Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan planted two pressure cooker bombs at the 117th Boston Marathon. The bombs exploded at 2:49 in the afternoon on the 15th of April 2013, Patriots' Day. One had been placed at the finish line, and the other outside the Forum restaurant. Three people were killed and hundreds were injured.
To the people who knew him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dzhokhar was a gentle, well-liked young man. To a federal jury, he was a convicted killer. Both descriptions came from people who had looked closely at the same life. How does a college student with a wrestler's trophies and a circle of friends end up on that path? What did the two brothers do in the days after the blast? And why, more than a decade later, are federal courts still deciding what his sentence will be?
Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev was born on the 22nd of July 1993 to Anzor Tsarnaev, a Chechen, and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, an Avar. Records leave his birthplace unsettled, with Kyrgyzstan and Dagestan both possible. Displacement ran through the family's history. In the years after World War II, the Soviet Union forcibly moved the Tsarnaevs out of Chechnya and into the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.
In 1986 his parents married in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Their first son, Tamerlan, was born there the next day, on the 21st of October 1986. The couple kept moving across Central Asia through the late twentieth century. After the bombing, a relative described Anzor as a "traditional Muslim" who objected to extremism.
In 2001 the family settled in Makhachkala, in the Russian Republic of Dagestan. In April 2002, Dzhokhar and his parents arrived in the United States on a 90-day tourist visa. Anzor applied for asylum, citing fears of deadly persecution because of his ties to Chechnya. Tamerlan stayed in Kyrgyzstan in the care of his uncle Ruslan and joined them about two years later. The parents then sought asylum for all four children, who received what is called derivative asylum status. The family settled on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The following decade was one in which the family "was in constant transition." Both parents received welfare benefits. Anzor worked as a backyard mechanic. Zubeidat worked as a cosmetologist until she lost her job for refusing to work in a business that served men. In March 2007, the family was granted legal permanent residence.
Dzhokhar would become a U.S. citizen while in college, and his mother eventually did too. Tamerlan never could, because an investigation held up his citizenship process.
Cambridgeport Elementary School was Dzhokhar's first American classroom, followed by the middle school program at Cambridge Community Charter School. At Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school, he was an avid wrestler and a Greater Boston League winter all-star. He graduated in 2011, and the city of Cambridge awarded him a $2,500 scholarship.
Neighbor Larry Aaronson called him "a lovely, lovely kid" who was grateful to be in the United States. His friends knew him as "Jahar." Rolling Stone reported that Cambridge residents saw "a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor." Tamerlan's boxing coach said Dzhokhar was "like a puppy dog, following his older brother."
Before enrolling in college, Dzhokhar wrote in 2011 to Brian Glyn Williams, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Williams taught a class on Chechen history, and Dzhokhar said he was interested in the topic. He enrolled that September.
Fellow students were divided about him. Some described him as "normal" and popular, while others called him "creepy." Friends said he liked hip-hop, avoided talking about politics, and sometimes smoked marijuana. He also sold it. He spoke American English without an accent and was not seen as foreign. One acquaintance said he was "not 'them'. He was 'us'. He was Cambridge."
On the Russian-language site VK, he listed his "world view" as "Islam" and his personal priorities as "career and money." He posted links to Islamic websites, videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war, and pages advocating Chechen independence. The Economist judged from his Twitter feed that he cared more about sports and cheeseburgers than religion. The Boston Globe noted that on the day of the 2012 Boston Marathon, a post of his mentioned a Quran verse popular with radical clerics.
At Pine Dale Hall, his dorm, Dzhokhar was a sophomore with a grade point average of 1.09. He had collected seven failing grades over three semesters and switched majors several times. By the time of his arrest he was registered in Arts and Literature with no declared major, and he owed the university an unpaid bill of $20,000.
After the blasts, Dzhokhar sent a tweet telling the people of Boston to "stay safe." He went back to campus, used the gym, and slept in his dorm. Friends said he partied with them and looked "relaxed." He stayed there until the 18th of April.
