MOSCOW, April 22 (RAPSI) - Former associates of slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev now believe he may have been involved in a 2011 triple murder that claimed the life of his closest American friend, Brendan Mess, the Buzzfeed website wrote on Monday.

Three people, including Tsarnaev's friend Brendan Mess, were killed in September 2011. The three men had their throats cut and they had marijuana dumped all over their bodies. The police suspected two other persons of being at the murder scene, but have not identified them. Mess's girlfriend, an immigrant from Somalia, was a suspect but there was no reliable evidence of her involvement.

The investigation of that triple murder is ongoing.

Buzzfeed writes that Tsarnaev's friend who asked to be identified by his first name, Ray, said: "At the time none of us would have thought it was Tam. It was just so emotional and we thought we had someone else who had done it. Tam's name wasn't coming up at all."

After Tamerlan was implicated in the bombing, "a few of my friends, without even speaking about it beforehand, have all been thinking" that Tsarnaev could have been connected to the 2011 murder, Ray said.

"Tam wasn't there at the memorial service, he wasn't at the funeral, he wasn't around at all," Ray said. "And he was really close with Brendan. That's why it's so weird when he said I don't have any American friends."

Brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, are suspected of detonating two bombs made from pressure cookers at the Boston Marathon on April 15 that killed three people and injured over 180. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police on Friday. Dzhokhar was arrested a day later.