Family, friends still ache over four slayings

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:

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.

Maria Cramer of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Cristina Silva contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.