Gina Crawford was Katherine Russell’s best friend since elementary school. But, she told a federal courthouse, she only once met the man Russell married – by accident, when he came into the Starbucks where Crawford worked.
That man was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who defence lawyers says masterminded the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, dragging his younger brother Dzhokhar along for the ride.
As the defence lays out their case to spare Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the death penalty, the figure of Tamerlan – who was killed following a shootout with police in the days after the bombing – is finally emerging from the shadows.
On Monday, the court heard from Katherine’s mother, Judith Russell, that Katherine met Tamerlan at a club. Their relationship was “on and off”, she said. She was against it; he cheated on her several times.
But after Katherine got pregnant with Tamerlan’s daughter, Judith Russell said, there were some parts of the mother-daughter relationship that Judith had to “rope off” in order to see her granddaughter.
The court saw a picture of Katherine and Tamerlan from early in their relationship. Tamerlan was stylishly dressed and clean-shaven – he was taken with expensive shirts and crocodile-skin shoes at the time. Katherine’s hair was bleached blonde. Both Tamerlan and Katherine were smiling broadly.
In another picture from several years later, Tamerlan wore a beard and a scowl; Katherine wore a headscarf.
The court also saw a video of their daughter, now four and a half years old, taken from Tamerlan’s phone. His voice, previously largely unheard, filled the courtroom. “Allahu Akhbar,” his voice says, and the infant responds: “Allahu Akhbar.”
Judith Russell said her daughter’s conversion to Islam was gradual, and seemed to be driven by her own interest. Tamerlan, however, developed an “obsession” with it. “He wanted to talk about it every time I saw him.”
Katherine, too, became more and more “intense into Islam”, according to Crawford. The court saw a series of text messages between the two of them at the time of the bombing. “A lot more people are killed every day in Syria and other places,” Katherine texts. “Innocent people.”
That was on Monday, the day of the bombing. By Friday, Tamerlan was dead, and the brothers’ faces were all over the news. Crawford texted Katherine again: “I love you.” And again: “I just want to hug you.” Katherine did not respond.
The defence strategy is to build Tamerlan as an overwhelming, powerful presence. In this penalty phase of the trial, success lies in balancing “aggravating factors” with “mitigating factors”, in persuading the jury to vote one way or the other.
During the guilt phase of the trial, Tamerlan figured less; partly because the facts of Tsarnaev’s involvement with his brother were never in doubt – Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev’s attorney, admitted as much in the opening day of the trial.
But now, when motivation and depth of “heinous and cruel” behaviour are directly at issue, the personality of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the biggest mitigating factor .
In fact, Tamerlan has become so much the focus of the trial that several witnesses apparently thought that it was him, instead of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was meant by the phrase “the defendant”.
Brandon Douglas, a mixed-martial-arts fighter who trained at Tamerlan’s gym, Wai Kru in Brighton, Massachusetts, took the stand on Tuesday; and the court saw video footage from the gym taken the Friday before the bombing. Tamerlan was in the ring, preparing to fight, his brother leaning on the ropes. The symbolism wasn’t lost on those watching.
At that time he and Katherine met, Russell said, Tamerlan’s driving motivation was boxing. But, according to Douglas’ testimony, when Tamerlan discovered he couldn’t compete in national competitions because he was not a US citizen, he took it as “an intentional slight”.
Via a reader, the court also heard from Magomed Dolakov, a Russian who was interviewed by the FBI in the days after the bombing. He could tell Tamerlan was radicalised, Dolakov told the agents; he reminded him of other radicalised people he knew from Moscow. Tamerlan, Dolakov said, told him he wanted to be mujahideen.
By contrast, Dolakov told the FBI, Jahar – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s university nickname – was “often very quiet”, and mainly listened, rather than talked. A former coach of Tamerlan’s testified that the younger Tsarnaev seemed like “a puppy” following his brother.
The depth into which the defence is currently diving into Tamerlan’s life is extraordinary. The court heard from a teacher who was forced to eject him from a jazz band nine years ago for not being good enough at the piano – was this, the implicit question seemed to be, what set him on the path to evil? Or, as seemed equally implicit on Tuesday, was it his inability to compete in the national boxing championships?
The prosecution gave short shrift to the jazz witness. “OK,” assistant US attorney Nadine Pellegrini said as she stood up for cross-examination. “So. Nine years before the bombing, Tamerlan was in your class and couldn’t play piano very well?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, OK,” said Pellegrini. “Nothing further.”
