording
studio after relatives denounced him as
a "monster" and "the spark of evil."
Calvin Carnes Jr.
displayed calm during the 45-minute
sentencing hearing before Suffolk
Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle
that was held after Carnes was convicted
of four counts of first-degree murder,
armed robbery, and gun possession
charges Wednesday.
"You will pay for
what you did. How dare you take these
good kids away from us for just a spark
of adrenaline," said Elizabeth Perez
Barani, mother of victim Christopher
Vieira. "You are truly the spark of evil."
The hearing, in a
courtroom overflowing with relatives of
the four murder victims and of Carnes's
own family, including his father, marked
the final public chapter of one of the
cruelest crimes in recent Boston history.
Killed in the
Bourneside Street basement studio were
Jason Bachiller, 20; Jihad Chankhour,
22; Edwin Duncan, 21; and Vieira, 19.
Carnes was friends with three of the
young men - Carnes did not know
Chankhour - who had formed a rap group
called Graveside. The four men were shot
a total of 15 times in Duncan's home
while his mother, Darnella Phillips, was
in the house.
Suffolk First
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Wall,
who prosecuted the case, had told jurors
that one of the victims, Vieira, had a
9mm Glock pistol that Carnes wanted.
Wall told jurors Carnes seized the
weapon, shot Vieira, and then
methodically murdered the three other
men, executing them as they ran for
their lives from the home on Dec. 13,
2005.
"It was the spark of
evil that ripened into a plan of evil,"
Wall said.
Speaking on behalf of
his younger brother, Zafer Chankhour
spoke directly to Carnes. His family,
Chankhour said, emigrated from Syria
when Jihad was 4 years old so they could
"live the American dream."
"I saw cruelty and
meanness in your eyes," said Chankhour,
who testified against Carnes and also
noticed that Carnes carried a copy of
the Koran into the courtroom. "It is in
our deeds and actions that portray the
depth of what is in our hearts, not in
any book that you carry in your hand."
Zafer Chankhour said
his brother had a brilliant smile and a
compassionate heart. "You do not know
the love, the beauty, and compassion you
have taken away form this world."
Guillermo Bachiller,
Jason Bachiller's uncle, who had raised
him as his own son, reminded Carnes that
his surname in Spanish means meat. "It
is appalling how you have reduced Jason
and his three friends to pieces of meat,"
he said, adding that Carnes attacked
people who considered him a friend. "You
were a wolf in a lamb's clothing."
"You are a monster,"
Miriam Cepeda, Bachiller's maternal aunt
said in a written statement. "I want you
to imagine what his pain was in his last
few moments. I want you to dream every
single night what it must have felt like
to hear your own heart beat slower and
slower as your life slips away, scared
and in pain."
Carnes took the stand
during the trial and insisted he was not
the killer. His lawyer, Shannon Frison,
told Hinkle yesterday that he had no
prior criminal convictions and has his
family's support. His family declined
comment after the sentencing.
Hinkle asked Carnes
whether he wished to speak. Wearing a
charcoal gray suit, a black shirt, and a
black-and-gold tie, Carnes rose to his
feet, holding his shackled hands in
front of him.
"No," he said. "No,
your honor."
A second man, Robert
Turner, pleaded guilty in Suffolk
Superior Court in April to being an
accessory after the fact. He was
sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Hinkle, in a symbolic
gesture that showed how repugnant she
found the murders, sentenced Carnes to
mandatory life in prison without the
possibility of parole for each killing
and said each life sentence would begin
after Carnes completes the prior one.
"These are horrendous,
senseless crimes," Hinkle said.
As the judge left the
bench, relatives of the victims
applauded. Chris Mitchell, a friend of
the victims, said outside the courtroom
that the clapping was not a celebration,
but a pointed message to Carnes that
friends and family believe justice has
been done.
"He knows what he
took away from this earth," Mitchell
said of Carnes. "Now he gets to rot for
a little while."
Carnes's convictions
will automatically be reviewed by the
Supreme Judicial Court.
Boston man cinvicted in quadruple murder
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - WBZ.com
A man has been convicted of shooting to death three
members of the rap band Graveside and their friend in a makeshift
recording studio in Boston.
Calvin Carnes Jr. was found guilty of four counts of
murder and weapons charges in the December 2005 quadruple slayings.
The conviction comes after jurors were forced to
restart deliberations twice after the judge dismissed members of the
panel for various personal reasons.
A lifelong friend of Carnes identified him as the
triggerman. Robert Turner pleaded guilty in April to all charges.
Accused killer takes the stand
June 5, 2008 -
MetroBostonNews.com
Calvin Carnes Jr., alleged
gunman in the Bourneside Street murders, builds alibi
The alleged gunman in the Bourneside
Street quadruple-slaying began to build his alibi before
jurors yesterday, taking the stand in a packed Suffolk
Superior Court room to describe a night of socializing that
put him nowhere near the crime scene.
Calvin Carnes Jr., 21, of Dorchester,
said he was smoking marijuana and drinking with friends in a
Florida Street apartment building the night of Dec. 13,
2005, when four “friends” were killed execution-style blocks
away in a basement music studio.
Then, with a softer voice, Carnes
described how he learned of the massacre while watching the
news inside his Talbot Street apartment later that night.
“I was crying and I was highly upset,”
Carnes said. “I was confused. I was scared because it was
highly possible I [could’ve] been there.”
Carnes was a frequent visitor to the
Bourneside Street basement of Edwin Duncan’s home.
