Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is buried "not far" from President Kennedy’s grave.
The announcement on May 9, 2013, that a burial site had been found for the body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev led to speculation about the location of the grave. The next day, after media outlets confirmed that Tsarnaev had been interred in a Muslim cemetery 15 miles from Richmond, Va., WPRO talk show host John DePetro weighed in. DePetro, at first, seemed to ask his talk-show audience if the site was near John F. Kennedy's grave. But then he simply declared to his listeners that it was. "You know, in a way, think of who else is there. That is, President Kennedy is buried not far from there, in Virginia," he said. Kennedy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. So was Tsarnaev really interred nearby? When we contacted DePetro, he said he wasn't sure what the distance was. We used the Google Maps Distance Calculator to find the actual span between Kennedy's grave at Arlington and the Al-Barzakh Cemetery on Sadie Lane in Doswell, Virginia. Driving distance: 87 miles. Bee-line distance: 74 miles. That's about 55,817 casket lengths. When we informed DePetro of the distance and asked if he was still bothered, he wrote in an e-mail, "Yes. Insult to bury him so close to JFK. Johnston landfill was my choice or out to sea." Our ruling Saying that Kennedy is buried "not far" from Tsarnaev is like saying Newport is not far from the eastern tip of Cape Cod, that Rhode Island's State House is not far from Derry, N.H., or that the site of the Boston Marathon bombing is "not far" from the the southernmost tip of Narragansett, R.I. And to say that such a distance should somehow spark offense strikes us as mildly ridiculous, so we rate his statement Pants on Fire! (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, e-mail us at politifact@providencejournal.com. And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)
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