Federal officials are seeking to speak with Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, the wife of killed Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Russell-Tsarnaev's attorney, Amato DeLuca, told the Associated Press that he has spoken with authorities and is "deciding what we want to do and how we want to approach this" in order to proceed. DeLuca told the Associated Press that she declined to speak with officers on Sunday when they showed up to her parent's home in Rhode Island where she was staying.
The lawyer says that the woman did not know that her husband was involved in the terrorist plot until she saw his name mentioned as a suspect on TV. The attorney also maintains that the 24-year-old widow was neither involved or knew about Tamerlan's attacks as she has been working 70 to 80 hours each week as a home health aide.
Russell-Tsarnaev married the marathon bombing suspect around 2009 and 2010 and had a daughter who is now three-years-old. The 26-year-old suspect was killed early Friday morning in a shootout with police.
The second suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar, was hospitalized on Saturday, but regained consciousness Sunday night. The Chechen brothers left Russia with their family in 2002 and became legal residents of the U.S.
Authorities are working toward putting together a motive, and whether the pair had ties to Islamic terror cells, the FBI believes thatTamerlan Tsarnaev made a mysterious trip to Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, a base for Islamists last year. As part of its investigation, the feds want to know whether Russell knew more about his seven-month long trip.
The Daily Mail reports that Tsarnaev was arrested in July 2009 for violently assaulting Russell. However, she later told Cambridge cops that he was "a very nice man."
Eventually, she converted to Islam for him. "She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Koran," DeLuca said. "She believes in God."
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