Police photog defends releasing ‘real’ images of Boston bombing suspect
In this Friday, April 19, 2013 Massachusetts State Police photo, 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bloody and disheveled with the red dot of a sniper's rifle laser sight on his forehead, raises his hand from inside a boat at the time of his capture by law enforcement authorities in Watertown, Mass. (AP Photo/Massachusetts State Police, Sean Murphy)
In this Friday, April 19, 2013 Massachusetts State Police photo, 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, bloody and disheveled with the red dot of a sniper's rifle laser sight on his head, emerges from a boat at the time of his capture by law enforcement authorities in Watertown, Mass. (AP Photo/Massachusetts State Police, Sean Murphy)
In this Friday, April 19, 2013 Massachusetts State Police photo, 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, with the red dot of a sniper's rifle laser sight on the top of his head, leans over a part of a boat where he had been hiding moments before his capture by law enforcement authorities in Watertown, Mass. (AP Photo/Massachusetts State Police, Sean Murphy)
In this April 19, 2013, Massachusetts State Police photo, state troopers prepare for the final assault on the boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in Watertown, Mass. Tsarnaev, 19, was captured later that night. (AP Photo/Massachusetts State Police, Sean Murphy)
In this Friday, April 19, 2013 Massachusetts State Police photo, state troopers dressed in protective gear hold weapons as they stand near a home, in Watertown, Mass. later that night, 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured. (AP Photo/Massachusetts State Police, Sean Murphy)
In this magazine cover image released by Wenner Media, Boston Marathon bombing suspectDzhokhar Tsarnaev appears on the cover of the Aug. 1, 2013 issue of "Rolling Stone." (AP Photo/Wenner Media)
What does a terrorist really look like?
A day after Rolling Stone magazine set off a wildfire of reaction with a glamorous-looking cover photo of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a Massachusetts police photographer has offered another image. And another point of view.
In one of Sgt. Sean Murphy’s photos, a dazed and bloodied Tsarnaev emerges in surrender from the parked boat in which he hid from a police dragnet days after the bombing in April. Tsarnaev is disheveled in the photo; his face and upraised hand are bloodied, as is the hull of the boat. A police marksman’s red laser dot lights up Tsarnaev’s forehead.
Murphy said he released the photo and several others to Boston magazine, which published them online Thursday, because he was upset by the Rolling Stone cover, which featured a shot Tsarnaev took of himself looking tousled, relaxed and friendly.
The Rolling Stone photo has sparked widespread outrage, and several chain stores said they wouldn’t sell the issue in sympathy with those who deemed it inappropriate.
Murphy was apparently the only police photographer behind the lines during the hunt for Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police officers. Boston magazine said Murphy photographed “high-level conferences, the mobilization of law enforcement, and the dramatic capture.” His photos have never been made public until now, the magazine said.
He brought the photos to the magazine “because he was outraged” by the Rolling Stone cover and because he appreciated Boston magazine’s coverage of the aftermath of the bombings, Boston magazine editor John Wolfson said in an interview “He’s been sitting on them for months. I don’t think he ever intended to release them at all.”
In a statement to Boston magazine, Murphy said, “As a professional law-enforcement officer of 25 years, I believe that the image that was portrayed by Rolling Stone magazine was an insult to any person who has ever worn a uniform of any color or any police organization or military branch, and the family members who have ever lost a loved one serving in the line of duty. The truth is that glamorizing the face of terror is not just insulting to the family members of those killed in the line of duty, it also could be an incentive to those who may be unstable to do something to get their face on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.”
Boston magazine said Murphy, a tactical photographer with the Massachusetts State Police, was speaking strictly for himself and not as a police representative.
Wolfson said the magazine didn’t pay for the photos, and Murphy didn’t ask for compensation. He said Murphy is aware that he could face disciplinary action from the state for releasing the photos but felt that it was more important “to help people understand that this was a real event and not a TV program.”
Murphy noted that one police officer, Sean Collier, was killed during the manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, and a second, Dick Donohue, was seriously injured.
“These were real people, with real lives, with real families,” he told the magazine. “And to have this cover dropped into Boston was hurtful to their memories and their families. I know from first-hand conversations that this Rolling Stone cover has kept many of them up — again. It’s irritated the wounds that will never heal — again. There is nothing glamorous in bringing more pain to a grieving family.”
Added Murphy, “What Rolling Stone did was wrong. This guy is evil. This is the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.”
Rolling Stone’s depiction of Tsarnaev is the latest in a long string of magazine covers that have sparked comment and outrage, from Vanity Fair’s image of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore in 1991 to Time’s photograph of a young mother breastfeeding her 4-year-old son last year.
Rolling Stone issued a statement saying, “Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. . . . The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.”