By Scott Malone
BOSTON (Reuters) - The jury hearing the Boston Marathon bombing trial began their day Monday by visiting the boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had hidden from authorities at the end of a massive manhunt four days after the deadly attack.
The boat, held at an undisclosed location and viewed by two pool reporters from the Associated Press and WBUR radio, bore at least 110 bullet holes on all sides from the immense volley of gunfire that had surrounded Tsarnaev's arrest.
Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of killing three people and injuring 264 with a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the race's crowded finish line on April 15, 2013, as well as fatally shooting a police officer three days later.
His attorneys have admitted that Tsarnaev committed the crimes he is accused of, but contend the plot was driven by his older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, in a bid to spare their client the death sentence that he may face if convicted at the end of a trial in U.S. District Court in Boston.
The older Tsarnaev died hours after the two are accused of shooting the police officer, following a gunfight with police that ended when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sped off in a car, running over and killing Tamerlan.
This week's testimony is expected to focus on the chaotic hours that followed that gunfight, when hundreds of thousands of residents of the greater Boston area were ordered to shelter in their homes as police hunted for Tsarnaev. He was found the evening of April 19, 2013, hiding in the boat, which was drydocked in a backyard in the suburb of Watertown.
Inside the watercraft were traces of a note that Tsarnaev had written in pencil, suggesting the attack was in retaliation for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries. Two brown streaks, presumably blood, could be seen.
Tsarnev sat quietly and unshackled under a white tent during the viewing.
The bombing killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, and graduate student Lingzi Lu, 23, as well as 8-year-old Martin Richard. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot dead three days later.
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)