[ominous music]
[eerie music]
[eerie music continues]
[ominous music]
Good afternoon. My name is Richard DesLauriers,
and I am the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Boston division.
Today we are enlisting the public's help to identify the two suspects.
[ominous music]
I didn't know it at the time, but that press conference
we conducted at the Sheraton Hotel
on the evening of Thursday, April 18th, 2013,
started the most momentous 48 hours of my career.
Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends,
neighbors, co-workers, or family members of the suspects.
It was very intense.
I mean, we're telling people now.
We're telling them about who's been identified.
Presenting them with the pictures.
We don't know what's going to happen.
The whole thing was risky.
Are we forcing their hand?
Are we making them do something?
Now we're not having the ability to creep up on them.
Here they are. The FBI is referring to them as Suspect 1 and Suspect 2.
[news anchor 1] The FBI has set up a special tip line
and a website dedicated to this case.
The website got like 40 million hits instantaneously.
[news anchor 2] Suspects are considered to be armed and extremely dangerous.
[news anchor 3] The revelation of the two suspects
gives the investigation a new sense of urgency.
[woman] Do you think they'll be recognized from these images that have been released?
Of course.
I think they'll definitely catch 'em.
They're doing their job. You know, it's gonna take time.
Yeah, guess what?
Richard DesLauriers is gonna take 'em down.
[man] I was relieved that the photos were gonna be put out there,
and I strongly believed the community would see those photographs
and say, "That is so-and-so, and he's over here."
Immediately after that, we didn't get any calls.
We didn't get one.
- I couldn't believe that. - I went home that night
and I said to my wife,
"We're gonna get a call overnight
that somebody's identified these guys."
And then I get a call that I didn't expect.
[distant police sirens]
[ominous music]
[gunshots]
MIT police. Calls recorded. Officer Sakov.
[man] Hi. We're hearing a lot of loud noises outside of our window.
They don't sound exactly like gunshots. But they're sharp, quick noises.
There is a police officer that seems to be within the vicinity in a car,
but we're really not sure what's going on.
[Sakov] Okay. Well, we'll check it out.
[suspenseful music swells]
[officer] Oh my goodness. Hurry up! All units, respond.
Officer down. Officer down. All units... Location. Officer down.
[man] The press conference ends,
and I'm taking the bus back.
Crossing the Mass Avenue Bridge toward MIT.
And as I'm getting to the other side of the CambridgeSide, I look to my right,
and I see this sea of blue lights everywhere.
Cop cars, patrol cars speeding up Memorial Drive.
I'm among the first on the scene, and there's a lot of anger.
One cop was visibly in tears.
I was talking to law enforcement, trying to figure out what happened.
- [reporter] Have anything to tell us, sir? - Nope. Nothing at all right now.
[Davis] I got a call.
A police officer has been killed in Cambridge.
Cambridge is a different city in a different jurisdiction.
But the story we got was that this was a robbery gone wrong.
For a campus police officer to be shot in the Boston area is extremely rare.
When was the last time a cop was killed in Cambridge?
It doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen on that campus. Doesn't happen in that community.
Something's wrong.
Something is definitely wrong.
You can clearly see there was a struggle.
They were attempting to get his gun.
It was clearly an assassination.
He had a retention holster that made it impossible for them to get it out.
[police radio squawking]
[Foley] Ed Davis is saying to me,
"Do you think this is Black Hat and White Hat?"
And I'm like, "It would make sense it would be."
I saw folks with a look of worry, of fear on their faces.
[sirens wailing]
[Foley] Every minute that goes by, we risk more lives.
If this is them, what other hell are they gonna rain down next?
[ominous music]
[man] On the evening of April 18th,
I was driving my new car
along the Charles River on the Cambridge side.
I know there is something happening in Cambridge because there was a lot
of blue lights and police cars.
Twenty of them.
Something serious must have happened there.
[sirens wailing]
[Meng] I came to America from China in 2009
to get a master's degree.
I wanted to learn more about American culture.
Learn more about the American dream.
President Obama, he once said,
"Any American
if you'll be honest,
if you're working hard, you deserve to have a bright future."
That's what I think. If you just work hard on yourself,
if you're honest with yourself,
you're gonna have a better life.
