[foreboding music playing]
[Filipov] To really understand what happened,
we have to go back.
[tape rewinding]
[Filipov] 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. - [camera clicking]
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.
[camera clicks]
And then they get here...
[camera clicks]
...and this dream, it wasn't real.
And things just don't go according to plan.
[dramatic music playing]
- [sirens wailing] - [police radio chattering]
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.
[ominous music playing]
One of the suspects was dead. The other had gotten away.
We were out there all night long searching hallways, garages.
[Martin] 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."
[dramatic music playing]
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.
[inaudible]
The decision was made to shut down the city.
[police siren blares]
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.
[reporter 1] One million people on lockdown in Boston right now.
As you heard there, everything closed.
[reporter 2] This is just unprecedented.
The city turned into a ghost town.
There was nobody on the street.
Everybody abided by it.
[reporter 3] 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.
[DesLauriers] We were surging federal state and local resources into Watertown
to find the individual we had identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
[sirens wailing]
[reporter] 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.
[distant sirens wailing]
Many as far away as New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
[no audible speech]
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.
[distant sirens wailing]
[reporter] There's an ongoing manhunt for a person
wanted in connection with Monday's marathon bombing.
Residents in Watertown are advised to stay indoors.
[ominous music playing]
[man] 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.
- [man 1] Everything's fine. - You guys are good?
- [man 2] Yep. - Okay.
The police searched with the assumption that someone may have abetted his escape.
- Cellar's all set? Everything's locked up? - [man] Yup.
- Well, we have an open garage in the back. - We'll just check that.
- [man] Okay. But the attic's locked. - Okay. All right. Thank you.
[man] Thanks.
[woman] Oh my God. Look, they're everywhere.
[man] 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.
[reporter 1] What's the last 24 hours or so been like?
Horrifying.
[reporter 2] What does it feel like?
Terror. It feels... It's horrendous. It makes me nervous.
I'm scared to death. I'm scared.
[officer] 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.
[helicopter whirring]
[man whistles]
It wasn't clear where he went. Was there anyone else involved?
Are there other explosives in the city? We just didn't know.
[Davis] This investigation was definitely two-pronged.
One was the hard search for the suspect in the area,
which took a lot of our attention.
[ominous music continues]
The other part of it was to understand these two brothers.
- [camera clicking] - How they did what they did,
and importantly to find out if anybody else was part of that conspiracy.
[ominous music continues]
[DesLauriers] We subsequently learned that the Tsarnaev brothers
lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So we immediately sought search warrants to conduct searches of that residence.
[camera clicking]
The evidence response teams were quickly finding bomb-making paraphernalia.
[camera clicks]
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.
[sirens wailing]
[Davis] She met Tamerlan and became a practicing Muslim.
She was interviewed.
- She was not cooperative. - [camera clicking]
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.
- [camera clicking] - [ominous music playing]
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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[foreboding music playing]
[DesLauriers] It's almost impossible to control media leaks
during an investigation of this magnitude.
[indistinct chatter]
[officer] Quiet, please!
So we made the decision to release their names.
[ominous music playing]
The dead suspect has been identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
- [reporter 2] Tamerlan. - [reporter 3] Tamerlan.
The one still being sought is Dzhokhar.
- [reporter 4] Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. - [reporter 5] Dzhokhar.
- [sirens wailing] - [Filipov] 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.
[in Chechen] 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.
[reporter, in English] 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. - [cameras clicking]
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.
[Aaronson] 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.
[cameras clicking]
He was on the wrestling team.
[spectators cheer]
[indistinct shouting]
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...
[man singing, chanting]
...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?"
[chanting]
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!"
[laughs] 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.
[camera clicking]
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.
[Youssef] 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.
[ominous music playing]
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.
[spectators cheering]
[Youssef] Dzhokhar ended up going to UMass Dartmouth.
[camera clicks]
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."
[ominous music continues]
That was... the last time I saw him.
[ominous music continues]
[Aaronson] 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.
[foreboding music playing]
[music fades]
We learned Dzhokhar has an apartment at UMass Dartmouth.
[suspenseful music playing]
Mass state police dispatches a tactical team to that apartment complex.
[sirens wailing]
I had another HRT, Hostage Rescue Team,
being flown up on Black Hawks from Virginia.
[reporter] 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.
[man] 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.
[officer] 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."
[man breathing heavily]
[man, whispering] What the fuck?
The bottom line, what we want? He's not there.
That was a very deflating experience for us.
[Martin] They did not find a thing.
It came to a dead end, and they were baffled by it.
[Foley] 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.
[distant police siren]
[Evans] One of my commanders, he says,
"We got a couple more blocks to do before we're done."
[ominous music playing]
[Foley] 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.
[Martin] 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.
[Davis] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[Foley] 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."
[Davis] 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.
[foreboding music playing]
[operator] 911, this line is being recorded.
What's the address of your emergency?
[man] 67 Franklin Street, Watertown.
[operator] Okay, do you need police, fire, or ambulance?
[man] Uh, I have a... a boat in my yard.
There's blood all over the inside. There's a person in the boat.
