Boston Marathon Wrap-up, Part One: Strictly the Official Story

by Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB

A truth group in Watertown, Massachusetts has invited me to make a one-hour presentation on the Boston Marathon. It will be given on January 23, 2018 with slides; the text here is without slides. It’s in three parts. Part One (today’s article at Gumshoe) is simply a recounting of the official story without criticism. Part Two, tomorrow, will offer ten challenges to the official story. Part Three offers another five challenges, real shockers.

In order to cover many points coherently, Part One chops the official story here into four sections: the players, the two scenes (the finish line and the boat arrest), legal formalities, and the evidence as presented in court that has now caused Jahar Tsarnaev to be on Death Row.

To repeat: what you see in this article today is strictly the official government and media narrative — what “they” want you to know.

The Players

I’ll brief you on some of the characters in this story.  Jahar Tsarnaev was born in 1993 in Kyrgyzstan. His father, Anzor, a Chechen. Anzor’s sister, Maret, a lawyer, is the aunt of Jahar. She will come to figure in the story. Jahar has two sisters, living in New Jersey, and a deceased brother, Tamerlan, 6 years older than himself. Jahar graduated from Cambridge Ringe and Latin in 2011.

In 2012 his parents left the US. Jahar became an American citizen in 2012 and enrolled in UMass Dartmouth, one hour south of Boston. He was on the wresting team, his older brother Tamerlan was a boxer.

Tamerlan married Katherine Russell whose Dad is a doctor and whose grandfather is a Yale Skull and Bones man. They have a daughter, born in 2010.

Other people involved are Deval Patrick who was governor of Massachusetts at the time of the 2013 Marathon, Richard DesLauriers who was FBI Agent in Charge of the case, and two eyewitnesses to Jahar’s alleged crimes: Dun Meng who was carjacked, and Nathan Harman who was on the MIT campus the night Sean Collier was killed.

Other witnesses who testified were Stephen Silva, who owned a gun that may have been used, Richard Donoghue a cop who was injured, and Dr. Stephen Ray Odom, a surgeon.

In the courtroom you will meet Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz (who now work for a private law firm), the defense attorney Judy Clarke, and Judge George O’Toole.

The Marathon Finish Line and the Boatside Arrest 

I’ll describe two scenes, the one on Monday, April 15th at the Marathon finish line — which is just outside the side door of the Boston Public Library. The other scene is in the residential part of Watertown where Jahar was found in a boat.

The Marathon race begins in Hopkinton, Mass, with runners who have pre-registered to participate. More than 20, 000 raced that year, with the winner, an Ethiopian man, coming in at 11.49 am. Three hours later there were still a lot of runners crossing the finish line and many of their friends lined the sidewalks of Boylston St.

At 2.49 a bomb went off and 13 seconds later, the second one exploded. That was Monday. On Thursday at 5pm, DesLauriers called a press conference to say that the FBI had looked at many videos and picked out two suspects, not yet identified by name.

Later that night, Thursday, the Tsarnaev brothers made their way to Watertown. Tamerlan was captured but Jahar disappeared. The next day police searched homes in Watertown. The governor asked people in greater Boston asked to stay home and “not let anyone in.”

At 6pm, when the curfew was lifted, a resident of Watertown, David Henneberry, went out to his yard for a smoke and saw that his dry-docked boat had been disturbed.

He called the police and helicopters flew over the boat to determine if a person was in it.  Yes, one was. Police shot 228 bullets; some police have been reprimanded for lack of discipline during this capture.

Jahar emerged from the boat, wounded and bleeding but unarmed, and was taken to hospital. The Guantanamo High Valued Interrogating Group questioned him in between his surgeries. They determined that the brothers did not have any accomplices worth worrying about. On April 26, he was sent to Fort Devens medical ward as a prisoner.

Legal Formalities   

I’m going to run down the legal proceedings. In federal district court in Boston, Jahar was accused of several crimes, including:  conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, bombing a place of public use resulting in death, malicious destruction of property.