Prosecutors allege that Carnes fatally shot Duncan, 21,
Jason Bachiller, 20, Jihad Chankhour, 22, and Chris Vieira,
19 — three of whom recorded music there as part of the rap
group ‘Graveside’ — so that he could steal guns stored there.
Carnes’ friend, Robert Turner, was
charged with helping his pal flee the scene and stash the
guns. He pleaded guilty in April. The defendant said Turner
handed him a gun the day after the shooting and made him
store it in an associate’s apartment, but had no idea where
it came from or “what’s been done with it.”
Allegedly all for the guns
May 20, 2008 - MetroBostonNews.com
Calvin Carnes Jr. lone shooter in Bourneside St.
massacre, ADA says
Calvin Carnes Jr. wanted some guns. A
friend had one in his hands.
So, in an effort to make off with that
man’s weapon, Carnes stole it and wasted away all the
potential witnesses in a hail of gunfire, a Suffolk County
prosecutor said yesterday in opening arguments for Carnes’
quadruple murder trial.
Carnes, 21, is accused of killing four
men inside a Dorchester basement just over two years ago.
According to First Assistant District
Attorney Josh Wall, Carnes — who also made off with some
stashed weapons after the alleged shooting — used a “spark
of evil” to turn a social situation into a bloodbath.
“Calvin Carnes decided he wanted that gun
and he wanted the other guns,” Wall told jurors.
“That’s when he took the [gun] and shot
and killed Chris Vieira.”
Vieira, 19, was showing off the gun to
Carnes and four others.
Three of them — Jason Bachiller, 20;
Jihad Chankhour, 22; and Edwin Duncan, 21 — were also killed
when Carnes allegedly uncorked a total of 13 bullets into
the victims, all from behind.
Carnes’ best friend, Robert Turner,
helped the defendant flee and stash the guns.
He pleaded guilty last month to being an
accessory to the crime.
Prosecutor: massacre suspect “the one
and only shooter”
Suffolk County -
Districy Attorney's Office
May 19, 2008
One man and one man only took the lives
of Jason Bachiller, Jihad Chankhour, Edwin Duncan, and Chris
Vieira in the basement of 43 Bourneside St. a little more
than three years ago, First Assistant District Attorney Josh
Wall told a Suffolk Superior Court jury this morning.
It was one man who fired Vieira’s unregistered Glock 9mm
again and again and again into the victims’ backs in a bid
to steal that weapon and two others – a Mossberg 12-guage
shotgun and an AK-47 rifle – on the night of Dec. 13, 2005,
Wall said.
And it was one man who stood
over the dying victims shortly after 9:30 p.m. and pumped
additional rounds into their bodies so that there would be
no witnesses against him, Wall told the panel of 12
deliberating jurors and four alternates.
That man, Wall said, was 21-year-old CALVIN CARNES, Jr. (D.O.B.
8/8/86), of Dorchester, whose trial on an 11-count
indictment charging four counts of first-degree murder and
an additional seven counts of robbery and weapons charges is
now under way.
“This was not an evil
plan,” Wall said of the slayings during opening statements
before Judge Patrick Brady in courtroom 815. “This was a
spark of evil – but as you will learn, a spark of evil is
every bit as deadly.”
The 20-year-old Bachiller, 21-year-old
Duncan, and 19-year-old Vieira were members of a fledgling
rap group, Wall said, and would frequently socialize with
the 22-year-old Chankhour – “not a member of the music group
but a member of the social group” – in the basement of
Duncan’s Bourneside Street home.
The foursome had met a few years earlier
when they attended Wakefield High School together and shared
a passion for hip-hop music and culture. They would listen
to and record music in Duncan’s basement, which had been
outfitted with couches, a stereo, and recording equipment.
“They didn’t lead the lives of gangsters,” Wall said of the
group that called itself Graveside. “But they thought, if
you don’t lead the life, maybe you need some props.”
It was as props that the young men had
obtained a Mossberg 12-guage shotgun and an AK-47 rifle,
Wall said. Those weapons were stored in the Bourneside
Street basement unbeknownst to Duncan’s mother and
stepfather.
More recently, Wall said,
Vieira had also obtained a 9mm semiautomatic Glock handgun
and was prone to showing it off and passing it around in
gatherings.
One such gathering, Wall said,
was on the night of Dec. 13, 2005, when Bachiller, Chankhour,
Duncan, and Vieira were joined by Carnes – “not best friends
with the group, but a friend, and ROBERT TURNER, Carnes’
best friend,” Wall said.
“Chris Vieira
passed that gun around,” Wall said, “and that’s when the
spark of evil arose. Calvin Carnes decided he wanted that
gun and he wanted the other guns. That’s when he took the
Glock and shot and killed Chris Vieira.”
In the heartbeat that followed, Wall said,
Carnes took stock of his relationships with Bachiller,
Chankhour, and Duncan.
“Now they weren’t
friends,” he said. “Now they were witnesses. He rapidly
fired at all three, killing all three.”
Carnes fired a total of 15 rounds, Wall
said, hitting with 13 of them.
“If he hits
13 times, how many were to the victim’s front? Zero,” he
said. “Every shot was to the back – to the back of the head,
to the center of the back. This is how desperate he was to
get rid of the witnesses. Some of those shots were while
they were down – Calvin Carnes stood over them and shot down
at them.”
Carnes took Vieira’s car keys and fled
the scene with Turner. In the days that followed, the two of
them made efforts to hide the weapons and fabricate alibis.
