Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  Dr. Khassan Baiev was a celebrated trauma surgeon who had treated thousands of soldiers on both sides of the wars between the Russians and the Chechens. At one time, he had been the only surgeon for nearly eighty thousand people living in Grozny during the height of the conflict. Baiev claimed to have performed eight brain operations and sixty-seven amputations within one forty-eight hour period. Because of his strict adherence to the Hippocratic oath, Baiev was labeled a traitor by both sides and was under constant threat of assassination. In 2002, the surgeon fled to the United States, where he was sponsored for political asylum by the human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights. Baiev later settled with his family in Needham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

  One day, Baiev received a call from his fellow Chechen Anzor Tsarnaev asking for help. “Please, can you help me?” Anzor begged over the phone. “There’s no one here to meet us.”3 Baiev opened his home to the Tsarnaev family and allowed them to stay in Needham for one month before helping them transition into a third-floor apartment with Tamerlan, Dzhokhar, and their two daughters, Bella and Ailina, The place was on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, which was a self-declared asylum city for immigrants, both legal and illegal. Anzor and Zubeidat felt the only way to get ahead in their new world was to inflate their status in their old one. The couple told anyone who would listen that they were trained lawyers back home. This was untrue. Anzor’s brother, Ruslan, and their three sisters had all earned law degrees, but he had received no such diploma. He also claimed that the reason he had fled was because as a prosecutor, he had tried to break the local mob’s stranglehold on his community. In reality, Tsarnaev and an uncle traded in a number of different products, including tobacco. Their business most likely drew the attention of local mobsters, who — according to family lore — responded by cutting off the head of the family pet, a German shepherd, and dumping it on the Tsarnaev’s doorstep.

  Whether this is true or something the couple concocted after watching a film like The Godfather, it fit their narrative of violent persecution. Zubeidat also told a co-worker that Russian mobsters had once kidnapped Anzor and beaten him so severely that they had no choice but to flee to the United States. The glorification of her husband, and thereby herself, was an important element of their relationship from the start. The couple met in the 1980s, she an ethnic Avar, a people who had been in constant conflict with the Chechens for centuries. Zubeidat was both volatile and alluring and had set out to win Anzor’s heart despite the disapproval of both families. Her arrival in America was like one extended walk down the red carpet. Zubeidat was very much the epitome of the modern Muslim woman. She paraded around in flowing dresses and high heels and pushed Anzor to dress with style to match her own. While Zubeidat got work as a home healthcare assistant, her husband tried his hand working on cars. Anzor particularly enjoyed working on older cars without computer chips as they reminded him of the Soviet-model automobiles he had worked on in the past. Anzor had no garage, so he bartered for space or did his repairs in the street when the weather was good. Loyal customers would sometimes get invited to the Tsarnaev home for a traditional meal of dumplings and chicken soup. One such customer, a journalist attending nearby Harvard University on a fellowship, was thrilled to receive an invitation to dine with Anzor and his family as he had planned to write about Russia’s Islamic insurgency. Alan Cullison remembers climbing up the narrow, cluttered stairway of the Tsarnaev’s Norfolk Street home where he was greeted by Anzor, Zubeidat, and the children who offered a demure hello before retreating into the corner of their three-hundred-square-foot apartment. The wife dominated the conversation from the very beginning — grilling Cullison about life in America, especially about the prospect for a good job for their eldest son, Tamerlan, who stood silently with arms folded in the doorway of the tiny kitchen. The conversation flowed in Russian as Cullison ate and answered Zubeidat’s rapid-fire questions the best he knew how. The journalist asked Anzor what he thought of Russia’s violent oppression of the Chechens, but Anzor and even Tamerlan appeared more concerned about earning money in the United States than in the fighting back home. Zubeidat enjoyed the conversation and was intrigued by Cullison’s interest in the plight of Chechen refugees. Following another dinner, Zubeidat praised Cullison as a “real dzhigit” (warrior), while dismissing her own husband with a wave of her hand.4

  Zubeidat’s attitude toward both America and Islam began to slowly shift as she opened herself up to more radical Muslim thinking about the attacks of September 11, 2001, when nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center towers and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, New Jersey, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, 2,996 Americans were killed and more than 6,000 others injured. The fact that two of the flights, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, had originated in Boston was not lost on Zubeidat Tsarnaev, who had grown to believe that the tragedy was orchestrated by the United States government as a plot to make Americans hate Muslims. Gone soon were the flowing dresses and the high-heeled pumps. Zubeidat now wore the traditional hijab to cover her once spiked, raven hair, a change in appearance that impacted her business. Zubeidat had transitioned from home healthcare aide to aesthetician after attending cosmetology school and had landed a job at Essencia Day Spa in the affluent town of Belmont, Massachusetts. She seemed fit for the job but soon began showing up for work wearing a head scarf and carrying a prayer rug on which she prayed five times a day in the salon. She made her female co-workers and customers uncomfortable and angered her bosses by refusing to work on men after her imam told her that it was sacrilegious to touch a male that had gone through puberty. “She went crazy religious,” said spa co-owner Larissa Dubosarky. “I had to let her go. She refused to deal with male clients and wouldn’t do waxing.”5

