Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Murders Before The Marathon’ On Hulu, A Docuseries About A Triple Murder Case That May Have Involved The Boston Marathon Bombers

The Murders Before The Marathon is a three-part docuseries about the murders of three men in Waltham, Mass. on September 11, 2011, and how one reporter’s investigation led her to connect the killings to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombings 18 months later. Her reporting showed that a series of assumptions and moves by law enforcement at the time of the murder led them away from that connection; what she wanted to find out is if the bombings could have been prevented if the investigation was conducted with more rigor.

THE MURDERS BEFORE THE MARATHON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: News footage of the April 15, 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The Gist: Journalist Susan Zalkind has spent almost a decade looking into the murders of Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken, who were found with their throats slashed, pot sprinkled over their bodies and $5,000 of cash laying nearby. Zalkind, who was admittedly a stoner before seeking a journalism career, was friends with Weissman, whom most people in their circle considered more of a cannabis connoisseur than a drug dealer. One person says that all three guys would be running dispensaries if they were alive now, in an era when recreational pot is legal in many states.

We hear from Zalkind, a producer on whose book the docuseries is based, through most of the documentary, along with Ed Davis, the Boston police commissioner at the time of the bombing. As the manhunt for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continued in the days after the bombing, Zalkind’s interest in the Waltham case, which had pretty much gone cold in the intervening 18 months, was rekindled.

There was a connection between Tamerlan and one of the Waltham victims, Brendan Mess; Tamerlan Tsarnaev considered Mess to be his best friend and the two of them did MMA training in the same gym. Another man, Ibragim Todashev, indicated that he and Tsarnaev were in the Waltham apartment on the night of the murder, but for some reason, he was shot and killed by law enforcement in Florida before he could complete his confession.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Murders Before The Marathon is in the style of other ABC News-produced docuseries on Hulu, like Have You Seen This Man?

Our Take: We’re never fans of docuseries produced in the style you see on network true-crime newsmagazines like 48 Hours, Dateline or 20/20. They tend to all have similar formats that are graphics-heavy, lean on ominous music and never really linger on a particular interview segment or aspect of a story. The Murders Before The Marathon is presented in this style. But in this case the story is so intriguing, full of what-ifs and how-could-this-happens, that the network-style brute-force presentation doesn’t hamper the storytelling.

The first episode dives more into the Boston Marathon bombing than one might expect, describing what first responders saw that day and how affected they were by it. Given that the tragedy was only nine years ago and still relatively fresh in people’s minds, you’d think that we wouldn’t need to explore the bombing and the manhunt of the Tsaranev brothers in any kind of depth. But what director Jesse Sweet is trying to establish with this is just how horrible the bombing was, and how it might have been prevented if the police had been looking in the right direction in 2011.

What Zalkind is trying to portray in this docuseries is how the Middlesex County DA’s office, who was in charge of the investigation, treated the murders more as a drug deal gone bad or a hit by the cartel, despite evidence that showed otherwise. Even as recently as 2011, marijuana dealers were considered to be felons, and law enforcement’s biases and blind spots were apparent. What she is trying to look at is if Tamerlan Tsaranev was investigated for the triple murder in 2011, would the marathon bombing ever have happened? Those kinds of questions carry a lot of speculation and second guessing, of course, but it sure is fascinating to contemplate.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Over photos of Tsaranev, Zalkind asks, “Did Tamerlan Tsaranev and Ibragim Todashev kill my friend?”

Sleeper Star: Zalkind is the dominant force in this series, though it’s interesting listening to Ed Davis recall the bombing nine years later.

Most Pilot-y Line: “He was like a nice Jewish marijuana dealer,” Zalkind says of Weissman. We don’t think that any Jewish grandmother has described their grandson like that.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the slick presentation, The Murders Before The Marathon examines a case that, while still remaining unsolved, has a lot of fascinating connections to one of the most brazen terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.