She thought that Dhzokhar Tsarnaev might be hiding in plain sight, now that it was easier for him to move around.
Where could he be? she asked herself.
Munro sat down at the bar and ordered off the menu. Everyone was still glued to the HD television sets overhead. The station they were watching suddenly flashed the breaking news graphic CORNERED. Her heart began racing again as it had on Boylston Street days before.
In Dave Henneberry’s back yard on Franklin Street in Watertown, cops assumed the boat where the bombing suspect was hiding was booby-trapped with bombs — and that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had a gun. There was a gaff in the middle of the boat, and the black handle that was poking out looked to authorities like a rifle barrel.
In fact, Tsarnaev did not have a gun. Instead, he had a pen and a piece of paper, which he used to scrawl this note:
I’m jealous of my brother who ha[s] [re]ceived the reward of jannutul Firdaus (inshallah) before me. I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive. God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions. I ask Allah to make me a shahied to allow me to return to him and be among all the righteous people in the highest levels of heaven. He who Allah guides no one can misguide. A[llah Ak]bar! The US Government is killing our innocent civilians but most of you already know that. As a [illegible] I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished, we Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all. Well at least that’s how muhhammad (pbuh) wanted it to be [for]ever, the ummah is beginning to rise [illegible] has awoken the mujahideen, know you are fighting men who look into the barrel of your gun and see heaven, now how can you compete with that. We are promised victory and we will surely get it. Now I don’t like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam but due to said [illegible] it is allowed. All credit goes [illegible]. Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.62
Dhzokhar Tsarnaev scribbled this manifesto with the presumption that they would be his last words. He believed the day would end with his death as it had begun with the death of his brother. Before leaving his Cambridge apartment for good the day before, Dzhokhar emailed his mother, telling her that he would see her in this life or the next one.63
Officers from multiple departments surrounded the boat, each with guns drawn. Noticing sudden movements inside the vessel, one cop fired and then bullets started flying everywhere. Cracks of gunfire echoed through the neighborhood and for several seconds, there was chaos.
“As soon as one cop shot everybody shot,” Deveau recalls. “A significant amount of rounds went off.”
Next-door neighbor Dan Cantor, a Berklee College of Music professor who moonlights as a drummer for indie rock band Jim’s Big Ego, heard the gunshots. His family had spent much of the lockdown in his soundproof basement music studio, so the kids wouldn’t hear explosions and gunshots ringing out in the neighborhood. As cops moved in on Dzhokhar, gunfire rang out again. Cantor estimates he heard between thirty and fifty shots. He rounded up his family and they all hid under a bed together — away from the windows — as the gunshots erupted just outside. Some of the cops were using Cantor’s Toyota Prius as a shield.
Boston Police Deputy Superintendent (and future commissioner) William Evans screamed out “Hold your fire!” several times until the gunshots ceased.
Danny Keeler was on the scene also and was relieved to know that no Boston police officer had drawn their weapon during the tense seconds when the boat was fired upon.
“Nice job on the fire discipline,” he shouted to William Evans. Keeler examined the bullet-riddled vessel. What the fuck would we have done if it wasn’t that kid in there, he muttered to himself.
The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team took control of the scene. They had been brought up from Virginia, and several of the operatives spoke with slow Southern drawls.
When Governor Patrick returned to Watertown, he met with the FBI’s tactical supervisor in a trailer at the command post. The Fed wore a headset and had control of several remote cameras at the scene.
“He had this big bulge of chewing tobacco in his lower lip,” Patrick recalls. “He was describing the action while spitting into a Gatorade bottle.” The supervisor resembled a minor league baseball coach calling in signals from the dugout.
In Watertown, another FBI agent was perched on the second floor of Henneberry’s home, overseeing the situation below. A state police chopper whirred overhead and took thermal images of the boat, revealing the outline of the terrorist in hiding. Television stations tapped into the state police camera’s live feed, and soon all of America could see a figure moving slowly under the tarp inside the vessel.
Flashbang grenades — small, non-lethal explosives that stun their targets — were lobbed toward the boat in a bid to disorient Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. When that failed to work, the FBI had another idea. One agent on scene, a big Southern man with a long beard, nudged Danny Keeler as he pointed over to the BearCat, an armored, tank-like vehicle that had been brought in by state police. He too was chewing tobacco and spitting in a cup.
“You know, I’d like to take that truck you have,” he told Keeler and William Evans, “and ram that fucking boat a couple of times and shake that motherfucker up a little and see what he wants to do. Is that OK with you?”
Evans gave him the nod and the BearCat moved into position. The vehicle’s motor cranked and its tires tore through the sod in Henneberry’s yard as it powered toward the boat.
The small tank crashed into the vessel — bam!
“Motherfucker ain’t moving,” the FBI agent said. “What’dya say hit him a couple more times.”
They tried the tactic again, but the boat trailer was too strong to let the vessel be lifted fully off the ground.
A negotiator from the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team then grabbed a bullhorn and delivered a message from Dzhokhar’s wrestling coach at Cambridge Rindge & Latin that urged his former student to surrender. The question was: would he go down fighting as his brother had, or was Dzhokhar ready to give himself up?