  After her firing, Zubeidat began offering facials out of the living room of their small apartment. Meanwhile, Anzor shifted his focus away from his wife and toward their son Tamerlan, whom he believed was the key to their American dream.

  [3]

  EASY MONEY

  Danny Keeler walked into his office at 650 Harrison Avenue at 7:30 a.m. He had a large hot coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts in his hand and a smile on his face. This was easy money day. Unlike members of the fire department, all Boston police officers are ordered to work on days like this when large crowds can sometimes get out of hand. Some police officers constantly griped at the fact that they can never watch the Super Bowl, the deciding game of the World Series, or the Boston Marathon with their families — but not Keeler. He welcomed the overtime duty. He and Carol had just purchased a place in Naples, Florida, in a neighborhood that included twelve retired Boston cops, and the extra money would come in handy. Keeler’s youngest daughter, Julie, was still in college at UMass-Amherst, and between the high cost of tuition and books, his wallet was always on the lighter side. He huddled quickly with the guys who would be patrolling the finish line with him before gathering outside on the adjacent basketball court with dozens of other officers from District D-4 (Back Bay/South End) and District D-14 (Allston/Brighton). All the names had been culled from the same overtime list. There were others who had simply volunteered for marathon duty from nearby District B-3 (Mattapan) and supervisors from across the city looking to pick up some easy overtime. Boston Police Captain Paul Ivens, who had previously served as commander of the Boston police bomb squad, gave roll call.

  “Guys, try to keep the drinking crowds down,” Ivens told his men. “If you see any issues, call for help immediately. Grab a quick breakfast, and I want everybody on post by 11 a.m. We’re gonna have the wheelchair runners coming in. We’re gonna have some of the handicapped guys coming in early. When they come across — be looking at the crowds, don’t be looking at them. I don’t want any Rosie Ruizes or any of that bullshit.”

  Until this day, the name Rosie Ruiz signified all that
could possibly go wrong with the Boston Marathon. During the eighty-fourth running of the marathon in 1980, Ruiz, a Cuban American, was crowned the winner in the women’s category with a record-breaking time of 2:31:56. Questions about her astonishing finish were raised immediately by many at the finish line who noticed that Ruiz wasn’t sweating or out of breath. She also appeared a little flabby and out of shape. Hers was not the body of an elite runner. Other elite runners including men’s winner “Boston” Billy Rodgers pointed out that Ruiz did not remember some of the key intervals of the race itself. Other runners could simply not remember ever seeing Ruiz anywhere along the 26.2-mile course. Witnesses who did remember seeing Ruiz claimed she had jumped out from a crowd of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue, just half a mile from the finish line. A few months before, Ruiz had run the New York City Marathon and was credited with a time of 2:56:29, which qualified her for Boston. Yet someone from that race came forward, claiming that she had seen Ruiz on a subway headed to the marathon that day. After an investigation, Ruiz was stripped of her win and relegated to a punch line and an embarrassing footnote in Boston Marathon history.

  The chances of another Rosie Ruiz situation were slim. Keeler and his men were more concerned that students from any of the nearby colleges would mistake Patriots’ Day for St. Patrick’s Day and use the day off from school as an excuse for an all-day drinking fest. In 2012, Keeler and his men confronted what he calls “Euro kids with money” who were hanging out the windows of a hotel along the finish line. “I remember going to them and saying, ‘Hey, enough’s enough. You’re throwing shit out the windows down on people, and we’re just not gonna have it.’”

  Normally, Keeler and his men from District D-4 would communicate by police radio on channel five. But since they were working on the marathon detail, they were ordered to correspond on channel one, where they could get minute-by-minute updates on the status of the lead runners. Once the leaders hit Hereford Street and began their turn onto Boylston Street, officers would normally hear Keeler’s voice on the radio. “Okay, guys at the finish line. Heads up, heads up now, they’re coming down.” It was all very routine and that’s exactly how Keeler liked it. Nothing out of the ordinary would happen here. Not today.

