The Marathon’s Carjacking Nonsense, Part 3: The Evolving Narrative of Police and Media

by Mary W Maxwell

Josée Lépine began this series of articles by showing us that in the trial of Jahar  Tsarnaev for the Boston bombing, the owner of the gas station gave testimony. The significance of the gas station is that it figures in the narrative of the carjacking.

It is important to note that the carjacking story was used to give the public a way to link the bomb blasts at the 2013 Marathon with the accused person – or should I say the now convicted person Jahar and his now deceased (i.e., murdered by FBI) brother, Tamerlan.

This article discusses important data that I found at an alternative website: WhoWhatWhy.org, edited by Russ Baker. He and colleagues have been doing excellent investigatory work on the Marathon case and they take a very skeptical approach to the carjackee, Dun Meng.

(You know that we at Gumshoe take a more than skeptical approach. We declare that the carjacking never occurred. It is crock city.)

WhoWhatWhy clearly demonstrates that there were several different police narratives as to the way in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev “admitted” to Danny that he was the Crim of the Hour. Thanks to the very number of these stories, we know they do not provide a reliable story.

You can follow details at Russ’s website, but I’ll just emphasize one of his main points. It concerns a Boston radio station, WMUR. They initially interviewed Danny, a mere four days after the “carjacking.”  When someone later asked WMUR to please re-interview him (because of the discrepancies) they declined to do so.

Look, pretend your radio station got kudos for doing the initial interview. Wouldn’t you want your station to associate itself even more thickly with the case by doing the second interview? You’d become the ultimate go-to person.

Blame WMUR

The offending channel, WMUR, operates out of Manchester NH — connected to Boston by the so-called northeast corridor. Four days after the alleged April 18, 2013 “carjacking” of Danny, Nick Spinetto at WMUR asked him key questions.

Danny obligingly furnished the information that Tamerlan had boasted about the (April 15th) Marathon bombing. Danny did not say anything to Spinetto about the killing of Sean Collier, the MIT campus cop!

Back in 2013, Danny told the media he was scared and did not want his surname revealed. Thus, on TV, he was seen only in silhouette. OK, that’s understandable, but there’s no longer any need to protect him. He is out in the open now, and he must know that his carjack story has put Jahar on Death Row.

I’m not here to trash Danny (at least not at the moment). I’m here to reprimand Alisha McDevitt. She is the station manager of WMUR — part of ABC, American Broadcasting Corporation. Come on, Alisha, you have to take responsibility.

If your radio station helped to terrify Massachusetts (remember the lockdown?), you owe us some Valium. You must do your best to sort this business out for us.

You can’t just say “No, thanks.”

The Logic of the “But For” Test

I learned in law school that we can’t use a “but for” test in a lawsuit.  Say you gave me a birthday cake and I decided to bring a piece to my neighbor’s house and fell down on her front stairs. I can’t say “But for the cake, I wouldn’t have sprained my ankle.” Even though it’s true.

We are not in a court of law here. We are in a community, and we use logic. We can “but for” all we like. I say the interview with Danny Silhouette led everybody to think that the Tsarnaevs killed Sean Collier. “BUT FOR” the false narrative on radio stations such as WMUR, the jury may have voted to acquit Jahar.

Do you recall a recent article of mine that showed a video of two teeny weeny persons creeping around the MIT parking lot? I said I couldn’t see how the jury would accept it as evidence of Jahar’s involvement. There’s just NO EVIDENCE AT ALL that the Tsarnaevs killed Collier.

So WMUR needs to do the right thing.  You know, Alisha, it won’t kill you to announce that you think Danny lied to your employee, Spinetto. You couldn’t have known it back then, nor could Spinetto.  It’s not your fault. 

Time To Get a Second Spinetto Interview

I mean the original problem – broadcasting Danny – is not your fault.  But putting the Seal of the Confessional on things (or is it the Seal of Langley, as usual?) is your fault. You hafta let Mr Spinetto do another interview.

