1.Put you [sic] trust in Allah and pray for the success of your mission. This is the most important rule.
2.Wear gloves throughout the preparation of the explosive to avoid leaving fingerprints.
3.This is an explosive device so take care during preparation and handling.
With his mother now gone, Tamerlan had no one else to share his beliefs or plans with, so he began nurturing a relationship with his younger brother Dzhokhar, who had idolized him since day one. The pair read the Koran together and scoured websites like Inspire and others to provide them both with the training and motivation for what was to come. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had graduated from Cambridge Rindge & Latin and was now attending the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where he had earned a scholarship with the hope of one day becoming an engineer. Unlike his brother, Dzhokhar did not wear his religion on his sleeve. However, he used to warn friends against taking God’s name in vain, and he did manage to give up his beloved pot smoking for his Ramadan fast. On the rare occasions when Dzhokhar debated US foreign policy with his friends, he told them that he believed some acts of terrorism were justified because the US was “dropping bombs all the time.”19
A good student in high school, Dzhokhar rarely applied himself in his college courses, which he found too easy. “Using my high school essays for my English class #itsthateasy,” he once tweeted. “You know what I like to do? Answer my own questions cuz no one else can.”
He longed for life back in Cambridge and returned home every chance he could. Since most of his friends were also away at college and his parents had fled the country, Dzhokhar spent more and more time with his older brother, who ordered him to pray five times a day. Tamerlan was now filling the void left by of Anzor’s absence. Although Anzor had showed very little interest in his youngest son, Dzhokhar missed his father desperately. “I can see my face in dad’s pictures as a youngin [sic],” he tweeted in 2012. “He even had a ridiculous amount of hair as me.” The one aspect of his life that he continued to keep hidden from his family, especially his older brother, was his drug use and his lucrative role as a pot dealer. Dzhokhar was known to keep large Tupperware containers of marijuana in the mini fridge of his dorm room and had several regular customers. He pocketed more than one thousand dollars per week and sometimes carried a gun to protect his cash and his stash. Dzhokhar did not use the money for school purposes — he owed about twenty thousand dollars to UMass because his financial aid package had been suspended due to his rapidly declining grades. Instead, he spent his windfall on trips to New York City and parties with friends.
On September 11, 2012, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a naturalized United States citizen after completing a US civics and English test, being interviewed by a federal immigration officer, and passing a criminal background check. With 2,500 immigrants packed into the TD Garden sports arena, Dzhokhar stood up with his right hand raised. “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty,” he declared. “That I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bare true faith and allegiance to the same….”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received his citizenship on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the first anniversary of the bloodbath inside the apartment in Watertown.
Over the next several months, the brothers Tsarnaev carefully hatched their plan. Following instructions found on the Internet and perhaps lessons taught by insurgents like Mahmud Mansur Nidal in Dagestan, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar used their Cambridge apartment as a base camp and possible laboratory for making bombs. In early February 2013, Tamerlan drove over the Massachusetts border to Seabrook, New Hampshire, where fireworks are legal, and spent two hundred dollars on two “Lock and Load” kits, which included forty-eight shells from Phantom Fireworks. Each shell was designed with two explosive powders. Back in 2010, an aspiring terrorist name Faisal Shahzad purchased fireworks from the company’s sister store in Pennsylvania to help construct a pressure cooker bomb he later planted inside a Nissan Pathfinder in New York’s Times Square.
Fortunately, that attempt was foiled by a pair of street vendors who spotted smoke coming from the vehicle. The bomb was lit, but it had failed to explode.
Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev would work long hours to make sure that mistake did not happen twice.
[7]
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
On a normal Marathon Monday, the city’s longest-serving mayor, Thomas M. Menino, would be at the finish line to crown the men’s winner. It was a duty he had performed for nineteen previous years and one that he looked forward to annually. The eyes of the sporting world are on Boston every Marathon Monday as the Red Sox play one of their first home games of the season and later the world’s finest long-distance runners seek to make history on one of the nation’s oldest and most challenging marathon courses. The race is filled with pageantry, pomp, and circumstance, and the finish line is a gathering spot for the city’s power brokers — from politicians and the media to business leaders and local sports celebrities. It’s an annual rite of passage in spring that Menino embraces with all his heart.
