The Boston Marathon is the oldest annual marathon in the world, and on the third Monday of April, Patriot’s Day, people from around the globe meet in Boston to compete against tens of thousands of runners. As scores of spectators gathered near the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013, two bombs went off nearby within seconds of each other, killing three people and injuring hundreds more. After a massive search effort, police ultimately caught the perpetrators — brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev — but not before engaging them in a deadly shootout. The docuseries American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing, from director Floyd Russ (Untold: Malice at the Palace) details the tragic ending to the 2013 marathon via interviews with former police officers, spectators, marathon runners, EMTs, journalists and others who speak about the day’s harrowing events and how the bombing has impacted their lives. Watch the trailer below.
Through interviews with victims, runners, first responders and other witnesses, the docuseries discusses the history of the Boston Marathon and Patriot’s Day, the timeline of events and the chaos that followed — including the devastating casualties and the hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers that led to two deaths. The three-part series also takes an in-depth look at how the brothers became radicalized and why they targeted the marathon in the first place. For a detailed timeline of events, click here.
The attacks occurred in Boston on April 15, 2013, during the annual Boston Marathon, whose route spans across several Massachusetts towns and ends in the city center.
According to the doc, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were radicalized over time before planning the attack, with 19-year-old Dzhokhar in particular being described as well-liked and kind. “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,” says then-Boston Globe reporter David Filipov in the series.
American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing is available to stream now.
