Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  “Is this my sixteenth or seventeenth Boston Marathon?” forty-three-year-old Javier Pagan asked himself while finishing his breakfast at Billy’s Coffee Shop on Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End, just a few blocks from the finish line. The years all blurred together after doing this for so long. Pagan had been a member of the Boston Police Department for nineteen years and had patrolled Boylston Street on race day for nearly all of them. Normally, his only concern was the weather. The last thing he wanted to do was stand out there in the rain all day, which he had done on more than a few soggy Marathon Mondays. In Boston, the weather in mid-April is always a roll of the dice. But today’s forecast called for near-perfect conditions: the temperature was expected to hover around fifty degrees under sun-filled skies. It was a day that could bring record-breaking times for the winners — unless some idiot decided to jump the barricade and tackle one of the elite runners as they made their way toward the finish line.

  Pagan and his fellow detail officers would be on alert for exactly that. Only three months before, as the Kenyan marathoner Edwin Kipsang Rotich was nearing the finish line of the 10k Kings Race in Cuiaba, Brazil, he had been grabbed and shoved by a spectator. Rotich still went on to win the race while his attacker, a man with a history of psychological problems, was arrested and thrown in jail. As on prior Marathon Mondays, Pagan would be positioned along the finish line, where he would scan the deep crowd for anyone looking to cause trouble. It was considered light duty for Pagan, an officer who had seen much and had overcome more during his journey.

  Pagan grew up in Dorchester, a predominantly Irish neighborhood bordering South Boston. Just a year after he and his family had emigrated from Puerto Rico and had moved into their apartment on Stoughton Street, the entire city collapsed under the weight of seething racial tension triggered by the infamous Busing Crisis, when violent protests flared up in white neighborhoods over the enforcement of public school desegregation. The racial hatred of the time directly impacted Pagan and his family. “We’d walk along Stoughton Street and then Columbia Road, and people would throw beer bottles at us and call us niggers,” he recalls. “My mom didn’t really speak English, so she had no clue. We were little and didn’t even know what the N-word was. Finally, the haters figured out we were Hispanic, not black, so they began calling us spics instead.”

  Pagan found both solace and strength at his neighborhood church and a priest there who was also a Boston police chaplain. “Father Francis used to bring the K-9 unit to St. Paul’s, and we went out on the police boat during the summer,” Pagan remembers. “I liked to watch cop shows, and my dream was to be a police officer. But I was a scrawny kid, and I just never knew that I could do the job.”

  Weighing less than a hundred pounds in high school, Pagan was smaller than his classmates, but he also realized that he was different in another way: he knew that he was gay. He tried to suppress his feelings and hide his orientation from both his friends and his own family — he had faced enough racial taunts to know that by announcing his sexuality, he would be adding kerosene to an angry fire.

  Pagan graduated from Boston Technical High School in 1989 and went on to Suffolk University, in the heart of the city. There he began studying theatre arts, but ended up earning a degree in sociology with a minor in criminal law instead. By then his body had finally filled out, and now he had the education to pursue his life’s passion. Javier Pagan wanted to be a cop. He entered the police academy, where his brother-in-law served as an instructor. Among his fellow cadets were a man and a woman who were both openly gay. Their honesty and courage opened the door slightly for Pagan, but not enough to give him the strength to come out himself. That would not happen until his first year on the force — and a surprise awaited him when he did. “When I came out,” he recalls, “they all said they knew.” Pagan found overwhelming support from his family, especially his three older sisters. He also found support within the ranks of the Boston Police Department. First and foremost, he was a cop, just like them. He had been baptized in blood and had seen more than his share of stabbings and shootings on city streets.

  But he wasn’t expecting anything like that on this day. He wasn’t expecting Black Hat and White Hat.

  [2]

  MURDER IN WALTHAM

  WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011,

  SOMETIME AFTER 7:30 P.M.

  As millions around the nation somberly observed the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America, a Chechen immigrant named Tamerlan Tsarnaev stood inside the second-floor apartment at 12 Harding Avenue in Waltham, Massachusetts, a relatively quiet suburb just eleven miles west of Boston. The apartment belonged to his friend Brendan Mess, a twenty-five-year-old college graduate who had done little with the degree in professional writing he had earned from Champlain College three years before. Mess was a stoner who had supported himself by selling marijuana and possibly other drugs out of his apartment, a place he had been living in for less than a month and had rarely left. Neighbors had noticed a steady stream of visitors coming and going, but those living on Harding Avenue preferred Brendan Mess over the previous renters, who had used the apartment like a frat house, partying until dawn on many occasions. He lived in the second-floor apartment with his girlfriend, Hilda Eltilib, whose name appeared on the rental lease. Recently, Mess had invited another friend to live with them, thirty-one-year-old Erik Weissman, who had just been kicked out of his own apartment in nearby Roslindale after police raided the place and seized a large stash of drugs and cash. Weissman needed a place to crash while he got back on his feet financially, and his buddy Brendan had been willing to help. Both knew the situation was temporary because, although Erik Weissman was also a stoner and low-level pot dealer, he was actively pursuing bigger things. The bespectacled native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, considered himself a businessman first and foremost. Along with two friends, he had founded a small company called Hitman Glass, which manufactured Chihuly-inspired ornamental marijuana pipes to take advantage of the rapid de-criminalization of marijuana sweeping through parts of the country. Weissman’s partner had just opened a shop on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and Erik was planning to head west once his legal problems were taken care of in Massachusetts. The raid on his Roslindale apartment had followed an arrest in 2008 for marijuana possession with intent to distribute after he had been pulled over by police while carrying a large brown paper bag filled with smaller plastic bags of pot. The decriminalization of pot wasn’t happening fast enough for Weissman, who was also a presence within the Boston hip-hop scene — he had even helped finance the second album for a local artist he dubbed Virtuoso.

  Another friend of Brendan Mess, Raphael “Rafi” Teken, was also in the second-floor apartment that night. Teken had graduated from Brookline High School in 1992 and prestigious Brandeis University, located right in Waltham, in 1998. At age thirty-seven, he was several years older than both Mess and Weissman, but the three men bonded through their shared Jewish heritage and their love of marijuana. Although an athlete in high school, Teken had set aside his passion for swimming and most other sports as he got older. He enjoyed getting high, but according to those who knew him, he had never pushed his lifestyle on others and was considered a trusted friend who wanted to help people. When his cousin was forced out of her home after a devastating fire, Teken worked tirelessly to collect donations for the family. According to their friends, neither Weissman nor Teken was capable of violence. Brendan Mess, however, was considered a skilled mixed martial artist and in 2010 had gotten arrested for assaulting several people at a store in Cambridge. Still, the trio resembled characters from a Seth Rogen comedy more than they did real hardcore gangbangers. No one could have imagined what they were all about to face.

  Tamerlan “Tam” Tsarnaev was another friend of Brendan Mess. The two had become close after meeting at a local gym. Both were physical creatures — Tamerlan more so than Mess, who despite his martial arts prowess was deemed by some to be soft. Tamerlan
, a Muslim, considered Mess to be his closest Jewish friend. Out of deference to his pal’s religious beliefs, Mess even asked his girlfriend, Hilda, to cook only halal meat, permissible to Muslims, when Tamerlan would visit. Hilda was Muslim herself, but not the practicing kind. An African immigrant, she had refused to follow strict Muslim doctrine when she arrived in the United States. Hilda didn’t pray much, nor did she wear a traditional hijab to cover her head and chest. She also drank alcohol, which drew concern from Tamerlan when he was around.

  “You’re not doing the things Muslim women do,” Tamerlan had scolded her during one visit.1 Hilda didn’t perceive his words to be threatening, just a difference in philosophy. If there was fire behind Tamerlan’s eyes, both Hilda Eltilib and Brendan Mess failed to recognize it — even though Tsarnaev had more than once hinted that he was something other than what he appeared to be. He had even informed Mess that the FBI had placed him on a terrorist watch list only a few weeks before. Brendan relayed the news to Hilda, and both got a chuckle out of the mere thought. Their friend Tam, they believed, was a threat to no one. But Hilda was gone now. After a fight with Brendan, she had jumped on a plane to Florida, where she was visiting a friend to help clear her head. Hilda was due back in Boston on September 12. She and Brendan would give their relationship another chance. He had even promised to pick her up at Logan International Airport.

  Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived at the Waltham apartment on Sunday, September 11, with another man, Ibragim Todashev, a mop-topped fellow Chechen immigrant whose lean, muscular body and long, crooked nose bore both the reward and punishment of years studying mixed martial arts. He had recently won his first match by applying a guillotine choke and forcing his opponent into submission during an MMA bout in Tampa, Florida. Todashev had trained with Tamerlan, and they were known to have prowled Boston’s nightclub scene together before Tamerlan had become more devout. That evening, both men talked their way inside Brendan Mess’s Waltham apartment. Mess kept a handgun for protection but apparently did not perceive his friend Tamerlan as a threat. Brendan and Tam talked for an uncertain period of time, their voices never raised high enough to alert neighbors to any trouble. Whatever the alleged reason Tamerlan gave Mess for the visit, Tsarnaev had leverage over his friend because only he and Todashev knew what their intent truly was. Suddenly a knife appeared in Tamerlan’s hand. With help from Todashev, Tsarnaev attacked Mess, Erik Weissman, and Rafi Teken, slit each of their throats from ear to ear, and left their lifeless bodies in separate rooms but in identical positions — lying on their stomachs with their heads positioned slightly to the right. All were covered with marijuana leaves and stems. The killers left five thousand dollars in cash but took Brendan’s gun. The bodies grew cold overnight as the blood of each victim congealed on the floor inside the apartment at 12 Harding Avenue.

  The next day, Hilda Eltilib returned to Boston as expected. She called her boyfriend, but there was no answer. Hilda and Brendan had spoken at 7:30 the night before, and he told her that he loved her. She tried calling once more later that evening to say goodnight, but there was no answer. She knew Brendan, Erik, and Rafi were planning to get together to watch the Dallas Cowboys take on the New York Jets on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, so Hilda simply dismissed the slight as men being men. Still, the words “I love you” spoken by Brendan earlier had kept her heart beating faster during her morning flight from Florida. The fact that Brendan still wasn’t answering his phone was a big problem — one that just might complicate her homecoming. Hilda grabbed her luggage, swallowed her growing anger, and walked out to the curb to hail a taxicab. She arrived at 12 Harding Avenue just before 2:30 p.m. on Monday, September 12. She paid the driver, grabbed her bags, and entered the building, where she climbed a flight of stairs and stuck her key into the door. Something was wrong. She turned the key and opened the door slowly, possibly hoping that someone would yell, “Surprise!” Instead, there was only silence. Hilda stepped forward into a grisly nightmare. She gazed in horror at the bodies of her boyfriend and the two others. Hilda turned on her heels and ran down the stairs into the street screaming — “There’s blood everywhere!”2

  Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not attend the wake or funeral for his friend Brendan Mess, a possible clue that had been overlooked by Mess’s friends and also by investigators. The fact that the murders had occurred on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America had no special significance for police — it was just a random date on the calendar for these particular crimes. A short time later, Tsarnaev made plans to return to his homeland.

  Tamerlan’s grandfather, Zaindy Tsarnaev, was just eleven years old when he and his family were forced out of their home in Chiri-Yurt, a small Chechen village overlooking the Caucasus Mountains, by Josef Stalin’s troops in 1944. The Soviet dictator was exacting his revenge against the Chechens for their collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. The expulsion of the Chechen people was carried out under Operation Lentil. Despite the fact that more than 40,000 Chechens fought for the Red Army, Stalin was outraged over the time and resources needed to quell two nationalist rebellions and by the rumors that Chechen tribesmen had granted German troops safe passage to the oil-rich fields of Azerbaijan. There would be no safe passage for the nearly five hundred thousand Chechens and more than two hundred thousand ethnic Ingush, Kalmyks, Balkars, and Karachays who were forced onto unheated freight cars and shipped off to Siberia and Central Asia. The refugees were crammed into the cars like cattle. No one had room to sit. Thousands, many of them children, died during the grueling two-week trek. Years later, one survivor said that Soviet soldiers would simply toss bodies of the dead out of the cars and onto the snow. When Zaindy Tsarnaev and his family arrived in Tokmok, Kyrgyztan, they had to survive on clover and potato skins left out by local villagers. Countless more refugees died during that harsh winter, when the ground proved too frozen to properly bury the dead. Mourning relatives would dig ditches only half a meter deep, wrap their loved one in an old piece of cloth, and bury them. Most times, their bodies were dragged out of the earth and devoured by starving dogs. Those fortunate enough to survive to the spring were put to work in the town’s kolkhoz (collective farm). Able-bodied boys like Zaindy Tsarnaev were forced to work on the farm for little or no pay and also ordered to perform a minimum of fifty days each year doing government work such as road construction. Those who shirked their duties were shipped off again — this time to Siberia.

  A decade later, in 1957 — four years after Stalin’s death — the Soviet Union allowed its dispossessed peoples to return to their ancestral lands, but Zaindy Tsarnaev and his family stayed in Tokmok, along with many other Chechens who formed a small, tight-knit community. As an adult, Zaindy pieced together a living by trolling through town in search of something of value to sell. He usually found his way to the local dump, as others had, and would dig for hours on end through a vast wasteland of garbage in hopes of finding metal wires or a few glass bottles that could later be sold. But the dump could be a dangerous place, and Zaindy Tsarnaev never paid much attention to his own personal safety. Tokmok was home to a Soviet airbase where thousands of fighter pilots were trained during the hottest days of the Cold War, and the dump was sometimes used by the military to discard old equipment. In 1988, during one visit to a dump the villagers had nicknamed The Golden Pit, Zaindy thought he scored a big payday. He uncovered several metal objects from a trash heap, objects he believed were worth more than the bottles he normally found. He tossed them into his rusty car carelessly. The metal objects, which were in reality old Soviet munitions, exploded on impact — smothering the vehicle and Zaindy Tsarnaev with flames.

  Ruslan Tsarnaev, a son of Zaindy’s, left their homeland and immigrated to the United States in 1995. He changed his last name to Tsarni, the original Chechen spelling of Tsarnaev, and lived in Washington State before returning to Kyrgyzstan a few years later with his wife, Samantha Fuller, the daughter of a former CIA case officer. The couple lived briefly in the city of Bishkek,
where Samantha Tsarni worked for Price Waterhouse on privatization projects, but the two soon had a falling out and divorced in 1999, after their return to the United States. Ruslan Tsarni remarried and within a few years was earning more than two hundred thousand dollars a year, plus stock options, which allowed him to build a sprawling, two-storied home in the upscale community of Montgomery Village, Maryland. He had earned his success as millions of other new Americans had: by working hard and striving for a better life. This core ethic had been lost on his brother, Anzor, who had come to the United States in 2002 with his wife, Zubeidat, and their youngest son, Dzhokhar. Originally, Ruslan had high hopes for his relatives, especially Dzhokhar’s older brother, Tamerlan, who spoke about earning an engineering degree in America. But Tamerlan was a talker and not much of a doer — just like his father, Anzor, and his grandfather, Zaindy. Anzor and Zaindy had been cut from the same cloth. Neither man had a formal or extensive education, unlike Ruslan, who was a trained lawyer. Instead, Anzor found work with his hands, like his father before him. He had been a mechanic back home and dreamed of opening a profitable garage in the United States. After his arrival in the spring of 2002, when he and his wife declared political asylum, Anzor leaned on a fellow Chechen for assistance.