How did the authorities determine who had bombed the marathon? A Chinese immigrant, Dun Meng, had told police that he was carjacked by the brothers. That was on Thursday night. after the press conference that showed photos of the boys. During the carjacking Jahar used Dun Meng’s ATM card. The bank provided a picture from its security cameras – as did the convenience store where they stopped for gasoline. The picture did not yield names but they were compared it to the Mass Registry of Motor Vehicles mugshots of the boys.

Late on Friday, Jahar was arrested boatside.  Two days later, om April 21, Officer Daniel Genck wrote up the Police Complaint on and it was signed by Magistrate Marianne Bowler that night.

On June 27, 2013 a grand jury returned an Indictment Bill charging Jahar with 30 counts. Half a year later, the trial began. Jury selection occupied the months of January and February 2015. The liability phase with opening statements and witness testimonies started on March 4. By April 8^th jury gave a verdict of guilty to all 30 charges.

Then, there was the sentencing phase. Prosecutor could show why the death penalty punishment should be imposed and defender could show why mitigating circumstances such as “indoctrination by his brother” should mean Jahar should get only life in prison.

On May 15, the jury decided on the death penalty. Jahar is now on Death Row in Supermax prison, Colorado, where all prisoners are in solitary confinement. Attorney General Eric Holder requested that Jahar be put under SAMs – special administrative measures. Thus he gets no visitors and no mail or phone calls except from sisters and parents. Jahar is appealing his conviction and has been assigned a new team of lawyers and three new judges:  one of whom, Judge Juan R. Torruella, has accepted as amici curiae Mary Maxwell, Cesar Baruja, and James Fetzer.

Evidence Presented in Court

At the trial, prosecutors wanted to prove the following 12 facts, among others:

1. Jahar borrowed a gun from his friend Stephen Silva in February. (Silva testified to this for the prosecution.)
2. Tamerlan bought pressure cookers in Saugus Mall, in January, paying with cash. (The receipts were found in Tamerlan’s wallet at death in April.)
3. Terrorist material was downloaded to the brothers’ computers. (FBI produced evidence from their computers.)
4. Jahar laid a backpack on the ground near Forum Restaurant at 755 Boylston St, which was the second bomb to explode.
5. Jahar then was seen buying milk at Whole Foods 20 minutes later. (Store video shows this.)
6. On Thursday after 10pm, the brothers went to MIT where they killed Officer Sean Collier as he sat in his cruise car on campus. (Nathan Harman, a student, testified that he saw Jahar near the car as he rode past on his bicycle.)
7. Right after that, the brothers did a carjacking of a Mercedes SUV which was parked on Brighton Ave. (Dun Meng testified to this and said Tamerlan boasted of having bombed the marathon and killing a cop.)
8. The SUV stopped at an ATM where Jahar withdrew $800 from Dun Meng’s account. (Dun Meng testified to this, and said the boys asked him if the rented car could be taken out of state.)
9. The SUV then stopped at a gas station. Jahar went into the convenience store and Dun Meng, in the front passenger seat, escaped and ran across the street to a Mobil station. (The owner of the Mobil testified about Dun Meng’s arrival.)
10. The brothers then drove to Watertown. They threw IED’s and pipe bombs at police and initiated a shootout with cops, at Laurel Street. (Police testified to this.)
11. Jahar escaped from the 1.00am shootout by climbing into the SUV, and as he drove he ran over Tamerlan. (Police testified to this.)
12. Jahar’s whereabouts was unknown for the next 19 hours. Then a man noticed a body in a boat and called police. (David Henneberry testified to this.)

The foregoing is what the public heard from media and what persons in the gallery of the Moakley Courthouse heard.  But they did not hear the truth. The Tsarnaevs were not the Marathon bombers.

The incident may have been cooked up years in advance. The purpose of it could be the removal of Boston’s sophisticated society and its replacement with unthinking, unquestioning, obedient people. Many citizens can see that we are giving up our freedom in small increments, and soon there will be no freedom.

The remainder of my presentation will contain fifteen items that challenge the official story. See Part Two of this Gumshoe series for ten of these 15, and Part Three for the remaining five that are the most mind-boggling.

–Mary W Maxwell was born and raised in Boston and can’t get over how the folks of that city have so readily accepted a pack of nonsense about the Marathon bombing.