Like the city he represents, Tom Menino was forever the underdog. The son of a factory foreman from the tough Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, his early life showed no signs of his later success. After graduating from high school in 1960, Menino found work as a door-to-door salesman for Metropolitan Life Insurance. He wasn’t flashy. He was squarely built and spoke with a thick tongue that gave some people the impression that he was slow. Menino was smart, though — smart enough to build a consensus within every group he connected with. His power was both subtle and disarming. Menino took a few college courses at night but soon gave it up, reminding his father that Harry Truman had never gone to college. Menino would eventually earn a bachelors degree from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, but in the interim, he slowly climbed his way up the steep ladder of local politics. In 1983, he was elected to the Boston City Council, where he would serve the people of District 5 (Hyde Park) for nearly a decade. Menino gobbled up committee appointments and eventually became chairman of the Boston City Council’s Finance Committee (later renamed the City Council Ways and Means Committee), and later rose to become City Council president. His home life was quiet and secure. Menino had been married to the same woman, the former Angela Feletra, since 1966, and the couple raised two children in Hyde Park. Described as more of a sturdy blocker-and-tackler type than a flashy quarterback, few outside Menino’s family gave him any chance of aspiring to higher office. He had flirted with the idea of running for Congress in 1992 but decided not to when the district he had his eye on dissolved. The decision to wait proved fortuitous. A year later, President Bill Clinton selected popular Boston mayor Ray Flynn, an avid runner and son of South Boston, to become the United States’ Ambassador to the Holy See. Flynn, who had once had presidential dreams of his own, accepted the position to the Vatican, which made Tom Menino acting mayor of the city of Boston. Some viewed Menino as merely a caretaker of the office once held by political legends such as Kevin White and the so-called “Rascal King” James Michael Curley. Surely Menino, with his cringe-worthy vocal delivery and sluggish gait, would be no match in the general election against the likes of James Brett, a smooth-talking state politician; Mickey Roache, a former commissioner of the Boston Police Department; or Christopher Lydon, an acerbic television personality and host of the city’s PBS newscast. But Menino’s campaign commercials, which poked fun at his style, won over the city’s voters. “I’m no fancy talkah,” he said, smiling into the camera. But what he was — was a doer. In the 1993 election, Tom Menino beat out seven other challengers, and he never lost another election. In fact, no candidates have ever managed to even come close. As mayor, Tom Menino consolidated his power and ran the city of Boston with nearly complete autonomy. During his administration, he reduced
gun violence in the city, which at one point had rivaled both Washington, DC, and Detroit. He helped bring the Democratic National Convention to Boston in 2004 and also opened up the South Boston waterfront to commercialization, which has been effectively shifting the heart of the city closer to the water ever since. Despite his success, Menino continued to get skewered in the press for his malapropisms — he once called Boston’s lack of parking spaces “an Alcatraz” around his neck. His reign was marked as much by steady leadership and progressive urban mechanics as it was goofy missteps. Screwing up the names of Boston sports figures like Adam Vinatieri, Jason Varitek, and Rajon Rondo would likely have sunk lesser politicians. For many, though, these mistakes became endearing over time, and supporters and critics alike felt that Tom Menino possessed a mayor-for-life type of power in the city.
But on race day 2013, the seventy-year-old mayor was in the hospital, recovering from a host of ailments, including a compression fracture he suffered in his back. The injury was the latest setback for the aging mayor, who in 2013 was diagnosed with Type II diabetes and also suffered a broken leg. He has had an impressive history of injuries and surgeries. In 1997, he was twice hospitalized for kidney stones. In 2003, a cancerous tumor was removed from his back. In 2004, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. In 2008, he had arthroscopic surgery to repair his knee, which he injured when he nearly fell while carrying the Red Sox’s World Series trophy. In 2010, he was hospitalized for an infection after he scraped his elbow while on vacation in Italy. Menino also had two more knee surgeries, a surgery to repair drooping eyelids, and he had to wear a walking boot for weeks in 2012 after breaking his toe. In October 2012, the mayor was back in the hospital yet again for a respiratory infection and a blood clot. He spent nearly two months in Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he sustained a compression fracture in his back from lying in bed. In February 2013, he was living at the city-owned Parkman House, rather than his Hyde Park home, because the stately mansion was handicapped accessible with elevators and ramps, unlike his modest single-family house. He was walking with a cane but still managed to make it to some public events. Speculation swirled as to whether the mayor had had a stroke — rumors that were stoked by a TV appearance while he was in the hospital during which he spoke slowly and slurred his words even more than usual. Aides attributed the speech difficulty to medication and denied the mayor had suffered a stroke or any other more serious ailment than what was described. In March 2014, just three months after leaving office, he was diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer that spread to his liver and lymph nodes.
The mayor’s health problems had Boston’s political scene abuzz in early 2013 as politicians and pundits wondered whether Menino would seek an unprecedented sixth term. City Councilor John Connolly called the mayor’s bluff and decided not to wait, announcing in February that he was in the mayor’s race — whether Menino ran for reelection or not.
On March 28, 2013 — just two weeks before the marathon — Menino announced that he would not run again.
“It’s a very difficult decision,” a humbled Menino said. “It’s a hard decision — the hardest in my career, the hardest of my life…. There have been a lot of unsolicited calls, people saying, ‘You have to stay.’ How do you say no to that? But I have to do what’s best for Boston and for me.”
“I love this job,” he added. “For 20 years, I’ve challenged the people and the people have challenged me. They’ve always been by my side on good days and bad days. We’ve made decisions that were not always popular, but they always trusted me.”