At 5:00 p.m. that day, the FBI released images of two men carrying backpacks and asked the public to help identify them. The men were Dzhokhar and Tamerlan. Hours later, the brothers visited the family apartment in Cambridge. There they collected five improvised explosive devices, ammunition, a semiautomatic handgun, and a machete. Then they drove to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At 10:25 p.m., they ambushed Sean Collier, an MIT police officer, and shot him six times. A surveillance camera caught the brothers approaching his car from behind. The attack was part of a failed attempt to steal his gun, and Collier was found dead in his vehicle later that evening.
In the Boston neighborhood of Allston, the brothers carjacked an SUV and robbed its owner, Dun Meng. Meng escaped when they became momentarily distracted while refueling at a cash-only gas station. He ran to a second station and called the police. Officers followed the SUV using his cellphone and its anti-theft tracking device.
In the early hours of the 19th of April, a shootout broke out in Watertown. The brothers threw bombs at responding officers, and both were wounded. Dzhokhar escaped by driving the SUV toward the officers arresting Tamerlan, dragging his brother about 30 feet. Tamerlan later died at a nearby hospital of gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma. Dzhokhar abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot, and a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police officer was critically injured during his escape.
Thousands of officers from nearby towns, state police, FBI agents, and SWAT teams combed Watertown's homes and properties. Social media filled with images of squad cars and armored vehicles on narrow streets, and of residents being led from their homes at gunpoint. The Boston area was effectively shut down for the entire day.
In Montgomery Village, Maryland, Dzhokhar's uncle Ruslan Tsarni spoke to the news media. He urged his nephew to turn himself in "and ask for forgiveness." Tsarni said Dzhokhar had shamed the family and the Chechen honor code.
David Henneberry noticed that the cover on his backyard boat was loose. When the "shelter in place" order was lifted that evening, he went out to check. He lifted the tarpaulin, saw a bloodied man, backed away, and called 911.
Three Boston police officers arrived, and Waltham police soon joined them. A forward looking infrared thermal imaging device aboard a State Police helicopter confirmed someone was inside. When the man pushed up at the tarp, Boston police began firing until the superintendent on the scene stopped them. Early reports spoke of a shootout and a suicide attempt, but officials later said Dzhokhar was unarmed when captured.
Broadcast images showed him stepping out of the boat. SWAT officer Jeff Campbell hauled him to the ground, and SWAT officer Saro Thompson handcuffed him.
Bleeding badly from wounds to his left ear, neck, and thigh, Dzhokhar was taken into federal custody. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he was treated in the intensive-care unit and listed in serious but stable condition. A nurse said he cried for two days straight after waking. A doctor described a skull-base fracture, along with injuries to the middle ear, part of the C1 vertebra, the pharynx, and the mouth.
A federal High-Value Interrogation Group questioned him. The unit drew on the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Defense, and it was created to question high-value detainees. He received no Miranda warning. A tracheostomy kept him from speaking, so he wrote his answers in a notebook.
Officials said the attack was religiously motivated, with no evidence of ties to Islamic terror organizations. They said Dzhokhar acknowledged his role and cited extremist Islamic beliefs and the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also admitted that the brothers had planned to detonate explosives in New York City's Times Square. They formed that plan spontaneously during the carjacking, and it fell apart when the SUV ran low on gas. He said he was inspired by online videos from the imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki had also inspired Faisal Shahzad, who attempted a car bombing in Times Square in 2010.
Investigators found no evidence of jihadist activity by Dzhokhar. The Wall Street Journal reported they believed that, unlike Tamerlan, he "was never truly radicalized." His computers showed no frequent visits to jihad websites or violent Islamist rhetoric. Some officials told the paper he fit the profile of an ordinary criminal better than a committed terrorist.
On CBS This Morning on the 16th of May 2013, correspondent John Miller described a note written in pen on the inside wall of the boat's cabin. According to Miller, it called the bombings payback for U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and referred to the Boston victims as collateral damage. It also said, "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims." The writer said he did not mourn his brother, who he believed was now a martyr in paradise. That wall bore multiple bullet holes from the shots fired into the boat. Prosecutors released photographs of the note in March 2015.
