Watertown, Mass. Homeowner on Cigarette Break Finds Smoking Gun in Boston Bombing Case Hiding in His Boat

Dave Henneberry of Watertown, Mass. discovered alleged terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding out in his boat. (Credit: PICASA)

David Henneberry, an avid boater and member of the Watertown Yacht Club, walked outside to smoke a cigarette just after Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick lifted the curfew on Boston residents at 6 p.m. Friday.

Puffing away, Henneberry noticed the tarp that covered his rare, 22-foot pleasure cruiser—a white Seahawk with blue trim and a fiberglass hull, reported the New York Daily News—wasn't on correctly.

"Then he saw that one of the straps was hanging loose," his stepson Robert Duffy told the Daily News. "He picked it up and saw it had been cut. He found it incredibly odd."

Henneberry got a small ladder, climbed up to reach the boat deck, and flipped back his tarp "and saw a pool of blood," Duffy added. "And then he saw what he thought was a body."

Henneberry jumped off the ladder and ran inside, dialing 911 as he went.

The "body" was the second Boston bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- alive.

Within minutes, Duffy said, police arrived and moved his stepdad and mother to a neighbor’s house.

The entire city had been on lockdown all day as police embarked on a massive manhunt for Tsarnaev who'd escaped a shootout around 1 a.m. Friday and was nowhere to be found since.

Apparently shots were exchanged at some point when police moved in, Duffy said.

Not in spots Henneberry apparently appreciated: “I just heard they wound up shooting a couple of rounds through his boat,” Duffy told the Daily News. “He’s not going to like that, he’s real anal about it.”

Henneberry's Watertown residence and what now may be the most famous pleasure boat on earth. (Credit: New York Daily News)

Here's audio of Duffy laying out his stepdad's harrowing episode in a phone interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News:

(H/T: New York Daily News)