Every year, Boston celebrates Patriots’ Day on the third Monday of April with the Boston Marathon, the oldest annual marathon in the world. It is one of the most beloved running events not just for Bostonians, but for athletes around the globe. But on April 15, 2013, domestic terrorists detonated two pressure cooker bombs near the finish line, killing three people and injuring hundreds more. What followed was a national effort to track down the two young men who carried out the attack: brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Netflix’s American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing tells the story of the terrible bombing and what radicalized the brothers to carry it out. People who knew the then-19-year-old Dzhokhar described him in the series as well-liked, charming, humble and kind. So why did he and his brother carry out the bombings? “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.
The three-part series uses computer visualizations and archive footage of the events, as well as interviews with reporters, survivors, law enforcement and people who knew the Tsarnaev brothers to narrate exactly what happened in the harrowing 100 hours after the bombing that ultimately led to ultimately led to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death and his brother Dzhokhar’s apprehension.
Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva.
2002-2003:
Anzor Tsarnaev moves his wife and four children, including Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, from Russia to the Boston area. The family was able to receive asylum because Anzor was an ethnic Chechen fleeing oppression. In the series, Filipov says Anzor “was seeking the American dream.” But, he adds, “Then they get here, and this dream, it wasn’t real.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a boxing match in 2009.
2008:
Boxing trainer John Allan begins working with a talented Tamerlan Tsarnaev in his early 20s. Allan says Tamerlan was good enough to have made it to the Olympics, but couldn’t compete in qualifying events because he was not a citizen. Tamerlan claimed that he believed he was barred because of his Muslim identity and that officials didn’t want him representing the US.
September 11, 2011: Two years before the Boston bombing:
Tamerlan’s best friend, 25-year-old mixed martial arts fighter Brendan Mess is a victim in a triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts. In the docuseries, Allan recalls Tamerlan being unsympathetic, saying, “That’s the type of stuff that happens to you” [if you do bad things]. In 2013, a few weeks after the bombing, police and the FBI interview Tamerlan’s friend Ibragim Todashev, who allegedly confesses to killing three men, including Mess. During the confession, agents say Ibragim tried to attack them, and he is shot and killed by the FBI.
Summer 2012:
Tamerlan travels to Dagestan, which investigators believe may have played a role in Tamerlan’s radicalization. In the docuseries, Boston Globe reporter Filipov says, “[The bombing] probably wasn’t something he decided [to do] when he went to Dagestan. I think he went to Dagestan trying to find meaning.”
A view of the finish line during the 2013 Marathon.
Hour 00 Monday, April 15, 2013, 2:49 PM:
Five hours into the race, two pressure cooker bombs go off near the finish line.
Hour 02, Monday, April 15, 2013:
Law enforcement seals off the crime scene. Bomb techs sweep the area for more explosives, which they do not find.
Reporter Phillip Martin.
Hour 03, Monday, April 15, 2013:
State troopers track down anyone at the airport who may have photos of the finish line on their cameras. Police send investigators out to question people injured in the bombing. They receive a report of a “suspicious person” who was taken to the emergency room, an injured Saudi man. He is questioned by the police. In the series, senior investigative reporter for GBH News Phillip Martin says that the man became an early suspect, which colors the rest of the investigation as a crime potentially “related to Al Qaeda.”
Hour 05, Monday, April 15, 2013:
Police send a SWAT team and detectives to the suspect’s home where they find “suspicious things” like official documents and passports. The police ultimately determine that their suspect was actually a victim, who was injured in the bombing. “He happened to be a Saudi near the finish line who was living in an age of Islamophobia,” Martin says. The city holds a press conference seeking information from the public.
A cell phone image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the white hat.
Hour 11, Tuesday, April 16, 2013:
The Boston FBI’s Cyber Division begins collecting hundreds of thousands of videos from civilians and businesses on the route to and from the finish line.
Hour 17, Tuesday April 16, 2013:
Evidence response teams find two backpacks at the crime scene that they believe carried the bombs. Bomb experts say the devices were remote-controlled.
President Barack Obama speaking at a press conference.
Hour 21, Tuesday April 16, 2013:
President Obama calls the bombing an act of terrorism.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Hour 23, Tuesday April 16, 2013:
The Cyber Division receives video evidence from a restaurant near where the second explosion went off, which shows a young man dropping a backpack on the ground and walking away as the first bomb detonates. They also receive a call from a civilian who was across the street from the explosion, and has photos of the same young man with the bag on the ground. They call him “White Hat.”
Hour 53, Wednesday, April 17, 2013:
Law enforcement continues collecting video evidence from businesses along Boylston Street, when they find surveillance footage from a bar that identifies “White Hat” walking around the corner with another man carrying a backpack who they identify as “Black Hat.” They now have pictures of two suspects.
Hour 65, Thursday, April 18, 2013:
President Obama attends a memorial service in Boston. Images of the suspects are leaked to a Boston news outlet. Authorities had feared that making such images public would cause the suspects to panic and engage in reckless and violent behavior. Learning of the leak, the FBI decides to release the pictures of the suspects.
Danny Meng in the docuseries.
Hour 80, Thursday, April 18, 2013:
Police are called to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. MIT police officer Sean Collier has been shot and killed. Soon afterward, 26-year-old tech entrepreneur Danny Meng pulls over to respond to a text while driving. A car pulls over behind him, and one of the passengers gets out of the car and holds Danny at gunpoint. After driving for a while, with Dzhokhar tailing the Mercedes in another car, Tamerlan forces Danny into the passenger seat and takes the wheel, and Dzhokhar gets into the Mercedes. Tamerlan tells Danny that he carried out the Boston Marathon bombing and killed a police officer in Cambridge and begins to drive to NYC.
