Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Boston Marathon Bombing Story

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, along with his older brother Tamerlan, perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, detonating two pressure-cooker bombs near the race's finish line.

So one day, all these runners are in the middle of running a marathon. And suddenly, kaboom, a bomb goes off. Then, kaboom, a second one goes off. Why? Well, this story starts with this guy, Tamerlin. And Tamerlin is 23 when all this begins, and he's living in Boston. And Tamerlin, he's an amateur boxer. And he's actually pretty good at it.

And he really, really wants to represent the United States in the Olympics one day. So he trains hard every day, trying to make that dream come true. But then, one day, in 2010, all that starts to fall apart for him. Because the governing body of the national tournament introduces a new rule that basically says, to compete in the Olympic trials, you have to be a U.S. citizen. And Tamerlund, he isn't a U.S. citizen. He was actually born in what was at the time known as the Soviet Union. And so, boom, his Olympic dreams are over.

And this is devastating for him. I mean, it feels like his entire future has been ripped away from him, and thus he loses all motivation for boxing, and he quits the sport altogether. And by 2011, he takes all this frustration and energy, and he focuses it on his religion, Islam. But specifically, he focuses on the very extremist version of those beliefs. And he starts convincing himself that his Olympic dreams were destroyed,

because the United States must hate Muslims and it's actively waging war against Islam. And the deeper he falls into this mindset, the more extremist ideas he starts to adopt. Then in 2012, he travels from Boston all the way over to Dagestan in Russia. And while he's there, he becomes even more radicalized. And allegedly, he links up with some Islamic extremist groups. We aren't exactly sure what he does while he's there. But what we do know is that six months later, he returns to Boston, and he's even more extreme than before. And that is when this guy enters the story.

His name is Jokar. And Jokar is 19, and he's also Tamerlin's younger brother, and he's also a college student. And over time, Tamerlin starts influencing Jokar, and slowly Jokar becomes radicalized as well. And somewhere along the line, these two brothers decide that they want to attack the United States. in a way that would hurt as many people as possible. So they come up with a plan. They're going to detonate a couple of bombs. And the target they choose is the upcoming Boston Marathon.

Because they know a lot of people will be there. There are thousands of runners and spectators from around the world there every year, which means that they'll potentially be a lot of casualties. So they start preparing. They get online and they read about how to make bombs and they gather up materials. and ultimately they create what are called pressure cooker bombs, which is just a type of bomb built inside of a pressure cooker. Anyway, a few months go by, and it's now 2013,

and the day of the Boston Marathon arrives. And the race is going on, and huge crowds are packed near the route, and once the race has been going on for hours, the brothers make their move. Tamerlin carries one of the bombs they made in a backpack, and he places it near the finish line where there's a big crowd of people. At the same time,

Jokar places a second bomb a short distance away. Then the two brothers flee the scene. A few minutes later, kaboom, one of the bombs explodes. Then, kaboom, a second bomb explodes. And these two blasts tear through the crowd and everyone is panicking and running away and the whole place is in chaos.

And ultimately, more than 260 people are. injured and unfortunately three people die. And so immediately the FBI and the local police get involved and they launch a massive investigation and they're questioning witnesses and they're calming through surveillance footage from nearby stores and security cameras and videos taken by spectators and eventually they piece together somewhat low resolution images of their suspects, Tamerlin and Jokar. So they can kind of see them but at this point they don't know their identities. Now, the feds, they don't want to release any images to the public yet, because they're worried the suspects might flee or worse, get angry and plant another bomb. So they hold the images

back. Meanwhile, this story is big news, so the internet is going crazy trying to figure out who set these bombs, and people online begin trying to solve the case themselves, on Reddit especially. Reddit users, they start analyzing all kinds of public photos and videos from the marathon trying to identify the bombers. And pretty quickly, they start publicly accusing innocent random people of being the suspects, which is actually really dangerous because it risks sending an angry mob after the wrong person. And because of that, the feds are basically like, okay, Reddit is going crazy, innocent people are being accused, so let's go ahead and release the images of the suspects.

And so they released the surveillance images to the public earlier than they had wanted. And that is when Tamerlin and Jokar see these images on the news. And they start freaking out. And they decide, ah, shit, it's time to flee and go on the run. But before they leave, they're going to need to get a second gun. Because right now, Tamerlin is the only one carrying a gun. So later that night, they go over to MIT campus. Because they know some police officers might be there and they can rob one of them.

for his weapon. Well, sure enough, they spot a police officer sitting alone in his patrol car, and they approach him and blam, blam, they shoot him. And unfortunately, he doesn't survive. Then they try to steal his gun, but his holster has a safety lock on it and they can't get the gun out, so they leave. A little later, they hijack an SUV, GTA style. And they basically take the driver of the SUV hostage. So now they're driving two. vehicles for some reason, the stolen SUV and Joe cars green Honda Civic. But then they both stopped for gas. And here the driver that they took hostage is able to jump out of the SUV and escape and he runs to a different nearby gas station and he calls the police and he gives

them details about the guys who kidnapped him and his stolen SUV. And so pretty quickly police are able to locate the two brothers driving both vehicles. So they pull up on them and immediately Blam, Blam! Blam! Tamerlin starts shooting at them, and this turns into a whole shootout. And Jokar is actually throwing pipe bombs that he has at the police. But before long, boom. Officers managed to grab Tamerlin and overpower him, and they get him onto the ground while they're trying to handcuff him. And while all that is happening, Jokar's like, oh shit!

And he jumps into the stolen SUV, and skirred, he reverses, and he speeds directly towards the officers. And the officers quickly move out of the way. leaving Tamerlin lying on the street, and chokhar runs over his own brother, and this eventually ends up killing him. But chokar, he manages to escape, and he drives away, and then he abandons the car, and he runs into a residential neighborhood into a random person's backyard, and he hides inside a boat covered with a tarp.

And police, they're looking all around the area for him, but they can't find him. And around 15 hours go by, and police still can't find where he went. But then, the homeowner, the guy who owns the boat, notices a loose strap on the boat's tarp, and he goes out to fix it, and he looks inside, and that is when he sees Jokar hiding out. And so he calls the police, and bam, Jokar is arrested. Here's a picture of him. And so ultimately, he goes to trial, and he's found guilty, and he gets sent. sentenced to death.