American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing (2023) s01e03 Episode Script

1
To really understand what happened,
we have to go back.
In 1944, Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin decided
that the entire Chechen nation
was helping Nazi Germany.
As a result of this,
they were put in cattle cars
and sent to this remote region
in Central Asia.
It was a mass exile of an entire people.
Half of them died on the way.
Those who survived
included Tamerlan and Dzhokhar's
grandfather, Zaindy Tsarnaev.
To get by and to provide for his family,
Zaindy would scavenge around
through this scrapyard
for parts that he could resell.
One day, he put his stuff in the car
unaware that one of the things
that he'd scavenged was a live munition
that detonated and killed him instantly.
His son Anzor meets this woman
named Zubeidat, and they get married.
They have four kids.
The oldest is Tamerlan.
The youngest is Dzhokhar.
They were able to get refugee status
and go to the United States,
the Boston area.
He was seeking the American dream.
And then they get here
and this dream, it wasn't real.
And things just don't go
according to plan.
This was the most incredible story
I had ever heard and seen
and experienced in my lifetime.
And it was happening in real time
at that moment in Watertown.
One of the suspects was dead.
The other had gotten away.
We were out there all night long
searching hallways, garages.
The cops aren't speaking,
but people in the neighborhood are,
and people in the neighborhood
are describing a shootout.
We heard the boom, boom!
Shotgun sound type of thing.
Then bap, bap! Boom, boom!
Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap!
Boom, boom, boom!
Bap, bap! Boom, boom!
Back and forth, it was crazy.
Boom, boom! And I was just
We didn't know what it was,
and then all of a sudden
you just see a hundred cruisers.
We were still going toward it,
and then residents from the windows,
they shouted,
"Hey, it's gunfire. Don't go that way."
We get reported back
that Boston PD are talking to a cab driver
who picked up a Chechen national
from Watertown and dropped him off
over at South Station train station
in Boston.
There's also a report
that there's a pipe bomb found
down the street from the train station.
"Oh my God. What do we have here?
Is it more than the Tsarnaevs?"
"Is our rail system under attack?
Is someone there with bombs?"
We need more information,
so we dispatch more people there.
We were literally stopping Amtrak trains
on the rails going down from Boston
to New York City and Washington, D.C.,
and conducting searches of those trains.
We were in the command post.
We had the head of the Transit Police.
We had the governor.
We realized that the buses
that were going to start running
at 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the morning
could be a means of escape.
And there's a huddle up
to figure out what should we be doing.
The decision was made
to shut down the city.
Good morning, everybody.
There is a massive manhunt underway.
We have suspended all service on the MBTA.
We're asking people to shelter in place,
to stay indoors with their doors locked,
and not to open the door for anyone
other than a properly identified
law enforcement officer.
And that applies here in Watertown,
also Cambridge, Waltham,
Newton, Belmont,
and at this point, all of Boston.
All of Boston.
One million people
on lockdown in Boston right now.
As you heard there, everything closed.
This is just unprecedented.
The city turned into a ghost town.
There was nobody on the street.
Everybody abided by it.
The entire city of Boston.
Residents being asked,
"Stay in your homes, do not open the door
unless you see
a clearly identified police officer."
A remarkable turn of events.
Law enforcement needed to have
unfettered access in the streets.
It wasn't just Boston,
it wasn't just Watertown.
It was almost
all of Eastern Massachusetts.
It was a use of police authority
that I had never seen before.
We were surging federal
state and local resources into Watertown
to find the individual
we had identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
We have throngs
of police officers arriving here.
I see what looks like
municipal police officers.
I see state troopers. All hands on deck.
Ultimately, you had
about 2,500 police officers in Watertown.
Many as far away
as New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
They heard what was happening,
they jumped in their cars and came down.
The police continue
to tighten their grip on this area
in which they believe
that suspect number two is holed up.
We had professionals
who understand the law,
understand civil rights,
understand how to do things right,
and that's what was happening.
But it was done with extreme urgency.
There's an ongoing manhunt for a person
wanted in connection
with Monday's marathon bombing.
Residents in Watertown
are advised to stay indoors.
My wife and I
have been up following the news.
Then around 5:30 we woke up,
and police officers were coming through,
going from house to house.
Just going house to house,
making sure everything's okay.
- Everything's fine.
- You guys are good?
- Yep.
- Okay.
The police searched with the assumption
that someone may have abetted his escape.
- Cellar's all set? Everything's locked up?
- Yup.
- Well, we have an open garage in the back.
- We'll just check that.
- Okay. But the attic's locked.
- Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thanks.
Oh my God.
Look, they're everywhere.
I never want to
wake up to this again.
A lot of people who were upset
when you had police going
backyard to backyard, alley to alley.
What's the last
24 hours or so been like?
Horrifying.
What does it feel like?
Terror. It feels
It's horrendous. It makes me nervous.
I'm scared to death. I'm scared.