He formally made the announcement in an impassioned speech at Faneuil Hall with his family by his side. It was an emotional decision, one that he said he made because he was unable to resume a “Menino schedule.”
The former Hyde Park city councilor prided himself on making it to dozens of public events every week. Visiting everywhere from senior centers, schools, and libraries to parks and new businesses, throughout his twenty-year tenure the mayor was a fixture in Boston’s neighborhoods — so much so that urban lore has it that half of Boston’s population claims they met him while he was mayor. When he realized he couldn’t keep up his usual pace — or endure a grueling summer of campaigning against an opponent thirty years his junior — the writing was on the wall, and he stepped aside. His announcement rocked Boston’s political world and immediately set off a frenzy among wannabe mayors. Menino vowed to stay out of the race and resumed his work at city hall, unknowing that the biggest task of his storied political career was looming just days away.
On April 12, 2013, Menino was still recovering from his back fracture and long rehab and was easing back into a more full work schedule when a freak accident landed him back in the hospital. Just three days before the marathon, Menino was walking into an event at the Lee School in Dorchester when he awkwardly twisted his ankle and fell to the ground. He was brought to city hall where he iced it, but the pain throbbed and soon his ankle swelled up like a balloon.
The mayor went back to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where it was confirmed that he had fractured his fibula and needed surgery. The procedure was performed on Saturday, April 13, when doctors repaired the fracture with screws and a metal plate. On Marathon Day the venerable mayor was once again bedridden, recovering from yet another surgery.
For Boston City Councilor Mike Ross, who had announced just four days before the marathon that he was running for mayor, the event was his first big chance to get out and greet thousands of potential voters, fundraisers, and movers and shakers. A handsome, single forty-year-old, Ross is the son of a Holocaust survivor and was hoping to become the city’s first Jewish mayor.
Besides the political ramifications of the party circuit, Ross loves the marathon. It finishes in his Back Bay district; plus, he himself is a big runner who organized a weekly runners’ group along the Charles River so that women who wanted to run that route would not have to run it alone.
That morning, he and an aide headed to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where he ran into fellow councilors Stephen J. Murphy and Bill Linehan. He then made his way to an event at the Lenox Hotel.
“I have to get to every marathon event that’s possible,” Ross told his aide, knowing the importance of making a strong start in the mayoral race, which would eventually field a dozen candidates.
He then stopped by an event at the Charlesmark Hotel that was being attended by a woman he was seeing at the time. He took pictures with supporters in front of the hotel, which he posted to his Instagram account. From there, he went into Marathon Sports to check out some new sneakers by Boston-based company New Balance. The place was filled. There was a line at the counter. People waited for clerks to get them their size. Tourists scooped up T-shirts, jackets, and other items emblazoned with the Boston Athletic Association marathon logo. The councilor was eager to try on the new running shoes, but his aide was tugging at his sleeve, telling him they had to get to another party. A female sales clerk came over to the councilor.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“No, I’ll come back,” he replied.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was looking forward to some down time. Today was Marathon Monday, and his only official duty was to crown winners at the finish line at Copley Square. After that, the rest of the afternoon was his to putter around his home in Milton. The governor’s wife, Diane, a partner at the prestigious law firm Ropes & Gray, was in New York City for the day on business. Their daughters were now off on their own. Sarah lived in California, while her sister, Katherine, lived in Boston’s South End. Governor Patrick’s family had often been public news. First, it was announced back in 2007 that Diane Patrick was receiving treatment for “exhaustion and depression.” A year later, Katherine announced to the world she was gay. Through it all, the governor stood in loving support of his family, even as the pressures of his office continued to build. Elected in 2006 as the first African American governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and re-elect
ed in 2009, the Milton Academy and Harvard graduate and native of Chicago’s rough South Side had developed a particularly thick skin during his years in politics. When he arrived in office, he was criticized for lavish spending on office drapes and his lease of a new Cadillac. He was criticized by the media for not holding news conferences to announce every new initiative. Compared to Mayor Menino, he was not viewed publicly as a man of the people — although he was an effective campaigner when he had to be. But the two shared a similar trait in the ability to roll up their sleeves and get the job done — whatever it was.
2013 had been a particularly difficult time for the governor. The state’s crime lab was a mess thanks to chemist Annie Dookhan’s criminal mishandling of evidence. Her crime had now placed thousands of successful prosecutions in jeopardy. Patrick’s second in command, Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray, was currently under investigation for crashing a state-owned vehicle while driving one hundred miles per hour without a seatbelt. Murray was fined $555 for the accident but did not face any significant charges. Still, many did not believe Murray’s claim that he had simply fallen asleep at the wheel during his pre-dawn drive, and there was wide speculation about what had really happened. With both scandals hovering above the Massachusetts State House, Governor Patrick could take some comfort in the fact that — for one day, at least — the spotlight would not be on his administration. Appropriately, the media would instead be focused on the Boston Marathon winners and those countless others who were crossing the finish line for one cause or another. Governor Patrick visited Mayor Menino in the hospital that morning.
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