Bombing Suspect Used to Frequent the Watertown Neighborhood Where He Battled Police, Died

The East Watertown neighborhood where Tamerlan Tsarnaev battled police - and where he died - was familiar ground for the Boston Marathon Bombing suspect.

The route Tsarnaev took during his car ride on the night of the Watertown shootout that left him dead took him within a "stone's throw" of the home where his friend, Brendan Mess, was found murdered on Sept. 12, 2011, according to the Boston Globe. Mess, and two other men were found killed in the home, their throats slashed and bodies covered in marijuana. 

State and federal authorities are investigating the possible role Tsarnaev played in the murders. Authorities

TAMERLAN'S WATERTOWN ROOTS

For a time, Tsarnaev visited the East Watertown neighborhood on almost a daily basis to dance to hiphop music, smoke marijuana and pray at the house of a friend on Boylston Street, just blocks from where the bombing suspect was killed, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

Watertown resident Sebastian A. Freddura knew Tsarnaev from Cambridge, and remembered him as a freewheeling Muslim who carried around a prayer rug in his car.

“He’d wash his hands and lay it out in the backyard and pray for 20 minutes or a half-hour a handful of times a day,” Freddura told the Globe. “We’d smoke a jay and he’d come out and pray.”

Tsarnaev's visits largely ended after he met his wife, Katherine O. Russell, in 2010, the Globe reported.

Freddura, who goes by the stage name SebNyce or Mr. Nyce, did not see the security camera images from the scene of the Boston Bombings until after the mayhem that engulfed his East End neighborhood. When he saw the pictures, he immediately recognized Tsarnaev.

“There wasn’t really a doubt in my mind in terms of recognizing him," he told the Globe.

Back in his home on Boylston Street on the hours after the shootout, Freddura feared that Tsarnaev's brother Dzhokhar - who survived the shooutout - might come knocking on his door. He grabbed a hammer just in case Dzhokhar showed up at his home, according to the Globe.

Watertown's East End is not the only area that Tsarnaev used to visit. He reportedly worked at a pizza place in Brighton.

Click here to read the entire Boston Globe article.