Danny won’t agree to it? No prob. Spinetto can go on radio and read out what Russ Baker gathered up by way of analysis of the whole situation, at the WhoWhatWhy website.

Baker compared numerous ever-changing statements by police officials and also by newspapers. He bothered to show us what the “Paper of Record” said.

The New York Times’ Idiosyncratic Report

For your amusement, I will quote what the April 20, 2013 New York Times stated. They claimed they got this from a “senior law official.” (Why not give the name?) This version of the carjacking doesn’t include any gas-station-with-ATM type stuff. Rather:

“It was only after the suspects decided not to kill the owner of a sport utility vehicle that had been carjacked and instead threw him out of his car around 1 a.m. — a decision that ultimately undid their plans to elude the authorities — that they re-emerged on the authorities’ radar.”

Granted, Alisha, that is not your concern. I don’t ask you to explain why the Paper of Record would say such a crazy thing as Danny being in the carjack situation at 1am. Everybody who has seen  the Maxwell/Podstava video knows that Tamerlan was in FBI custody by that point.

I just say that your radio station has to undo its errors. Simple as that.

Danny Forgot to Say the Biggie That Night?

I have just re-read the Russ Baker article at WhoWhatWhy.org and noticed that he wrote it before the court case. Wow. And I repeat that the Nick Spinetto interview was broadcast on April 22, 2013, only 4 days after Danny had had the traumatic experience of a lifetime. (Or not, as the case may be.)

In his WMUR interview, Danny does NOT mention Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s confessing to the killing of MIT cop Collier. Yet, as Russ Baker discovered, the Associated Press – which I believe is run by the CIA – had already announced that bit on the afternoon of April 19^th. Yikes!

According to the AP, Watertown’s police chief Ed Deveau claimed that Tamerlan admitted both of his major crimes to Danny. As in “Yes I am the big, fat marathon bomber, and yes I left that MIT cop as dead as a doornail!” That’s the “dual confession,” in Russ Baker’s terminology.

Baker notes that the Criminal Complaint itself, which was filed by Officer Genck on the 21st, states that Tamerlan told Danny about his role in the bombing — but the Complaint “notably says nothing about an admission to having killed Collier.” Baker proposes that this is a newsworthy item in itself.

It certainly is; it is a full-scale shocker. Is there a lawyer anywhere — Judy Clarke excepted — who would not demand that the charge of Collier’s murder be thrown out at this point?

The whole thing is a shameless lie. When are the people of Boston going to wakie-uppie?

Our “Carjacking Nonsense” Series

In this series of articles about the Dun Meng story we are trying to keep it light. The name of the series is “the Marathon’s Carjacking Nonsense.” Really it is a pleasure to poke fun at such nonsense.

Yet this was put forth with a straight face at the United States District Court in Boston in 2015. And a man is now on Death Row for at, at age 22.

As both Cheryl Dean and Josée Lépine have been showing, in articles at Gumshoe, there is no case against Jahar.  The public has the general idea that there are two solid pieces of evidence, a video of Jahar laying a backpack on the street, and witnesses’ proof that Jahar killed Sean Collier.

The video of the accused dropping his backpack onto the sidewalk does not exist. Yes, it’s much spoken of, but so is the Lochness monster. No matter how often the authorities referred to the video, they never displayed it. Naturally. It does not exist. (Like the Lochness monster, it does not exist.)

Hence, the other piece of evidence – Tamerlan’s confession to Dun Meng that he killed an MIT cop (Collier) — becomes pivotal. This is where Russ Baker’s work at WhoWhatWhy comes in. Baker, to an extent that should satisfy any judge or jury, kills off any credibility that Dun Meng may have had.

In my opinion Meng should be arrested for perjury. However, he is not the target of this article. The media is. The Spinetto interview of Danny, on radio WMUR, deceived the public and it is not asking too much to require that radio station to make amends.

— Mary W Maxwell has written many Marathon articles for Gumshoe and also for Rumor Mill news, such as an open letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Hanley about the travesty of Jahar’s incarceration. Here is her Podstava video, produced by Dee McLachlan: