Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice

by Helman, Scott

  • • •

  At Thursday’s service, when the president had delivered a public warning to the bombers, his words were generic, almost boilerplate. “We will find you,” he said. “We will hold you accountable.” Wasn’t that what political and law enforcement leaders always said at moments like this? Boston wanted to believe him, wanted it to be true. But it was such an easy thing to say. As far as the public knew, no progress had been made in finding the perpetrators. Were they still in the area? In the country? Would they ever be found? It had been nearly seventy-two hours since the explosions. The hunger for progress was palpable.

  As Obama spoke those words, though, he surely knew more than he was letting on. It had been more than twenty-four hours since investigators had zeroed in on the two suspects, the men they were calling White Hat and Black Hat. As the president traveled to the cathedral in Boston, US Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged publicly the existence—and promise—of the surveillance video. Speaking elliptically, Napolitano told a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee that the FBI had come upon some footage that had “raised the question” about some suspicious characters. She said she would not characterize them as suspects, however.

  For investigators in Boston, the men’s menacing presence on Boylston Street had left little doubt about their involvement—that these were the guys they wanted. The only question was how to go after them. Investigators initially tried using facial recognition technology to identify Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but the angle at which the cameras had caught them—looking down at their faces, and from the side—made that difficult. That meant the images could not be readily cross-checked against photos stored in government databases. This left authorities with two primary options: release the photos right away and seek the public’s help in identifying the suspects, or keep the pictures private and see if law enforcement could somehow covertly track them down. Behind the scenes, state, local, and federal law enforcement leaders debated vigorously which path to take. Either way, the stakes and the risk were grave.

  Later in the day on Wednesday, around a table at FBI headquarters, Boston Police commissioner Ed Davis made his case to Rick DesLauriers, the local FBI chief. Davis, worried principally about public safety, wanted to put the photos out there, believing it would hasten the arrest of the suspects and minimize the potential for further mayhem. FBI officials, focused on building the strongest criminal case they could, were initially cool on the idea. They came from a different culture. They specialized in working discreetly, methodically building cases over time, acting only when everything was in hand. One concern, for example, was that showing the suspects’ photos would prompt the men to destroy evidence, making it more difficult to prosecute the case. “If your main goal is prosecution, then you look at things one way. If your main goal is a larger goal of public safety, you might make different decisions,” Davis said. “They don’t necessarily line up.” Tim Alben, the head of the Massachusetts State Police, also worried that putting the pictures out would cause the suspects to flee, or go underground. “You always want to apprehend someone when you have control of the situation,” he said. “Not when someone has been tipped you’re coming through the door.”

  Around 6:00 Thursday morning, DesLauriers called Davis. He told the police commissioner he had been thinking about it all night, and that he had come around: He now agreed that they should put the photos out. “Everybody wanted to do the right thing,” Davis said. “Ultimately, we came together on it.” Local FBI leaders, though, were getting push-back from Washington. It took much of Thursday to get all parties on board. Finally, in midafternoon, the FBI put out word: It would update the public on the bombing investigation at 5:00 P.M.

  • • •

  Sixty miles away, on the campus of UMass–Dartmouth, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life as a carefree college sophomore was about to end. He had one hour of anonymity left. At 4:02 P.M., with the FBI preparing to release photos of the men they wanted, Dzhokhar used his swipe card to enter his dorm room. It would be the last time he used the card on campus. Dzhokhar had already made what would be his last posting on Twitter the previous day. He had retweeted a message from a Zimbabwean scholar, Mufti Ismail Menk, that was almost absurdly off point, given his current situation: Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable. After that, silence. He and his brother had enjoyed three days of relative freedom since the bombing. But they had failed to prepare for what was coming, as if they had imagined they’d never be found. They had little money. They seemed to have no plan. And they had run out of time.

  At 5:20 P.M., DesLauriers strode to a podium set up in a third-floor ballroom at the Sheraton Boston, flanked by the state’s top law enforcement figures. Since the bombing, he said, the FBI, Boston Police, and other agencies had chased down thousands of leads and tips. Now it was time to ask for assistance. “Today, we are enlisting the public’s help in identifying the two suspects,” he said. As DesLauriers spoke, the world got its first glimpse of two of the most wanted men in the city’s history. There, unveiled on two display boards set up to his left, were eight photographs culled from surveillance video, four of suspect number one—dark coat, black hat, sunglasses, with a bulky backpack—and four of suspect number two—white hat turned backward, tufts of dark curly hair peeking out, a bag slung over his right shoulder. Underneath each image were the words ARMED AND DANGEROUS. News photographers’ cameras began clicking furiously. TV cameras zeroed in. In a week full of dramatic moments, this was one of the biggest. Here, for the first time, were the faces of Boston’s terror.

  In an instant, the images traveled the globe, showing up on TV screens, smartphones, and computers far and wide. Their faces quickly lodged in the public’s consciousness, unforgettable after a single study. Mindful of the errant speculation by online vigilantes, DesLauriers pointedly urged the public and the media to rely on these images alone in trying to help. He laid out the case for why authorities deemed them suspects—how video cameras had captured the men walking together along Boylston Street, how White Hat could be seen dropping a bag in front of Forum restaurant minutes before the bomb there exploded. “We know the public will play a critical role in identifying and locating these individuals,” DesLauriers said. “Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, coworkers, or family members.” The nation, he said, was counting on their help and also their discretion. God forbid anyone should try to detain the suspects themselves. “We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous,” he said. “No one should approach them.”

  Back at UMass–Dartmouth that night, Pamala Rolon, a senior and a resident assistant in the dorms, returned from class and turned on the TV news. Pictures of the bombing suspects flashed across the screen. One of them looked faintly like a guy she knew on campus. “We made a joke, like, ‘That could be Dzhokhar,’” she said. “But then we thought it just couldn’t be him. Dzhokhar? Never.” It made no sense; the slacker college kid she knew would never be capable of something like this. One of Dzhokhar’s Twitter followers sent him a copy of his image from the FBI pictures, writing, Is this you? I didn’t know you went to the marathon!!!! By the time Dzhokhar arrived back in Cambridge sometime that night, his face was known to millions. Tips about his identity, and that of his older brother, had begun pouring in to federal agents. The brothers’ sudden notoriety may have inspired their desperate plan to escape to New York, where authorities came to believe they saw their next target: Times Square, the fabled “crossroads of the world.” But the Tsarnaevs hadn’t set aside money or even a getaway car for the journey—they had to figure the green Honda Civic Dzhokhar drove would soon be known to police. They were also short on weapons; police would later recover only one handgun and a BB gun that they could trace to the pair. In Thursday’s waning hours, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan set out to expand their arsenal, and they had an idea where to look
.

  • • •

  Sean A. Collier was born to be a cop. There was little doubt he would be one day. As the second-youngest of six siblings in the Collier household, raised in the Boston suburb of Wilmington, north of the city, he used to make siren noises as he chased his brother Andrew around. “You’re breaking the law!” he’d yell. “You’re breaking the law!” In the car, if they passed someone who had been pulled over, young Sean would sing the theme song to the show COPS. As his sister Nicole Lynch explained to CNN, Sean was born with an instinctual sense of right and wrong. “There was no in between,” she said. “Either you did the right thing or you did the wrong thing. And if you did the wrong thing, you needed to be punished.” He also possessed a deep sense of compassion, as if he felt an obligation to look out for others. Once, as a six-year-old, he was sitting in the booth of a Papa Gino’s Pizzeria with his mother, Kelley, and his little brother, when he noticed a woman sitting alone nearby, crying.

  “Mum,” he whispered. “You’ve got to go talk to that lady.”

  Kelley glanced at the woman and told her son it was best to leave the woman be.

  “Sean,” she said, “I’m sure she just wants to be alone.”

  “Maybe she has no one,” Sean replied. “You’re a nurse, Mum. Please go talk to her.”

