<p>They could have murdered the carjacking victim after they got his money. Their actions were inconsistent–no trouble with blowing up innocents or shooting officers, even those who are unsuspecting like the MIT officer but freed the carjack victim after getting $800 and bragging to him. Just odd to me.</p>
<p>I guess analyzing them rationally when they appear by their actions to be sociopaths is a trap that’s hard for us to escape. Hard to understand people who have a totally different world view–whatever theirs may be.</p>
<p>You can watch Deveaux explain. Or read other reports that seem to confuse.</p>
<p>Residential street. The officer sees two vehicles. He calls it in; "they follow proper procedure, do not engage, let’s get you some more backup. And before the backup could even get there, the two cars stop, they jump out of the car and unload on our police officer…they both came out shooting…</p>
<p>I’d speculate that they told him they’d let him go if he agree to give them the money. </p>
<p>The police in that earlier WaPo story speculate that they were looking to provoke a confrontation. They had killed the MIT policeman 9 minutes before the car jacking.</p>
<p>There is another WaPo article that has this speculation:</p>
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<p>They did have more pipe bombs, so I suppose a follow up attack was a possibility. </p>
<p>I wonder when the last time the wife was at the house. This is a lot of bomb making to have overlooked.</p>
<p>Yes, having trouble adjusting is one thing and we see kids with those kinds of problems on CC all the time. But they ask for help.</p>
<p>One other thing: where did they get the ammunition and where did they get the handgun training? Hitting a target 25 feet away is pretty hard with a handgun, even if you’re on a platform and things are quiet. Doing it in the dark, out of a car, at targets that are behind a barricade? Why did they have so much ammunition? Did they have some kind of side-business where they needed firearms? MA has very, very tough handgun legislation in place (goes back to Dukakis I think). I’m going to go out on a limb stating that they weren’t legally licensed. It would be interesting to find out what they were using.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of us would like to believe that the younger brother was brainwashed by his older brother, especially given the younger brothers relationships with his friends and others that interacted with him were positive. Some of his actions, though, make it really hard to think that there isn’t a really nasty streak in his personality. That you could kill innocents, and joke about it (one of his twitter comments struck me as really crude) and then party with your friends - I don’t think that folks here can understand that.</p>
<p>I think it’s likely they let him go so he could say they were the terrorists, given that they told him this. But, who knows? I’m not going to ever understand what they did, or why, anyway. Not any of it.</p>
<p>Let’s face it, all sorts of people face all sorts of hardship and disappointment in their life without putting bombs down next to children.</p>
<p>Re: who they killed and who they didn’t: I suspect they killed the MIT police officer because they probably suspected him of having identified them and thought he was a threat. </p>
<p>I suspect they released the driver of the car they hijacked because there was no benefit to them from killing him: there were no witnesses or camera to record the event. It would have been a tree falling in the forest with no audience. So they didn’t bother.</p>
<p>MA is not a very big state. Could they have just driven to a nearby state where handguns and ammunition were not regulated as much to buy them?</p>
<p>Also, were the 200 rounds from just the suspects, or combined from the suspects and police officers? If it were just from the suspects, then perhaps they did not do much handgun practice if they shot off that much ammunition and hit only one of the police officers.</p>
<p>Question for the self-incrimination experts. I haven’t read the Miranda case in decades and can’t remember the specifics of the holding. Does it require that the Miranda warning be given, or just bar the use of self-incriminating material in court if it’s not given? If the latter, I don’t see why the warning need be given until the authorities have finished their interrogations, since there’s plenty of evidence to put the guy away forever without using any of his own disclosures.</p>
<p>I’m in a circumstance with little access to news reports. Can somebody bring me up to date on the details of the capture of the younger brother? All I know is that the homeowner saw something amiss with his boat, saw blood and a body, called the police, and then shots were fired and distraction blasts were fired. What I can’t find info on is: Did the suspect engage the police in a gunfight, did the cops fire pre-emptive shots at the boat, or something else?</p>