The stories they gave police were “a pack of lies,” Wall
said, and Carnes even made statements in the hours after the
murders in which he relayed information about who had died
that no one – not even the victims’ families – knew. Later,
he and Turner made efforts to sell the weapons, and Carnes
even made deeply incriminating statements to two young women
in the aftermath of the carnage.
Carnes
and Turner were arrested on May 11, 2006, amid an extensive
investigation by Boston Police homicide detectives and
Suffolk prosecutors in a special grand jury. Turner (D.O.B.
12/16/86), charged as an accessory after the fact to the
murders, pleaded guilty to all charges last month and was
sentenced to up to 13 years in state prison.
“From Calvin Carnes’ actions, conduct,
statements, and lies in the minutes, hours, days, and weeks
after the killings,” Wall told the jurors, “you will know
that you’re seated just a few feet away from the one and
only shooter and killer of Chris Vieira, Edwin Duncan, Jason
Bachiller, and Jihad Chankhour.”
Carnes is represented by attorney Shannon
Frison. Testimony is ongoing, with the trial expected to
last about six weeks.
Man says he watched as friend killed 4
rap artists
Is sentenced to 13 years
for 'heartless' actions
By John R. Ellement and Andrew Ryan - The
Boston Globe
April 10, 2008
A Dorchester man yesterday admitted
that he stood and watched as a longtime friend used a
9mm handgun to fire 15 bullets in the basement of a
Dorchester home - killing four aspiring rap artists in
2005 in a crime that stunned the city.
Saying he was so ashamed by his
actions he could not look relatives of the victims in
the face, Robert Turner pleaded guilty in Suffolk
Superior Court to four counts of accessory after the
fact of murder and unlawful possession of three firearms,
including the weapon used in the killings inside the
Bourneside Street home. Turner was sentenced to a
maximum of 13 years in prison.
"My actions were cowardice and
heartless and also selfish," Turner, 21, said in court,
reading quickly from a handwritten note. "I was raised
to be strong, no matter what the situation was. . . . My
actions were wrong."
Before Turner was sentenced, the
mother of Edwin Duncan, one of the victims and the host
of the gathering in the basement recording studio, said
she will never be able to forget that Turner and the
alleged shooter, Calvin Carnes Jr., were welcomed into
their home.
"It's such an evil, evil crime for
someone to do this," said Darnella Phillips, before she
was overwhelmed by emotion. "To come into our home and
take their lives - I will never get over that."
Suffolk First Assistant District
Attorney Joshua Wall said Turner should be imprisoned
for up to 16 years because he was an eyewitness to the
"carnage" who then helped Carnes avoid arrest for about
five months.
The Dec. 13, 2005, shooting ended the
lives of three members of a rap group known as Graveside
and the life of a fourth man who was simply visiting,
according to the office of Suffolk District Attorney
Daniel F. Conley.
In addition to killing Duncan, 21,
who was shot three times, Carnes shot Jason Bachiller,
20, seven times; Christopher Vieira, 19, four times; and
Jihad Chankhour, 22, once through his heart as he ran
for the door, according to court papers. All 15 shots
were fired at the victims from behind, Suffolk
prosecutors said.
Bachiller's aunt, Yvette Bachiller,
said her family is devastated by the loss of the bright,
caring man who loved music and words so much he would
sometimes just sit and read the dictionary. "It was easy
to love Jason," she said.
In court papers, prosecutors said
that the 9mm handgun belonged to Viera and that an AK-47
assault rifle and a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun were in
the basement studio, weapons that were "not intended for
use, but for protection and for show and to impress
others in the music world." The papers state that Carnes
and Turner stole the firearms from the basement and hid
them.
Wall said Turner found a place in
Roxbury to stash the AK-47 and the shotgun - which he
eventually destroyed - and fabricated a mutual alibi for
Carnes. The weapon used in the killing was recovered in
2006, but prosecutors contend Turner had brief
possession of the 9mm handgun after the killings.
Defense lawyer Michael Bourbeau
pressed for a maximum sentence of seven years, saying
Turner was not a violent man and has been deeply
remorseful for playing any kind of role in the deaths of
the men with whom he was friendly.
Turner said he regrets not stepping
in and stopping the killings, and he expressed hope that
relatives of the slain men would consider him someone
who made a mistake, "not an animal with no heart."
Relatives did not speak with
reporters after the sentencing.
Turner faced 48 years in state prison
if given the maximum, but Superior Court Judge Margaret
Hinkle decided on a total of 13 years of imprisonment,
citing Turner's remorse, his minimal criminal history,
and the fact that prosecutors had no evidence showing he
knew that Carnes would kill the four acquaintances.
Turner has already served about two
years awaiting trial, making him potentially eligible
for parole in about nine years. He has not agreed to
testify against Carnes, who is scheduled to go on trial
May 16, according to both Wall and Bourbeau.
Carnes's lawyer, Shannon Frison, said
yesterday that prosecutors have a weak case against her
client and that witnesses, including Turner, have told
varying accounts of what happened that evening.
Carnes, she added, denies being the
killer. "Absolutely not," she said. "We are looking
forward to showing that at trial."
2 plead not guilty in quadruple
slaying
By Suzanne Smalley -
The Boston Globe
May
23, 2006
The alleged triggerman in
Boston's bloodiest crime in a decade took a semi-automatic
handgun from one victim, then used it to shoot four
young men from behind in a ``cold-blooded execution,"
a prosecutor said yesterday.
Jason Bachiller , 19, was shot
seven times, including in the head and neck, said
Assistant District Attorney David Meier . His fellow
members of the rap group Graveside, Christopher
Vieira , 19, and Edwin ``E.J." Duncan , 21, were
also shot multiple times, including in the head.
