Key figures: Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26), Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19), FBI Director Robert Mueller, Governor Deval Patrick, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, MIT Police Officer Sean Collier (27, killed April 18)
Summary
On April 15, 2013—Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts—two homemade pressure-cooker bombs detonated near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on Boylston Street, roughly 12 seconds apart at about 2:49 PM EDT. The explosions killed three spectators: Krystle Campbell (29), a restaurant manager from Medford; Lu Lingzi (23), a Boston University graduate student from China; and Martin Richard (8), a boy from Dorchester. At least 264 people were wounded, including 16 who ultimately lost limbs. The bombs were constructed from six-quart pressure cookers packed with low-grade explosive powder, nails, BBs, and ball bearings—improvised devices designed to maximize shrapnel injuries in a crowd.
The attack was carried out by brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19), ethnic Chechens who had immigrated to the United States approximately a decade earlier and were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Investigators found that the brothers had been radicalized online through jihadist websites and drew inspiration from Inspire, an al-Qaeda-affiliated English-language magazine that had published instructions for building a pressure-cooker bomb under the title “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
The Bombing: Timeline
- ~2:49 PM: First bomb detonates at 671 Boylston Street, near the finish line.
- ~12 seconds later: Second bomb detonates about 180 yards (roughly 165 meters) farther from the finish line at 755 Boylston Street.
- Within minutes, more than 500 law-enforcement officers respond. Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital activate mass-casualty protocols.
- By late afternoon, 17 victims are in critical condition; surgeons perform dozens of amputations over subsequent days.
- Boston Marathon Medical Director Pierre d’Hemecourt later credited triage teams—many of them military medics familiar with blast injuries from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—with saving lives that would otherwise have been lost.
The attack struck at the 26.2-mile mark when most elite runners had already finished, but tens of thousands of recreational runners and spectators remained on course and along Boylston Street. The timing on Patriots’ Day—a Massachusetts public holiday that also coincides with Tax Day—was deliberate, according to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s later statements and court documents.
The Manhunt
On April 18, three days after the bombing, the FBI released photographs and surveillance video showing two men in baseball caps planting backpacks near the finish line. The images spread immediately across social media and news broadcasts, triggering widespread crowdsourced identification efforts—some of which led to misidentification of innocent bystanders, a significant controversy in the episode’s aftermath.
Late on the night of April 18, the Tsarnaev brothers shot and killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier (27) on campus in Cambridge, apparently attempting to steal his service weapon. They then carjacked a Mercedes SUV, whose driver escaped at a gas station and alerted police. In the early hours of April 19, police intercepted the brothers in the residential Watertown neighborhood. During a gun battle lasting roughly 15 minutes, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot multiple times and subsequently run over by the getaway car driven by Dzhokhar. Tamerlan was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dzhokhar fled on foot.
Governor Deval Patrick issued an unprecedented shelter-in-place order for Greater Boston—approximately 1 million residents—on the morning of April 19, effectively shutting down the metropolitan area. At 6:00 PM, authorities lifted the order after an exhaustive search found no trace of Dzhokhar. Minutes later, Watertown resident Dave Henneberry noticed blood and a disturbed tarpaulin on his dry-docked boat in the backyard. Police surrounded the boat; Dzhokhar, wounded and unarmed, was taken into custody at approximately 8:42 PM. He was found to have written a justification for the attack on the interior hull of the boat: “We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.”
Trial and Sentencing
Federal prosecutors charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with 30 counts, including use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and murder of a federal law enforcement officer (for the killing of Officer Collier). The trial opened on January 5, 2015, in Boston federal court.
- April 8, 2015: Tsarnaev convicted on all 30 counts after roughly 11½ hours of jury deliberation.
- May 15, 2015: Sentenced to death on six of the capital counts by the federal jury, making him the first person sentenced to death by a federal court in Massachusetts in decades.
- July 31, 2020: The First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the death sentence, ruling the judge failed to adequately screen jurors for bias from pretrial publicity.
- March 4, 2022: The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Tsarnaev’s death sentence in a 6–3 decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas (United States v. Tsarnaev), finding the First Circuit had erred.
As of 2025, Tsarnaev remains on federal death row.
Impact on Security and Policy
The bombing triggered a sweeping reassessment of public-event security across the United States:
- Crowd control perimeters: Major marathons, including New York, Chicago, and London, adopted new no-bag or clear-bag policies and expanded security perimeters.
- Surveillance infrastructure: The attack renewed debate about urban camera networks. Boston’s relatively sparse camera coverage compared to cities like London was cited as a factor complicating initial identification; subsequent investment in surveillance cameras in American cities accelerated.
- Surveillance debate linkage: The bombing occurred just seven weeks before Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations in June 2013, and the two events became intertwined in public debate: proponents of expanded surveillance cited the bombing while civil libertarians cited the NSA disclosures to warn of overreach. See: NSA Surveillance Revelations (2013).
- Lone-wolf and self-radicalization policy: The attack influenced FBI and Department of Homeland Security focus on “homegrown” radicalization through online networks, distinct from foreign-directed plots.
- Congress held multiple hearings on security gaps. A 2014 inspector-general’s report found that the FBI had received a 2011 tip from Russian intelligence about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s potential radicalization but closed the investigation after finding no derogatory information.
Memorialization
- One Fund Boston: Established April 29, 2013, by Governor Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino, the fund raised more than $61 million from approximately 200,000 donors worldwide within weeks. Distributions were made to 232 survivor claimants, with those who lost limbs receiving the largest shares.
- Permanent memorial: A permanent Boston Marathon Memorial, designed by Gloucester sculptor Pablo Eduardo in consultation with the victims’ families, was installed at the two blast sites along Boylston Street and completed in August 2019. It comprises two sculptural markers of stone, bronze, and cast glass—incorporating stone drawn from places meaningful to each of the three people killed—set into the sidewalk near the finish line.
- Annual commemoration: Each year on April 15, a moment of silence is observed at 2:49 PM. The phrase “Boston Strong” became a civic rallying symbol, printed on merchandise that generated additional charitable funds and adopted by the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series in October 2013.
See Also
- NSA Surveillance Revelations (2013) — national security and surveillance debate intensified by the bombing
- Syria Chemical Weapons Convention (2013) — parallel 2013 episode reframing the use of weapons designed to maximize civilian casualties
Sources
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[Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 Facts, Date, Victims, Map, & Suspects Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Marathon-bombing-of-2013) - Boston Marathon bombing - Wikipedia
- United States v. Tsarnaev, 595 U.S. 302 (2022) — Oyez
- One Fund Boston — City of Boston archives