  As Danny Keeler and his men pulled on their orange vests and made their way to the finish line, their boss, Commissioner Ed Davis, was busy preparing for his seventh Boston Marathon as the city’s police commissioner. Davis, a towering figure with a deep, booming voice and the face of a bulldog, had been Boston’s top cop since the fall of 2006. To many in the Boston law enforcement community, he was still seen as an outsider. Davis’s roots were planted not in Boston, but in the mill city of Lowell, just over thirty miles to the north. Thirty miles seemed more like three thousand miles to many Boston police officers who believed that the city would be better served by a commissioner who had grown up and worked on its streets. But Lowell and Boston shared many of the same challenges. Both were plagued by depressed neighborhoods where drugs led to violence and violence often led to death. Ed Davis started his law enforcement career as a beat cop in Lowell in 1978. He had been born and raised in the city and was known for his fierceness and also his fairness. Criminals often thought better than to tangle with the imposing Davis on the street, and the last thing they wanted was to see his long, stern face at their door. But he wasn’t the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” type. Instead, Davis understood early on that a community could only gain positive change from within. The same went for him. He took college courses on weekends at Southern New Hampshire University, where he learned the importance of grassroots organizations and human services when it came to modern policing. He applied those teachings to his life on the street, where on a daily basis he dealt with drug pushers and drug users — including former professional boxing contender Dicky Eklund, whose story was later chronicled in the Oscar-winning film The Fighter. The city of Lowell saw something special in its native son and eventually elevated him to police commissioner, in 1994. Over the next five years, Davis and his department oversaw a rapid reduction in Lowell’s crime rate — the fastest drop in crime of any city its size or larger in the country.

  Davis’s success caught the eye of Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino, who needed to replace outgoing police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole after she accepted a job with the Garda Síochána in Ireland. O’Toole’s two-year stint running the Boston Police Department had been tumultuous at best. She was forced to accept full responsibility on behalf of the department after a Boston cop named Rochefort Milien shot and killed Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove as officers tried to quell a disturbance in Kenmore Square after the Boston Red Sox beat the rival New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. At the time, Snelgrove was just days away from celebrating her twenty-second birthday. Officer Milien and others on duty that night had been armed with a semiautomatic “less lethal” riot gun called an FN 303, which shoots a spherical projectile that is designed to break up on impact in order to avoid inflicting a critical injury. But the shot fired at Snelgrove struck her face and opened a three-quarter-inch wound behind her eye. The pellet then broke into nine pieces and damaged her brain. Snelgrove was pronounced dead at Brigham and Women’s Hospital approximately twelve hours after being shot. A special investigative panel led by former US Attorney Donald K. Stern blasted the Boston Police Department, claiming that poor planning and a breakdown of command contributed to the Snelgrove tragedy. The city of Boston paid five million dollars to the victim’s family — the largest wrongful death settlement in Boston’s history. Commissioner O’Toole demoted the police superintendent who was in charge that night, suspended two others, including Milien, and wrote official reprimands for two more. Commissioner O’Toole had not signed off on the operations plan for the Red Sox celebration, and Mayor Menino backed his commissioner, pledging his full confidence in her leadership. “Anyone who second guesses her [O’Toole], doesn’t understand the quality of this individual,” he said at the time.6

  Still, the buck stopped with the commissioner, and she was strongly encouraged to pursue another job. Once O’Toole was out, Menino7 could move the department forward. For only the second time in more than three decades, the mayor looked outside the department for a replacement. Menino chose Ed Davis, and the impact the Lowell native had on Boston was almost immediate. During his first three years as commissioner, the number of shootings in Boston plummeted by forty percent and acts of serious crime had dropped eighteen percent. The city had also celebrated three more world championships by the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins on Davis’ watch.

  On April 15, 2013, Commissioner Davis woke up early, made some phone calls to his staff, and left his Hyde Park home around 9 a.m. He headed to Boston Police headquarters at One Schroeder Plaza for the marathon. Although boots-on-the-ground officers like Danny Keeler expected nothing out of the ordinary, it was the job of Davis and others to do the necessary planning for a worst-case scenario. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, cities such as Boston had been preparing for a day that they hoped would never come. The marathon, with its thousands of international runners, spectators, and dignitaries — plus the fact that it is nationally televised — has always been considered a soft target by law enforcement authorities. The security planning literally goes on all year. It starts the day after the race and continues until the marathon begins again in Hopkinton a year later. Chief among Davis’s responsibilities was to check in regularly with the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), a unit that was set up post-9/11 to ensure that law enforcement officials share information about potential threats. Officers in the BRIC receive regular briefings from the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, state police, and other federal and state agencies about any possible issues that could pose a threat to Boston. The process was followed as usual in the months, weeks, and days leading up to April 15, 2013.