Is there anybody else in there?
Just you two?
Is it one big residence
or is there multiple apartments?
The "shelter in place"
was the correct decision.
He could have been anywhere,
but we felt he was in Watertown.
It wasn't clear where he went.
Was there anyone else involved?
Are there other explosives in the city?
We just didn't know.
This investigation
was definitely two-pronged.
One was the hard search
for the suspect in the area,
which took a lot of our attention.
The other part of it was
to understand these two brothers.
How they did what they did,
and importantly to find out if
anybody else was part of that conspiracy.
We subsequently learned
that the Tsarnaev brothers
lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So we immediately sought search warrants
to conduct searches of that residence.
The evidence response teams were quickly
finding bomb-making paraphernalia.
But Dzhokhar was not there.
We learned that Tamerlan
had a wife named Katherine Russell.
A producer saw police
come out of his building with a woman.
She met Tamerlan
and became a practicing Muslim.
She was interviewed.
She was not cooperative.
People that are innocent
that see something like this happen
are usually devastated
that their relative has been involved
in something so heinous.
That's what I think is striking
about this interrogation.
There was no remorse or sympathy.
My impression was
that she was aligned with Tamerlan,
and despite
the horrific things that he did,
she was not going to help
the government of the United States.
I was hopeful that there would be
enough information developed to charge her
because I thought
she was probably involved,
but that never came to pass.
There was not enough evidence
to bring charges
against Katherine Russell.
If you find out that someone
is about to commit a crime
or you suspect
that they're about to commit a crime,
it's not against the law
to just keep your mouth shut,
to not say anything or do anything
to stop it from happening.
It's almost impossible
to control media leaks
during an investigation of this magnitude.
Quiet, please!
So we made the decision
to release their names.
The dead suspect has been identified
as Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
- Tamerlan.
- Tamerlan.
The one still being sought is Dzhokhar.
- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
- Dzhokhar.
I'm driving in very early.
I hear on the radio their names.
When you hear the name Tsarnaev,
that's a Chechen name.
Both parents are back in Dagestan,
and Elizabeth Palmer has their reaction.
What happened is a terrible thing,
but I know that my kids
have nothing to do with this.
I know it. I am mother.
I'm scared for my son's life.
They should arrest him.
Bring him in alive.
Alive.
And the judicial system
should investigate everything.
Who is right and who is guilty.
Reporters found the suspects' uncle.
His message to his nephew, "Surrender."
If you're alive, turn yourself in
and ask for forgiveness
from the victims.
When I first heard Dzhokhar's name,
I was in utter shock.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, he is still at large,
and police are combing through
the entire city of Boston.
Dzhokhar was a neighbor,
and he also was a student
at the school where I taught.
He was very social. He was charismatic.
He had lots of friends.
He was very popular.
He was on the wrestling team.
He was a charmer.
People have said to me,
"Why didn't you call people
and say you can identify this person?"
Because this is no way
this could be this kid, so
Because why?
Because there's nothing about him
that would suggest anything like this.
Politics, religion. Nothing.
It was beginning
to become clearer and clearer that
"Larry, this is Dzhokhar."
"You know Dzhokhar. He's the bomber."
When I found out that it was Dzhokhar,
I couldn't wrap my head around it.
And I had cognitive dissonance.
There was nothing
that anybody could tell me to-to-to
for me to believe that they did it.
I needed somebody to physically tell me
that they saw them do it,
and I need to trust
that person's, um, perspective.
I first met Dzhokhar
when I first started playing basketball.
He was definitely popular.
Like, everybody knew him.
I remember every Friday
I would go to the mosque
and it's a packed room.
And I see Dzhokhar, and it confuses me
because I assumed
Dzhokhar was a white kid from Boston.
I sit next to him, and I'm like,
"What are you What are you doing here?"
And then he's like, "Yeah, bro,
I've been Muslim my whole life."
"I just never thought
it was, like, important to, like"
I'm like, "Bro, we could, like, chill."
Like, you know, like,
"We could do Muslim things!"
Like
We started hanging out,
like, every single day.
I could relate with him
on a level that I couldn't before.
He was humble, he was kind,
he would give me five bucks
to go to lunch.
He got along with, like, everyone.
I never saw him as ideological.
I never saw him as militant. Never.
And the truth is, there were times
when I tried to talk to him
about social justice issues.
He was not interested in any
of those kinds of conversations.
He gave no indication
that he was in the least bit political.
His parents divorced and they moved
separately back to Dagestan.
Suddenly you have this rip
through the whole fabric
of what this was supposed to be,
and they all blame America for it.
Losing your mother and your father
almost immediately after you enter college
has to be devastating.
Dzhokhar and his brother
became a lot closer.
He admired his brother deeply,
like, to the point where I almost
envied their relationship.
Now, the relationship
between Tamerlan and Dzhokhar was
In the gym, was extremely similar
to the relationship
between Tamerlan and his father.
Tamerlan was definitely telling
Dzhokhar what to do.
It was almost like it was
when his father was training him.
But Dzhokhar was not interested in boxing.
He wanted to wrestle.
Dzhokhar ended up
going to UMass Dartmouth.
He said he was doing well in school.
He enjoyed everything.
He was making money.
Turns out not to be true.
Dzhokhar would lie
that he was going to transfer,
and that his grades were great,
when actually he was failing out.
He's not just the all-American kid now.
He's got a drug operation
that he's been sort of running down there
in Dartmouth, dealing marijuana.
I knew he was selling weed,
but, like, all my friends sold weed.
Definitely dealing in pounds,
but like, not to the point
the FBI is about to knock on your door.
The last time we ended up meeting
was a month before the bombing.
We're about to go out,
meet up with some more friends.
There was, like, two parties that night.
And then, um,
yeah, he gets a call from his brother,
and immediately after he hung up,
he turns to us and he says,
"Yo, bro, I gotta go."
We're like, "You good? Everything good?"
He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just family."
That was the last time I saw him.
This is the most
impactful thing I've ever been through.
And as a history teacher,
my job is to make sense of this.
It's something I've really never
been able to put together in my mind.
We learned Dzhokhar has an apartment
at UMass Dartmouth.
Mass state police dispatches
a tactical team to that apartment complex.
I had another HRT, Hostage Rescue Team,
being flown up
on Black Hawks from Virginia.
Emotions ran high
as hundreds of students
evacuated campus in the morning,
notified via text message
that something was wrong.
My roommate came in and he was like,
"By the way,
we're supposed to be leaving campus
because the guy goes here."
I'm like, "Oh, he used to be an alum?"
He's like, "No, he's the guy
that we hang out with sometimes."
I'm still in shock.
Yeah, I just want to get them out of here.
That was our greatest hope
of finding him alive down there.
A fucking SWAT team
is right outside my fucking door.
An armored car. What the fuck?
We're listening to it live
on the radio feed.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev!
Exit the residence now!
Come out with your hands up
and don't move your hands!
You could hear them going in
and talking to individuals,
and telling them to get down.
You were hanging on it
and waiting to hear things.
We thought, "Gosh, Dzhokhar's got to be
one of those people in that room."
"He's just got to be
one of those people in the room."
What the fuck?
The bottom line, what we want?
He's not there.
That was a very deflating
experience for us.
They did not find a thing.
It came to a dead end,
and they were baffled by it.
We are literally
running everything down,
but understand,
pretty much running out of good leads.
They're starting to collapse the search
into a smaller and smaller area.
One of my commanders, he says,
"We got a couple more blocks to do
before we're done."
We felt like, oh,
he's got to be right in these streets.
And we always felt like it was close.
And all day long,
we're getting different SWAT teams
calling in and near misses.
It was just this roller coaster
of highs and lows,
and at that point to say, "No? Nothing?"
"He got away?"
I felt horrible.
This "shelter in place"
can't stay in place forever.
It's eating up precious commercial time,
it's making a lot
of citizens disconcerted,
and they're not sure
where he is at this point.
And then the governor called.
He had received the call
from President Obama.
And Obama was concerned
about the "shelter in place" order.
President Obama had said that,
"Listen, you can't keep
an entire metropolitan area
shut down forever."
People really were working
on fumes at that point,
so we were going to announce,
that we're lifting the "shelter in place,"
but please be very, very careful.
Don't leave your house
if you don't have to.
We're still looking for him.
In light of the developments,
in the course of the day,
the "stay indoors" request is lifted.
The T is open effective immediately,
the MBTA effective immediately.
We are asking the public
to remain vigilant.
If you are out,
there is still a very, very
dangerous individual at large.
Everyone started to go home.
I could see, you know, state police,
everyone starting to pack up.
Police who have been combing this area
actually are being pulled out
after that somewhat
disappointing news conference.
And the bottom line from that conference
is that he got away.
The younger brother
is on the loose right now.
- Much younger brother.
- He's armed, very dangerous.
Yet the local authorities
come out and say,
"You know what?
We're going to ease this lockdown
and go back and do what you need to do."
The freeze, in effect, is over.
It was Friday night.
I probably had slept
eight hours in the last five days.
I was happy to be standing.
And I'm not proud of that.
I'm really not proud of that,
but that's just what it was.
Rick DesLauriers,
he looked around the room
and he saw
just exhausted people, and he said,
"We have nothing viable at this point.
Let's shut it down."
"Let's put a skeleton crew in place."
"Get a few hours of shut-eye,
and let's come back at this fresher."
I was exhausted.
I had sent my Chief of Department home
because he couldn't keep his eyes open.
We had lost some SWAT team guys
who had to go to the hospital
because they were so exhausted.
And it was clear
that we needed to take a break
and put some other people in charge.
I get in my car and started
to head to my home to get some sleep.