I was really fascinated by nice cars.
So I bought my first car.
It was a Mercedes.
When I was driving the car, I felt like a badass.
[tires squeal]
I don't want anybody getting too close to it.
I don't want anybody else to drive it.
It's like a baby to me.
[Meng] I was driving my new car.
I remember I got a text message.
I decided to pull over on a street called Brighton Avenue.
I was focused on the phone for one or two minutes.
Then I saw a car pull over right behind me.
It felt a little bit weird.
[ominous music]
I thought, maybe it's someone trying to ask for directions.
And then they knocked on my passenger side.
So I lower down the window a little bit, just maybe this much space.
Then he wants me to lower a little bit more.
Very fast. I didn't have time to response.
And I was like, "What the heck is happening?"
And he pointed a gun at me.
My body was shaking.
I was like,
"I'll do whatever you ask me to do."
"Just please don't kill me."
He told me he can kill me anytime he wants to.
"Just start driving."
And the car behind me was following us the whole way.
[ominous music]
[Meng] I realize we were driving to Watertown.
We pull over to a house...
in Watertown.
And the older one, he wants me to sit on the passenger side.
They both get out of the car.
I was thinking, maybe it's my time to run,
but they took out the key and locked the door.
And then they moved some stuff from the other sedan to my car.
A couple of boxes, I think.
They get back in the car, and now it's three of us.
The older one is driving.
Then they just left their car behind us.
I didn't know their relationship.
One of them was much younger and looked like a student,
but they seemed pretty American to me.
The older one asked me, do I know who he is?
I said, "I don't know who you are."
He said, "I did the Boston Marathon bombing."
"And we just killed a policeman in Cambridge."
[ominous music]
Oh shit. Like...
How could it be possible?
Like, why me?
- [helicopter propellers beating] - [police sirens blaring]
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was shot at.
He suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
He was taken to hospital, and he died.
I was told that they shot six times into the vehicle,
one which pierced this officer's brain.
When I arrived at the command post,
I had learned about the murder of Officer Sean Collier at MIT,
which was just absolutely tragic news.
Anytime somebody in law enforcement gets killed, it's devastating.
And to assassinate poor Sean
while he was sitting in his car doing a thankless job?
He didn't deserve that.
- [police sirens wailing] - [indistinct radio chatter]
I felt a combination of anger and urgency to run these guys down.
These guys had beat us. They got through our lines of defense.
[Martin] After those photos were released to the public,
it was clear that they were flushed out.
That they were known.
And they seemed to be in a mood of, "We have nothing to lose."
[interviewer] Do you ever reflect if you hadn't released the photos,
Sean Collier would still be alive today?
Well, I mean, to be quite honest with you, they needed another gun.
That's what they were gonna do.
They were gonna do that whether it was Thursday, Friday or Saturday.
I thought then and I think today
that there was no downside to releasing those photographs immediately.
Right to that corner over there...
Given what happened, I know it's Monday morning quarterbacking,
but it is a legitimate question.
Was this the right approach?
[Davis] We had a responsibility,
so that the public could protect themselves.
This is an aberration.
This incident goes to show that no matter what you have in place,
no matter how hard you try to prevent it, you're not gonna prevent everything.
And I think that's what happened here.
[dog barking]
[ominous music]
[Meng] In the car,
they are speaking another language that I don't really understand.
We stop at a bank.
The younger one gets out of the car.
They use my debit card to get some cash.
When we were in the car, I actually remember asking him,
"Are you gonna kill me tonight?"
That's when he said, "No, we're not gonna kill you."
"We're just gonna drop you off at someplace
far away where nobody can find you."
Should I believe those two murderers?
Why would they let you go?
They don't care about other people's lives.
They'll probably kill me on the side of a highway.
My family, my parents, my friends,
I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to them.
They asked me, "Can your car go out of state? Like, New York?"
I said, "Yeah, of course." You know?
Then I realized, they're probably trying to go to New York to do another bombing.
[car horn honking]
I know that if we are on a highway, they probably won't stop until New York.
I told him that I only have a quarter of a tank left,
so let's get a full gas tank.
They were driving, looking for a gas station
that was still open,
but everything was closed.
Ten minutes later, we stopped at a gas station in Cambridge.
[foreboding music]
[Meng] The younger one gets out of the car.
The older one put his gun
in the pocket of the door.
If I want to run away, if I want to escape from this,
it's probably my last opportunity.
It's the most important decision of my life.
And then I just tell myself, "Fuck it. I'll do it."
Then...
Fortunately, you know, I was able to unlock the seatbelt,
unlock the car, and then pull the handle.
I could feel like he was trying to grab me with his right hand.
But it felt really, really close.
Like, this close.
[suspenseful music]
I run across the street
to another gas station that's still open.
[suspenseful music continuous]
[no audio]
[911 operator] 911, recorded line. What's your emergency?
[man] Yes, I am in a Mobile gas station.
816 Memorial Drive.
There is one customer who came inside now,
and he told me someone wanted to shoot him,
and he stay inside, and he won't leave.
[911 operator] Can I speak with him?
[Meng] They are the suspects of the marathon explosion.
Help me, please. They have guns.
[911 operator] Where are they?
[Meng] They are in a Shell gas station on Memorial Drive.
[911 operator] They're in front of the gas station?
[Meng] Yes. I just ran. I just got to run.
- Can you please come? - [911 operator] They're on their way.
Take a deep breath and stay where you are.
- I'm gonna stay on the phone with you. - [Meng] Okay. Okay.
Yeah, I can feel my voice is shaking.
And I cannot even speak.
It felt like the longest two hours of my life.
I still feel terrible every time I think about it.
That's, like, the most difficult decision I have ever made.
As life goes on, you know,
what I'm trying to do is just not...
focus on that.
You know, I just appreciate that I'm still alive.
- [police sirens wailing] - [helicopter propellers beating]
[Davis] We were flooding MIT
with police, looking for anything suspicious.
All of a sudden we get a call from the gas station on Memorial Drive.
There was a guy there saying he was kidnapped,
and it was the bombers.
I told them that my car
had a tracking system.
He says to the police officer, "The GPS number is 1234567."
And the officer said, "How do you know that?"
You get excited with your first car. You remember everything.
So he literally had the GPS transmitter number off the top of his head.
I really wanted them to catch those guys as soon as possible.
The officer called that in,
and they tracked the car almost immediately
to Watertown.
[operator] Watertown Control to all cars.
Cambridge is looking for a one, three, seven, November, Zulu, one.
That's a 2013 Mercedes. Color black.
The vehicle was taken from 816 Memorial Drive
in Cambridge during a carjacking.
Occupied by two Middle Eastern males. One described as 5' 7".
The second described as light-skinned.
[foreboding music]
[MacLellan] I did 30 years as a police officer
in the town of Watertown.
It is a touching town of Boston,
and we are a very small town with four square miles,
but it is densely packed
with over 40,000 people living in the town, in four square miles.
It's very tight-knit.
A lot of families, a lot of young kids.
It is a very, very safe place.
I can't even say I even came close
to pulling the trigger until that night.
- [indistinct radio chatter] - [sirens blaring]
[officer] Shot fired! Shot fired!
[panicked radio chatter]
[officer shouting indistinctly]
[shouting continues over radio static]
[ominous music]
[MacLellan] PTSD is a real thing.
It'll eat you up and kill you.
It's like a different life. It's a different life.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
[Pugliese] In 2013, I was a sergeant.
And I had been in that position for 20 years.
I came to the police station,
and I have my police radio on.
I heard about Sean Collier, the MIT police officer, being murdered.
I thought, "Oh my God, it's horrific."
So, I went out to my car.
I lit up a cigarillo,
and I'm listening to the police radio.
[operator] We got a call from Cambridge P.D.
They just pinged the phone number in the vehicle
in question on the carjacking.
It's in the area of Dexter Ave.
A 2013 Mercedes.
A Cambridge police officer
called our officer in charge directly
and said, "Hey, listen, just to let you know,
we have a stolen car in Cambridge."
"We're tracking it, and it's in Watertown right now at 93 Dexter Ave."
[officer 1] Okay, could you give me the plate number again, please,
and the description of the vehicle?
[operator] Black 2013 Mercedes.
