At around 3 p.m. on Monday, April 15, 2013, the streets of Boston were split by the sounds of two homemade explosive devices, killing three people, and injuring nearly 300 more, some of whom were hurt so badly that in order to save their lives, they had to have body parts amputated.
The crowds gathered that day to watch one of the world’s marquee sporting events: The Boston Marathon. Two brothers committed the Boston Marathon bombing, both immigrants of Chechen descent: 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now known as the Boston Bombers.
Dzhokhar later said he and his brother planned the attacks in response to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were otherwise unaffiliated with any terrorist group. Before that information was known, however, more than four days of terror and uncertainty followed the carnage on April 15 as Boston went on lockdown and law enforcement scoured the city.
What happened at the Boston Marathon?
About two days after the Boston bombing, police identified the Tsarnaev brothers from surveillance footage from businesses in the area where the blasts happened. The Tsarnaev brothers used improved explosive devices, or IEDs, built from pressure cookers and operated by remote control, using instructions found online, according to FBI documents.
By April 18, the Tsarnaev brothers were aware police were after them, as their photos were shared worldwide. On the run and armed with an arsenal of weapons and more explosives, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar shot and killed a security officer near the MIT campus, and the next day, they carjacked a vehicle, planning to escape to Manhattan. The driver later escaped and alerted the authorities, who caught up with the Tsarnaev brothers in Watertown, a Boston suburb.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gun battle
In Watertown, the Tsarnaev brothers engaged police in a firefight with still more homemade explosives. Tamerlan was injured and taken into custody, but later died in the hospital. Meanwhile, one officer was injured, likely by friendly fire, according to The New York Times. Dzhokhar was also wounded in the gun battle, but he escaped in the stolen vehicle. He ditched the car and his cell phones and evaded the authorities until the next day.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was discovered hiding in a boat
Five days after the Boston bombings, Dzhokhar was found hiding and badly injured under a tarp in a boat in someone’s backyard. While hidden, Dzhokhar explained why the Tsarnaev brothers planned the attack, in a message written on the ship itself. Once the boat’s owner alerted the police that Dzhokhar was on their property, more than 100 officers converged on the scene and another fight broke out. Eventually, Dzokhar surrendered.
Jeff Campbell of the Boston Transit Police SWAT team, who was there when Dzokhar was taken into custody, later told CBS News the following,
We’re commanding him to get down off the boat. We don’t know if he has a weapon or some type of explosive ignition switch that he could just reach down and hit. We waited to a point where, as we were getting closer to him, and both hands came up, we saw that both hands were open. We bolted out in front of the shield at that point. It was the one chance we had and we wanted to end this for everybody.
via CBS News
Dzokhar was convicted and sentenced to death
Two years later, in 2015, Dzokhar Tsarnaev was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was housed in a Colorado federal supermax prison called the “The Alcatraz of the Rockies,” alongside another infamous bomber, the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. In 2020, Dzokhar’s death sentence was vacated when an appeals court ruled the jury was influenced by media coverage. But two years later the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it.
As of 2024, Dzokhar’s fate remained uncertain, as potential juror bias remained an issue, and the case remained locked up in appeals. Whether the younger Tsarnaev brother committed the crimes was never in question, but rather, the appeals courts sought to decide whether the death sentence was justified or if Dzokhar, who was then 30, should spend the rest of his life in prison, instead.
Referring to potential juror bias, Marc Furile, who had his leg amputated after the Boston bombing said,
A bias on what? The fact that he took a bomb, put it down, and blew up innocent people? We saw it on tape, the evidence is there. Does it matter how anybody on that jury felt? His actions were what they were. If someone had a bias, would it have changed anything? He still killed people. He still took and dismembered people.”
via CBS News
As of this report, Dzokhar’s appeals case was ongoing.