[operator] Are you sure?
[man] I just looked in the boat.
- [operator] Okay, stay on the phone. - [man] Okay.
[Evans] 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."
[indistinct police radio chatter]
And we followed him quietly down to the front of 67 Franklin Street.
[suspenseful music playing]
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.
[gunfire]
[explosion]
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.
[Evans] Can we get a TAC unit up here, please? 67 Franklin.
[Evans] But the problem at that point is once it went out,
everyone started to come.
[officer] 468 Sunnybank.
[Evans] 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!"
[laughs] 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?"
[reporter] If you're tuning in right now, there has been what appears to be
a major development in what has been a painstaking search.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Martin] 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.
[reporter] 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."
[Evans] Yeah, we don't want too much help here, okay?
I knew it would make for a chaotic scene.
[officer] Watertown control to cars, do not approach the boat.
Set up a perimeter.
[Evans] 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.
[man] There's more coming in.
[Evans] When we got the situation calmed down,
it was nice and quiet.
And then, all of a sudden...
[gunfire]
[distant sirens wailing]
[gunfire crackling]
[gunfire continues]
- [man] That's gunfire. That's gunfire. - That's gunfire.
Hearing that?
[gunfire continues]
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."
[Evans] Everyone hold their fire! Hold their fire!
[officer] All units, hold your fire. Hold your fire.
[Evans] 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. - [camera clicking]
[Martin] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[Foley] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[helicopter whirring]
I still didn't know if he was still alive.
[intense music playing]
[officer 1] Tango 9'er 3B. State police air wing tells me
that there's definitely... There's definitely movement in the boat.
[officer 2] 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."
[officer 3] HRT moving up, left side.
[Foley] 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.
[intense music playing]
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."
[explosion]
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."
[officer] Fire's coming down Walnut. Fire's coming down Walnut.
[reporter] We're now being pushed back by law enforcement with force,
trailing back a little bit behind a dumpster.
[helicopter flying]
[explosions]
[reporter] 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.
- [helicopter whirring] - [sirens wailing]
They negotiated with him.
They got him to sit up.
[dramatic music playing]
[Foley] He's standing.
They're asking him to lift his shirt.
Doesn't appear to be armed.
Is this really going to happen?
[radio static crackles]
[officer] He's in custody. He's in custody.
[Evans] Metro SWAT took command.
Subject in custody.
[officer] Subject in custody. Subject in custody.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
[uplifting music playing]
"In custody." It was the best words I ever heard.
You could hear people just clapping.
[Evans] 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.
[reporter] 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.
[smattering of applause]
[man] Fucking scumbag motherfucker!
[siren chirps]
[Davis] 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.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[siren blaring]
[Ortiz] There were all these people...
lining up the street.
[voice breaking] I felt so patriotic.
I felt so part of this country and part of what makes it good.
[crowd] USA! USA!
[DesLauriers] 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 ♪
[DesLauriers] 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.
[crowd] USA! USA! USA!
[Eddafali] 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.
[crowd chanting boisterously]
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.
[David Ortiz] All right. All right, Boston.
[crowd cheering]
This jersey that we wear today, it doesn't say Red Sox. It say Boston.
[crowd cheering]
[David Ortiz] We want to thank the whole police department
for the great job that they did this past week.
This is our fucking city.
[cheering and applause]
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.
[suspenseful music playing]
Even though we had arrested Dzhokhar, the investigation was just beginning.
[Swindon] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[Ortiz] 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.
[Ortiz] 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.
[Ortiz] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[Youssef] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[Ortiz] 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.
[Foley] 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.
[Fenni] 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.
[ominous music playing]
[distant sirens wailing]
[Martin] 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.
[no audio]
[DesLauriers] My understanding was that Tamerlan
was involved in that.
There were drugs involved.
But I can't really comment on that too much.
[Davis] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[ominous music playing]
[Filipov] 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.
[intense music playing]
[laughing]
[man, in Arabic] Peace be unto you!
You see the result of bullying by the Makhachkala brothers
toward their brother who has come here from America.
[man, in Arabic] This is him.
And also toward the Jamaat of Kizlyar, represented by...
[Filipov in English] 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.
[in Arabic] We call for what is approved of,
and forbid what is disapproved of.
And I remind you to get on the path of truth.
[man] This is just abuse!
Allahu Akbar!
[Filipov in English] It's not a militant group.
[foreboding music playing]
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.
[camera clicks]
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.
[ominous music playing]
[sirens blaring]
[Martin] 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.
[helicopter whirring]
[Karen] 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.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
[Martin] 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.
[Kevin] 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.
[dramatic music playing]
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.
[helicopter whirring]
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.
[Evans] 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.
[Filipov] 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.
[Fenni] 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.
[Foley] 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.
[Davis] 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.
[Danny] 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.
[DesLauriers] 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.
[crowd applauding, cheering]
[Evans] 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.
[starting pistol fires]
[crowd cheers]
[reporter] The runners in the first wave of this Patriots' Day Boston Marathon
are taking off.
[audio fades]
[somber music playing]
[somber music continues]
[dramatic music playing]