April 15, 2013 – two bombs tear through the crowd welcoming runners over the finish
line at the Boston Marathon.
The carnage is total with three people killed and dozens wounded.
Within hours the FBI have identified a pair of suspects.
The two brothers are immigrants to America whose parents have fled the violence of Chechnya
to give their children a better life.
So, how did it all go so wrong?
Today, through the story of the younger of the two bombers, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, we find
out.
Early Years
Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev was born on July 22, 1993 in Kyrgyzstan.
His parents were Anzor and Zubeidat Tsarnaev.
Anzor was a cattle farm laborer in the Caspian region of Kalmykia.
Zubeidat was a city girl who struggled to fit into the rural community life that marriage
gave her.
Her spirits were lifted with the birth of her first child in October, 1986.
The couple named the boy Tamerlan, after the great Asian conqueror.
Zubeidat was a doting mother.
She always dressed Tamerlane, who was nicknamed Tami, in the best attire.
The boy did well in school.
His mother put pressure on her husband to move in order to provide their son with wider
opportunities.
They returned to Anzor’s hometown of Anzor and moved in with his parents.
About a year later, Anzor’s father was killed in a work accident.
This left him as the family patriarch.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, life in the region changed dramatically.
Laborers became entrepreneurs overnight as the western economy began flooding in.
Anzor found a job as a car repairman.
He was making a living but in order to really get ahead he realized that he had to get to
the newly created republic of Chechnya, which seemed like the new promised land.
The family, which now included two daughters, moved to Chechnya in 1992.
It was there that their second son, Dzhokhar was born.
He was named after the charismatic new President of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev.
Within a year, things had gone horribly wrong.
The Russians invaded Chechnya and the Tsarnaev’s found themselves in the middle of a war zone.
The family piled into a battered old Skoda and drove back to Kyrgyzstan and the old family
home in Tokmok.
They settled back into their old lives, while also making plans to get out of Eastern Europe.
Their goal was America.
Anzor and Zubeidat believed that their chances of getting to America would be improved if
they obtained some educational credentials.
As a result, they both began studying law part time.
After four years in Tokmok they sold the family home and moved, not to America, but to Zubeidat’s
hometown of Dagestan.
However, it seemed as if this family was unable to escape from war, and before long the streets
there were filled with gunfights and explosions.
Coming to America The Tsarnaev family moved once again.
Anzor and Zubeidat took Dzhokhar with them on a trip to the United States.
Tamerlan, along with the two daughters, was left with their uncle in Kyrgyzstan.
They traveled on a 90-day tourist visa.
During that visit, Anzor applied for political asylum, claiming that his life was in danger
due to his connections with Chechnya.
The application was submitted and the family were allowed to stay until a decision was
reached.
The Tsarnaev’s had chosen to come to Boston, Massachusetts.
That was where some friends had moved the previous year, so at least they would know
somebody.
They moved in with this couple and the eight-year-old Dzhokhar began attending second grade at a
public school along with two of the Biev children.
In April 2002, Anzor managed to find an inexpensive apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts and
they moved out of the Biev home and into their own place.
Dzhokhar was left with the Biev’s for the meantime in order not to interrupt his school
year.
Anzor and Zubeidat presented themselves as prospective lawyers, even though their studies
had been minimal.
The were, they told people, fleeing from ethnic strife.
They found a kindred spirit in their landlord, Joanna Herlihy, who took them under her wing.
She took Zubeidat to an Amnesty International event focused on human rights abuses in Chechnya
and even paid for her to enroll in a Harvard extension course on negotiation.
Anzor picked up under the table jobs fixing cars for ten dollars an hour.
When the school year was over, Dzhokhar came to live with his parents in Cambridge.
His time with the Biev’s had been challenging.
The parents insisted that the only language spoken in the home was Chechen, which he could
barely understand.
When the parents weren’t around, the children would speak Russian.
He learned English from his association with American kids at school, picking it up at
an amazing pace.
Dzhokhar soon became an accepted member of the Chechen community of children in the local
area.
He was a good student who made quick advancement.
In fact, during his second year at school he was bumped up from 3rd to 4th grade.
