Picking the Best Liar Regarding Tamerlan’s Death

by Mary W Maxwell

I apologize for talking so much about Boston here at Gumshoe, but we feel we are hot on the trail to something. God knows what.

I have been very irate since the Podstava video that appears to show Tamerlan taken into custody.  I am still angry, but not for his sake so much as for the lack of interest that Bostonians (“my people”) show towards all the discrepancies in the story.

We are lucky to have Cheryl Dean and Josée Lépine contributing from their “documentary” knowledge about what went on after the arrest of Jahar, though of course none of us has a clue who did the bombing.  Pardon my insulting Jahar, but he does not look to be at the level of genius.  I am SURE he did not plan the bombing.

Someone has recently drawn my attention to the Weebly website which has in-depth articles about the Boston Marathon “incident.” I’ll mine it shamelessly in this article. (And I hope people will mine my products shamelessly….)

So let’s just look at the medical aspects of Tamerlan’s death.

How Many Wounds Would the Wounded Sustain, If the Wounded Could Sustain Wounds?

The helpful writers at Weebly give us some general background:

1. You can get road rash on your chest (or elsewhere) if you are dragged on the ground.
2. If the doctors have to help you breathe, they can stab you with a tracheotomy.
3. If they need to clear out a coalescence of blood around the heart they may puncture your chest.
4. If you received an open wound on the abdomen, your guts could protrude and would need to be protected.

Graphics are provided on the website for all these things, along with other “physical evidence” such as photos of bullet casings. So now, which testimony do you want to hear? I offer you four sources:

— the cop who fought with the criminal (assume for the moment that there was a criminal),

— an ambulance attendant who saw the wounds,

— a hospital director or similarly titled medical boss, or

— the lady who saw it all from her second-floor window.

Names are named here which is a help. We are talking about the Laurel St scenario in Watertown. The time is just after midnight on the morning of April 19^th in the year of Our Lord or Allah or somebody, 2013.

Source One: The Cop

I think this quote was taken from a District Attorney’s investigation (investigation? hello?) It says there was concern that the criminal could be wearing an explosive vest, endangering the life of any cop who touched him. I quote:

“Boston Police Superintendent-in-Chief Dan Linskey saw another officer holding Tamerlan on the ground and he ran over, worried that the suspect might be wearing an explosive vest — worried that he might blow up the cop. The pair began to strip the suspect’s clothes. An ambulance arrived for the officer. And cops called for an ambulance for the suspect…”

Gosh, that is the first time I have heard of a ‘medical’ stripping of Tamerlan. Let’s put that to one side and move on.

Source Two: The Ambo

(All this from Weebly, which makes use of trial transcripts provided by Gumshoe’s own francophone, Josée Lépine:

“Michael Sullivan, a Boston paramedic … was qualified to work in any of the 3 ALS ambulances fielded every evening by the City of Boston.

“Prior to an equipment breakdown, Sullivan’s ALS ambulance had been directed to the Watertown area to be ‘ready’ after reports of the Laurel street gunfire exchange went out over the police scanners. [Don’t you love a ‘gunfire exchange’?]

“Testifying for the defense on Trial Day 52, April 29th, Sullivan described the wounds of the unidentified injured man he found already strapped down in the BLS A14 ambulance:

“When I first got in the truck, I noticed that he had multiple trauma, and he had some — and road rash.”  [Jahar’s fraternal run-over, you recall].

Interruption for newcomers.  Younger brother caught in big gunfight with about 50, 000 police on the one corner in sleepy Watertown, jumps into a car and not only manages to sneak off – I mean what’s 50,000 among friends? – but in his haste runs over the beloved brother.

“The two police, in the ambulance, corrected the paramedic with 26+ years of experience.  ‘No, no, no. It was a blast-type injury from an errant explosive device,’ he was told.

“He elaborates:  ‘Some looked like they were apparent gunshot wounds, and others looked like shrapnel-type-appearing wounds.’ [Grammatically I think it should be ‘shrapnel-type’ or ‘schrapnel-appearing.’ ‘Shrapnel-type-appearing’ is hedging too much.]

“Sullivan described the patient, handcuffed and on his back, as combative, growling, rearing up, sweaty, pale, and resisting efforts to treat him. The man was suffering from shock and would allow only very limited medical intervention.”

Well you know how it is with Muslim terrorists. They can’t make up their minds whether to martyr-ize themselves, or run away to New York, or gives those cops a good punch-up.

Source Three: The Big Cheese at the Hospital

Actually this source is a twofer: Richard Wolfe, MD, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Brookline (upmarket end of Boston), and a Dr Schoenfeld of that hospital’s Trauma Team.

(What do you bet they get extra pay for advising Homeland Security about weapons of mass destruction trauma type thing.)

