FBI asks to interview wife of dead Boston suspect
Attorney says Katherine Russell Tsarnaev only learned of her husband’s involvement in the bombings from television coverage
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — Federal authorities have asked to speak with the wife of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, her lawyer said.
Lawyer Amato DeLuca also offered new details on Tsarnaev’s movements in the days after the bombings, saying “he was home” when his wife left for work on the last day she saw him alive.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev learned her husband was a suspect by seeing it on TV, DeLuca told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, two ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia, are accused of planting two explosives near the marathon finish line Monday, killing three and injuring more than 180. A motive remains unclear. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was still hospitalized Sunday.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev did not speak to federal officials who came Sunday evening to her parents’ home, where she has been staying since her husband was killed during a getaway attempt Friday.
DeLuca said he spoke with the federal officials, but he would not offer further details. “We’re deciding what we want to do and how we want to approach this,” he said.
When asked whether anything seemed amiss to the wife following the bombings, DeLuca said, “Not as far as I know.”
DeLuca said his client did not suspect her husband of anything. He said she had been working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week as a home health care aide. While she was at work, her husband cared for their toddler daughter, DeLuca said.
“When this allegedly was going on, she was working, and had been working all week to support her family,” he told the AP.
He said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was off at college and she saw him “not at all” at the apartment they shared with her mother-in-law.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev was attending university in Boston when friends introduced her to her future husband at a nightclub, DeLuca said. They dated on and off, then married in 2009 or 2010, he said.
She was raised Christian, but at some point after meeting Tamerlan Tsarnaev, she converted to Islam, he said. When asked why she converted, he said, “She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Koran. She believes in God.”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
