The day after Bampumim Teixeira was captured inside a South Boston condominium where two doctors were found stabbed to death with their hands bound behind their backs, he told police that he had killed one of them in self-defense.
In a rambling account that prosecutors have dismissed as preposterous, Teixeira claimed that he bypassed security and snuck up to the doctors’ penthouse apartment on May 5, 2017, because he was having an affair with one of the victims, Lina Bolanos, and wanted to be “discreet.”
An audio recording of his interview with police was played for jurors Thursday at Teixeira’s murder trial in Suffolk Superior Court.
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Speaking in a whisper from his hospital bed at Tufts Medical Center hours after he was shot by police, Teixeira told Boston police Sergeant Detective Michael Devane and Detective Michael Walsh that he was “chatting” with Bolanos when her boyfriend, Richard Field, came home and became enraged.
“He’s gonna kill us both,” said Teixeira, slowly telling his version of events while complaining of pain from a bullet still lodged in his body. He claimed that Field, brandishing a large black gun and two knives, stabbed Bolanos to death, handcuffed her, and covered her body with “white stuff.”
When one of the detectives asked what he was doing while this happened, Teixeira whispered that he hid in a bathroom, but didn’t have a phone to call for help. He said Field ran water outside and shouted that he was going to drown him.
Teixeira boasted that he used his “agility” to overpower Field, then handcuffed him, stabbed him, and covered his body with a white soapy liquid as retribution.
“Sorry, I was enraged,” Teixeira told the detectives. “It was either him or me.”
In his opening statement at the trial, Assistant District Attorney John Pappas told jurors they would find Teixeira’s statement to police “preposterous” and realize that “it makes no sense compared to all of the other evidence in this case.”
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Bolanos, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, arrived home shortly before 5 p.m. on the night of the slaying, picked up two packages at the concierge desk, and took the elevator up to her 11th-floor apartment, according to security footage shown to jurors. Field arrived home nearly two hours later.
Police rushed to the Dorchester Avenue building after a friend of the doctors received text messages from Field’s cellphone saying there was a gunman in the apartment. Police testified that they found two packages strewn in the hallway outside the apartment, along with a set of keys, indicating that Bolanos had been ambushed there when she arrived home.
Teixeira was shot and wounded by police who confronted him inside the condominium as he prepared to flee with a bag stuffed with jewelry, police officers have testified.
Inside the apartment, someone had written on the wall, “HE KILLED MY WIFE 15 Years Ago” and the word, “payback,” police said.
Police officers testified that when Teixeira was arrested, he shouted, “He killed my wife.”
In the recording played for jurors, Teixeira told the detectives he had “no idea” about the writings on the wall of the apartment. Asked why he was wearing gloves when police found him inside the apartment, Teixeira said “It was cold.”
Teixeira, 33, said he met Bolanos in 2016 when he worked as a concierge at the Macallen Building for three weeks, then had an affair with her for three or four months. He told police that she would text him when she wanted to meet him, yet later said he didn’t have a phone.
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Teixeira had been released from jail just weeks before the slayings after serving nine months for robbing the same bank twice. In his hospital interview, he told police that he was homeless when he went to see Bolanos. Initially, he said he was carrying $100,000 with him, then said it was more like $850 or $900, which he had received as a tax refund.
Relatives and friends of Field and Bolanos listened to Teixeira’s effort to cast blame on the victims from the front row of the gallery, only feet from the defendant.
Earlier Thursday, jurors were shown graphic autopsy photos of Bolanos and Field and heard testimony about their wounds from Richard Atkinson, a deputy chief medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The trial is scheduled to resume Friday.
Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymurph.