Blood trail led boat owner to Tsarnaev's hiding spot
BOSTON — The suburban retiree who came upon the wounded Boston Marathon bombing suspect hiding in his backyard boat told jurors in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial Tuesday that he noticed something amiss with the shrink-wrapped vessel on the morning of April 19, 2013. But he waited most of the day to investigate, he said, until police lifted an order for residents to remain in their homes.
When he did, around 6 p.m., David Henneberry climbed a ladder and "noticed a lot of blood on the deck." He recalled fixating on it, then tracing the trail to a body lying on its side.
He found a bleeding, motionless, 19-year-old Tsarnaev in black boots, work pants and a dark-colored sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head. "No movement at all," he said.
Henneberry quickly descended the ladder and called 911.
The discovery came hours after he looked out his window in his quiet, residential neighborhood of Watertown. His boat, Slipaway II, was on a trailer and its shrink-wrap winter covering "looked a little loose." He didn't investigate because Watertown was under a "shelter-in-place" order as the manhunt for Tsarnaev intensified. He also figured the covering had come loose with the early spring winds.
Jurors saw the bullet-riddled boat Monday, before listening to a day of gripping testimony about the explosive shootout that capped one of the most intense manhunts in recent American history.
Henneberry told the jury that no bullet holes or blood stains were on his boat before Tsarnaev turned up in it. Also new, he said, were carvings in a wood fixture that read: "stop killing our innocent people and we will stop."
Henneberry was the first witness to take the stand in federal court Tuesday morning in the fast-moving trial of Tsarnaev, now 21. The bombing suspect could get the death penalty if convicted on any of 17 counts against him. He faces a total of 30 counts in an indictment stemming from the twin bomb attacks at the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013.
A childhood friend of Tsarnaev also took the stand Tuesday and linked the defendant to a gun used in the murder of MIT security officer Sean Collier and in the shootout with police.
Stephen Silva, 21, testified that he sold Tsarnaev marijuana and loaned him the Ruger P95 that authorities have traced to Collier's murder. Tsarnaev had originally borrowed the gun because "he wanted to rip some kids," meaning rob them, Silva said. He said he repeatedly asked for the gun back early in 2013, but Tsarnaev kept making excuses.
Silva, a convicted heroin dealer, faces a 40-year prison sentence and testified as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
He recalled a high school class in which he and Tsarnaev were students together. The teacher asked whether acts of terrorism could ever be justified. Silva paraphrased how Tsarnaev answered the question: "American foreign policy tends sometimes to be a little hostile toward the Middle East, persecuting Muslims, going to war, taking over people's cultures and telling them what to do," Silva recalled his friend saying. Tsarnaev pushed the view that the United States should leave other cultures alone.
Dressed in a brown jumpsuit because he's currently incarcerated on drug and firearms charges, Silva shed new light on Tsarnaev as a popular young man who sustained a B+ average through high school. He described getting together with Tsarnaev a few times a month and communicating several times a week via cellphone, text and Facebook. When they'd hang out, he said, they'd smoke marijuana, sometimes watch movies or go swimming at a reservoir. During the year they were both in college, they were frequently in touch, talking mostly about partying and girls.
Attorneys for both sides tried to mine Silva's close relationship with Tsarnaev to move the jury to their respective sides. Prosecutors teased out potentially telling details, such as how Tsarnaev laughed when Silva told him how he'd used the Ruger to rob two young men at gunpoint. Asked if he ever saw Tsarnaev get angry, Silva said yes: every time Silva called him a "Russian refugee."
"That used to tick him off because he's very proud of his Chechen nationality," Silva said. Tsarnaev would call Silva names, too, especially "kafir," an Arabic term for "non-believer" or "infidel."
Tsarnaev's attorneys, however, wouldn't let the prosecution's angle stand. They mounted their most aggressive cross-examination to date in the eight-day-old trial, grilling Silva.
"Do you recall that he complained that his brother was keeping him on a short leash?" defense attorney Miriam Conrad asked Silva.
"Yes," Silva quickly answered.
Judge George O'Toole sustained Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty's objection to the question and struck it from the record, but the jury had already heard it. The comment was one of several that fed the defense's core argument that Tsarnaev was entwined with a domineering older brother who masterminded the bombings.
Conrad also sought to impeach him as a witness. She reminded him that in talking with the government after the bombings, he'd denied committing a robbery that might have given Tsarnaev some ideas.
"You lied to them about the robbery," Conrad said.
"Yes," he answered.
She suggested he had reason to help the government now by lying in court with hopes of reducing his five-year mandatory sentence. She noted that only the U.S. Attorney's Office could help him get a lesser sentence in exchange for helping convict Tsarnaev. Conrad also suggested that her client couldn't return the gun to Silva, who repeatedly asked him to give it back, because Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan, had likely taken it. The older brother was killed during the April 19 shootout with police.
The prosecution could rest its case against Tsarnaev as soon as next week.