Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev (born July 22, 1993) is an American domestic terrorist and mass murderer of Chechen and Avar descent. Along with his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he planted pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The bombs detonated, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others.

During his early childhood, Tsarnaev lived in Kyrgyzstan and in the Russian Republic of Dagestan. He moved with his parents to the United States in 2002 and later became a U.S. citizen. Tsarnaev and his family settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2011, he graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and began attending the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He had a brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and has two sisters.

On April 18, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two men, stated that they were suspects in the bombing, and asked the public for help in identifying them. The images depicted Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Later that evening, the Tsarnaev brothers shot and killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier and then committed a carjacking. During an ensuing shootout with police, both brothers were injured; Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from his injuries. On the evening of April 19, after thousands of police officers conducted a manhunt in Watertown, Massachusetts, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat in the backyard of a residence. He was shot and taken into custody. During an interrogation, Tsarnaev acknowledged his role in the Boston Marathon bombing and added that he and his brother had also intended to detonate explosives in New York City's Times Square.

Tsarnaev was tried and convicted of 30 counts and was sentenced to death. His death sentence was vacated on appeal in July 2020, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision in March 2022. As of 2025, he is being held on death row at ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado.

Early life, family, and education

Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev was born on July 22, 1993 to Anzor Tsarnaev, a Chechen, and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, an Avar. His older brother, Tamerlan, was born on October 21, 1986. In the years following World War II, the Tsarnaev family had been forcibly moved from Chechnya by the Soviet Union to the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. Anzor and Zubeidat moved peripatetically across Central Asia during the late 20th century. In 1986, they were married in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and Tamerlan was born there the next day. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in either Kyrgyzstan or Dagestan, in the Russian Federation. He has two sisters. The family raised their children as Muslims; after the Boston Marathon bombing, a relative described Anzor Tsarnaev as a "traditional Muslim" who objected to extremism.

Tsarnaev spent the first years of his life in Kyrgyzstan. In 2001, the family moved to Makhachkala, Dagestan, in the Russian Federation. In April 2002, Tsarnaev and his parents went to the United States on a 90-day tourist visa. Anzor Tsarnaev successfully applied for asylum, citing fears of deadly persecution due to his ties to Chechnya. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been left in the care of his uncle Ruslan in Kyrgyzstan and arrived in the U.S. about two years later. The parents then filed for asylum for their four children, who received "derivative asylum status". They settled on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The family "was in constant transition" for the next decade. Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva both received welfare benefits. Anzor worked as a backyard mechanic and Zubeidat worked as a cosmetologist until she lost her job for refusing to work in a business that served men.

Tsarnaev attended Cambridgeport Elementary School and Cambridge Community Charter School's middle school program. 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 from high school in 2011 and the city of Cambridge awarded him a $2,500 scholarship.

Neighbor Larry Aaronson described Tsarnaev as "a lovely, lovely kid" who was grateful to be in the United States. According to Rolling Stone, Cambridge residents saw Tsarnaev—known to his friends as "Jahar"—as "a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor". Tamerlan Tsarnaev's boxing coach said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was "like a puppy dog, following his older brother".

In March 2007, the Tsarnaev family was granted legal permanent residence. Tsarnaev would become a U.S. citizen while in college. Zubeidat Tsarnaev eventually became a U.S. citizen as well, while Tamerlan Tsarnaev was unable to naturalize because an investigation held up the citizenship process.

College years

In 2011, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev contacted Brian Glyn Williams, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who taught a class about Chechen history, expressing his interest in the topic. Tsarnaev enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in September 2011.

Tsarnaev was described as "normal" and popular by some fellow students. Others described him as "creepy." His friends said he sometimes smoked marijuana, liked hip-hop, and did not talk about politics. He also sold marijuana. Many friends and other acquaintances at first found it inconceivable that he could be one of the two bombers, calling it "completely out of his character". He was not perceived as foreign, spoke American English without an accent, was sociable, and was described by peers as "[not] 'them'. He was 'us'. He was Cambridge."

On the Russian-language social-networking site VK, Tsarnaev described his "world view" as "Islam" and his personal priorities as "career and money". He posted links to Islamic websites, links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war, and links to pages advocating independence for Chechnya. Tsarnaev was also active on Twitter. According to The Economist, he seemed "to have been much more concerned with sports and cheeseburgers than with religion, at least judging by his Twitter feed"; however, according to The Boston Globe, on the day of the 2012 Boston Marathon, a year before the bombings, a post on Tsarnaev's Twitter feed mentioned a Quran verse often used by radical Muslim clerics and propagandists.

At the time of the bombing, Dzhokhar was a sophomore living in the UMass Dartmouth's Pine Dale Hall dorm. He was struggling academically; his GPA was 1.09, and he had received seven failing grades over three semesters. He changed majors several times, and at the time of his arrest was registered as an Arts & Literature undergraduate with no declared major. He also owed an unpaid bill of $20,000 to the university.

2013 Boston Marathon bombing and aftermath

The 117th annual Boston Marathon was run on Patriots' Day, April 15, 2013. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev used pressure cooker bombs to commit the Boston Marathon bombing on that day. One bomb was placed at the Boston Marathon finish line, while the other was placed outside the Forum restaurant. The bombs were detonated at 2:49 pm. The bombing killed three people and injured hundreds of others.

Tsarnaev continued to tweet after the bombings, and sent a tweet telling the people of Boston to "stay safe". He returned to his university after the bombing and remained there until April 18, when the FBI released pictures of him and Tamerlan at the marathon. During that time, he used the college gym and slept in his dorm; his friends said that he partied with them after the attacks and looked "relaxed".

Manhunt and additional crimes

At 5:00 p.m. on April 18, 2013, the FBI released images of two Boston Marathon bombing suspects carrying backpacks and requested the public's help in identifying them. The FBI-released images depicted Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Hours after the FBI released photos of the two suspects in the bombing, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev visited their family's apartment in Cambridge. There, they obtained five improvised explosive devices (IEDs), ammunition, a semiautomatic handgun, and a machete. The two brothers then drove to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On April 18, 2013, at 10:25 p.m., the Tsarnaev brothers ambushed Sean A. Collier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department and shot him six times. Collier died from his injuries and was found in his vehicle later that evening. The shooting occurred as part of a failed attempt to steal Collier's gun. The brothers then traveled to the Boston neighborhood of Allston. There, the brothers carjacked an SUV and robbed its owner, Dun Meng, who said he managed to escape when the Tsarnaevs became momentarily distracted in the process of refueling the car at a cash-only gas station. Meng fled to another nearby gas station and contacted the police. Police were then able to track the location of the SUV through Meng's cellphone and the SUV's anti-theft tracking device.