Jihad Chankhour , 22, who was visiting the group's
makeshift recording studio in the basement of a home
on Bourneside Street in Dorchester, was shot once
through the heart as he tried to escape.
Meier did not declare a motive
for the Dec. 13 shootings, but said the two 19-year-old
defendants took the handgun, an AK-47 rifle, and a
shotgun from the basement and later tried to sell
them. The rifle and shotgun were stored in the
basement and were ``not intended for use, but for
protection and for show and to impress others in the
music world," Meier said.
Calvin L. Carnes Jr. of
Dorchester pleaded not guilty yesterday to four
counts of first-degree murder and robbery and
weapons charges. Robert B. Turner of Boston pleaded
not guilty to being an accessory after the fact to
murder and other charges. Both were ordered held
without bail.
Meier, who led a grand jury probe
into the killings, said investigators have amassed a
large amount of physical and other evidence
implicating the defendants, including:
Carnes's fingerprint in Vieira's
Ford Escort, which was stolen from the scene of the
crime.
Blood from one victim in the
driver's seat area of the Escort.
Witnesses who saw a man matching
Carnes's physical description leaving the crime
scene.
Witnesses who saw Carnes and
Turner in possession of Vieira's ``distinctive
looking" handgun in the months after the murder.
Witnesses who say the defendants
tried to fabricate an alibi by enlisting their help.
Cellphone records placing Carnes
and Turner near the crime scene the night of the
killings.
Witnesses who say the defendants
tried to sell them the stolen guns.
Stephen Weymouth , the lawyer
representing Carnes, said in an interview yesterday
that his client is not guilty of the charges andhas no history of violence. Carnes and
Vieira were friends, Weymouth said, arguing that it
is likely Carnes left his fingerprint in the Escort
on a prior occasion.
Weymouth said he was struck by
Carnes's demeanor when he met with him on Sunday at
the Roxbury police station where he was jailed after
his arrest Friday night.
``I've been doing this for 30
years and I expected someone much more hardened,"
Weymouth said. ``He was upset and he was crying."
Weymouth said Carnes had been
living in Wareham with his parents and working in
construction for his father's company.
Turner's attorney declined to
comment.
Deputy Superintendent Daniel
Coleman, the head of the Boston Police homicide
unit, said yesterday that the arrests are just the
first step in the effort to prove Carnes's and
Turner's guilt. He said a special grand jury
empaneled in March will continue to hear evidence.
Police used the grand jury to compel nearly 50
witnesses to testify under oathand
to present some 75 pieces of evidence.
Standing in the courthouse foyer
as relatives and friends of the victims gathered in
the sun outside, Coleman acknowledged the criticism
leveled at the Police Department for solving only
about a third of last year's 75 homicides, a 10-year-high.
``There are a lot of families out
there that don't get this day," he said. ``That's a
personal and professional frustration for me."
Chris Mitchell, 22, one of dozens
of friends and relatives who packed the courtroom,
wore a T-shirt with the four victims' pictures and a
tattoo with their nicknames and the date of their
deaths. He said the day was doubly tragic because of
who is accused of killing the four youths. He said
Bachiller and Carnes had been neighbors in an
apartment complex and were close friends.
``He [Bachiller] was the
godfather to [Carnes's] child," Mitchell said.
``It's like a movie. We could do a movie out of it."
2 arrested in slaying of four in Dorchester
Police say meticulous case built in
killings at a studio
By Suzanne Smalley and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
- Boston.com
May 20, 2006
Boston police arrested two teenagers
yesterday in the shooting deaths of four young men in a
Bourneside Street basement recording studio in December, the
city's deadliest crime in a decade.
Within hours of asking for the public's help,
officers apprehended the alleged triggerman in a car in Wareham
last night, according to a law enforcement official with direct
knowledge of the case. Calvin L. Carnes Jr., 19, of Dorchester
faces four murder charges, as well as charges of armed robbery.
Yesterday afternoon, Robert B. Turner, 19, of
Boston, was apprehended in Dorchester and is to be arraigned
Monday on charges of being an accessory after the fact.
The slayings shocked Boston and capped a year
in which the homicide count climbed to a 10-year high of 75.
Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole
praised the department's homicide squad and the Suffolk district
attorney's office yesterday for meticulously building the case
against the two men over the past six months.
''I hope these charges send a strong message
to our communities: The Police Department will work tirelessly
to bring murderers to justice," O'Toole said. ''It may take time
to build a case and get it right, but this department will never
give up."
The department has been criticized for making
arrests or identifying suspects in only about one-third of last
year's homicides. But O'Toole pointed out yesterday that police
had also made an arrest last week in the slaying of Dominique
Samuels, who was found strangled and burned in Franklin Park on
April 30.
''These charges on the heels of the arrest
last week in the Dominique Samuels murder should silence the
critics," the commissioner said.
But in an interview last night, Calvin Carnes
Sr. said police have the wrong man.
He said his son would never have harmed the
four young men and said his son attended at least one funeral
for the youths. ''They were his friends," he said. ''One of them
was his neighbor, his next-door neighbor."
While neither officials nor arrest warrants
filed yesterday in Dorchester District Court explicitly describe
the alleged motive, the warrants say that Carnes is charged with
stealing a 9mm Glock pistol, an AK-47 rifle, and a shotgun from
the victims. Carnes is also charged with stealing one of the
victim's cars, a 1998 Ford Escort, after the slayings, according
to the court records. He is also charged with unlawful
possession of a firearm, possession of an assault weapon, and
possession of a shotgun.