In mid-2003, the Tsarnaev’s asylum application was granted.
The three children left in Kyrgyzstan were now free to join their family in the promised
land.
With the family reunited, things were looking pretty good for the immigrant family.
Both Anzor and Zubeidat were working and they had permanent, affordable accommodation.
Strange New Land Dzhokhar is remembered as a sweet, lovable
boy.
He was described as being charming.
His teachers described him as being bright, but lacking in the ability to think creatively
for himself.
He tended to say things that got other people to like him.
In 2003, Dzhokhar entered fifth grade.
His sisters, thirteen-year-old Ailina and fifteen-year-old Bella were in seventh and
ninth grades, while seventeen-year-old Tamerlan was in tenth grade.
The landlady, Joanna, tutored the children in English, took them to movies and lent them
DVDs to watch.
Tamerlan, augmented his studies with Joanna by reading Sherlock Holmes stories.
Being the oldest son, Tamerlan was the focus of the family’s plans for success.
He was the golden-haired child, the one who was destined for greatness.
He was tall, muscular and handsome.
Even Americans saw something special in him.
The Older Brother Anzor decided that, before heading off to
college, his oldest son would become a champion boxer.
Tamerlan proved himself to be a gifted fighter.
He had a very unconventional stance, with his arms hanging down rather than in a defensive
stance.
After training with his father for a while, he turned up at a local martial arts gym.
He had no mouthpiece, helmet or other protective gear, and claimed that he didn’t need them.
When he got in the ring, he proved it.
His stated ambition was to win a spot on the US Olympic team and to use that position as
a way of becoming a naturalized US citizen.
Tamerlan’s first victory in boxing competition was achieved in January, 2004.
It was a golden gloves amateur bout held in Lowell, Massachusetts.
In his post victory interview, he said . . . I like the USA.
You have a chance to make a lot of money here if you are willing to work.
In 2006, Tamerlan was enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College.
For two years he focused on his studies.
Then, in 2009, he returned to boxing.
Within a year he had made it onto the national amateur boxing circuit.
In 2010, he won the Rocky Marciano Trophy for winning the New England Golden Gloves
competition.
But because he wasn’t a US citizen, he was ineligible to fight for a national title.
This was a severe blow to Tamerlan and it caused him to give up on his boxing career.
By that time, Tamerlan had also dropped out of college.
His focus now was on becoming a music star.
He began dressing flamboyantly, with one person describing his look as that of an Italian
gigolo.
While American teenage boys may have mocked his look, the girls were entranced and he
had no shortage of female admirers.
In 2011, Tamerlan, the great hope of the Tsarnaev family, was a failed boxer, a college dropout
and a father.
He was still living at home with his parents, though his girlfriend and child did not.
For money he delivered pizza part time, and sold marijuana on the side.
It was not exactly the career path that his parents had in mind.
Despite their initial efforts to integrate into American society, by 2011 the Tsarnaevs
had given up on trying.
After struggling with the language, with the culture and even with buying things on credit,
they reverted back to what they were comfortable with.
They decided to live as Chechens’ transplanted.
Their home had the typical Chechen look- oriental rugs, a large plush sofa, and mirrored credenza
housing plates.
Things had not panned out as they had envisioned – their neighbors viewed them with suspicion,
if not with outright hostility.
Their son was dealing drugs, both their daughters had by them entered into disastrous marriages
and Anzor was spending his days fixing old cars in the street.
Jahar In mid-2011, Dzhokhar graduated from Rindge
college and moved to the university of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where he lived on campus.
A couple of months later his parents filed for divorce.
By now all of the rest of his family had become disillusioned with their life in America.
But not Dzhokhar.
He continued to make good grades and establish solid, positive friendships.
He maintained his friendly, happy outlook.
At college he joined the wrestling team.
He impressed his coaches with his humility and constant requests at what he could do
to improve.
It was a marked contrast to the American boys on the team.
Before long, he was captain of the wrestling team.
Just like his older brother, however, Dzhokhar was both smoking and selling dope.
Yet, his image of the pure, sweet teenage boy was so complete, that no-one had any inkling
of it.