[Pugliese] It was Officer Joe Reynolds' patrol area,
and he says, "I'll check that out."
[officer 1] The car is on the move right now.
It's a carjacking, is how it came out. And they said they may be armed.
I'm thinking, well, if they get there, there's gonna be two things happening.
It's gonna be a car chase or a foot pursuit.
We only know that it's a vehicle taken at gunpoint.
I'm thinkin' it's a couple of kids. You know, we're gonna pull this car over.
They're gonna give up, or get out of the car and run.
If they take off out of the car and they're chasing 'em on foot,
I'll be an extra set of eyes.
So, I started driving.
I left the police station, and I started heading in that direction.
[officer 2] Okay, roger. Still here on Laurel.
Just took a left on Laurel.
[Pugliese] Joe Reynolds got there, and they passed each other.
Then they slow down to about two miles an hour.
They actually made eye contact.
We found out that the suspects were driving two different vehicles.
It was their vehicle in front and then the black SUV behind it.
[officer 2] Right next to it now. You want me to stop it?
And I get on the radio, I said, "Joey don't stop that vehicle."
"Let me catch up to you." He said, "Roger, Sarge."
[officer 1] I'm right behind that vehicle.
Light him up.
[ominous music]
Officer Reynolds was following behind them.
They weren't going fast.
And that's when the black SUV stopped.
And when I took a left onto Laurel Street, it was mayhem.
[ominous music continues]
- [sirens wailing] - [gunshots]
[gunfire continuous]
Suspect in the middle of the street, just firing in it.
I'm throwing my car into park.
And boom, glass in my face.
[officer 3] Shots fired. All units respond.
[officer 4] All units. We have shots fired on the vehicle in question from Cambridge.
Last seen near the area of Dexter Ave.
[officer 5] Shots fired in Watertown.
When he said, "They're shooting at me," my thought was, "I gotta help."
I went from doing 30 miles an hour to doing 80 miles an hour.
[officer 1] Shots fired! Shots fired!
[officer 2] Shots fired.
[gunfire]
I said, "I gotta do something."
I said, "I'm gonna jump up into this vehicle."
"I'm gonna throw it in drive, and I'm just gonna send it towards them."
At least this way,
I can see how many people are gonna be shooting at us.
See what we got, so I can give it to the incoming units.
[gunfire continuous]
Reynolds says, "Sarge, who's driving 468?"
My car was going down towards them. He didn't know no one was in it.
I was just... You know, it was just goin' down the street.
That's when I saw them behind the Mercedes,
I could see him throwin' something.
And I saw it coming through the air,
and it was coming through the air I'm like,
"This kid's throwin' sticks at us."
And when it hit the ground,
it went ting-ting-ting-ting...
And I went... [gasps]
[explosion]
[ominous music]
[police radio squawking]
[MacLellan] Loud explosion! Loud explosion!
Loud explosion!
What? What a friggin' week this has been.
First, the marathon bombing.
An MIT police officer gets murdered.
You know, what else can go wrong this week?
[Martin] At that point, while I'm standing there at MIT,
there was suddenly this commotion that was going on.
And police are listening to their car radio.
We hear on the radio, you know, "Shots fired. Shots fired."
[officer 1] Shots fired! Shots fired!
[officer 2] Units respond to the scene. We need assistance immediately!
[officer 3] Watertown, Newtown has 8 comin' at you.
[officer 4] Eight en route with K9.
[officer 5] Cambridge to Watertown, we also have three units responding.
My mind immediately went to,
"This is all related. This has gotta be them."
I remember immediately hitting lights and sirens and just flying
to Watertown.
[sirens wailing]
I just headed towards Watertown,
and there was a cavalry of police vehicles heading that way.
And I just jumped in it and followed the crowd out there.
And I don't know what's going on, but I decided to rush with them.
Whatever was happening,
it seemed to be connected to something much larger than what's going on.
'Cause they're leaving the scene of a murdered cop.
[officer] We have him pinned down. He's throwing explosives at us.
Overnight, Chief of Department called.
And he said,
"Commissioner, they're throwing bombs at us and shooting."
And I said, "Who's throwing bombs?"
He said, "We got these guys, we're chasing 'em down."
