NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. -- Lawyers for the wife of the deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect say she is doing everything she can to assist authorities.
But they wouldn't say Tuesday if Katherine Tsarnaeva, widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has spoken to investigators yet.
Providence attorneys Amato DeLuca and Miriam Weizenbaum issued a statement Tuesday saying Tsnarnaeva is deeply mourning the bombing victims. They say that Tsarnaeva and her family were in shock when they learned of allegations against her husband and brother-in-law, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The lawyers say Tsarnaeva, whose toddler is the daughter of the late suspect, is "trying to come to terms with these events."
Katherine Tsarnaeva, 24, has avoided the public eye since her identity became known Friday. On the rare occasions when she has emerged from her parents' Rhode Island home, she is dressed in the traditional Muslim headscarf, a hijab, and has refused to answer questions.
Those who know her and knew her husband describe her as sweet and dedicated to Islam.
Tsarnaeva grew up with two younger sisters on a quiet cul-de-sac in North Kingstown, a rural, wooded town a 90-minute drive south from the apartment she would eventually share in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and his family. Her father, Warren Russell, is an emergency doctor whose Facebook profile lists his high school alma mater as the elite New Hampshire boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy and college as Yale. Her mother, Judith Russell, was listed on her Facebook profile as working at a social services agency.
Tsarnaeva attended North Kingstown High School, graduating in 2007. Her yearbook entry lists her plans as college and the Peace Corps.
Suffolk University said Tsarnaeva attended from 2007 to 2010 and majored in communications. Her lawyer, DeLuca, said she was a student when she met Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a nightclub, introduced by one of her girlfriends. Tsarnaev, who had attended Bunker Hill Community College, was no longer in school, DeLuca said, and was seeing another woman at the time.
"They went out for a while, and then they stopped and then they went out again," DeLuca said.
Tsarnaeva knew nothing about Islam when they met, said her lawyer, adding he didn't know if marriage was a motivating factor in her conversion. The reason was that she is a believer, he said. "She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Qur'an," DeLuca said. "She believes in God."
The couple got married on June 21, 2010, a Monday, in a ceremony performed by Imam Taalib Mahdee, of Masjid al Qur'aan, in Boston's Dorchester neighbourhood, according to their marriage certificate, which lists his profession as a driver.
Mahdee said he never saw the couple again and that they never attended his mosque.
The couple had a daughter and lived with her in the Tsarnaev family apartment, which was shared over the years with his mother, Zubeidat, and father, Anzor, now divorced, and Dzhokhar, DeLuca said. He said Tsarnaeva rarely saw her brother-in-law there because he was living in the dorms at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Tsarnaeva's lawyer said she had no reason to suspect her husband of anything and was focused on supporting her family, working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week as a home health care aide. Her husband cared for their daughter when she was away, Deluca said.
Federal authorities have asked to interview Tsarnaeva, and DeLuca on Sunday told The Associated Press he is discussing with them how to proceed. He said on Tuesday during a brief statement to reporters that his client "is doing everything she can to assist with the investigation," although he would not answer questions about whether she had spoken with federal authorities.
DeLuca would not give the AP details on what his client told him her husband was doing in the days before and after the April 15 bombing but said as far as he knew nothing seemed amiss to her in the days after.
Her other lawyer, Miriam Weizenbaum, said on Tuesday that reports of her husband and brother-in-law's involvement in the bombings came as a shock to Tsarnaeva and her family and said she deeply mourned the loss of innocent victims.
Tsarnaeva, she said, was trying to come to terms with the events.