<p>I am going to say that the AK-47 detail is probably debunked. It would have been incredible if true because of the difficulty of getting then and the expense. The NYT reported handguns and “long guns” [oh those Timers]. </p>
<p>You are correct that at some point there would need to have been training. The Boston Globe quotes a student as saying he might have been missing recently for a couple of weeks. “Tsarnaev was quite studious, she said. He had not been seen on campus during the past two weeks, she said, but she did not think much about it because everyone was busy with tests and studying.”. This is the article that says he was partying Wednesday and had slept in his dorm room- a single BTW. Isnt that usually a surcharge?</p>
<p>Sherpa: That hasnt been cleared up yet. The curfew was lifted and the homeowner notice that the ratcheting tiedown on his tarp had been cut and there was blood. He looked inside in some reports. </p>
<p>Supposedly white hat was weak from loss of blood and would have died overnight if not discovered. He did get himself out. People report a lot of gun fire but that could have just be to see if the police could draw fire. Not clear if he shot back.</p>
I don’t think economic stress is the DIRECT explanation for the terrorism, but I wonder to what extent the humiliation of economic stress made the older brother vulnerable to radicalization. </p>
<p>This is why the leadership of China is terrified of low GDP growth: economic unrest leads to civil unrest. The ancient Roman emperors knew about this too; that’s why they sponsored bread & circuses…</p>
<p>That is how I felt at first. He seemed like “just a kid,” about the same age as my son and his friends. I couldn’t accept that someone who seemed “normal” and had friends could actually be capable of such calculated evil. The comment about the photo of him making eye contact with a child as he set the bag down was the final straw for me.</p>
<p>Sociopaths can be very charming and deadly. Them having another pressure cooker bomb that they rolled at law enforcement does make it appear they may have caused more explosions if they could. While older nutcase clearly appeared to be more the leader, there is no evidence of his brainwashing younger nutcase. The younger one liked smoking dope, drinking and partying, which are things forbidden by the elder’s religion. Lots of contradictions. </p>
<p>I think the elder only saw wife at her folks’ home. Not sure she ever went to the boys’ apt. Interesting that the younger had a dorm single PLUS the apt with elder, if they were low on funds. A room in a house or sharing an apt or dorm room is cheaper.</p>
<p>Clearly the elder had unusual marriage, leaving for 6 month Russia trip and living apart from wife and D.</p>
<p>Having read this entire thread, I have to say that there are some posters who appear to believe that the real world could somehow work like it does in the Jason Bourne movies.</p>
<p>No one is as smart or lucky as Jason Bourne, government agencies are not as quick or as omnipotent as they are in books and movies. Real lfe is messy and rarely moves in a smooth, linear direction.</p>
<p>There was skill and luck and good work done in Boston this week. Good men and women did the best they could with the information they had to kill and capture two slightly less lucky, dumb young men. It could have gone differently, but it didn’t.</p>
<p>I got the impression that the younger one was not particularly religious. I know lots of muslims who are muslim-lite, just like I know lots of Catholics who are Catholic-lite.</p>
<p>“Well, InterestedDad’s comment basically says that your husband doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”</p>
<p>I don’t see anything in his post which indicates that. Seems to me he is saying there was nothing limiting the communications with the police on patrol and everything came through loud and clear.</p>
<p>I know. Not a peep. The policeman who called for reinforcements after making that stop was seriously agitated. Later, there was a lot of radio traffic organizing squad cars to stop traffic for a bit on a stretch of road by Charles Gate apartments while they detonated the bomb. </p>
<p>At the very same time, a bomb squad was sent to Kenmore Square for a suspicious package. I did see photos of that bomb truck in Kenmore Square in the local media.</p>
<p>This was all the stuff that was going on every time I tried to go to bed. it was crazy listening to the police scanner. The local TV stations were blabbing on nonstop, but were basically clueless.</p>