'Gunman ... in house': Doctor sent friend desperate text messages for help in final moments before double murder

Both victims were respected doctors who were found dead in their shared penthouse

Lina Bolanos and Richard Field

A Boston doctor sent a desperate text to a friend asking for help moments before being stabbed to death alongside his fiancee.

That’s according to the friend, Matthias Heidenreich, who testified last week during the opening of a double-murder trial for the man, Bampumim Teixeira, alleged to have killed 49-year-old Richard Field and 38-year-old Lina Bolanos, in 2017.

“I was confused for the first minutes,” Mr Heidenreich testified. “I did not realise what [the text] means, wasn’t sure what it is.”

In the texts, Field asks Mr Heidenreich to call 911 because an armed man had entered his home.

The harrowing messages started coming at 7.30pm, when Mr Heidenreich was at a pharmacy. They started with a plea to “Call 111”, in an apparent reference to 911. Other texts said “Gun man” and “in house”, before a final text of “Serious”, according to reporting by the Boston Globe and Boston Herald.

Mr Heidenreich, according to those newspapers, did not see the texts until he got home. He got no response when he answered the text, he testified last week.

Prosecutors allege that Mr Teixeira slipped into the Boston building where the two victims lived in a penthouse, after stalking the building to find the right time to get in. He had an intimate knowledge of the building, too, because he had worked there previously.

He was “looking, waiting, lurking, out front, out back, for just the right opportunity to present itself”, said John Pappas, the assistant district attorney, in opening remarks.

The timeline presented by the prosecution alleges that a person wearing a bright yellow shirt, a hooded jacket, gloves, and carrying a backpack snuck into the building’s garage at around 4pm on 5 May, 2017. Ms Bolanos then arrived at 5pm, and Mr Field showed up about half an hour later.

Police were not contacted until 8.30pm, when the building’s concierge called after receiving a message from a concerned friend, who had been texted by Mr Field, according to a press release from police.

The 11th floor penthouse at that point was already shocking.

Mr Field was found “dead in a pool of his own blood. His hands bound behind his back with handcuffs,” Mr Pappas said during the trial, according to WCVB. “Lina Bolanos was also in a pool of her blood after having been stabbed repeatedly in the neck.”

Police encountered Mr Teixeira inside the building, where they then shot him, apparently believing he was aiming a weapon at them.

Mr Teixeira’s defence attorney has argued that there is no evidence supporting the prosecution’s case.

“No video, no audio, no scientific evidence, no credible evidence will tell you that Bampumim Teixeira broke into the home of Lina Bolanos and Richard Field and murdered them,” Steven Sack said at the trial. “And that’s because he didn’t.”