The arrest warrants say that Turner assisted
Carnes after the killings, although they do not detail any steps
he allegedly took on Carnes's behalf. Besides four counts of
accessory after the fact of murder, Turner is charged with
unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of an assault
weapon, and possession of a shotgun. Police declined to say last
night whether either Carnes or Turner has a record of serious
crimes.
Jason Bachiller, 21; Edwin ''E.J." Duncan, 21;
and Christopher Vieira, 19, were slain in the makeshift recording
studio used by their rap group, which friends say they named
Graveside to try to sound tougher than they were. Also, slain was
Jihad Chankhour, 22, a friend of the group.
Family members of the four victims, who met as
students at Wakefield Memorial High School, have made emotional
pleas for justice and have said they were at a loss to explain why
the young men were targeted.
Linford Duncan, whose son E.J. lived in the
Dorchester house where the killings occurred, said the arrests give
him some satisfaction that his son's killers didn't ''get away with
murder."
''I think E.J. would feel real good about this,"
Duncan said. ''He'll probably rest in peace now with these guys
going to jail."
His son was trying to obtain a gun permit to
protect himself, Duncan said, though he said he did not know whether
his son had a gun when he was killed.
''When you do those rap shows and all that, a lot
of stupid stuff goes on," Duncan said, explaining why his son wanted
a weapon.
A brother of Chankhour's said he doesn't know
Carnes or Turner. ''Hopefully, they'll get their due and their day
in court, but it's not going to bring any of the four kids back,"
said the brother, who declined to be named because he doesn't want
publicity. ''We always had faith in the Boston police and all the
detectives who were all working hard on the case."
Carnes and Turner, who were the subjects of a
special grand jury investigation that began in March, have been the
focus of significant police interest since soon after the Dec. 13
slayings on Bourneside Street, two law enforcement officials with
direct knowledge of the investigation have said.
Assistant District Attorney David Meier led the
grand jury effort, which officials yesterday said involved
interviewing nearly 50 witnesses and presenting nearly 75 exhibits.
''The jurors heard and saw evidence painstakingly
collected and developed by Boston homicide detectives," Suffolk
District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. ''That evidence led to and
continually pointed to Calvin Carnes and Robert Turner. Today the
volume of that evidence reached a point where we had probable cause
to charge these men with the murders and get them off the streets
immediately."
In February, about a month before the grand jury
probe began, Carnes and Turner were arrested on Talbot Avenue in
Dorchester on trespassing charges after gang unit officers and a
State Police K-9 officer sought Turner on an unrelated arrest
warrant, according to court records.
Family, friends still ache over four slayings
Dorchester case remains a mystery
By Suzanne Smalley - The
Boston Globe
January 13,
2006
One month after four young men were found
shot to death in the basement recording studio of a
Dorchester home, law enforcement officials say they are
optimistic they will bring the killers to justice.
But some relatives and friends are
starting to get frustrated and wonder whether an arrest will
ever be made.
On Bourneside Street, the scene of
Boston's deadliest crime in a decade, much has changed. Some
residents say they are leaving the quiet, tree-lined block
for the suburbs. The mother of one of the victims has
already left town. The three-story house where the killings
occurred has a new resident.
''Investigators from the Boston police
homicide unit have reviewed extensive evidence," Deputy
Superintendent Daniel Coleman, who is head of the
department's homicide unit, said in a statement yesterday.
''I am pleased with the progress they are making. . . . The
department's primary objective in all homicide cases is the
effective prosecution of those responsible for these
horrific crimes. Therefore, a rush to make an arrest in any
case could jeopardize this process."
Police have said that there was no sign
of forced entry and that drugs, robbery, and gang-related
activity are not likely motives. For weeks, the families of
the victims -- who, friends say, named their rap group
Graveside in a bid to sound tougher than they were -- have
tried in vain to understand why anyone would kill them.
Even as the investigation progresses
under a veil of secrecy, new details are emerging about the
case and the lives of the four young men:
Christopher Vieira, 19; Edwin ''E.J." Duncan, 21; Jason
Bachiller, 21; and Jihad Chankhour, 22. The information
includes:
- Contrary to some published reports,
police did not recover a gun from Vieira's Ford Escort when
it was found parked near the Ashmont MBTA station a few days
after the slayings, two law enforcement officials with
direct knowledge of the investigation said this week.
- A small amount of marijuana was found at
the crime scene, Coleman has told the Globe.
- Vieira was stopped by police in his
hometown of Wakefield wearing a bulletproof vest about three
months before his death, Wakefield police Lieutenant John MacKay
said yesterday.
- About a year before his death, Vieira was
stabbed multiple times with a screwdriver after a fight over
liquor, Duncan's father, Linford Duncan, and Vieira's cousin,
Joey Lourenco, said this week.
Lourenco said the stabbing occurred in
Stoneham during a party after Vieira stopped some Boston youths
from stealing a bottle of liquor. Vieira's lung collapsed during
the stabbing, Lourenco said, and he was hospitalized for several
days.
It's not clear whether the assailant has been
arrested. Vieira's mother, Elizabeth Barani, declined to be
interviewed.
The two law enforcement officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because they do not have
permission to discuss the case, said Boston police looked
into the stabbing, though they would not discuss whether it
is connected to the slayings.
For Linford Duncan, Vieira's stabbing is
one of the only possible explanations for the violence that
took his son. Duncan said that when E.J. told him about his
friend's stabbing, he said he hoped Vieira would learn and
change from the experience.