Members of the SWAT team were then selected to advance on the boat to capture the suspected terrorist — or kill him if they had to.
At this point, Tsarnaev was positioned along the starboard side of the boat. His arm emerged from beneath the shrink-wrap. He stood up, and a sniper’s scope beamed a red dot on the bloodied, battered teenager’s forehead. Dhzokhar Tsarnaev was dead if he made a wrong move. He was unsteady on his feet and bleeding profusely from the neck and head. He lifted his shirt to alert police that he was not wearing a suicide vest.
“Show me your hands!” one member of the SWAT unit shouted. “Show me your hands!”
A phalanx of cops grabbed him, tore him out of the boat, and thrust him to the ground where he was gang-tackled by several officers. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev screamed out in pain. His arms and legs were patted down for explosives. His hands were pried open and searched for detonators — all while he continued to cry out.
Two transit police officers, comrades of Dic Donohue, were given the honor of handcuffing the suspected bomber.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was placed on a stretcher and led through a group of cops that included Danny Keeler. Each officer stared angrily at the terror suspect who had damaged — but had not broken — their beloved city. A few cops spit in Tsarnaev’s face as he went by.
As Danny Keeler looked at Tsarnaev, he saw the faces of Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Martin Richard in his mind’s eye. Their faces, both in life and in death, would be with him forever. He thought about their families and the families of all the murder victims he had fought for during his long career.
“We got you, motherfucker,” Keeler whispered as Dzhokhar was led past him in shackles on a stretcher.
“I owe you, everybody, a drink after this one,” Keeler told his boss, Ed Davis.
“The rounds are on me,” the commissioner responded.
Watching the dramatic arrest from a pub in Cambridge, Tracy Munro saw the breaking news banner
CAPTURED fly across the television screen. She placed her head down on the bar and wept uncontrollably.
[20]
CAPTURED
Moments after the bombing suspect was taken into custody, Mayor Tom Menino got on the police radio. He was exhausted and overcome with emotion.
“Your mayor is very proud of you,” he told his men.
“We did it for you, boss,” an officer replied immediately.
At 5:58 p.m., the Boston Police Twitter feed broke the news to the world: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”
Residents in both Boston and Watertown took to the streets in celebration. On Mt. Auburn Street in Watertown, a large crowd gathered to honor the police officers. Cops made their way back to their vehicles amid the sounds of cheering and clapping. Many jubilant residents broke from the crowd to offer hugs and a pat on the back to their protectors. Police officers responded with a wail of sirens and lights flashing in celebration. One armored vehicle came through with several cops riding on the back in their SWAT gear. The officer riding shotgun got on the loudspeaker and chanted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” to thunderous applause. The chant extended to the throng partying in the streets. In Boston, meanwhile, a spontaneous celebration broke out on Boston Common. It was reminiscent of a Red Sox, Bruins, or Patriots world championship win. But on this night Bostonians weren’t celebrating some shiny trophy, instead they were celebrating something much more meaningful — their freedom and their safety.
The party raged into the wee hours. Mayor Menino was back at the Parkman House at 33 Beacon Street, close to the Common. He had been staying at the historic, city-owned residence while recovering from surgery. He could hear the loud cheering on the next block, and he smiled.
Soon, he got a call from Commissioner Davis.
“Mayor, they’re drinking and partying on the Common. What do you want us to do?” the commissioner asked.
The mayor wished he could be out there celebrating with his people. “Who cares?” Menino replied.
If the city was going to heal itself, let that healing begin tonight, he thought.
Earlier that evening, the mayor had participated in a news conference along with Governor Patrick, Commissioner Davis, Colonel Alben, and others in Watertown.
“We are so grateful to be here right now. We’re so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case,” Alben said. “We are eternally grateful for the outcome here tonight. We have a suspect in custody. We’re exhausted, folks. But we have a victory here tonight.”
Commissioner Davis echoed Alben’s sentiments.
“Four days ago my city was ruthlessly attacked” a stern Davis said. “[This result] makes me proud to be a Boston police officer.”
Governor Patrick brought the night back to the victims and their families.
“On behalf of Krystle and Martin and Lingzi;” Patrick said, “on behalf of the MIT officer who was lost last night, and the transit police officer who was injured; and on behalf of the hundreds of people that were hurt by the explosions at the marathon, I want to say how grateful I am … to all of the law enforcement who worked so long and so hard together, to bring us to tonight’s conclusion. It was a very, very complicated case. A very challenging case. It’s a night that I think we’re all going to rest easy.”
The final tweet from the Boston police that night read, “In our time of rejoicing, let us not forget the families of Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell and Officer Sean Collier.”
Michelle L’Heureux had undergone eight hours of surgery on Friday morning. It was her third surgery in less than a week. She was aware of Sean Collier’s execution and the Watertown shootout the night before, and she knew there was an intense manhunt underway for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brother of the man who had tried to kill her on Boylston Street.
Doctors performed skin grafts to close up her arm and leg and removed the vacuum apparatus from her arm. As she was being wheeled back from surgery that morning, she held up both her arms to show her nurses that she had no more hoses attached to them. It was a small but important victory for her. Back in her room, she asked one of the nurses, “Did they catch him yet?”