The phone rang, and I answered it, and it was one of my assistants,
and he had told me, "Our suspects are on the run right now,
and they're hurling more bombs at Watertown police officers
in Watertown, Massachusetts."
And as soon as I heard that, I said, "Holy shit."
[sirens wailing]
[officer 1] Can I get that location, please?
[officer 2] Dexter and Laurel. Dexter and Laurel.
[gunfire]
[MacLellan] When you hear those cruisers pullin' up,
it's like it's the best...
It's the best feeling in the world,
because you know we got more ammo coming, we got more guns on these guys.
[man 1] Fucking shooting, right in front of my house.
[man 2] Get outta here.
[man 3] Hey, everybody stop. Look out. Go the other way.
[man 4] Go the other way.
[gunshots]
[man 5] Getting serious, man.
[gunfire continuous]
Bombs goin' off. There's cops shooting everywhere.
It was an absolute war zone.
We did have residents comin' out, and that's what scared me.
[operator] Line's recorded. What is your emergency?
[woman 1] I'm in Watertown.
I'm hearing what sounds like gunshots, and I heard...
[operator] We're aware of the situation. Thank you.
911, this line is recorded. What's your emergency?
[woman 2] Somebody's shootin' a gun...
[operator] 911, this line is recorded.
[woman 3] Hi. I just heard a huge bang.
[operator] Ma'am, we're aware of it. Thank you.
At least one of the residents, he came out three times,
opened his door and said, "You need any help? You need any help?"
And I kept telling him, "Get back in the house!"
"Unless you have any 40 cal ammo, get back in there."
[gunshots]
I pulled up and I start just around the corner from Laurel Street.
Put on my bulletproof vest.
And as I'm walking around the corner,
I see Officer Reynolds and Sergeant MacLellan.
He was behind a tree returning gunfire, and he was giving them commands.
[MacLellan] Give it up! Give it up!
"Give it up. Give it up." You know, trying to get them to surrender.
- [gunshots] - And they just continued to fire.
What we thought at the time was two guns, muzzle flashes.
And ultimately, we found out that they had one handgun,
and the second muzzle flash that we saw,
one of them was lighting the pipe bombs.
That was our second muzzle flash.
[gunfire]
The last bomb that was thrown,
I saw him get out of the vehicle, holding something with two handles,
and I saw him go...
[explosion]
[man 5] God!
[car alarms blaring]
You could feel the percussion, but all's I can remember
was like someone putting a white screen in front of your face.
Gray black smoke, and then you felt stuff raining down on you.
It was all the shrap metal.
It was a pressure cooker.
One of the clips unclipped,
and it didn't come up to as much pressure as it should have.
So if he had placed it instead of throwin' it,
we would've been...
We all would've been hurt. We were in the blast zone.
[explosion]
[Pugliese] It was a standoff.
So, I decided that what I was going to do was cut through some backyards
and come up on their side. Flank them.
I went up a driveway, over a fence,
through that backyard, over another fence.
Went along the house fence line.
That's when I saw them. And they were taking cover there.
But I was a firearms instructor for the department,
so I usually hit my target.
- I took aim. I squeezed off a round. - [gunshot]
I know I hit the guy. No reaction, so I try again. Bang.
I know I hit him, and there's no reaction.
I shot him nine times. It wasn't all torso shots.
I got him in the feet. He just wouldn't go down.
That's when he knew I was there, and he came running out.
He and I were facing each other about six feet apart, exchanging gunfire.
[gunshots]
Fortunately, they just went all around me. It was like a Pulp Fiction moment.
Die, you motherfuckers, die!
[gun clicking empty]
His gun stopped working.
I didn't know if it jammed or ran out of ammunition.
He was almost like in disbelief that he couldn't shoot his gun anymore.
And he stopped, he looked at his gun, looked at me.
We made eye contact, and he threw the gun, hit me on the shoulder.
It dropped to the ground.
And he turns towards us, all the guys shootin' at him,
and just starts chargin' at us.
My slide's back. I have no bullets in my gun, but he doesn't know that.
The slide's back and I said, "I'm gonna kill you. Get on the ground."
"I'm gonna kill you."
And he just keeps... Dead eyes.
Just keeps looking at me and just walkin' right towards me.