''I'm just putting one and one together,"
Duncan said. ''The man got stabbed up, and the way E.J.
described Chris to me he's not the type of person to forget
about it."
Pierre Leary, a 19-year-old friend of
Duncan's who occasionally rapped with Graveside, said the
killings have devastated his group of friends and sparked
suspicion among them.
''Whoever it was was somebody who knows
they were there," Leary said. ''They zipped off in Fat Boy's
[Vieira's] car. They had to know it was his car. E.J. didn't
let everybody know where he lived. Whoever went there had to
have gone there before or had to go there with somebody who
knew them."
Chankhour's sister, Jamileh Kessilyas,
said the notion that her family-oriented brother could have
known his killer seems unfathomable. She said police have
not questioned any members of her family.
Kessilyas said her brother was a homebody
who doted on his Syrian immigrant parents. The last time any
of Chankhour's family members saw him, she said, was a few
hours before he died, when Vieira came by the family's
Wakefield home to pick him up.
''He held my mother . . . tickled her,"
Kessilyas said. ''Next thing, she hears a beep, and he left."
Chankhour's family believes that he was
at Duncan's house the night he died to help fix some
equipment the rap group used, which friends have said had
broken in the days before their deaths.
''He's a technician; he liked everything
to be fixed," Kessilyas said. ''Anybody can ask him for a
favor. 'OK, I'll be there.' . . . That's what hurts even
more."
Linford Duncan spends his days gazing at
newspaper clippings chronicling his son's violent death.
''All you can do is guess," Duncan said.
But gazing at photos of his son on the
far wall, Linford Duncan said that, ultimately, solving the
mystery of who killed E.J. doesn't mean that much.
''It's not going to bring him back," he
said.
A rap crew's hope, loss
World they sang of collided with middle-class lives
By Brian MacQuarrie and
Cristina Silva - The Boston Globe
December
21, 2005
They would hear their favorite rappers
boast of ''bling-bling" and ''thug life" on the radio. They
were 12-year-olds, from a middle-class Dorchester
neighborhood, but Edwin ''E.J." Duncan and Jelani Haynes
thought they could do it better. With a used keyboard and a
beat-box machine, they set out for hip-hop glory.
They first performed for the youth group
at their church, lacing Gospel lyrics over secular beats so
their devout Christian parents wouldn't mind.
They called themselves Graveside, a name
that lent them street cred and made their mothers roll their
eyes.
Four more boys eventually joined the crew,
two of them from Wakefield, where Duncan was a Metco student.
In 2002, the six teenagers opened for the
rapper Talib Kweli at a club on Lansdowne Street.
Fame seemed imminent. Duncan set up a
makeshift studio in the basement of the Bourneside Street
three-decker where he lived with his mother and stepfather.
There, the group, now young men, composed songs about
''sexy" handguns and about bodies ripped apart by bullets.
This summer, they recorded a CD and began
handing out discs to anyone who they thought might help them
get a contract.
But last week, the violent world that
Graveside rapped about collided with their middle-class
reality.
Duncan and two other members of the
group, Jason ''J" Bachiller, 21, and Christopher ''Fat Boy"
Vieira, 19, were listening to music in their studio with a
friend, Jihad Chankhour, 22, when officials say a lone
gunman entered the basement and fatally shot them.
All were killed in quick, bloody
succession.
Now, officials are trying to put together
the pieces of the worst multiple homicides in Boston in a
decade.
Police said they had obtained a warrant
Monday to search a Ford Escort they found early Saturday
afternoon near the Ashmont MBTA station.
Vieira's black Ford Escort was taken from
Duncan's house on the night of the shootings.
Friends and family members said they did
not know why anyone would have opened fire in the Graveside
studio or why, in just one fatal moment, more than nine
years of hard work and fantasies of celebrity had been wiped
out.
''E.J. was all about making it happen,"
Haynes, 21, said last week as he fielded a chorus of calls
from friends and family offering condolences. ''It was his
dream."
Haynes's and Duncan's parents had lived
across the street from each other in Dorchester and had
never met, until their mothers were admitted to the same
hospital before giving birth to the boys. Haynes's mother,
Alveta, said the boys ''were friends at birth."
The boys became inseparable. They
attended religion classes together on Saturdays, shared
birthday celebrations, and found they were obsessed with
music.
''We loved what we heard on the radio,"
Haynes said. Shortly after they learned to write, the pair
began slapping their own rhymes over the beats they had
heard from their boom boxes. By middle school, they were
performing gospel rap at Sunday services at Eliot
Congregational Church in Roxbury.
''We didn't have rap names or anything;
we were just writing," Haynes said. ''We were developing our
musical ear and seeing what sounded good."
As rap became increasingly commercial,
Haynes said he and Duncan had grown weary of artists who
referred to brands in their lyrics and rapped about the
''bling-bling" lifestyle of excessive spending and
ostentation.
''What we wanted to do was something
different," Haynes said. ''We wanted to take it upon
ourselves to make something that wasn't about that."
In 1999, Haynes and Duncan invited two
other childhood friends to start the group that became
Graveside. The name was a play on Bourneside Street, where
Duncan had recently moved.
''We couldn't think of a group name for
the longest time," Haynes said. ''We were all just too
young, and we just thought it was cool. As far as the
meaning of Graveside, we never really thought about it. We
all had different interpretations, I guess."
In the two first years, the youths
practiced in Duncan's living room, rapping during the
daytime to avoid disturbing his family. Duncan taught
himself to play a keyboard a friend had given him, and the
group started to create its own beats.
