Boston Strong

by Casey Sherman

  It seemed that the only bright spot for Tamerlan was his growing relationship with Katherine Russell, or Katie as she was known to friends. But their carefree affair turned problematic when Russell discovered that she was pregnant. Once again Anzor and Zubeidat found themselves at a cultural crossroads as one of their children had found love outside their heritage. Tamerlan did his best to appease his parents by announcing that Katie would convert to Islam and take the name Karima upon marriage. They were wed in June 2010 at the Masjid Al-Qur’aan mosque in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Katie, now Karima, gave birth to a daughter they named Zahira, but she would not be allowed to care for the infant. Instead, she was forced to work to support not only her newborn but also her new husband, who showed no willingness to get a job. Tamerlan stayed home with the baby while Karima worked as many as eighty hours per week as a home health aide. When he was not watching Zahira at the apartment he still shared with his parents, Tamerlan frequented a nearby mosque, socializing with fellow Muslims who shared his radical views. This deep fall into the abyss of Islamic extremism was too much for Anzor, whose influence over his children had been usurped by his wife. He told Zubeidat that he was moving to the Russian republic of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, and the couple filed for divorce.

  It was at this time that both Tamerlan and his mother first drew the attention of authorities, both here and abroad. Intelligence officials in Russia had secretly recorded a telephone conversation between Zubeidat and Tamerlan in which they discussed jihad — which can be interpreted as the physical struggle (war) against all non-Muslims. The Russians brought this information to the FBI, which conducted a brief, three-month investigation into the mother and son. The authorities added Zubeidat’s and Tamerlan’s names to the widening pool of potential threats in its terrorism database and moved on. The Feds did not understand, nor did they take seriously, the true threat posed by Tamerlan — who at the time was using his Facebook page to promote a Chechen news article that urged all Muslims to take up arms against America. But Tamerlan could not join the war himself until he gained a more intimate knowledge of what it felt like to kill. On September 11, 2011, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his Chechen companion Ibragim Todashev crossed the threshold of Brendan Mess’s Waltham apartment and into madness.

  Months later, in January 2012, Tamerlan made plans to return to his native Dagestan to seek out Mahmud Mansur Nidal, a young terrorist who had fallen in with a group of insurgents operating in Dagestan’s capital of Makhachkala. Dubbed the Makhachkala Gang by local authorities, Nidal and his men were responsible for several bloody attacks, including a pair of bomb blasts in May 2012 that killed fourteen people at a police checkpoint. In that particular attack, the bombs were detonated fifteen minutes apart. The first explosives were hidden in a red Mitsubishi sedan. The second bomb was concealed in a parked minivan and was triggered shortly after first responders arrived at the scene. According to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee, the combined force of the explosions was equal to nearly two hundred pounds of TNT.10

  Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Mahmud Mansur Nidal were alleged to have met while Nidal was on the run. “He [Nidal] had been a wanted man for some months before the attack,” said Russian investigator Shamil Mutaev in a May 2013 interview with Time. “He had gone underground. I don’t believe [Tsarnaev] could have been allowed to visit him underground.” Mutaev further explained that there would have been a serious vetting process before Tamerlan was allowed to meet with Nidal in hiding. “They [Makhachkala Gang] do not just invite outsiders over for tea.”

  According to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Tsarnaev met with Nidal several times in 2012 while the insurgent was interviewing new recruits. Their clandestine meetings were later discovered by members of the counter-extremism forces of the Interior Ministry Police of Dagestan. Word quickly spread to Russian intelligence officials, who then reached out again to their counterparts in the FBI to obtain more information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