On the 26th of April, U.S. Marshals moved Dzhokhar to the Federal Medical Center, Devens, near Boston. He was held in solitary confinement and limited to one three-page letter and one telephone call each week.
On the 22nd of April 2013, a federal magistrate judge read Dzhokhar his Miranda rights at his hospital bedside. He was charged by complaint with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, and with malicious destruction of property resulting in death. He nodded to the judge's questions and answered "no" when asked whether he could afford a lawyer. After hearing his rights, he stopped talking and declined to keep cooperating.
In June 2013, a federal grand jury indicted him on 30 charges, some of them eligible for the death penalty. Middlesex County prosecutors also charged him with Collier's murder. On the 10th of July 2013, he made his first public court appearance before magistrate judge Marianne Bowler in Boston. He pleaded not guilty to all 30 counts, including four counts of murder.
On the 30th of January 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the government would seek the death penalty. Prosecutors had first argued that his statements made before the Miranda warning were admissible under a public safety exception. They later decided not to use those statements, so the court never ruled on the exception. In January 2015, CNN reported that plea talks had failed because the government would not rule out the death penalty.
The trial opened on the 5th of January 2015 before Judge George O'Toole. Assistant U.S. attorneys William Weinreb and Aloke Chakravarty prosecuted the case. The defense team included federal public defender Miriam Conrad, William Fick, and Judy Clarke. In her opening statement, Clarke admitted that Dzhokhar had committed the acts. Her aim was to avoid a death sentence by arguing that Tamerlan had influenced and manipulated him. Counter-terrorism expert Matthew Levitt testified in March 2015.
On the 8th of April 2015, the jury found him guilty on all 30 counts. In the sentencing phase, jurors heard from victims, friends, and relatives. On the 4th of May 2015, Dzhokhar appeared to weep as relatives testified for him, after showing little emotion throughout the trial.
Bill and Denise Richard were the parents of Martin Richard, the youngest of the three people killed. Martin and the Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu were the two killed by Dzhokhar's bomb. The Richards urged jurors not to impose death. A lengthy appeals process, they said, would force them to relive that day, and they would rather see him serve life without parole and give up his appeals.
On the 15th of May 2015, the jury sentenced him to death by lethal injection on six of 17 capital counts. Verdict forms recorded how individual jurors weighed the evidence. Three of the 12 believed he acted under his brother's influence. Two thought he was remorseful, and two thought Tamerlan, not Dzhokhar, had shot Officer Collier. Three noted that his friends still care about him. One blamed his mother, Zubeidat, and one believed he would never be violent again in prison.
On the 24th of June 2015, he faced his surviving victims as the sentence was formally delivered. According to the New York Daily News, 25 people who lost loved ones and limbs took turns condemning him. Dzhokhar, silent throughout the month-long trial, then admitted carrying out the bombings with his brother and apologized to the injured and the bereaved.
On the morning of the 25th of June 2015, Dzhokhar was transferred from Devens to the United States Penitentiary, Florence High in Colorado. By the 17th of July 2015 he was at the Administrative Maximum Facility, known as ADX Florence. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson cited "unique security management requirements" for placing him there instead of at the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where male death-row inmates are normally held.
In June 2016, according to The Guardian, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri warned of the "gravest consequences" should Dzhokhar be harmed. In December 2024, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal death-row inmates to life without parole. He excluded Dzhokhar, Dylann Roof, and Robert Gregory Bowers because of their terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder convictions.
Dzhokhar's appeal argued that the trial should not have been held in Boston and that jury selection contained errors. It also argued that the judge wrongly excluded evidence that Tamerlan and a man named Ibragim Todashev had committed a triple murder in Waltham on the 11th of September 2011. That evidence, the defense said, would suggest Dzhokhar acted under Tamerlan's influence and feared what would happen if he refused.
A three-judge First Circuit panel heard the appeal on the 12th of December 2019. On the 31st of July 2020, it overturned the death sentence and three other convictions. The judge, it found, had failed to determine how much potential jurors knew about the case. It ordered a new jury for the penalty phase. Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote the opinion and added: "Make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution."