I was one of the last people
still in Watertown, at my capacity,
because I was literally trying
to find someone to take over for me.
911, this line is being recorded.
What's the address of your emergency?
67 Franklin Street, Watertown.
Okay, do you need
police, fire, or ambulance?
Uh, I have a a boat in my yard.
There's blood all over the inside.
There's a person in the boat.
Are you sure?
I just looked in the boat.
- Okay, stay on the phone.
- Okay.
A Watertown cop
came running up to me and he says,
"We're getting word
that there's someone in a boat
behind 67 Franklin Street."
And I says, "You're kidding me."
And he says, "Follow me."
And we followed him quietly down
to the front of 67 Franklin Street.
No sirens, no nothing.
A real quiet approach.
We literally were the first ones there.
It hadn't gone out over the air at all.
We went down the driveway.
Myself and the lieutenants
had our guns drawn.
I remember looking up at the heat seal.
You know how the boats
have the winter wrap?
We could see him, like a finger
or a gun trying to poke through it.
We knew we had someone in the boat,
but who was in the boat?
Please be our guy. Please be our guy.
At that point I'm saying,
"Do we try to take him ourselves?"
You know, we didn't know
whether he had a suicide vest on.
We've seen the ammunition
he had on the street.
We didn't know
how many people were in the boat,
so at that point, I made the decision
to call for a tactical unit.
And let's slow this down,
and let's peacefully,
as well as safely, get him out.
Can we get a TAC unit
up here, please? 67 Franklin.
But the problem at that point is
once it went out,
everyone started to come.
468 Sunnybank.
Sir, I have a call
from 67 Franklin Street.
67 Franklin.
There's a boat in the backyard.
There's blood all over the cover of it.
I hear on the radio,
"Boss, they found him!"
"You gotta go back!"
I'm like,
"All right, I'm down the street."
Spin the car around and go flying back.
The call was, there's a report
that there's a suspect
in a boat in Watertown.
In hindsight it's almost funny,
but I said to my driver,
"Where's the water in Watertown?
Like, where would a boat be?"
If you're tuning in right now,
there has been what appears to be
a major development
in what has been a painstaking search.
If this individual
is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,
this guy apparently hid himself
in the boat for 18 hours.
From where he abandoned the car
to where he hid himself
was one block away.
How they missed a boat
that's sitting in a backyard,
not see the bloody prints, I don't know.
Local police
in the Watertown area have told everyone
forget about what they said an hour ago,
stay inside, don't go outside.
This is clearly a significant moment.
I could see the policemen
coming all of a sudden from all over.
I could hear the sirens.
And I yelled to them and said,
"Stop the policemen from coming."
"I'm all set.
No, don't let everyone come in."
Yeah, we don't want
too much help here, okay?
I knew it would make for a chaotic scene.
Watertown control to cars,
do not approach the boat.
Set up a perimeter.
When the whole world
is basically waiting five days to get him,
you can imagine
the police response at that time,
and that's what I had
a hard time controlling.
There's more coming in.
When we got
the situation calmed down,
it was nice and quiet.
And then, all of a sudden
- That's gunfire. That's gunfire.
- That's gunfire.
Hearing that?
Everyone's diving for the ground.
You know, I didn't know who fired first.
All I know is
I had to get the fire to stop
before we killed
the individual in the boat.
Billy is on the mic
screaming at everybody.
"Hold your fire. Hold your fire."
Everyone hold their fire!
Hold their fire!
All units,
hold your fire. Hold your fire.
Everybody hold until we have
the tactical here. All right?
It was initially reported as a shootout.
Of course, we now know
that it was a shoot-in.
I think over 100 shots impacted the boat.
A hundred and twenty-six rounds,
not counting the bullets
that missed the boat.
They were going everywhere,
all over the neighborhood.
A lot of this was coming
from officers who were not authorized
to even be in the area,
who weren't even authorized
to be part of this task force,
but had inserted themselves
into the scene.
When the officers arrived
at 67 Franklin Street,
some of them thought they saw
Dzhokhar pointing a gun at them.
I think what happened
was one officer fired,
everyone starts to fire.
There were things
that happened at the first shootout
and then at the boat
that sort of point out the need
for command and control of various
assets from various police departments,
so that there can be
a really coordinated response.
Those were lessons that we learned.
Shots were fired,
we clearly know that now,
and that the suspect is down.
That is the word from police.
Now, whether or not that suspect
is deceased at this point, we do not know.
We wanted him alive.
There's a process in place,
and bringing them to justice,
and And having answers.
I was extremely disappointed
because I really wanted to get
an interrogation on this guy.
You can't understand
whether it was a broader conspiracy,
who financed this operation,
by interviewing a corpse.
We didn't know if he was dead or not.
The state police helicopter,
they have FLIR,
forward-looking infrared, on.
They're infrared cameras
that will pick up a heat, a stamp,
and give you an image.
At this point, I was in the command post.
