2 arrested in slaying of four in Dorchester
Police say meticulous case built in killings at a studio
Boston police arrested two teenagers yesterday in the shooting deaths of four young men in a Bourneside Street basement recording studio in December, the city's deadliest crime in a decade.
Within hours of asking for the public's help, officers apprehended the alleged triggerman in a car in Wareham last night, according to a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case. Calvin L. Carnes Jr., 19, of Dorchester faces four murder charges, as well as charges of armed robbery.
Yesterday afternoon, Robert B. Turner, 19, of Boston, was apprehended in Dorchester and is to be arraigned Monday on charges of being an accessory after the fact.
The slayings shocked Boston and capped a year in which the homicide count climbed to a 10-year high of 75.
Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole praised the department's homicide squad and the Suffolk district attorney's office yesterday for meticulously building the case against the two men over the past six months.
''I hope these charges send a strong message to our communities: The Police Department will work tirelessly to bring murderers to justice," O'Toole said. ''It may take time to build a case and get it right, but this department will never give up."
The department has been criticized for making arrests or identifying suspects in only about one-third of last year's homicides. But O'Toole pointed out yesterday that police had also made an arrest last week in the slaying of Dominique Samuels, who was found strangled and burned in Franklin Park on April 30.
''These charges on the heels of the arrest last week in the Dominique Samuels murder should silence the critics," the commissioner said.
But in an interview last night, Calvin Carnes Sr. said police have the wrong man.
He said his son would never have harmed the four young men and said his son attended at least one funeral for the youths. ''They were his friends," he said. ''One of them was his neighbor, his next-door neighbor."
While neither officials nor arrest warrants filed yesterday in Dorchester District Court explicitly describe the alleged motive, the warrants say that Carnes is charged with stealing a 9mm Glock pistol, an AK-47 rifle, and a shotgun from the victims. Carnes is also charged with stealing one of the victim's cars, a 1998 Ford Escort, after the slayings, according to the court records. He is also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of an assault weapon, and possession of a shotgun.
The arrest warrants say that Turner assisted Carnes after the killings, although they do not detail any steps he allegedly took on Carnes's behalf. Besides four counts of accessory after the fact of murder, Turner is charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of an assault weapon, and possession of a shotgun. Police declined to say last night whether either Carnes or Turner has a record of serious crimes.
Jason Bachiller, 21; Edwin ''E.J." Duncan, 21; and Christopher Vieira, 19, were slain in the makeshift recording studio used by their rap group, which friends say they named Graveside to try to sound tougher than they were. Also, slain was Jihad Chankhour, 22, a friend of the group.
Family members of the four victims, who met as students at Wakefield Memorial High School, have made emotional pleas for justice and have said they were at a loss to explain why the young men were targeted.
Linford Duncan, whose son E.J. lived in the Dorchester house where the killings occurred, said the arrests give him some satisfaction that his son's killers didn't ''get away with murder."
''I think E.J. would feel real good about this," Duncan said. ''He'll probably rest in peace now with these guys going to jail."
His son was trying to obtain a gun permit to protect himself, Duncan said, though he said he did not know whether his son had a gun when he was killed.
''When you do those rap shows and all that, a lot of stupid stuff goes on," Duncan said, explaining why his son wanted a weapon.
A brother of Chankhour's said he doesn't know Carnes or Turner. ''Hopefully, they'll get their due and their day in court, but it's not going to bring any of the four kids back," said the brother, who declined to be named because he doesn't want publicity. ''We always had faith in the Boston police and all the detectives who were all working hard on the case."
Carnes and Turner, who were the subjects of a special grand jury investigation that began in March, have been the focus of significant police interest since soon after the Dec. 13 slayings on Bourneside Street, two law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the investigation have said.
Assistant District Attorney David Meier led the grand jury effort, which officials yesterday said involved interviewing nearly 50 witnesses and presenting nearly 75 exhibits.
''The jurors heard and saw evidence painstakingly collected and developed by Boston homicide detectives," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. ''That evidence led to and continually pointed to Calvin Carnes and Robert Turner. Today the volume of that evidence reached a point where we had probable cause to charge these men with the murders and get them off the streets immediately."
In February, about a month before the grand jury probe began, Carnes and Turner were arrested on Talbot Avenue in Dorchester on trespassing charges after gang unit officers and a State Police K-9 officer sought Turner on an unrelated arrest warrant, according to court records.
Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com. 