[Pugliese] So I holstered up and chased after him, and I tackled him.
[MacLellan] The kid just collapses.
And he's violently resisting us.
Just running on pure adrenaline.
I had an empty gun. No bullets in it, but I had a gun.
So I said, "I'm gonna knock him out."
I tried as hard as I could to knock that kid out.
Sergeant Pugliese got one cuff on him, and I'm just hittin' him as hard as I can.
I'm tryin' to knock this kid out. Tryin' to make it easier.
Tryin' to make sure that we don't die.
Officer Reynolds is looking down the street, and he says,
"Somebody got in the SUV. They turned around."
[MacLellan] Coming towards us! Coming towards us!
I looked again, and the headlights were right in my face.
"Sarge, get off, get off." And I push.
I just let go, and I felt the breeze of the vehicle go by my face.
I watched the front wheels go over to the suspect.
He bounced up between the undercarriage and the pavement three or four times,
and he got dragged about 20, 25 feet.
And it was like whack-a-mole.
I mean, the car was going probably 40 miles an hour,
and it was just so violent.
[officer] Suspect just took off in an SUV!
He ran over his partner!
The car spit the body right out from under the car.
The vehicle collided with one of our police cruisers
that was stopped there.
And you heard an engine racing,
tryin' to break free of the collision.
Then he broke free,
sped off through an intersection.
There was a barrage of gunfire from officers that had arrived on scene.
[gunfire]
[Pugliese] Uh, and he sped through the intersection, and he was gone.
[ominous music]
[police sirens wailing]
[indistinct radio chatter]
Move. Move. Move. Move.
You gotta get outta here.
And I roll up on scene.
It's dark.
It's chaotic.
Officers screaming, yelling.
[Martin] When I first arrived, there were police officers everywhere.
You're hearing that there's a shootout. Bombs thrown at cops.
It was absolutely surreal.
[Foley] All of a sudden, we see police officers
running down the road.
Now we join them.
We find out that we're chasing down to where the Mercedes SUV went.
And we come across the SUV in this street.
The door's open. No one's there.
I said to myself, "I can't be doing this."
"I need to organize this and come up with a plan."
Yeah, it was frustrating that he got away, but I did think that he would be captured
very shortly thereafter.
[distant police sirens]
With many police officers on the scene, and the suspect had gotten away,
I think this was embarrassing, uh, to the police.
[MacLellan] We need an ambulance at Laurel and Dexter for the suspect.
Shot and run over, shot and run over.
And the kid was in such bad shape.
He was ripped from the armpit to his waist, was totally open.
Still alive.
They cut the clothes off 'im
and they put him in the back of the ambulance,
and started working on him, and then off they went.
They took him into a Boston hospital, a major trauma center.
[dramatic music]
I get out of the car, and there was a federal agent there,
and he said, "That's an unexploded ordnance on the ground."
One of the fuse pipe bombs was lying on the ground.
There was bullet holes everywhere.
Through the stop signs, into the side of houses.
Discarded handguns in the street.
The thing that struck home with me was pressure cooker in the side of a car.
You know, exactly the MO for the Marathon bombers.
I'm like, "Oh my God. These are the guys."
SWAT guy came up to me. He said, "Hey, Sarge, you know who you got here?"
"You know who you got here?" And I thought he was asking me, like, who...
I go, "Guys, these aren't Watertown kids."
[Pugliese] Other people are showing up.
They're saying, "You guys know who you got here?"
I said, "A couple of carjackers." "No, you got the Boston Marathon bombers."
Get outta here.
"You got the Boston bombers."
"These are the Marathon bombers." And he goes, "No, it was a stolen car."
The cops involved in the shootout really didn't realize what they had.
Holy shit. And then I'm thinking, "Bombs"?
"You know, all this ammo. Jeez, I probably should have picked up on that earlier."
But, you know, I'm not a detective. I'm a patrolman.
[laughs]
I'm not a cop. I understand that there are inherent dangers
in a lot of situations...
[gunfire]
...but to just shoot and shoot 210 shots from police alone...
[man 5] This is no bullshit.
[Martin] ...you put innocent lives in danger.
[gunfire]
I interviewed a man whose child was almost killed.
