Maddow: 'Something weird is going on' in FBI shooting of Ibragim Todashev

On Thursday night's edition of "The Rachel Maddow Show," host Rachel Maddow discussed the swirl of questions around the shooting of Ibragim Todashev, an associate of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two men charged with the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

FBI officials have given conflicting accounts of the questioning and killing of Todashev, who knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev through Mixed Martial Arts fighting. Todashev, who, like the Tsarnaevs, was Chechen, lived in Boston for a time before moving to Florida. Agents from the FBI traveled to Florida to question Todashev repeatedly about the bombing.

"Last week while being questioned again in Florida," said Maddow, "something went very, very wrong and he ended up dead."

Law enforcement officials were interviewing Todashev in his apartment in Orlando on Wednesday, May 22, when something occurred that resulted in the young man being shot multiple times.

On Thursday, Todashev's family held a press conference in Moscow, where they showed autopsie photos of their slain son. Ibragim Todashev was shot six times in the torso and once in the back of the head.

"We have not been able to authenticate these photos," said Maddow. "No one has."

But, she said, if they are genuine, "something weird is going on."

"How does that comport with the FBI's story that he was killed during questioning by armed agents who were only acting in self defense?" she asked. "Shot seven times, including in the back of the head?"

Todashev was questioned because of a possible connection to a bizarre 2011 murder in Waltham, Massachusetts in which three men were found with their throats cut, covered in marijuana, with $5,000 in cash untouched nearby. Law enforcement officials theorize now that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have murdered the men with the help of some other person or persons.

"That cold case got hot again" after the marathon bombing, Maddow said. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was close friends with one of the victims, but, after his murder, Tsarnaev declined to attend his friend's funeral.

After Todashev was shot during questioning, Maddow said, law enforcement officials "leaked an elaborate story" that purported to justify the killing. The officials also claimed that Todashev had implicated himself in the Waltham murders prior to being shot. They said that just before the man was about to sign a confession, he snapped, and "lunged at the interrogator with a blade."

"That initial story has fallen apart," Maddow said. Within 12 hours of the shooting, two of the three law enforcement officials who were talking to the media about the case changed their story, saying they were no longer sure whether Todashev had a knife.

Now, multiple sources have come forward to papers like the Washington Post to say that, in fact, Todashev was unarmed. NBC News reported on Thursday that Todashev may have been brandishing some kind of "metal rod."

"So they shot him seven times?" Maddow asked, "Including in the back of the head?" She added that no one actually knows right now if that was the actual number of gunshot wounds on Todashev's body since officials will neither confirm nor deny that the post-autopsy photos are accurate.

"What we're left with here is a baffling mess and a story that does not make sense," she said.

Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC:

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