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  JOY ON BOYLSTON STREET

  Denise and Bill Richard had a decision to make. How would they spend the crisp spring day with their three children, eleven-year-old Henry, eight-year-old Martin, and seven-year-old Jane? They were an outdoorsy couple who loved hiking and bike riding. Bill had once been a runner, but back problems had forced him to hang up his sneakers. He first met Denise while the two were attending Bridgewater State College in the early 1990s. Bill was studying geochemistry, and Denise was preparing for a career in early-childhood education. They were opposites, but their differences were what attracted them to each other. Bill had grown up in Salem, Massachusetts, where he played high school soccer. Denise was raised by her parents, Bob and Helen O’Brien, on Belfort Street in the Savin Hill section of Dorchester. A self-proclaimed rough-and-tumble “Dot rat,” Denise brought her city sensibility with her to Bridgewater State, where she met Bill and his college buddy Larry Marchese. “She was witty, sharp, intuitive, and quick,” recalls Marchese, “whereas Bill was an all-around good guy who wore his heart on his sleeve.” The couple hit it off and carried their romance beyond college. They shared a condo in Quincy, but Denise felt it was too far from Boston, despite the fact that it was only twelve miles away. So they purchased a condo together on Telegraph Street in South Boston, where they entertained friends each year at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. One particular point of pride for the couple was the fact that their front door can be seen during a shot in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting. Bill and Denise enjoyed movies and television, especially episodes of Seinfeld, which was the top-rated comedy at the time. “Bill and I use Seinfeld references in just about every conversation,” Marchese says. In fact, Bill reminded Larry of Jerry Seinfeld. “They’re both very neat and orderly. Bill is very funny himself, but he doesn’t need to get a laugh at someone else’s expense. He doesn’t break balls.”

  Bill Richard also prided himself on his ability to cook. He always served up large spreads for family and friends on holidays and at New England Patriots games, to which he and Larry held season tickets. “Bill’s chili always drew raves at our tailgate parties,” Marchese recalls. “His secret ingredient was replacing traditional chili beans with Boston baked beans.” Bill was also the type of guy who would take home the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving dinner and boil it for homemade soup.

  The couple married in the fall of 1995 at St. William’s Church, just down the block from Denise’s childhood home. Her parents had moved to Florida after her father, Bob, retired from his job at Gillette. However, Denise could not see herself living anywhere but her home turf. When the real estate market skyrocketed in the late 1990s, the Richards cashed in on their South Boston condo and moved across the highway to Dorchester. It was a move that confounded their friends. “They bought the most run-down, nasty shithole in Dorchester,” Marchese remembers, smiling. “It was so bad that the local guide for historic homes called the place ‘ugly beyond words.’” The house on Carruth Street had been split into several apartments, which meant that the stairs no longer went the right way, and it was so dilapidated that several dead rats were found inside the walls during renovation. Undeterred, Bill and Denise worked on the Victorian for more than a year with contractors and eventually transformed it into a beautiful home — a home where they could raise a family. Arriving in 1998 was a son they named Henry, followed by his brother, Martin, and later, their sister, Jane. Their friend Larry Marchese and his wife, Nina, moved further south to Braintree to raise a family of their own, but they never missed a Christmas Eve celebration at the Richards’ Carruth Street home. “Christmas Eve is a blast. It’s an open house; neighbors and friends. Both sides of the family are there,” Marchese says. “The place is packed. All night long Bill is getting ready to sing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ Everyone gets assigned a day, and you sing your brains out.” Marchese says that young Martin was especially fond of this holiday tradition.

  Not only had Bill and Denise seen the potential in their
home, they also saw the potential in their neighborhood, which had been plagued by drugs. One nearby house had been a constant nuisance for residents and local police. It was owned by an elderly woman whose son was suspected of dealing drugs out of the home. When the woman could no longer afford to live there, Bill and a neighbor bought it and restored it to a single-family home.

  “That’s when neighbors began to zero in and respect Bill as a ‘family first, community first’ kind of person,” Marchese says.

  It was at that point that Bill Richard began to get involved in community causes. When a woman was raped at the nearby Ashmont Street MBTA station, Bill complained that the area was too dark and therefore too dangerous for residents. He helped form a task force that successfully lobbied Mayor Tom Menino for a much-needed renovation. He later became the president of St. Mark’s Area Main Street, a civic organization whose mission was to revive one of Dorchester’s once-prominent business districts. As Bill focused on creating a better environment for his young family, Denise became a stay-at-home mom, shepherding the kids to school, where she worked part-time in the library, and driving them to soccer practice. The couple never appeared to be motivated by money. They had just enough to live on and drove around Dorchester in a Ford and a used Volvo. They did own a small summer home on a lake in New Hampshire, but Bill and Denise calculated their true wealth in terms of their three healthy kids, their abundance of good friends, and the positive impact they made on their community.