The baby was sleeping in the room
where a bullet came within inches of the baby's head.
The fact that civilians in their homes weren't injured or killed was luck.
What we're looking for is a suspect consistent with the description
of suspect number two, the white-capped individual
who was involved in Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon.
[reporter 1] Suspect 1 was shot?
- That's correct. - [reporter 2] Is he alive?
- [reporter 3] Is suspect 1... - We don't have names at this point.
[reporter 2] Is he alive?
Listen, this is an ongoing... This is an ongoing investigation.
We can't... We can't get into details
on the, uh... On the descriptions of the suspects or the names.
We're trying to get information out to the people who live here.
That they should stay in their homes and not open their doors
unless police officers are there.
[Davis] We had one suspect in custody.
I was told that he had been taken from the scene.
- [distant sirens] - [indistinct radio chatter]
He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
So we needed to identify the suspect
to find out who these guys are.
We scrambled to the hospital, and we rolled his prints.
We know he's one of the bombers.
We're all thinking, "Hopefully we've got him in the database."
If we can figure out who he was,
then this information could also lead us to the other suspect.
We ran his fingerprints through numerous amount of federal databases
to identify this individual.
[intense music]
[Foley] We got a hit.
[DesLauriers] His name was Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev. - Tamerlan.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Immediately, we began the process of database checks
to understand who this individual was.
It's a massive information flow.
We learn he's a Chechen national,
been here for a number of years, right here in Cambridge.
That was a huge break for the investigation.
[ominous music]
[Davis] I was in the command post.
The door opened up, and Rick DesLauriers came in.
He was upset. He was clearly frazzled.
He said, "We know this guy. We've looked at him before."
I was shocked, and I said,
"How do you know him?"
He said, "We received a report from the FSB,
the Russian intelligence service, that this guy is a terrorist."
There was a prior Guardian lead.
The Guardian assessments are the lowest level of investigation
that the FBI will conduct on a national security subject.
That is when you have uncorroborated single-source information that comes in.
[Davis] He said he questioned them,
looked at the information that they provided us,
and we closed the case.
I said, "You guys had access to this information?
"Why didn't you tell us that these guys were out there?"
Nothing in that Guardian assessment would've led us to believe
that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was gonna bomb
the 2013 Boston Marathon.
I was frustrated by that, and surprised.
[foreboding music]
[light bulbs buzzing]
[man] Law enforcement is always trying to find
the people who committed a crime
or were suspected of committing a crime.
I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to understand the story.
You're not born a monster who blows up a marathon
and kills an eight-year-old.
We need to know how this happens.
How did he get there?
That's why I'm here. I'm here for that.
[explosions]
[reporter] Hour after hour,
the thunder of Russian guns rolls around this border area.
They're aimed at Chechen militants.
[explosions and artillery fire]
In the late 1990s, Chechens were seen as people who were being persecuted,
and the United States was willing to give refugee status
to those fleeing persecution.
Anzor Tsarnaev, Tamerlan's father, saw the American dream on Hollywood movies
and decided that that's what he wanted.
He gets to America with his wife and their four children.
They move into this cramped apartment in the Boston area.
By this point, Tamerlan is a teenager.
He had learned to box in Kyrgyzstan, and he was talented.
And his father saw this,
and he wanted him to become a champion.
Watch this guy.
Very skilled man
who's gonna take the championship for sure.
[Allan] The first time I met Tamerlan was around 2008.
His father had trained him.
Very intense guy.
He rode him to be the best.
So Tamerlan, he was very on point.
I was really impressed with his work ethic.
And he was very effective in the ring.
[boxing announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, Tamerlan Tsarnaev!
He was like a man boxing kids.
[intense music]
[crowd cheering]
Um, ahem...
The year before the Olympics,
he was doing phenomenally well
and he was winning all of his matches.
[boxing announcer] The winner! Tamerlan Tsarnaev!
[applause]
[boxing announcer speaking indistinctly]
[Filipov] Anzor Tsarnaev would brag to his friends:
"My son is gonna be on the US Olympic boxing team."
I not only believed that he could make the Olympics,
but he had a good chance of winning a medal.
You excited?
Yeah. Why not?
You know?
[Allan] But we later found out
that he wasn't gonna be able to go to the Olympic trials.