It was pretty dramatic.
You could see the thermal image
of Dzhokhar lying inside the boat.
There was also a live feed
that was going on,
and so we were able to observe this.
I was glued to the television set.
We were watching the news for so long.
The claustrophobia, the tension,
it was a lot to deal with.
The world was watching this live.
Farah, you're here.
I know you're working your sources.
Tell our viewers
what you're learning right now.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers
who have zeroed in on a man
they believe is the suspect.
They have him cornered.
They have a visual,
they can see what he's doing.
We're told to be on standby
because clearly
this could be the big moment.
I still didn't know if he was still alive.
Tango 9'er 3B.
State police air wing tells me
that there's definitely
There's definitely movement in the boat.
All right,
there's movement in the boat.
The key thing was,
the helicopter pilot said,
"We've got movement.
We've got movement in the boat."
HRT moving up, left side.
The tactical team
had a BearCat armored vehicle on scene.
It was used to approach the boat
and to pull back the tarp,
which gave the operators better vantage,
but also gave him an opportunity
to stand up and give up
if that's what he wanted to do.
The FBI hostage recovery team director
came up to me, and he says,
"We're gonna throw
a smoke grenade in the boat."
"Are you okay with that?"
And I said, "Sure."
It didn't work.
Then he came back and said,
"We're gonna throw
a flash-bang in that boat."
I said, "Yeah."
He says, "The only problem is
there's 45 gallons of gasoline
in that boat."
He said, "We're liable
to blow up the house and everything."
He says,
"We're going to need a fire engine."
Fire's coming down Walnut.
Fire's coming down Walnut.
We're now being pushed back
by law enforcement with force,
trailing back a little bit
behind a dumpster.
Erin, there's been
a series of eight explosions.
That could be these flash-bang grenades
that John King was talking about.
We didn't have an explosion of the boat,
and that didn't work to get him out.
It was like this.
You were on pins and needles,
as I was watching.
They negotiated with him.
They got him to sit up.
He's standing.
They're asking him to lift his shirt.
Doesn't appear to be armed.
Is this really going to happen?
He's in custody.
He's in custody.
Metro SWAT took command.
Subject in custody.
Subject in custody.
Subject in custody.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
"In custody."
It was the best words I ever heard.
You could hear people just clapping.
Great job. Good job, gentlemen.
The radio, everyone, "Yeah!"
Everyone's screaming, "Yeah!"
I was so worried
that we had the wrong guy in that boat.
And I'll always remember
when the leader of the HR team
came by to me, I looked up at him
And he's very intimidating
for a scrawny guy like me
I says, "Is that our guy?"
And he went like this.
"100% it's our guy." Just like that.
And I
The blood rolled out of my whole system.
That was one of the most
profoundly satisfying moments
of my law enforcement career,
was seeing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arrested.
Good evening.
The tweet just came from Boston Police,
and it reads in all caps,
"Captured! The hunt is over.
Suspect in custody."
There might be residual things going on.
We've got to do investigations.
We got to find out
who else is involved in this.
But this unbelievable manhunt
that we've been going through
for four days is now over.
We've got him.
Fucking scumbag motherfucker!
It was 101 hours
to run these guys down.
We drove out of the cordoned-off area
into the streets of Watertown,
and the people were screaming, waving.
I feel like we just liberated Paris
in World War II.
There were people clapping and cheering.
It was like a parade.
There were all these people
lining up the street.
I felt so patriotic.
I felt so part of this country
and part of what makes it good.
USA! USA!
It was a very emotional,
emotional experience for me
to see people
pouring out of the buildings,
waving American flags,
thanking law enforcement.
And it was just
To this day, it brings tears to my eyes.
I think this is a great closure,
just to end it with him in custody,
and everything at ease for right now.
Relief. We can sleep well tonight.
It's a victory for peace.
It's a victory for love, for the country.
It's a victory for all of us, for Boston.
Boston, baby! Boston strong!
Nothing can tear us down!
Boston, baby!
Students are coming out of the dorms.
They're marching in the streets.
It was almost like we just won the war.
God bless America ♪
My home sweet home ♪
Today, the city of Boston,
the city of Cambridge,
and the city of Watertown
can breathe a sigh of relief,
knowing that two perpetrators
who caused so much pain and anguish
are no longer a threat
to our personal safety
and to our communities.
At the time, we read the heading
that said, "Body found on boat."
So we thought he was dead.
So, we're walking down the street.
People are screaming.
USA! USA! USA!
We're distraught.
Our friend just died.
Then a guy on a bike, he's like,
"Hey, did you guys hear?"
And we flip the fuck out on him.
"Get the fuck away from"
Like, "Leave us alone, you"
And his face of just pure
and utter confusion.
We met up with a few other friends,
and that's when we found out that he was
He was captured instead of killed.
I remember coming into headquarters
the following morning,
and Commissioner Davis called us down
and he said, "Oh, come on,
we're gonna go up to Fenway Park."