  “Everyone looked through what was happening with the world picture and the differen
t intelligence streams that were coming in,” Davis says. “There were no known specific threats to this event. But we realize the marathon is a soft target, and there is always a possibility and especially in this event where you have such a focus, an international focus, on the finish line.

  “That is when you have the highest visibility of this event,” Commissioner Davis continues. “From the perspective of someone involved in a terrorist event, the fewer cameras, the less possibility there is that someone is going to try to target this because their interest is international.”

  The commissioner and his team went through their checklist and were satisfied with their preparation. Bomb-sniffing dogs had already made regular sweeps down Boylston Street to the finish line that morning. There were more than eight hundred officers on patrol for marathon duty. Metal barricades lined Boylston Street as historically the biggest threat has been the possibility that someone would try to harm a runner or block the race. The barricades also control the flow of the crowd and keep vehicles away from the thousands of spectators, not to mention the VIP grandstand outside the Boston Public Library at the finish line. Around noon, Davis, his wife, Jane, their children, Kaitlyn and Phillip, and some friends all made their way to the VIP grandstand to celebrate their adopted city — a city they had grown to love.

  Davis’s counterpart at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) had already been at his desk since 5 a.m. and was still feeling a little foggy from the wedding he had attended the night before. Kurt Schwartz wasn’t too concerned. Although it was his job to plan for both natural and manmade disasters in Massachusetts, Patriots’ Day was historically the slowest public safety day of the year. Bald, slender, and bookish, Schwartz was the polar opposite of Ed Davis in just about every way. He had grown up far from Massachusetts in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan. The product of private schools, Schwartz came east in 1974 to attend Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. During the summer of his freshman year, Schwartz found himself serving as a seasonal police officer on Martha’s Vineyard. He returned to Wesleyan for his sophomore year, took an EMT class, and worked at night for an ambulance company. That training allowed him to return to the Vineyard for the next three years, where he continued working as a summer cop while also serving as one of the island’s few emergency medical technicians. At that time, police stations on the Vineyard were equipped only with station wagons, which served as transportation for those arrested and also for those who were injured. “I was horrified because I was working in Connecticut on real ambulances, and I’m down on the Vineyard throwing people in the back of station wagons,” Schwartz recalls. It was the excitement and adrenalin of responding to emergency calls that drew him to public service. Like Ed Davis, Kurt Schwartz dreamed of a career as a police officer. He had been offered a full-time position on Martha’s Vineyard, where the police chief told him that he’d be sent off to study at the police academy and would also be in charge of emergency medical services for the town. The offer was a dream come true for Schwartz, who then dropped out of college and in 1977 entered the Boston police academy. He returned to Martha’s Vineyard, where he worked as a full-time police officer for the next five years while continuing to collect college credits. He had a bright future ahead of him, but Schwartz made an ill-fated decision that cost him not only his career as a cop, but very nearly also his ability to walk. While on vacation in Aspen, Colorado, in his mid-twenties, Schwartz — who was an accomplished skier — was clowning around on the slopes when he suffered a serious compression injury to his back. “I was jumping off moguls and landed real hard on a mogul field, and the pain just went all over,” Schwartz remembers. “My body buckled over, and I landed on my skis and stopped. My whole back went into a spasm.” He spent the next four months in the hospital undergoing a series of surgeries. Schwartz eventually recovered but knew that the lingering effects of his injury would not allow him to return to police work. While on medical leave from the police department, he finished his studies at Wesleyan and went on to law school at Boston College, where he continued to work nights on ambulances that were dispatched throughout the city. After law school, he climbed up the criminal justice ladder, from Prosecutor for the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, to Chief of the Criminal Bureau for the Massachusetts Attorney General, and eventually becoming Undersecretary of Law Enforcement for the Commonwealth. In 2007, Governor Deval Patrick promoted him to Undersecretary for Homeland Security and Emergency Management in the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPS), where it was his responsibility to coordinate the strategic response of the Massachusetts National Guard and two EOPS agencies, the Department of Fire Services and the Homeland Security division. In emergency situations, Kurt Schwartz served as the governor’s most trusted counsel. With no apparent threat looming on marathon day, he figured he would have limited conversations with his boss, who would make a brief appearance at the finish line to crown the women’s winner. At 2:15 p.m. on April 15, Schwartz climbed into his vehicle and drove toward Copley Square with little on his mind except for maintaining crowd control during the city’s signature event.