  Her son’s appeal to her conscience too strong to resist, Kelley walked over to the woman and asked if she was okay. The woman said she was fine, but that she appreciated the gesture.

  Sean was known, too, for his love of American flags, drawing them constantly with crayons, pencils, and markers and then handing them out to family, friends, and strangers. He was also known for a charitable side that showed early. In high school, moved by stories he’d heard on the radio of kids overcoming cancer, he went home one night and made a donation to the Jimmy Fund, which supports cancer research at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He set up an automatic withdrawal from his bank account, commencing a stream of gifts that would continue for the rest of his life.

  After high school, Collier studied criminal justice at Salem State University, traveling to England to learn about rehabilitating offenders and researching the plight of Mexican women used as drug mules. He graduated from the university with honors in 2009. Tamerlan Tsarnaev partied with friends at Salem State around the same time, the first of two periods in which the men may have encountered each other—a potential link law enforcement officials would later decline to discuss. After college, Collier worked in information technology for the police department in Somerville, a dense, diverse city just north of Boston, but he longed to join the police ranks himself. He graduated from the MBTA Transit Police Academy in 2010, and then in January 2012 he got his first real police assignment, joining the security force of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He became one of nearly sixty officers charged with protecting the Cambridge campus and its roughly eleven thousand students. It didn’t take long for Collier to build relationships within the MIT community. In a place that draws students, faculty, and visitors from every corner of the world, Collier had a knack for making foreigners feel welcomed and comfortable. “Sean was one of these guys who really looked at police work as a calling,” said MIT police chief John DiFava.

  Collier joined the MIT Outing Club and enjoyed climbing New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, even in winter. For one “retro” hike, he donned plaid flannel and yodeled from the heights at the top of his lungs. He played on a local kickball team that called itself Kickhopopotamus, participating in a national tournament in Las Vegas. And he was active in Somerville boxing circles—the second instance in which he may have crossed paths with Tamerlan, who trained at one of the city’s gyms for a time. Collier’s dream was to become a police officer in Somerville, where he lived. And it looked promising. He had scored well on a civil service exam. Around Easter, in late March of 2013, he told his family he was going in for a final interview. Afterward he announced proudly that he had gotten the job and would be sworn in in June. The news was bittersweet for John DiFava. The MIT chief knew Collier’s departure would be a big loss for his department, but he also knew Collier had been pining for a job like this. “I said, ‘Sean, you owe me nothing. You’ve done a fine job for me,’” DiFava said. “I would never stand in the way of someone trying to do better for themselves. I was thrilled for him.”

  On the night of Thursday, April 18, Collier was nearing the end of his 3:00-to-11:15 P.M. shift. In the days after the marathon bombing, DiFava had ordered additional security for the MIT campus. Collier was stationed at the corner of Vassar and Main Streets, near Cambridge’s Kendall Square, a typically placid neighborhood that served as Boston’s unofficial headquarters for innovation and technology. Collier was positioned at a spot where drivers would sometimes take a chance, making an illegal shortcut through campus to avoid a red light. Putting an officer there both discouraged cut-throughs and provided a high-profile police presence for the MIT community, at a time when no gesture of reassurance was too much. Around 9:30 P.M., DiFava pulled his car next to Collier’s cruiser.

  The chief asked his young officer what he was up to.

  “Just making sure everybody behaves,” Collier told him.

  The two men chatted easily for several minutes. And then DiFava pulled away.

  Shortly before 10:30 P.M., Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, their photos now plastered everywhere, drove undetected toward the MIT campus in the green Honda Civic. They had packed the car with five explosive devices, a Ruger P95 9mm semiautomatic handgun, additional ammunition, a machete, and a hunting knife. They approached Collier’s cruiser from behind. As Collier sat behind the wheel, they ambushed him, shooting him five times at close range, twice in the head. An assassination. “He didn’t stand a chance,” said DiFava, who was home barely a half hour before getting the devastating news from his deputy. The two bombing suspects then sought to steal Collier’s weapon but couldn’t figure out how to remove it from its locking holster. Within minutes, the Tsarnaev brothers were gone, their attempts to add a gun to their stash having ended in failure.

