Video Shows Tsarnaev Leaving Target With Backpacks Before Bombing
BOSTON (CBS) - It was barely 24 hours before the marathon bombings, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev is captured on surveillance video leaving the Target store in Watertown. In his shopping bag: Two brand new backpacks he had just purchased.
Jurors in the trial against his younger brother Dzhokhar even saw a copy of his receipt.
Remnants of one backpack, prosecutors say, were found on Boylston Street. The other, on Laurel Street in Watertown.
Still another backpack for jurors to consider on Wednesday was the one that took days of digging in the Crapo landfill to find. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friends had stuffed that backpack full - with a thumb drive, UMass Dartmouth paperwork, and fireworks. Then, the jury heard, those friends put the backpack in a black trash bag and threw it in a dumpster in an attempt to protect Tsarnaev.
Testimony Wednesday also focused on the 110 pieces of evidence that were seized from the Tsarnaev family apartment in Cambridge. Among the items jurors saw: Parts of a pressure cooker, loose BBs, a fuse and wires, wire-cutters, and a pickle jar full of nails and metal fragments.
Prosecutors showed those things as they were building their case that the bombs the brothers used were assembled at their home. But the defense team spent its efforts asserting Dzhokhar really didn't live on at the Norfolk Street address anymore by that time- and it was only really home to Tamerlan, his wife, and their baby daughter.
Jurors also followed a remarkable evidence trail. An FBI investigator testified at length about how authorities figured out the type of pressure cookers left at the marathon finish line, and thrown at police Watertown, was a Fagor brand pressure cooker. Those are sold exclusively at Macy's department stores.
Before long, jurors heard authorities had the records for every single such pressure cooker sold in the Northeast. They eventually narrowed their list down those that were bought with cash and in Massachusetts.
Next, FBI analysts took data from the Tsarnaev brothers' portable GPS units and used it to figure out everywhere they drove in the weeks and months leading up to the bombings.
Sure enough, the jury heard testimony that the data shows the brothers' GPS at the Square One Mall in Saugus at the exact times when the pressure cookers were purchased.
Prosecutors did admit that the GPS trail cannot tell them who was in the car at the time or who purchased the pressure cookers.