Too many theories

What we know so far — what we can really verify — is that the FBI charged 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the lone surviving suspect, for detonating two improvised bombs with his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan. We know five people died, including Tamerlan, in related events. Nearly 300 were injured. That’s all verifiable.

But there are many unanswered questions.

Just one example: when Collier, the MIT police officer, was shot on Thursday evening a little after 10:30PM, the circumstances of his murder were odd. This was during the post-bombing manhunt, 80 hours or so after the marathon ended prematurely. The officer was killed in his car, which meant he hadn’t attempted to chase anyone on foot. If we accept FBI allegations that the Tsarnaevs were involved in that shooting, we know they didn’t take the officer’s police car anywhere. And they didn’t rob him. So was it simply anger? Was he shot because he was a cop in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was something else afoot?

A conspiracy theory — and again, it’s just one associated with this case — is that the Tsarnaevs had sought to toss one of their improvised explosives into MIT’s “little nuclear reactor” near the corner of Massachusetts Ave. and Vassar Ave. Officer Collier had stumbled upon their plot, the theory goes, and so he had to die.

AMERICA'S FIRST HIGH PROFILE TERRORIST ATTACK IN THE AGE OF OMNIPRESENT CONNECTIVITY AND NEAR-UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE

Like many of the theories floating around Boston right now, chances are that’s not what happened. What the MIT shooting theory represents is just one example of a grassy knoll, second shooter-type guess offered mere days after the event took place. And again, that’s just one theory, from one event. Alex Jones offered another. He said the Tsarnaevs were patsies, set up by the FBI, the event a “false flag.” The Tsarnaevs' father is making similar claims. There are many more.

Everyone’s got their story, after all.

Especially now. The Boston Marathon bombing was the first time America has experienced a high profile terrorist attack in the age of omnipresent internet connectivity, in an environment of near-ubiquitous surveillance.

Reddit users responded immediately. The first post was a photo from Twitter that captured white smoke billowing skyward. That was followed by a live video feed of the finish line, and gruesome photographs of blood spilled on the street, people scrambling, police officers and EMS workers racing toward petrified people scattering for their lives. In turn, more videos, more news reports, and more tweets appeared by the second. The National Guard cleared Copley Square and established a 15-block crime scene. The events continued to unfold, live, across the internet, thanks to America’s conditioned response to anything that happens, good or bad: plastering it all over social media.

Not even law enforcement could resist the lure of the internet. Realizing they needed as much information as they could gather, and that the CCTV cameras near the finish line perhaps didn’t provide all the evidence they needed to identify a suspect, Boston police put out a call at around 4:30PM for video and images of the finish line. Shortly thereafter, when the FBI announced that it had no suspects, Reddit users had plenty of “leads”: suggestions about who the bombers may have been, as well as photos and videos that might lead police to the culprits. It wasn’t long before the Reddit approach to the investigation — guesses based on images and video floating around the web — would spill into the mainstream. On Friday, Boston police said they kept citizens abreast of updates via Twitter and governmental websites because the public speculation had reached dangerous levels.

On Wednesday, CNN’s John King erroneously reported that an arrest had been made, prompting both Fox News and the Associated Press to follow suit. On Thursday morning, the now infamous New York Post front cover was released. “BAG MEN: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon,” it screamed in bold, capital letters. A photo of two local high school students sat beneath the headline. The students had no connection to the plot whatsoever.

“[E]veryone thinks they’re an investigator,” said Howard Levinson, president of Expert Security Consulting in Norton, Massachusetts. “I would suggest that people should just move on with their lives and be more careful. But I think we know that’s not going to happen.”