You know, they want to do
a little tribute up there.
All right.
All right, Boston.
This jersey that we wear today,
it doesn't say Red Sox. It say Boston.
We want to thank
the whole police department
for the great job
that they did this past week.
This is our fucking city.
And nobody gonna dictate our freedom.
Stay strong. Thank you.
When Big Papi said, "The F-word our city,"
as vulgar as that term was,
I think, you know,
it was a release of a lot of tension
for the whole city at that moment.
The whole "Boston Strong" thing
wasn't a gimmick, it was real.
If you were living here at the time,
it was very real.
Even though we had arrested Dzhokhar,
the investigation was just beginning.
We needed
to start to figure out the why.
Who they were, what they were doing,
who their associates were.
We need to establish a pattern of life.
Shortly after
Dzhokhar was arrested,
he was treated for his injuries
by medical personnel.
As soon as he was able
to be questioned, he was,
by the FBI's high-value
interrogation group.
They were going to question him.
He was not going to be Mirandized
or given a lawyer right away.
That does happen,
especially in terrorism cases.
Part of the Patriot Act allows
this interrogation team to question people
outside of the regular constitutional
protections that a citizen has,
especially when dealing
with an ongoing terrorist event.
Dzhokhar was not able to talk
because of his injuries,
so he had to write
some responses down, as I recall.
That's a judgment
by the United States attorney's office
as to when you have
to read his Miranda Rights.
Even when individuals
may ask to see a lawyer,
the questioning can continue
as long as you are justified in doing so.
But you have only so much time
you can hold on to someone
without processing them.
We searched the boat.
Every little bit of evidence at that point
was of critical importance to us.
What we found inside there
was jihadi manifesto
that Dzhokhar had written inside the boat,
which was one of our first clues
that these individuals had been inspired
by radical terrorist beliefs
and had been radicalized
at some point in the past.
We needed to know
whether there were collaborators
that helped construct these bombs.
The evidence that was on his computer
included things
like editions of Inspire magazine,
which was a known terrorist's publication.
Directions on how to make a bomb
in the kitchen of your mom.
Inspire magazine is the magazine
The official magazine of Al-Qaeda.
He was interviewed
for two or three days,
but in the end
it did not yield much information.
And then he was subsequently
read his Miranda Rights.
But we also were taking a look
at many individuals
who were their friends.
The FBI came down on everybody,
but I know they specifically targeted
my Muslim peers way more
than any other demographic.
I was interrogated for, like, eight hours.
I was 19, I was terrified.
My life was on the line.
I knew it. They knew it.
It felt like we were guilty
and had to prove our innocence.
I think it's time for profiling, though,
don't you, Ange?
I think it's time for profiling
because the profile has been
Middle Eastern Muslims
who have blown people up
or attempted to blow people up
over the last 15 years.
Many terrorists are Muslims,
and we'd be foolish not to look
at this phenomenon and get ready for it.
My worst fears became reality.
Not only was it a Muslim
that committed that appalling act,
but also someone I know
and someone who had come to the mosque.
It was a moment of, to be honest,
of of profound despair.
Later on, we found out
that the youngest brother's roommate
had recognized his picture on the news.
They were working to get rid of evidence.
They had
some explosive evidence
that they had disposed of
in a garbage dump.
And we actually recovered that evidence,
and that evidence was used as the basis
to charge these two individuals
with obstruction of justice.
Once they knew they did it
and they've seen their photos out there,
they should have stepped up
and came forward.
If they had,
Officer Collier would still be alive.
Despite the fact that some
of his friends had lied to the FBI,
we got the impression that this was just
the two of them that were involved.
That they made the bombs locally,
put them together in Tamerlan's kitchen.
I do not believe for one minute
that these bombs were made
by looking on the Internet.
I believe they had help,
and I don't know who,
but it is very difficult
to construct this type of device
and have both of them go off flawlessly
in close proximity with remote detonators.
I think some people think
there's some grand conspiracy
that something was missed.
But there wasn't,
and this happens all the time.
There are lone wolves.
This is not amateur hour.
These were professional explosive devices,
and the IED defeat team in Afghanistan
agreed with my assessment of that.
We determined that the bombers
were lone-wolf extremists
who had been inspired by reading
Anwar al-Awlaki's Inspire magazine,
which meant
to perpetrate jihad across the world.
Whenever I hear
somebody speak about jihad
in the connotation
of killing someone, I cringe.
Jihad, the Arabic word for "jihad,"
means to struggle.
You struggle to get a good life.
That's jihad.
You struggle to be an honest person.
That's jihad.
You struggle to be a good,
religious person. That's jihad.
Jihad is not
picking up a gun or making a bomb
and killing innocent people.
A few weeks after the bombing
and its resolution,
police and the FBI were interviewing
a fellow named Ibragim Todashev.
He was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
also Chechen and a mixed martial artist.