On the 22nd of March 2021, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Department of Justice's appeal, and arguments came on the 13th of October 2021. On the 4th of March 2022, the Court ruled 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, that the First Circuit had improperly vacated the sentence. It held that Dzhokhar had received a fair trial and reinstated the death penalty. U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins responded that legal rulings do not erase trauma and pain, and that her focus was on the hundreds of affected families.
The First Circuit then took up four constitutional claims the Supreme Court had not considered, hearing them on the 10th of January 2023. His attorneys argued that jurors had denied discussing the case on Twitter and Facebook when they had in fact shown strong bias. In March 2024, the court ruled that the trial judge had not adequately investigated those claims. It sent the case back to the trial court to decide whether the death sentence should stand.
Dzhokhar then asked that Judge O'Toole be removed from the juror-bias question, citing comments the judge made on a podcast. In July 2025, a three-judge First Circuit panel rejected that request. In August 2025, he asked the full court to reconsider. The First Circuit denied that request on the 18th of December 2025, leaving Judge O'Toole on the case. As of 2025, Dzhokhar remains on death row at ADX Florence.
The August 2013 issue of Rolling Stone carried a cover story titled "The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell into Radical Islam and Became a Monster." Early media portrayals, according to Rachel Simmons of the Girls Leadership Institute, were somewhat sympathetic. They painted him as a teenager taken advantage of by a brutish older brother. After his arrest, a group of supporters, many of them women, insisted he was innocent.
The photograph on the magazine's cover drew heavy criticism. Boston magazine reported that critics felt it glamorized him as a rock 'n roll outlaw rather than a man charged in the killings and the wounding of hundreds. Boston Mayor Tom Menino wrote that the cover "rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment." Massachusetts State Police sergeant Sean Murphy called it insulting to the families of those killed and warned that it might tempt unstable people to seek a cover of their own.
The New York Times had used the same photograph on its front page in May 2013 without drawing similar criticism. Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi argued that the difference was reputation, since everyone knows the Times is a news organization. Not everyone, he said, knows that about Rolling Stone.
The magazine's editors responded that the story fell within the traditions of serious journalism. They noted that Dzhokhar was close in age to many of their readers, which made it more important to understand how such a tragedy happens. CVS Pharmacy and other retailers announced that they would no longer sell the issue.
Adweek magazine nonetheless ranked it the "hottest" cover of the year, after newsstand sales doubled to 120,000.
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Common questions
Who is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, born on the 22nd of July 1993, is a man of Chechen and Avar descent who, with his older brother Tamerlan, planted the bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon. He lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
What did Dzhokhar Tsarnaev do at the Boston Marathon?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan planted two pressure cooker bombs, one at the finish line and one outside the Forum restaurant. They detonated at 2:49 pm on the 15th of April 2013, killing three people and injuring hundreds.
How was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev captured?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found wounded and hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard on the evening of the 19th of April 2013. The owner, David Henneberry, saw a bloodied man under the loose cover and called 911, and officials later said Tsarnaev was unarmed.
What sentence did Dzhokhar Tsarnaev receive?
On the 15th of May 2015, a jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection on six of 17 capital counts. He had been found guilty on all 30 counts on the 8th of April 2015.
Is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev still on death row?
Yes. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is held on death row at ADX Florence in Colorado. The First Circuit vacated his sentence in July 2020, and the Supreme Court reinstated it on the 4th of March 2022 in a 6-3 decision.
Why did Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appear on the cover of Rolling Stone?
Rolling Stone featured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in its August 2013 cover story "The Bomber." The editors said the story examined how a tragedy like this happens, but critics, including Boston Mayor Tom Menino, said the cover glamorized him.
What did Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tell investigators about Times Square?
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators that he and Tamerlan planned to detonate explosives in New York City's Times Square. The plan formed spontaneously during the carjacking on the 18th of April 2013 and failed when the SUV ran low on gas.
All sources
149 references cited across the entry
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