  On the morning of April 15, 2013, Bill and Denise Richard contemplated whether to jump in the car and go for a ride to a local hiking trail, or whether to take their kids into the city to watch the Boston Marathon. They had been going to the marathon for several years, and their children always loved the experience. The couple weighed a day of hiking against the once-a-year spectacle, and the Boston Marathon won. Bill and Denise grabbed Henry, Martin, and Jane and jumped on the MBTA headed toward the finish line on Boylston Street.

  Heather Abbott always looked forward to spring. Not only because it signified a break from the icy Rhode Island winters but also because it signaled the pending arrival of summer. And summer in a beach town like Newport means lots of friends, family, and visitors. And for Heather, the official beginning of spring each year was ushered in by the Boston Marathon. Every April for the past several years, she would make the pilgrimage up to Boston to spend the day reconnecting with good friends she’d spent the previous summer partying with in Newport.

  Newport, with its majestic mansions, cobblestone streets, and breathtaking ocean-side cliffs, transforms each summer from a sleepy New England burg into a bustling resort town — a playground for wealthy singles from Boston, Providence, and New York. It’s not uncommon for groups of city-bound single people in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s to join together and rent luxurious condos for the summer so they have somewhere to unwind each weekend.

  Heather, a single, thirty-eight-year-old human resources manager at Raytheon, grew up in nearby Lincoln, Rhode Island, the only child of Rosemary and Dale Abbott. Rosemary retired from Mass Mutual in 2013, while her husband Dale, a retired salesman, continued to work in the mailroom at the Citizens Bank part-time. The couple has been married for forty years and raised Heather on a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburban town. Her parents still live in the comfortable house on Rosewood Drive where Heather grew up. Pretty and athletic, she took tap, jazz, and ballet lessons as a child. As a teenager, she taught dancing to little girls at a school called Dance Rhode Island. Heather wanted to go to school at the University of North Carolina, but her parents thought the idea of their only daughter moving away for college was absurd.

  “‘Are you crazy? What if you get sick? What if something happens? How are we going to get you?” her mom told her. “You need to go somewhere close to home.”

  She trusted their advice and enrolled at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, where she studied accounting. The school was nice and she made some good friends, but she didn’t love the small, private Catholic college — largely because her then boyfriend was back home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Still, she excelled academically and tutored struggling high school math students just down Route 138 in the hardscrabble city of Brockton. She graduated from Stonehill in 1996 and moved back home to Rosewood Drive in order to save money as she started her first job at a Providence accounting firm. She soon left that job and took a human resources position at a small industrial design firm, also in Providence. She attended night classes at Providence College and got her MBA, which then landed her a job that had her traveling all around the Northeast — from Burlington, Vermont, and Augusta, Maine, to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania. By then she was living on her own in North Providence, and she hit the road every Monday. On the weekends, she barely even unpacked, leaving her suitcase at the foot of her bed. Eventually she became sick of the traveling, so she took a labor relations manager position at Roger Williams University, then, in 2007, she went to work for Raytheon, where she handled sexual harassment, discrimination, and other employee complaints. She was originally drawn to Newport for the summer social scene, but she grew to love the seaside community year-round. She loved taking runs along the storied Cliff Walk and paddleboarding on Third Beach. She loved having post-beach cocktails with friends at the Atlantic Beach Club and hosting small dinner parties for friends visiting from out of town.

  She spent a few summers renting beach houses with friends and fell in love with the city. She eventually rented a quaint, colonial-style townhouse in the heart of Newport, across the street from some of the city’s most striking mansions. The winters can be long in Newport as wild New England nor’easters whip up winds that bring sleet, freezing rain, and piles of snow. She doesn’t have many visitors in January, February, and March, but once the sun starts poking out its head in April, her phone rings a little more as friends are eager to visit. By June, her social calendar is generally booked.