  As news of the shooting spread around campus, to the media, and to Boston-area police, the awful truth emerged. The beloved twenty-seven-year-old with big promise and a bigger heart, the man who loved his new black Ford F-150 truck, who loved country music, who paused at noon when Boston’s country music station, WKLB-FM, played the national anthem, was gone. The grief, though, was accompanied by an even greater sense of urgency. After three quietly tense days of investigative work, the sirens were blaring again. The Tsarnaev brothers, five hours after their photos had been broadcast worldwide, had resumed their reign of terror—police officials knew it in their gut. The murder of a campus police officer was highly unusual. Surely it was connected, even if much of the public—assuming they were even still awake—wouldn’t know of the link until morning.

  Collier’s death would be a violent prelude to a violent night, making the president’s visit to Boston Thursday morning feel like a distant memory. State police colonel Tim Alben was in Springfield, in Western Massachusetts, when he got the call from one of his deputies. State troopers, he was told, were on the scene at MIT. Ed Davis had already gone to sleep. He awoke to a similar phone call. The commissioner got up, got dressed, grabbed his gun and his badge, and hustled out. He ordered police out in force on Boston streets. He wanted bars and hospitals on high alert. From the moment they heard the news, neither man had much doubt: The terrorists had struck again.

  CHAPTER 11

  “DEATH IS SO CLOSE TO ME”

  Hell in a Mercedes

  The man jumped out of his car. He approached Danny’s passenger window, talking loud and fast, and rapped on the glass. Danny lowered the window. The man reached inside and opened the car door from the inside. He climbed in, shut the door, pointed a silver handgun at Danny, and demanded money. Danny, who had grown up in China, assumed that he was the victim of a classical
ly American violent crime, a stickup. He told the man that he didn’t carry much cash, but to take anything. He handed over $45 from inside the armrest. He gave the man his wallet. The man then asked Danny an unexpected question: Had he heard about the bombing at the Boston Marathon? Danny said he had. “I did that,” the man replied, his voice full of pride. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”

  Danny’s heart dropped. He had been following the news closely enough, had studied the surveillance images of the suspects. But he had not recognized Tamerlan Tsarnaev sitting inches away in the passenger seat, not thinking he was this skinny, this white. He couldn’t believe what was happening. How could this be possible? Danny thought. Tamerlan’s instructions to him were simple: “Don’t be stupid.”

  It had all begun with a text message. At work earlier that night, Danny—who asked to be identified only by his American nickname—had gotten a message from a friend. Nothing special, just a quick note, a simple hello. He was busy, so he didn’t answer right away. He worked late, not getting out until 10:00 P.M. Afterward, he needed to unwind. So he took his black 2013 Mercedes-Benz ML350 out for a spin in the darkened city. Just him, his music, and the hum of a car he had come to love. It was his little ritual, his way to relax, his right arm usually on the wheel, his left resting on the door. His life, at that moment, had seemed ascendant: from a province in Central China, to graduate school at Northeastern University, to a start-up in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, the hub of the Boston-area technology industry.

  On this night, the Thursday after the marathon bombing, he tried to drive down to Boylston Street, but it was still closed. So he took a route that roughly tracked the Charles River, no destination in mind, eventually ending up on Brighton Avenue, in a dense neighborhood west of downtown, home to thousands of college students. Suddenly, he remembered: He’d never written his friend back. He pulled to the curb to text a reply. Just as he was starting to type, he saw, in his mirrors, an old sedan slam to a stop behind his Mercedes. It struck him as strange—the speed and suddenness seemed out of place. People don’t park like that, the twenty-six-year-old thought to himself. Maybe our cars had scratched and I didn’t notice, Danny thought. Maybe the other driver wants to swap information. It was nearly 11:00 P.M.