Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has admitted that he and his brother were behind the Boston Marathon bombings, a law enforcement official said this afternoon.
Tsarnaev made his admissions to FBI agents who questioned him at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Boston Globe reported on Tuesday.
He is still hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds.
The suspect had been given a Miranda warning at the time of the confession. Tsarnaev was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction Monday.
Attorneys for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (left, above) are certain to challenge the legality of those admissions, and claims that he and his brother acted alone.
The 19-year-old, who was captured after a massive manhunt Fiday night, reportedly said his older brother was radicalized in an extreme form of Islam.
But in an interview with the Globe, a senior police official said authorities are not worried about the initial admission to authorities being thrown out.
This is due in part to the fact that they reportedly have a strong witness: the man who was abducted by the Tsarnaev brothers last Thursday night.
Police sources told the Globe that the carjacking victim has told police that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother pointed guns at him that evening.
At that point, Tamerlan reportedly told him, "We just killed a cop. We blew up the marathon. And now we're going to New York. Don't [expletive] with us."
The carjacking took place in Allston shortly after, police say, the Tsarnaevs ambushed and murdered an MIT Police Officer in his cruiser in Cambridge.
Boston Police, State Police, Watertown Police, Transit Police and other officers confronted the Tsarnaevs early Friday after the stolen SUV was spotted.
"We already knew these guys had admitted to killing three civilians and a police officer, and that they were prepared to kill many others," the senior official said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with police, while Dzhokhar escaped on foot and somehow managed to avoid capture for nearly 24 hours.
According to the official, the bombers told the carjack victim that they were going to New York and used his ATM card at various locations for cash.
Investigators are trying to determine if the two had either friends or co-conspirators in New York, where they said they were headed more than once.
But the haphazard, ill-planned escape has many investigators skeptical that there were other any radical Islamists involved in the brothers' attack.
"If they had accomplices in New York, you'd think they would have had an established contingency plan to get there, and wouldn't be shooting cops and stealing cars," the official said.
"That said, we haven't ruled out anything in New York. We're looking into who they knew down there and was anyone in New York prepared to hide them."
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