Their first official performance was in
2002 at a talent show in Dorchester sponsored by
Coca Cola. Graveside did
not take home the top prize, but the boys were not
discouraged. They performed three original songs, but lost
to a younger group who sang and danced.
''We never danced," Haynes said. ''We
weren't upset that we didn't win. We just thought: 'Oh, they
let the little kids win. OK.' ''
At the time, Duncan was enrolled at
Wakefield Memorial High School through Metco, the
Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity. That is
the program that sends minority students from Boston to
suburban schools.
At Wakefield, Duncan met Bachiller and
Vieira and invited them to join the group. The original
group members welcomed the Wakefield teenagers with open
minds, Haynes said.
''Everybody has something good to offer
talent-wise," he said. ''Beyond that, we were cool as
people, not just in the group."
Each member had his own rhyming style,
lending Graveside a unique sound that seemed to be gaining
momentum.
In 2002, the group opened for Kweli at
Karma on Lansdowne Street. Last year, Graveside opened for
the popular R&B group Jagged Edge at Lido's in Revere,
Haynes said.
Though most of the members were entering
college, they still made an effort to lay out tracks during
school vacations, always regrouping in Duncan's basement
studio, a narrow space with electronic equipment, to play
their music, and to dream.
''They were searching for a manager,"
said Alveta Haynes. ''They were worried about finding
someone credible who could help them. They didn't want to be
taken advantage of."
This summer, Graveside recorded its first
record, entitled ''Offical Basement Files, Volume 1." The
13-track demo CD was produced by Peter Mazalewski, who hosts
a hip-hop show as Mr. Peter Parker on WBOT 97.7 FM.
''They were happy kids, always smiling,
always positive," he said.
Graveside hoped the work would jump start
a recording career, Mazalewski said. Instead, three of the
groups' members lives ended last week.
Drugs, robbery, and gang-related activity
do not appear to have been motives for the slayings, police
said. The absence of any sign of forced entry indicates that
the gunman knew the victims.
Bridget Adams, who had been the Metco
administrator at Wakefield High from 2002 to 2004, described
Duncan and Bachiller as close friends who often visited her.
''They were always gentlemen," Adams said.
''They were very serious about their music. I never saw them
ill-tempered or behaving inappropriately."
Vieira was said to have been the funny
one, Bachiller the handsome one, and Duncan, the determined
leader.
Duncan's dream, she said, was to be a
music producer. He also played drums as part of the muscial
accompaniment at church services at Eliot Church. But Duncan
had experienced tragedy. His grandmother died on
Thanksgiving weekend. His half-brother, Leon Bocage, was
shot to death in Roxbury on March 16.
Chankhour, a close friend of Vieira's who
had hoped to become a computer technician, was visiting the
house to check out the recording equipment, said his uncle,
John Chankhour. Chankhour, whose family immigrated to the
United States from Syria in 1988, had taught himself how to
DJ at family parties, his uncle said.
''They weren't gangsters," Mazalewski
said. ''It was a release for them. It was like a movie."
Dead mourned; hunt is launched
Killing of four in Dorchester jolts community
By Donovan Slack and Megan
Tench - The Boston Globe
December
15, 2005
Police hunted last night for whoever
carried out Boston's deadliest crime in a decade, as grief
for four men killed in a amateur recording studio in
Dorchester rippled through the local hip-hop community and
reverberated as far away as Wakefield.
Police identified two victims of the
shootings Tuesday night as Edwin Duncan, 21, of Dorchester,
and Jihad Chankhour, 22, of Wakefield. A senior police
official identified the other two as Jason Bachiller, 21,
and Christopher Vieira, 19.
All four attended Wakefield High School,
and at least three were members of a rap group called
Graveside, whose music had become known in local hip-hop
circles. The group's lyrics often focused on guns and
violence, but friends and relatives said yesterday that the
victims were ''good kids" who used harsh words as an outlet
and didn't deserve to die violently.
The four men were found in a basement
family room that had been fitted with recording equipment,
according to a law enforcement official who described a ''very
bloody" scene Tuesday night. One was inside the doorway, two
others lay next to each other about five feet away, and the
fourth was at the far end of the room, sitting near the
equipment, said the official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because no permission had been given to speak
publicly. There were no obvious signs of struggle, nor
visible signs that the victims tried to escape.
''It looks like [the killer] shot where
he found them," the official said. ''It was very, very fast."
In their only public comments on the
quadruple homicide, Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M.
O'Toole and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley
expressed condolences yesterday to the victims' families
while vowing to catch the killer or killers.
''This will not stand unanswered," Conley
said. ''We answer violence with a painstaking and thorough
investigation."
Police asked for help in finding a car
driven by one of the victims before the shootings, a black
1998 Ford Escort with tinted windows. Deputy Superintendent
Daniel Coleman, who heads the homicide unit, did not give a
plate number, saying that the driver may have switched
plates, but said that finding the car was important.
Coleman said a motive had not been
established for the slayings, but stressed that preliminary
information suggested the victims were not involved with
gangs.
Duncan had spoken to his girlfriend about
an hour before the shooting, his sister, Tia Duncan, said
yesterday.
She said her brother and Bachiller were
''just hanging out playing music" and waiting for another
member of Graveside to arrive.
Shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, police
were called to Bourneside Street, where they found three men
dead and the fourth with multiple gunshot wounds. The fourth
was later pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.
The deaths pushed the number of homicides
in the city this year to 71, the most in a single year since
1995, when there were 96. The rampage was the deadliest
since November 1995, when four men were gunned down at a 99
Restaurant & Pub in Charlestown.