“The trauma team immediately put a breathing tube in Tsarnaev’s throat, Dr. Schoenfeld said, then cut open his chest to see if blood or other fluid was collecting around his heart.  (The technical term for this was a thoracotomy, releasing blood from the chest cavity and possibly massaging his stopped heart.) He was also apparently given massive amounts of blood to replace what he had lost.”

Frankly I don’t know how a hospital would “apparently” give massive amounts of blood. Isn’t there a written record? Don’t nurses have to sign for something like that? How else would one get reimbursement from Blue Cross?

As for Wolfe, the boss, I have seen him on Youtube. A more self-confident person does not walk the earth (’xcepting possibly myself). Dr Wolfe is bearded and a bit grandfatherly. He testifies:

“This was a trauma arrest, multiple injuries, probably, we believe, a combination of blast, potentially gunshot wounds.”

“When asked how many gunshot wounds, he said: ‘Unable to count.’” [I’ll assume he means “countless” rather than a personal limitation on his ability to count.]

“Wolfe said the injuries may have been caused by ‘an explosive device, possibly shrapnel, thermal injury. It was pretty much throughout the trunk….’

“‘There were signs of more than just gunshot wounds,’ Wolfe said. A blast injury to the trunk? [We’re fishing for the grenade line of weapon here.] He replied, ‘Yes.’  The person arrived at the hospital in (cardiac) arrest, he said.”

Could be pressure-cooker activity, I suppose, in a pinch.

Source Four: The Lady at the Window

Finally – please remember I am preparing to tell you my method for picking out liars – there was a local who saw it all.

“He was on his belly; he was moving,” said Jean MacDonald, who was watching from her second-floor bathroom window on Laurel Street. “I saw [Tamerlan] trying to lift up his head.”

Weebly then reminds us that another resident, from “five doors down” had posted stuff right away but now is known only as ‘Jess Ica.’ (Understandably, like Danny the carjackee, you don’t want to be a witness against rough criminals.)

She herself made a video.  “Her video captured the last minute of the gunfire exchange and ended after Dzhokhar ran the police cruiser barricade.” (I have not seen this. Maybe she’s waiting to sell it at scalper’s prices?) She informs us:

“I was watching the news about the MIT shooting.  I heard a car speed by really fast. Soon after, I heard three pops, like fireworks.  The pops continued.  There was an explosion…and gunshots.”  “There were two explosions, I did see one orange flare… Soon after the bullets stopped, a lot more police showed and an ambulance showed up and about 5-10 minutes after the ambulance showed up, someone was actually getting carried out on a gurney, just wrapped in a white sheet from head to toe. They were clearly deceased.” Good heavens.

Deceit and Self-Deceiving

Dear Reader, how are you going with these sources of the case against Jahar? Did you feel comfortable with Dan the cop, Michael the ambulance driver, the two docs at Beth Israel Deaoness, Jean the second-story lady, and Jess the video-maker?

Ever since I heard that 9-11 was not dinkum di, rolled gold, true blue, I have realized that when they put on a scenario – Oklahoma City, Port Arthur, Washington sniper, Sydney siege (oops, sorry, not supposed to talk too close to home) — they have to have, at the ready, a bevy of liars.

I mentioned that Dr Wolfe is the only one I have seen, on the screen, of this group. Very persuasive. Could sell you the Sydney Harbor bridge, no problem.

The ability to lie is an important part of human nature. And, as Randolph Nesse, MD, a leading sociobiologist says, we had to evolve the ability to self-deceive, as it makes us better deceivers if we actually believe the lies we are telling. Some animal species have this trait. Homo sapiens definitely has it and it is here to stay.

Last October I wrote about the Geelong Grammar music teacher who professed to the Royal Commission that he was absolutely unaware of events that we all know he must have been aware of. I said I believed him. He cannot recall the events as it is extremely in his interest to block them out.

And the Winner Is…

So, naturally I am not going to say that I accept one of these observer’s reports of the criminal’s wounds as opposed to others.  When observers give me a range — road rash, blunt hit on the head, countless bullet wounds, a blast, the cut from a thoracotomy, did I miss something, perhaps a pregnancy? —

I know they all have to be wrong.

The logic is that if several are lying, there can’t be one of them getting it right. I would say this even if I had the impression – which I don’t of course – that an actual shootout took place on Laurel St.

There is no point trying to compare the likelihood of the blast, the cut, etc.  If even one person in the group says the boy ran over his brother (the road rash symptom), and other members of the group did not see the marks from that – and don’t even mention it – we have to know the whole affair is a gross fiction.

Don’t we?

— Mary Maxwell is a sociobiologist by any other name. She looks forward to your visiting the website maryWmaxwell.com, where a free book or two can be had.