The answer was no. Because of the lockdown ordered by Governor Patrick, she didn’t have any visitors that day. The hospital was eerily quiet. For the first time since the bombings, there were no flower deliveries, no well-wishers dropping by. When she awoke from surgery, Michelle picked up her iPad and immediately began surfing the web for information on the manhunt. The television set in her hospital room was tuned to CNN. As the day wore on and the intense pain returned, she was given medication to make her sleep. At around 7 p.m. on Friday night, Michelle was awakened by the sound of nurses, doctors, and others cheering out in the hallway.
Someone yelled into Michelle’s room, “They caught him!”
She turned on the TV and confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was indeed in custody.
“Thank God,” she said to the TV. “Thank God!”
Boston Police Officer Javier Pagan watched the surreal, chaotic events of Friday’s manhunt from home. He got text messages all day from his fellow officers who were on the scene.
When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was finally in handcuffs, a friend texted Javier, simply, “We got him.”
Javier’s reaction was one of relief, but he was also sad about Sean Collier’s senseless murder. He felt the anxiety of his brother and sister officers, all of whom knew these terrorists were not only capable of killing a cop — they wanted to do so.
“The stress level was so high,” he recalls. “But you have to give it to the city, you give it to the state, you give it to all the agencies involved — from Monday to Friday, we got them.”
Danny Keeler stopped off at a package store before returning to District 4. He purchased two thirty packs of beer for his men, all of whom had been pulling eighteen-hour days for the past week and were physically and emotionally drained. Some were crying in the station house. Keeler himself wept privately for those who were lost and the hundreds more who would never be the same again. Keeler took the party over to J. J. Foley’s, a legendary cop bar in Boston’s South End. The cops drank, hugged, and destressed from the most intense hours they had ever faced on the job. Keeler raised a glass of Jameson’s, looked around the bar, and toasted his men. His eyes welled with tears, and his heart filled with pride.
“It’s like some of the guys are racehorses and you have got to reward a racehorse or something afterwards,” Keeler explains. “They’d been going at it real good. They need to unwind and the drinks are on me. It was very satisfying to know that those guys were there when you needed them.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was brought by ambulance to Beth Israel Hospital, where twenty-six survivors, including Denise Richard, were still being treated for their injuries. Beth Israel was the closest Level One trauma center to Watertown. It was also the same hospital where Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been pronounced dead hours before. The younger Tsarnaev brother was flanked by armed guards as his stretcher was wheeled into a resuscitation room where ER nurses and doctors worked from thirty to forty minutes to stabilize him for surgery. A breathing tube was placed in Dzhokhar’s mouth, which made it impossible for him to communicate. Staring down at the suspected terrorist, staffers felt conflicted, but they knew they also had a job to do.
“They look at the perpetrator as someone absolutely horrible and ask themselves, ‘What have we done? We just saved him,’” said Dr. Richard Wolfe, head of emergency medicine at Beth Israel.64
There was also outrage among victims and their families recovering at the same hospital.
“The bastard is downstairs,” Bill Richard said as his own wife lay in a hospital bed and his daughter remained in a medically induced coma at Children’s Hospital. The reality of the situation was distressing, as was the planning for their son Martin’s funeral. Bill Richard and his friend Larry Marchese had both gotten word that members of the infamo
us Westboro Baptist Church were planning to protest at the eight-year-old’s funeral. The church, located in Topeka, Kansas, is made up of about forty radical zealots who leverage media attention surrounding funerals for American soldiers to espouse their hatred for gays. Firefighters and members of local biker gangs had offered to form a protective barrier around services for the little boy, but the Richard family wanted to avoid such a spectacle at all costs.
They were forced, despite their enormous grief, to stage a decoy funeral for Martin. Only a small number of family members were told where and when the real service would take place. Flowers were sent to a different funeral home as a diversion. The owners of John J. O’Connor & Son Funeral Home in Dorchester, where the actual service was held, also participated in the ruse by pretending they were closed and by giving most employees the day off. A select group of pallbearers and ushers were brought in for the funeral. On Monday, April 21, exactly one week after Martin’s murder, family members were given information about where to be at 7:30 a.m. the following morning. On Tuesday, April 22, a bus with tinted windows picked up the family from the hospital chapel and drove them toward the service with a police escort. When two TV satellite trucks followed the small convoy, state police blocked an intersection to stop the media.
Inside the funeral home, Martin lay in an open casket, wearing his Boston Bruins jersey. The Bruins were his favorite Boston team, and forward Patrice Bergeron was his favorite player. A marathon medal and his football were placed in the casket with him.
Larry Marchese was angry. He prayed before the boy’s body and got angry with God.
“You didn’t learn from your own son?” Larry demanded, looking up at the crucifix above the coffin.
Denise Richard attended the funeral for her little boy, but Martin’s sister could not.
“Jane was still being cared for by a group of angels at Children’s Hospital,” Marchese recalls. By angels, he meant the nurses who spent every hour with the child, changing the dressing on her bandages and comforting the little girl with soothing voices.
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