As a crush of media waited outside the
three-story house in Dorchester where Edwin Duncan lived and
Graveside died, friends and relatives gathered yesterday to
console each other.
Duncan had longed to be a music producer,
relatives said, and when he wasn't working the grill in
Wendy's at Logan
International Airport, the 6-foot-4-inch Wakefield High
School graduate was in the basement, playing with different
instruments in the studio his mother had built for him.
''He didn't deal in those type of circles
for us to say, 'Oh, we knew something was going to happen'
said his sister, Linette Duncan.
''He didn't live that type of life,"
Duncan said. ''This here is like walking to the store to get
soda and getting hit by a car."
Duncan had been a student in METCO, the
program that sends minority students from Boston to suburban
schools.
He had made quick friends with Bachiller
at Wakefield High, school officials said.
The two often visited Bridget Adams,
METCO administrator at the school from 2002 to 2004, and
talked about their music.
Adams said Graveside often opened for
more established rap performers when they came to Boston.
''They were very proud of their work, and
I believe they were well respected," Adams said.
One local radio host said the group had
just begun to develop on the hip-hop scene. Pete Mazalewski,
who broadcasts as Peter Parker on WBOT (97.7 FM), played
host on Graveside's demo tape, which was recorded in
Duncan's basement studio.
''It was good," Mazalewski said.
''Edwin's studio was hot."
Bachiller, who used to work at an audio
production company, had ''all the potential in the world,"
Mazalewski said.
Vieira was a ''cool kid," and Duncan was
a ''really passionate rapper and producer."
The lyrics on their demo feature ''nothing
but gun talk, rhetoric, and violence," but Mazalewski said
the lyrics are typical hip-hop fare and don't reflect the
musicians' real personalities.
Chankhour had worked as a
Comcast technician and
liked to deejay as a hobby, family members said. In high
school, he was the type to spin music at a dance instead of
inviting a date, a cousin said
Vieira had gone to Chankhour's house to
pick him up the evening of the shooting, and Chankhour's
family worried when he didn't come back home. They were
called yesterday afternoon to identify his body at the
morgue.
''He comes from a good family," said his
cousin, Iyman Wanis, a 31-year-old Wakefield resident.
''This is all a shock to us."
Early yesterday, before being officially
notified of her son's death, Vieira's mother said she knew
police were looking for her son's car.
''He was close to those kids who got shot,"
said Elizabeth Perez Barani, also a Wakefield resident. ''They
were like his brothers."
Through relatives, she declined to
comment on his death yesterday afternoon.
At Wakefield High School yesterday,
officials assembled a crisis team of counselors,
administrators, and teachers to help students deal with the
deaths.
''It's a tragedy that we're all deeply
saddened by," Assistant Superintendent Michael J. Malinowski
said in an interview. ''We're grieving the loss of four
students. Every comment I've heard is that they were great
kids."
Malinowski, who lives in Boston, said the
city has become a national ''teenage murder capital."
''And we add four, which is mind boggling,"
he said. ''We're all shaken by this."
4 slain in Dorchester house
Victims found in basement in city's deadliest shooting since '91
By Ralph Ranalli - The Boston Globe
December 14, 2005
Four
people were shot dead in a startling attack inside the basement of a
Dorchester house last night.
It appeared to be Boston's deadliest shooting
since the execution-style murder of five people in an underground
Chinatown gambling parlor in 1991.
Boston Police Superintendent Bobbie Johnson said
the shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. on Bourneside Street,
which is near Fields Corner. Police who responded found four men in
their late teens to early 20s. Three were dead. The fourth, a 21-year-old
suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, was taken to Boston Medical
Center, where he was later pronounced dead, according to police.
Police stressed that the gunfire erupted inside
the home and that the attack did not appear random. Police said they
received preliminary reports of a heavy-set male leaving the house
after the shooting, but said they didn't have enough details to put
out a description.
''Generally speaking, when a homicide is indoors,
it's not a random incident," Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole
said late last night. ''But it's too early to speculate what the
motive is."
Police did not release the identities the victims
or other details.
The deaths brought the city's homicide total this
year to 71, the most since 1995, and reignited anger and concern
among residents about the wave of violence.
''This is crazy," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers,
who lives adjacent to the house where the shootings occurred, on the
street of spacious, well-kept homes a block from Dorchester Avenue.
''And it's going to get worse before it gets better."
Johnson said neighbors had seen young people
often going in and out of the house where the shootings occurred.
But neighbors had not complained to police about the foot traffic,
because the young people were not excessively loud or troublemakers,
he said. Johnson and neighbors said the eldest son of the family
living in the home had some sort of music studio in the basement.
''I'd like to reiterate that this incident
happened in the basement, not outside," Johnson told reporters at
the scene late last night. ''Even if we had had 100 cops on the
beat, we wouldn't have been able to prevent it."
A female neighbor who did not give her name said
she heard a single gunshot and raced outside to see what had
happened. Rivers, founder of the Ten Point Coalition, a group that
helped curb Boston's gang violence in the 1990s, said that his
daughter had heard a gunshot and a woman scream and was very upset
about the incident. ''Boy that gave me a scare," he said.
Neighbors said the family had lived for some time
in the house where the shooting occurred.
Tom Gannon, president of the Fields Corner Civic
Group, went to the shooting scene. He said it's extremely unusual to
have trouble on the street, which he described as part of the
Melville Park area.
''I've lived here since 1955, and this isn't
normal," he said. ''The biggest noise you usually hear in this
neighborhood is kids over there across the street playing baseball
and basketball and football in the park."