He supposedly confessed
to killing three men,
including Brendan Mess
on September 11th, 2011.
Brendan Mess was best friends
with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
They knew each other
from mixed martial arts.
During this confession
in Todashev's apartment,
something very strange happens.
The FBI and the state police say
that he rushed them.
They subsequently shot
Ibragim Todashev several times.
A lot of people had
suspicions about the story.
I think they just shot him.
He didn't do nothing.
He I know him.
He He just wanted everything to be over.
The story became more complex
and problematic, if you will,
when it was determined
that Ibragim Todashev confessed
to killing these three men
in concert with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
I think the chronology of it
is important to recognize.
Brendan Mess was murdered
inside his apartment
after Tamerlan found out
that he wasn't going to be able
to go to the Olympic trials.
There was no signs of a forced entry,
which means that whoever did it to them,
they must have known them.
They let them in.
The way these guys were killed,
nearly decapitated
is how it was described,
this was personal.
Jewish friend,
he's living the American dream.
He's got all the opportunities.
He didn't have to work. He's rich as hell.
And these things
are happening to Tamerlan,
and he doesn't have
the same opportunities.
My understanding was that Tamerlan
was involved in that.
There were drugs involved.
But I can't really comment
on that too much.
The homicide investigation
in Waltham is still open.
That bothered me.
It bothers me to this day.
There's a lot of unanswered questions
about this whole thing.
Shortly after
the triple homicide in Waltham,
our understanding is Tamerlan Tsarnaev
had travelled over to Dagestan
and had engaged in some
radicalization activities over there.
And we believe that was
one of the pillars of the radicalization.
Whatever happened while he was there
must have had profound effects on him
because when he came back,
we know he started to plan
and execute the Boston bombing.
In the summer of 2012,
Tamerlan goes to Dagestan
to get closer to his historic roots
and also to his faith.
As a reporter, that means
that the story's going to be back there.
You want to tell people
what's actually happening.
You want to make sure
that people understand.
Don't go by generalizations
and stereotypes.
Here's exactly what's going on.
I spent two months in Chechnya,
Dagestan and Kyrgyzstan.
I'm trying to find people who knew them,
people who might have been around
when Tamerlan was there.
He meets up with young Muslims
who are in this movement,
the Union of the Just.
Peace be unto you!
You see the result of bullying
by the Makhachkala brothers
toward their brother
who has come here from America.
This is him.
And also toward
the Jamaat of Kizlyar, represented by
I hung out
with these guys, and I can tell you
they go to beaches,
they have barbecues,
they go to the mosque, they talk a lot.
But the things they say
are no more radical
than anything you hear anywhere.
We call for what is approved of,
and forbid what is disapproved of.
And I remind you
to get on the path of truth.
This is just abuse!
Allahu Akbar!
It's not a militant group.
So I'm trying to confirm or deny
any contacts between Tamerlan
and any of the recruiters
for the actual militants.
Somebody took me as far as you could go.
Somebody pointed the path from there.
I walked up there
and ran into this group of people.
And no, they had no clue.
We don't find that moment
where he's sitting there, going,
"Hey, you know what?
Let's Let's kill innocent people."
This probably wasn't something
he decided when he went to Dagestan.
I think he went to Dagestan
trying to find meaning.
He's got these doubts.
He's failed to make it
onto the Olympic team.
He blames anti-Muslim sentiment,
so he's trying to get closer
to what it is to be a Muslim,
and what can he make of his life.
But he doesn't get his militancy there.
That moment comes
when you come back to the States.
And it didn't change your life,
and it didn't change anything,
and you're not in a better place.
The deeper the brothers get into Islam,
the more they start to associate it
with their own failure
and with what's happening overseas,
where, at this point,
the US is fighting two wars
in predominantly Muslim countries.
You know, if you go by the thing
that Dzhokhar wrote in the boat,
he's blaming
the US policy against Muslims.
And that's what I wrote.
A lot of people were really upset
because to some it looked like
by making them look like people,
we were somehow rationalizing away
or, I don't know,
justifying or giving him a pass.
I got an email.
"I hope that you or someone you love
gets killed by Islamic terrorists,
so that you know how it feels."
I know exactly how it feels
when somebody you love
is killed by Islamic terrorists.
My dad was on the first plane
that went into the World Trade Center.
And the thing about that one is,
every September 11th
you get to watch that plane
flying into the building
again and again and again.
How many times do you have to see that?
How many times do you have to watch
your father blow up dead?
We're never going to, in any of this,
try to justify what they did
by saying they had a rough time.
But these people
were not born marathon bombers.
They became them.
That is the truth. That's the story.
I covered the trial
from beginning to end.
There was no doubt that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
would be found guilty.
What was really at stake
during the trial was the death penalty.
The alternative sentence
was life in maximum security.
I did testify,
and I did want to testify,
and I also did an impact statement.
