Boston victim in iconic photo may have helped identify a bomber

Minutes before the bombs blew up in Boston, Jeff Bauman looked into the eyes of the man who tried to kill him.

Just before 3 p.m. Monday, Bauman was waiting for his girlfriend to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon. A man wearing a cap, sunglasses and a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt looked at Jeff, 27, and dropped a bag at his feet, his brother, Chris Bauman, said.

Two and a half minutes later, the bag exploded, tearing Jeff's legs apart. A picture of him in a wheelchair, bloodied and ashen, was broadcast around the world as he was rushed to Boston Medical Center. He lost both legs below the knee.

"He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, 'bag, saw the guy, looked right at me,' " Chris Bauman said.

Those words may have helped crack the mystery of who perpetrated one of the highest-profile acts of terror in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Jeff Bauman's face-to-face confrontation with one of the suspects — identified as brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — may have yielded key clues in the manhunt, which intensified after the FBI on Thursday released images of two men. While still in intensive care, Bauman gave the FBI a description of the man he saw, his brother said. Bauman's information helped investigators narrow down whom to look for in hours of video of the attack, he said.

"I've had many times alone with him, and yes, he told me every single detail," Chris Bauman said.

Jeff Bauman wouldn't be the last to look into the eyes of one of the suspects. On Monday, Remy Lawler, 25, was standing with Bauman, said her father, Arthur Lawler, of Amesbury. Remy is the roommate of Bauman's girlfriend, Erin Hurley. Shortly before the explosion, Remy moved closer to the finish line, away from Bauman and another friend, to take better photographs.

She suffered a baseball-sized shrapnel wound.

Shortly after, Lawler called her mother's cellphone and left a message in which she cried "Mom! Mom!" Medics could be heard telling her, "You're going to be all right," her father said.

"She feels guilty about a lot of this, that she wasn't with her friends," Arthur Lawler said.

It would take hours before the Bauman family knew what had happened to Jeff. They learned about it the way much of the world did: the grisly image on television of their son being wheeled from the scene, his lower legs destroyed.