Hour 81, Friday April 19:
Danny convinces the men to stop at a gas station in Cambridge to fill up before making the long drive to NYC. Seeing an opportunity, Danny manages to escape from his car, and runs across the street to another gas station where he asks a clerk to call the police. Using the transmitter number for Danny’s GPS system, police track down the Mercedes to Watertown. Cambridge police alert Watertown police, who begin tailing the car.
A firefight begins in the middle of a residential street between the brothers and Watertown police, who do not know yet that they were the Boston bombers. All Watertown units are called to the Dexter Avenue area. Sergeant John MacLellan maneuvers his vehicle toward the Mercedes, and the brothers throw pipe bombs and a pressure cooker bomb at law enforcement. Boston police and Cambridge police send units to Watertown. In the series, MacLellan recalls that the firefight had a high potential of civilian casualties: “At least one of the residents came out three times.” After being shot, Tamerlan charges toward MacLellan, where police begin to restrain him. Dzhokhar gets into the Mercedes and speeds toward police, running over Tamerlan before fleeing. While no residents are injured in the shoot-out, their homes are riddled with bullet holes. Police quickly locate the abandoned Mercedes, but Dzhokhar is nowhere to be found.
Hour 82, Friday April 19:
Watertown police learn the suspects are the Boston Marathon bombers. Tamerlan is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. Police identify him, and the FBI learns it has a file on him.
Law enforcement approach an area where a suspect is hiding in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Hour 83, Friday April 19:
Police identify the missing suspect as Tamerlan’s brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Law enforcement begins searching Watertown house by house.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick with Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
Hour 84, Friday, April 19:
Governor Deval Patrick holds a press conference. Public transit is suspended, and some one million residents across eastern Massachusetts are asked to shelter in place.
Dzhokhar’s schoolmate, Youssef Eddafali.
Hour 88, Friday April 19:
Police search the Tsarnaev residence in Cambridge. They find bomb-making paraphernalia, but Dzhokhar is not there. Police question Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell. Police release Tamerlan and Dzhokhar’s names to the public. “When I found out that it was Dzhokhar, I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” says schoolmate Youssef Eddafali in the series. “I had cognitive dissonance.”
A view of the quad at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus.
Hour 95, Friday April 19:
Massachusetts State Police dispatches a tactical team to Dzhokhar’s apartment at UMass Dartmouth. Students are evacuated from campus.
Hour 98, Friday April 19:
President Obama contests the governor’s shelter in place order, which is lifted at 6:03 p.m. Public transit goes back in service, and law enforcement sends their teams home for the night.
The boat in which Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding is seen from a police helicopter.
Hour 99, Friday April 19:
Police receive a call at 6:42 p.m. from a Watertown resident who says a person is hiding in the boat in their backyard, the location of which is only one block away from where Dzhokhar abandoned Danny’s stolen Mercedes. Multiple units respond to the call, including police officers who, according to reporter Phillip Martin in the docuseries, are not authorized to be there. Without warning, police begin shooting. “It was initially reported as a shoot-out. Of course, now we know it was a shoot-in,” says Martin in the series, adding that 126 rounds hit the boat. Some more bullets missed the boat, and were fired into the neighborhood. In American Manhunt, the FBI claims police began shooting because they saw a gun.
Hour 100, Friday April 19:
A state police helicopter pilot says there is movement in the boat. The FBI hostage recovery director receives permission to throw a smoke grenade and flash-bang into the boat, even though the flash-bang could blow up the house. After a period of time, Dzhokhar gives himself up, and he is unarmed. Says Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis in the docuseries, there was a lack of “command and control” during both shoot-outs that prevented a coordinated police response. Boston Police Superintendent Billy Evans says, “What happened was one officer fired, everyone starts to fire.”
Ismail Fenni of the Islamic Society of Boston
Saturday, April 20:
Law enforcement question Dzhokhar in the hospital, and he asks for a lawyer. Police say they found a “jihadi manifesto” written inside the boat. “Whenever I hear somebody speak about jihad in the connotation of killing, I cringe,” Ismail Fenni of the Islamic Society of Boston says in the series. “Jihad means to struggle. We 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.”
After several days of questioning, Dzhokhar is finally read his Miranda rights. The FBI investigates his friends. “The FBI came down on everybody, but I know they specifically targeted my Muslim peers way more than any other demographic,” Eddafali says in the docuseries. Right-wing media push the narrative of a “radical Islam attack” on Boston and use their platforms to call for racial profiling of Muslims. Police say Dzhokhar’s friends tried to dispose of evidence against him in a garbage dump after they recognized him on the news. They are charged with obstruction of justice.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is seen giving the middle finger to a security camera inside his jail cell.
March 4, 2015:
Dzhokhar’s trial begins. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office releases an image supposedly showing Dzhokhar giving the finger to a camera in his prison cell. In the series, Ortiz also mentions video footage of Dzhokhar calmly shopping after the bombing as an indication of his lack of remorse. The judge does not allow the Waltham killings into evidence, preventing the defense from making a case that Tamerlan, suspected in the gruesome murder of his own best friend, was capable of ruthlessness and that Dzhokhar was under his influence, says reporter Phillip Martin.
After being overturned by appeal, Dzhokhar’s death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 2022. He is appealing again.
