New evidence reportedly found in the Watertown boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev was hiding has further implicated him in association with the attacks.
CBS News senior correspondent John Miller broke the story on Thursday May 16, over a month since the Boston Marathon tragedy which claimed three lives and injured many others.
Miller reported that sources told him Dzhokar Tsarnaev scrawled the note with a marker on an inside wall of the boat as he was bleeding from gunshot wounds he had sustained earlier in the day.
In the note, Tsarnaev wrote “You attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” and went on to refer to the victims of the Boylston Street bombings as “collateral damage” for the innocent lives claimed in Afghanistan and Iraq at the hands of US Military forces.
Dzhokar also reportedly wrote that he did not mourn the death of his brother Tamerlan, who died earlier that day during a shootout. Dzhokar wrote that Tamerlan was now a martyr in paradise, and that he would most likely be joining him soon.
ABC News separately reported that “F*** America” was also written on a side panel of the boat, as well as “Praise Allah.” ABC News said that Massachusetts State Police and Watertown police first denied the existence of a note in the boat two weeks ago; however, on May 16 authorities referred reporters to the FBI who in turn confirmed CBS’s reports on writings in the boat.
It was also reports that some of the writings were documented via cell phone pictures by police who were present that day.
Sources told CBS senior correspondent Miller that the area surrounding the note in the boat was riddled with bullet holes from over one hundred rounds fired. Fearing that Dzhokar may be armed, police continued to fire shots after Dzhokar emerged through through the tarp that was covering the boat.
The note, of course, further implicates Dzhokar Tsarnaev as being responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings. Miller said on ‘CBS This Morning’ that the note is "consistent with what he [Dzhokar] told investigators while he was in custody.”
However, Miller explained that the note was only consistent with what Dzhokar said "during the time he was interrogated, but before he was given his Miranda warning."
The note is a victory for prosecutors as it provides an admission, even if there is a fight over whether the things Dzhokar said before he was read his Miranda rights are admissible as evidence.
Miller said that "the last big question remaining is going to be who else knew anything? Is it going to be the wife? Is it someone overseas?"
Miller speculated that with no other evidence of a video or note claiming responsibility for the attacks from the Tsarnaev brothers, the note in the boat could have been a last ditch effort for Dzhokar to go on the record for being behind the bombings.
Watch John Miller on ‘CBS This Morning’ discuss the new evidence:
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