Dzhokhar developed a friendship with one of the college’s most respected professors.
Larry Aronson was the college’s official photographer.
Aronson adopted Dzhokhar as his poster child for kids from war torn zones who were now
attending Rindge college.
He also helped the boy to come up with a more American friendly version of his name, Jahar.
Aronson was interested in engaging Dozkhar in discussions about what was going on in
Chechnya, but the teenager had no desire to talk about his old country.
Aaronson said . . . Whenever I tried to talk to him about being
Chechen, it meant nothing to him.
Radicalization Meanwhile Jahar’s older brother, Tamerlan,
was moving in the other direction.
In January, 2012 he flew to Dagestan.
He went to his old hometown of Makhachkala.
This was the capital of Dagestan and, over the last ten years, it had transformed itself
into a modern city.
Tamerlan quickly fit into the social scene, spending his days mixing with fervent young
men in their twenties and thirties who talked about their religion, their aspirations and
the injustices in the world.
He met many of his relatives, a number of who were involved in organized crime.
Tamerlan joined a group called Union of the Just, which was allied to the Hizb ut-Tahrir,
one of the largest Islamic organizations in the world.
He told members of the group that American was a racist country that was deeply divided,
with corrupt police and a xenophobic foreign policy.
When asked to compare America with Russia, Tamerlan is reported to have said . . .
I refuse to choose between two kinds of fecal matter.
Both taste like shit.
In July 2012, Tamerlan told his associates that he urgently needed to return to the United
States because he had a problem with his documentation.
He intimated that he had no desire to go and would come back soon.
Tamerlan returned to Cambridge to discover that his father had himself returned to Dagestan
and had started a successful car repair business with his brother.
A couple of weeks later, Zubeidat also returned to Dagestan, not to reunite with her ex-husband
but to live with her family.
To Tamerlan, Dagestan was now home.
He would only stay in the US long enough to get his passport.
Joanna Herlihy, the Tsarnaev’s landlord had become increasingly concerned with the
radicalization of the family.
After a heated encounter with Tamerlan in which he vented about his hatred of America,
she issued an eviction notice.
Frustration Back at College, Jahar got a new roommate.
Andrew Dwinells ws a young American go-getter.
The engineering major was going places and his very presence highlighted to Jahar just
how inadequate he really was.
The two never spoke and only exchanged messages when one of them was locked out of the room.
Jahar had a small and tight-knit group of friends, all of them being eastern European.
There was also a steady flow of customers to his dorm room to buy pot.
Within a few months, Jahar’s social circle had widened slightly to include a couple of
Americans.
They congregated off campus at the apartment of a couple of members of the group.
Once, Jahar disclosed to a couple of the group members that he knew how to make a bomb.
He also said there were parts of the Koran that were worth fighting for with force.
Still, he was not a Muslim extremist, though those in his group who had met his brother
considered Tamerlan to be one.
The Bombings Patriot’s Day 2013 occurred on April 15
in 2013.
It is a public holiday in Massachusetts and on that day in Boston the Boston marathon
is run.
Two hours after the end of the marathon, at 2:49 pm, as runners were streaming cross the
finish line, two bombs exploded near the end of the course.
Three people were killed and 264 others were wounded.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, the police scanned the crowd in an attempt
to identify anyone who looked out of place.
Their first target was a Saudi Arabian man who had actually been wounded in the blasts.
He was quickly cleared and then three other Muslim men were looked at, but all dismissed.
On Thursday, April 18th, the Boston Post published a photo on its front page along with a banner
that read . . . Bag Men: Feds Seek These Two Pictured at Boston
Marathon.
The two men were Tamerlan and Jahar Tsarnaev.
When Larry Arronson picked up the paper, he thought that one of the men looked amazingly
like Jahar.
Then when students at the university saw the picture, they didn’t think that it looked
like Jahar – they were convinced that it WAS him.
Still, his friends couldn’t believe that he had been involved in the bombing.
He just didn’t seem capable.
Rather than going to the police of the FBI, his friends went to Jahar’s dorm.
But the door was locked.
Unable to locate Jahar, his friends went back to their dorm and proceeded to play Xbox.
