No bravery, Boston boat owner says, before unsought fame

— Associated Press

After six months of film producers, book writers, and a legion of tourists trouping to his door, David Henneberry wants to set the record straight and demystify what has become a legend.

The retired technician was heralded for his bravery following a flurry of initial reports that suggested he found the Marathon bombing suspect hiding in his backyard after discovering dabs of blood on the side of his dry-docked boat. Henneberry said the truth is he would never have approached his shrink-wrapped Seabird if he had an inkling the alleged terrorist was inside.

“If I had seen blood out there, I wouldn’t have investigated it,” he said in one of the few interviews he has given in recent months. “I’m not crazy.”

Here’s what he said really happened on that Friday, four days after the attacks:

As he and more than a million others in the area waited inside their homes while police scoured Watertown for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Henneberry noticed from his back window that some padding he used to protect the hull of his 24-foot boat had fallen to the ground from beneath the shrink-wrap. It was a windy day, so it didn’t strike him as suspicious.

“But it was driving him nuts,” said Beth Henneberry, his wife, who spent the day at home with him. “He wanted to fix it.”

So when authorities lifted the lockdown on the evening of April 19, the 66-year-old ambled out his back door and went to repair the buffer. As he did that, he noticed a strap that secured the shrink-wrap to the hull had become loose.

He grabbed a stepladder and put it beside the boat, which he called Slip Away II. Then he lifted a piece of shrink-wrap that covered a Plexiglas door, allowing him to look inside. He immediately noticed blood splattered on the deck. When he looked near the console, he spotted a body curled in a fetal position, wearing a hoodie and dark shoes.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s in there,’” Henneberry said.

He dropped the flap, scrambled down the ladder, and ran into the house.

He looked at his wife and said, “He’s in the boat! He’s in our boat!”

He immediately called 911. The massive police response that followed played out on national television, as the younger Tsarnaev was captured after a burst of gunfire and stun grenades.

Even six months later, the Henneberrys’ home remains a stop on the local tourist circuit, attracting an unnerving number of gawkers, and the couple continue to field a steady stream of interview requests from media around the world.

The government has not offered the couple any financial compensation for their 32-year-old boat; their insurance company gave them only about $1,000.

“We generally don’t compensate people for seized items,” said Greg Comcowich, an FBI spokesman in Boston.

The Henneberrys, however, aren’t complaining.

Like other victims of the Marathon bombings, they have been the beneficiaries of an outpouring of good will.

In less than a week after Tsarnaev’s capture, a Texas man whom they had never met organized an online campaign that raised more than $50,000 to replace their boat. They have also received thousands of letters, countless calls, many handshakes, and gifts, everything from quilts to candles.

Last month, the couple used the money raised online to buy a 24-foot Rampage Sportsman, which they found on Craigslist and cruised from Marblehead to a mooring on the Charles.

For the Henneberrys, they’re ready to move on from an experience they now call “the event.”

They scoff when people call them heroes.

“If anything, we’re incidental heroes,” he said. “We just did what we should have done.”

With that, Henneberry had enough of being interviewed.

“I just want this all to fade away,” he said. “I’m not like a rock star who sought publicity. I don’t want any more.”