I thought it was really, really important
that I do that for Krystle.
I really felt like
I wanted to be that voice.
When Dzhokhar
came into the court,
a lot of reporters reported
that he looked arrogant and aloof.
I interpret it as resignation.
He seemed resigned to his fate.
And I'll tell you,
when I looked at him, I saw the devil.
He screwed up his eye,
and it just looked like the devil.
It was, like, red. It was scary.
He would look right at you.
He'd stare right at you.
It was hard. It was really hard.
Listening to some of the survivors,
what they had gone through
and what they would need
to live with the rest of their life
That definitely stays with me
from the trial.
I think the defense tried to portray
that his brother,
who was older, was domineering
and had an intense,
potentially violent personality,
and that he had succumbed
to his older brother.
He did this because his brother
was forcing him to do it.
He could have been influenced
by his brother.
I think that he felt maybe sometimes
he couldn't say no to his brother,
but he chose to put
that backpack near those children.
His brother was not there saying,
"You have to put that
right there near those kids."
And when you blow up a young family
like the Richards and hurt Lingzi Lu
and the Campbell girl and Sean,
there's no excuse for that.
Don't blame that
on your brother radicalizing you.
I think for me, what indicated
that he knew what he was doing
and that he had the willingness to do it
was not only viewing
how he placed that bomb
and walked away from it in time
to himself not get hurt
but that shortly after that,
that same afternoon,
there were videos of him
shopping at a Whole Foods
like nothing had just happened.
And then after the murder of Sean Collier
and kidnapping Danny Meng,
there's a video of him
getting snacks at the Shell station. Calm.
Just calm.
There were two things that happened
during the trial that I think
probably led people to believe
that he would get the death penalty.
One was the image widely circulated
by Carmen Ortiz's office
supposedly showing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
giving a finger to the camera in his cell,
which was interpreted as giving a finger
to the people of Boston.
And then prosecutors
certainly phrased it that way.
The other was the judge
deciding not to allow into evidence
connection to the Waltham killings
of Tamerlan's best friend years earlier.
The defense felt that by connecting it
to the Waltham killings,
you could show that someone
who was that ruthless,
who would just slit his best friend's
throat, would do anything,
and that his brother
was under his influence.
That was disallowed.
That was a huge blow to the defense.
Kevin and I had both agreed
from the very beginning,
if he got the death penalty
or the jury decided it was life in prison,
it would be justice.
Ultimately, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
was sentenced to die.
When the sentence was read,
he showed no emotion,
and that was the conclusion of the trial.
The press conference for this,
it was held outside
in the back of the courtroom
where victims
and their families were asked to speak.
I want to personally say thank you
to each of my fellow survivors,
and thank them for being here for us.
I have to watch
my two sons put a leg on every day,
so, I mean, I don't know if it's closure,
but I can tell you it feels like
a weight has been lifted
off my shoulders, so
With the harbor in the background,
it wasn't just closure for them.
It was closure for the city.
There's no justice here.
We witnessed four tragic deaths.
People who lost limbs and who's
You know, they'll never get back
the innocence of their life.
So, to say that it's over,
it will never be over.
You know, I know the Richards family,
and I knew the Campbell family.
They have to live
with the tragedy forever.
There is no closure
for everyone who was there.
This thing is going to always be a memory.
You will never, ever,
ever be able to not have been there.
And it's the first responders.
It's the people
who were maimed and wounded.
It's the people who lost loved ones.
Everybody's going to remember
that moment for the rest of their lives.
It's not something
that is easily forgotten.
It still is in our hearts, to be honest.
It brought me
to the lowest point of my life.
I didn't know who I was anymore.
I lost touch with the person I once was.
Um
And, really, I felt let down and betrayed.
Every year, it just
It rips up the memories for Karen,
and it's tough. It's still tough.
I don't want Krystle to ever be forgotten.
I lost my friend,
and that was a terrible thing.
And that's always gonna be
a terrible thing.
It's been ten years now.
You look back at the footage,
and you see civilians
and marathon workers and police officers
and first responders just jumping in
to save and to do what they can.
It really does
speak to the courage
and the commitment
of the citizens of Boston,
to their fellow neighbors,
but also to stand up
against people that attack us.
I cannot believe
it's been ten years already.
You know, it's just,
I appreciate that I'm still alive.
My life could have ended that night.
Danny Meng was an important hero
in the Boston Marathon
bombing investigation.
It was his courage that led
to the neutralization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev
and the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
You know, I've done
a lot of interviews on this,
and this isn't about the glory.
This isn't about who was a hero, you know.
It was about Boston coming together
and supporting what happened that day,
and supporting those families
that's lives will forever be changed.
I would like to see
the Boston Marathon go back
to being this fabulous event in the city
that is not constantly just overshadowed
by this horrific thing that happened
because there's so much good
that comes from the marathon.
The runners in the first wave
of this Patriots' Day Boston Marathon
are taking off.