A short time later, one of them received a text from Jahar that read . . .
If you want you can go to my room and take what’s there.
They returned to the room, used a spare key to get in and began to search his side of
it.
One of them found a black backpack that contained a large metal cylinder and a half empty jar
of Vaseline.
He turned to his friends and said, I think he used these to make
the bomb.
Fugitives The FBI had been focused on Jahar as early
as Wednesday morning.
They had been studying video of the aftermath of the explosions.
It was noticed that Jahar didn’t react to the blasts.
While everyone one else ran ducked and screamed, he just kept right on walking.
They also noticed Tamerlan walking alongside, nd again showing no reaction.
But they had no idea who these two men were.
The images were issued to the American public with a warning that they were considered to
be armed and dangerous.
In the hours following the bombing, local media blamed the pair on every crime committed
in the area, including the murder of an MIT police officer.
They got that last accusation right.
The brothers killed officer Sean Collier in order to steal his gun.
They then committed a carjacking at a Cambridge gas station.
They were driving a Mercedes SUV, but they were unaware that it was fitted with a GPS
device.
This allowed the police to track their every movement.
They seemed to be driving around aimlessly, which they were, having no post bombing plan
of action.
In their possession the brothers had five homemade explosive devices, a semiautomatic
handgun, a machete and a hunting knife.
End Game The police caught up with the Tsarnaev brother
in the early morning hours of April 19th.
They closed in on the brothers in a quiet suburban street in the suburb of Watertown
and began randomly firing.
One of the officers was seriously wounded by friendly fire.
The brothers were behind cover and, when ordered to give up, Jahar threw the explosives devices
towards the cops.
They exploded harmlessly in the street.
The final shootout was between Tamerlan and a Watertown police officer named Jedd Pugliese.
The officer scored several body hits while Tamerlan failed to find his target.
When his ammunition ran out, he threw his gun at Pugliese.
He then ran for it.
Pugliese and another officer ran after him.
They soon got to him and dragged him to the ground.
But now Jahar jumped behind the wheel of the SUV and proceeded to run down the officers.
They officers quickly jumped aside, and Jahar unwittingly drove over top of his brother,
dragging the body thirty feet down the street.
Leaving his brother dying on the road, Jahar sped away.
It took nearly a minute for the police to give chase.
By then, he’d ditched the car and run off into the suburbs.
A huge manhunt now swung into action, with police officers scouring backyards in dozens
of suburbs and thousands of people being ordered to evacuate their homes.
In the early afternoon of Friday, April 19, a Watertown homeowner reported seeing blood
on the side of a boat in his yard.
A SWAT team rushed to the home.
Jahar had been hiding in the covered boat for hours.
The officers tempted to coax Jahar to come out with tear gas.
When that failed they fired bullets to scare him out.
In the end an imposing officer approached the boat and loudly demanded that Jahar come
out immediately.
A childish voice replied . . . But it’s going to hurt!
Police officers then moved in and helped Jahar make his way down from the boat.
He was severely wounded, with either bullet or shrapnel injuries to the neck, ear and
thigh.
He was rushed to hospital where he was operated on.
According to one of his nurses, he cried for two days straight after his operation.
When the police searched the inside of the boat that had been Jahar’s final hideout,
the found the following message written in blood . . .
The bombings were in retribution for the U.S. crimes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan
that the victims of the Boston bombing were collateral damage in the same way innocent
victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world.
Jahar’s trial began on January 5, 2015.
He was charged with four counts of murder, along with 26 other charges.
The prosecution sought the death penalty.
Even though Massachusetts had outlawed the death penalty in 1988, the federal charges
against Tsarnaev made him eligible for execution.
He plead not guilty to all of the charges.
The defense position was that Tamerlan had been the mastermind of the enterprise and
that Jahar had been coerced into cooperating.
Tsarnaev showed no emotion throughout the trial until his family members took the stand.
At that point he wept bitterly.
On April 8, 2015, Jahar was found guilty on all 30 charges.
A month later he was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev now sits in the notorious supermax prison ADX Florence in Fremont County,
Colorado.
Meanwhile his defense team are working on an appeal to his death sentence.