That right overhand's there all day.
That left hook when he drops his right hand.
The rule change was what did it.
To make it onto the Olympic team, you had to be a US citizen.
And Tamerlan, he wasn't a citizen.
[Allan] The way he presented the Olympic situation to me
boiled down to,
"I'm Muslim, they don't want me to represent the United States."
"So it's not gonna happen."
I said, "You could go professional."
"You know, there are many things we can do and..."
"No, it's all rigged."
"I'm Muslim, and it's not gonna work out for me."
And at this point,
you start to really sense his disillusionment.
He really pushed deeper into religion.
[ominous music]
[man] One time we had a guest speaker, and the subject was Martin Luther King.
And what he stood for. Uh, what kind of person he was.
Tamerlan stood up and shouted.
"Why are we to celebrate Martin Luther King?"
"He's not a Muslim."
"We should be following and celebrating only the Prophet."
For anyone during a sermon to voice discontent
as vehemently as he did,
it was kind of really upsetting for everyone.
Um, and very unusual.
Tamerlan's rhetoric about the Zionist conspiracies
became a lot more animated.
I think Tamerlan used Islam as a tool
to justify his discontent of where his life was going.
The idea that it's not, "We failed."
It's, "This society is built
against Muslims, against us."
[Allan] He would say that the Muslim nations
were being stomped on
by the West,
their oil taken.
Israel and the rich Jews were behind it.
Kind of a global conspiracy.
He's started to overtly associate with his religion.
Was wearing the skull cap with a big beard.
[ominous music]
[man] Approximately 2:30 p.m. today,
the Waltham police responded
to this scene at 12 Harding Avenue.
Uh, there are three dead bodies. Very graphic crime scene.
This is a fluid, ongoing investigation.
[news anchor] Two of the three victims lived nearby in Cambridge, Mass.
The third victim was 25-year-old Brendon Mess.
He was a local mixed martial arts fighter.
Brandon Mess was Tamerlan's best friend at the time.
They always came to the gym together. I know they went out together.
The following day, Tamerlan came into the gym.
I said to him,
"Sorry to hear what happened to Brendan."
His response really, really unsettled me.
He said, "You do bad things, you sell drugs,
that's the type of stuff that happens to you."
Then suddenly, Tamerlan disappeared.
And when he came back,
he was quite different.
[Filipov] Tamerlan goes to Dagestan in the summer of 2012.
The FBI get a memo from the FSB, the Russian Security Service.
Tamerlan had been recorded on a phone call saying the word "jihad."
And that's what led to the Guardians screening.
But the FBI had deduced that he doesn't pose a threat.
They let him go.
[sirens blaring]
[DesLauriers] When we identified Tamerlan,
we didn't know if any of his associates
that might have more bombs out there.
At that point we looked at his background,
his friends, family members.
We quickly learned his younger brother was named Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
We obtained his driver's license photograph.
We matched that up with the photos from the bombing.
At that point,
we knew he was the second bomber.
Black Hat is Tamerlan Tsarnaev. And Dzhokhar is White Hat.
That's his brother.
[DesLauriers] We needed to find Dzhokhar as quickly as possible.
And we began the search
for the second suspect.
We were activating a grid search of Watertown.
[DesLauriers] They go into a tactical mode,
going 20 blocks out
in every direction from that Mercedes,
the car they dumped after the carjacking.
[Evans] We were searching house by house,
block by block
from the middle out.
Is he in the neighborhood? Did he get out? Is he back home? Where is he?
[Davis] I've been involved in thousands of searches.
You know, sometimes they get out, and other times they just hunker down.
And I was hoping that it was the latter.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
But it had been two to three hours, and we hadn't found anyone.
Every minute that passes is a possibility of him getting away.
That was a scary moment in the investigation.
We don't know how big of a group we're dealing with.
We were anticipating the potential of the activation of a larger cell
who would attack.
This was a massive national manhunt,
unprecedented in US law enforcement history.
We're asking people to shelter in place.
[reporter 1] The city on lockdown. This is unprecedented.
[reporter 2] Several hundred police officers
are scouring these streets
for a man they are convinced
is a terrorist
who has come here to kill people.
[ominous music]