BOSTON (MyFoxBoston.com) -- The graphic images, still pictures and cell phone video presented this week after several full days of testimony during the Boston Marathon bombing trial will forever take us back to one of the darkest days in Boston's history.
Our Heather Hegedus sat down with the mother of two brothers who lost legs in the bombings, and Liz Norden has mixed feelings about the videos being released.
She says on one hand, they're like pieces of a puzzle helping her better understand exactly what happened that day as her sons watched the marathon from outside Forum restaurant. On the other hand, she worries about her sons and even her granddaughter having to re-live that day, because once it's online, it's pretty much available to everyone, forever.
"Yeah, you know it's funny, they're smiling. They're all laughing and in the blink of the eye they're on the ground and bloody. Their legs are missing. Looking for help, from anybody. And it was just, excuse me, horrible," Norden said.
The first time she watched the video of her two sons being gravely maimed by a pressure cooker bomb at the marathon finish line was right in the courtroom along with everyone else.
"I want to know what happened to my boys that day. I think, for me, I had to see, you know," she said. "I saw how much they went through and what they endured and just to see how it happened."
Still, while she wants to know, it is the hardest thing for a mother to watch. She says it was "terrible."
Some of the video used in the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been deemed simply far too graphic to be shown on the news. Some, the US Attorney's office has chosen not to release because it involves minors or people who died that day. Still, at least 70 pictures and video clips are being used and it's got some of the victims' families questioning whether it's all really necessary. She thinks the victims have been through enough.
In surveillance released this week from outside Forum restaurant, you can see not only Tsarnaev, but Norden's sons Paul and JP as well as their good friend Marc Fucarile, who also lost a leg. And once that video was released, it became permanently accessible with the click of a mouse.
One of Marc Fucarile's concerns was his son being able to watch these videos on the internet when he gets older, and Norden says she has the same fear for her granddaughter.
"I guess you can say keep them away from the internet but to me I feel it's kinda private. You know I mean these people they went through that so much, I think it should be up to them who they decide to watch it and I know that's not possible, not this day and age.
