A high-flying Boston doctor found tied up and murdered alongside his fiancee was born in Britain.
Dr Richard Field, 49, and Dr Lina Bolanos, 38, who was from Colombia, both worked in the Massachusetts city as anaesthetists. They were found dead in their 11th-floor apartment on Friday night. Reports claim their throats had been cut.
Bampumim Teixeira, 30, has been charged with their murders. On Monday, Teixeira’s lawyer entered not guilty pleas on his behalf at a hearing by the suspect’s hospital bed, where he is recovering after being shot three times by police.
Field’s nationality has not yet been confirmed by the Foreign Office. However, according to local media reports, he was born in Hammersmith, west London, and the Massachusetts medical register said he had graduated from the University of Sheffield’s medical school in 1999. A Facebook profile in his name also states he was from the UK.
According to the Suffolk county district attorney’s office, police went to investigate at the couple’s penthouse at the Macallen Building in South Boston at 8.40pm, after a call from the apartment block’s front desk.
“The caller stated that another party had alerted him to a text requesting police notification for a ‘serious situation’ with a gunman in the victims’ apartment,” prosecutors said.
Officers entered the apartment after finding keys on the floor near the front door. Inside they found Teixeira dressed all in black and wearing black gloves. Police opened fire, shooting Teixeira in the hand, abdomen and leg, before arresting him.
“The officers provided first aid to Teixeira outside the apartment, where he allegedly stated that another person would open fire on the officers if they went back inside,” prosecutors added.
The victims’ bodies were found, alongside a knife and a rucksack full of jewellery, by a Swat team. Authorities have not said how Field and Bolanos were killed, but the Boston Globe, citing anonymous police sources, said their throats had been “slit”.
On Monday afternoon, reporters, court clerks and lawyers joined a robed judge in Teixeira’s room at the Tufts medical centre to see him charged with murder. Teixeira, of Chelsea, north Boston, kept his eyes closed throughout the hearing.
Prosecutors contradicted initial police reports that the suspect had opened fire on officers when he was discovered in the victims’ home. A replica gun was found at the scene, but Teixeira had not been carrying it when he was shot and captured, the Suffolk district attorney Daniel F Conley said.
At a news conference Conley also said there was no evidence to suggest Teixeira had a “personal relationship” with either of the victims, as had previously been suggested by police after what was described as a “message of retribution” was found written on a wall.
“Nor is there any evidence to explain why he would attack them so viciously,” Conley added.
It also emerged that Teixeira, a former security guard at the Macallen Building, has a history of bank robbery. Last June, he passed a note demanding money at a Boston bank. He committed the same crime two years earlier. He completed a nine-month sentence for the robberies last month.
The North Shore Pain Management centre, where Field had worked since 2010, described him as a “guiding vision” who gave patients and colleagues his “tireless devotion”.
“He was a valued member of the medical community and a tremendous advocate for his patients,” a message on the clinic’s website said. “His tragic and sudden passing leaves an inescapable void in all of us.”
One patient wrote on Facebook: “He was an amazing Dr who was so kind and compassionate. I always said if he ever moved back to England I would follow him. Dr Field changed my life.”
Bolanos worked at Massachusetts eye and ear hospital as a paediatric anaesthetist and was an instructor at the Harvard Medical School. John Fernandez, the hospital’s president, said: “Dr Bolanos was an outstanding paediatric anaesthetist and a wonderful colleague in the prime of both her career and life.”