  On April 15, 2013, Heather woke up early, showered, blow-dried and brushed her long, blonde hair, and got dressed for a day of fun in Boston. She planned to meet several Rhode Island friends with whom she rented a Newport house each summer and whom she hadn’t seen in months. As on every Marathon Monday, they would take the trip to Boston by train, go to the Red Sox game, then watch the race from the Boylston Street finish line. Heather set out and, along with her friends Jessica, Jason, Michelle and Al, drove to the MBTA commuter rail station in Providence. There they met another friend and took the train up to South Station in Boston.

  It was a sunny, mild day, and the group was excited. They laughed at old jokes from the previous summer. They caught up on the latest news with each other. They checked their various devices for text messages. The plan was to meet at Fenway Park and then at Forum, a café near the finish line and their traditional gathering spot,

  First pitch at Fenway was at 11 a.m., and the foe was the Tampa Bay Rays, a former expansion team that had become an American League East powerhouse and top nemesis of the Sox. While Boston is generally a fairly conservative city — many of the Puritan blue laws are still on the books, including one banning happy hour — Marathon Monday is one occasion that the city really lets loose. Along with St. Patrick’s Day, it is one of the few days that thousands gleefully play hooky and hit the city’s many pubs and bars at uncommonly early hours. Following tradition, Heather and her friends rolled into a Kenmore Square pub to have a pre-game morning cocktail. Afterward, with the sun glistening in the pale blue sky above, the group walked from Kenmore to Fenway and through the turnstiles into the hallowed ballpark. They grabbed some draft beers and made their way to their lower box seats, smiling, laughing, and joking the whole time. It was Jackie Robinson Day, and the hometown team paid tribute to the former Brooklyn Dodger who broke pro baseball’s color barrier.

  The game was a defensive battle, and Heather and the others grew bored and decided to leave early. They stopped in at a Lansdowne Street hotspot called Game On! for a drink before walking fro
m Fenway toward Boylston Street, where they would congregate at Forum. The crowds were thick as the group negotiated blocked intersections and packed sidewalks lined with metal barricades. Being from Rhode Island, Heather wasn’t exactly sure of the best route and got lost on her way. By the time the group made it to Forum, the Rays had tied the game at two, and outfielder Mike Napoli hit a walk-off double to bring home Dustin Pedroia, giving the Sox a dramatic 3–2 win.

  Forum was crowded, and four of Heather’s friends were already inside. There was a short line to get in as the doorman checked IDs. Out on the sidewalk patio, former New England Patriot offensive lineman Joe Andruzzi — a cancer survivor — was throwing a fundraiser for his charity foundation. Lots of local celebrities, politicians, and socialites were in and out of the event all day, including another former New England Patriot, Matt Chatham, and his wife.

  Michelle L’Heureux has never been a runner. Her mother, Linda, had been a runner and always pushed Michelle to run, too. As kids, Michelle and her sister, Danielle, would spend many weekends watching their mom run in local road races. Slender, tall, and athletic, Michelle is built exactly like her mom, but she never got the running bug. In fact, she’d tell friends, “I’d rather eat half a dozen donuts on the couch than run a quarter mile.”

  She is not lazy. On the contrary, Michelle is a self-described “cardio junkie.” She just does everything but run.

  Michelle hits the gym five or six days a week, taking spinning classes and working out on the elliptical or the treadmill. She also walks roughly twenty-five to thirty miles a week with her dogs, Romeo and Louis. Romeo, a tiny, silky terrier with golden-brown hair, and Louis, a Great Dane–Black Lab mix, are her family, and they give her motivation when she’s feeling lazy. Michelle was raised in rural Auburn, Maine, with her parents and her younger sister, Danielle. Their modest single-family home was on the outskirts of Auburn near the Lewiston line, an area of Maine known to locals as Frenchville or Little Canada for its predominantly French-Canadian population. Sherwood Drive is in a quiet, suburban neighborhood on the edge of both the countryside of Maine and the dense, urban city of Lewiston. The elementary school that Danielle and Michelle attended is at the end of the street.