May 3, 2013

"Investigators sharpen focus on Boston bombing suspect’s widow."

The Washington Post reports today:
Federal law enforcement officials are sharpening their focus on [Katherine Russell, 24, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev] after finding al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine and other radical Islamist material on her computer, according to law enforcement officials....

On Monday, FBI special agents spent about 90 minutes inside the North Kingstown, R.I., home of Russell’s parents. The agents left with bags of material and a sample of Russell’s DNA.

Two law enforcement officials said that investigators found fingerprints and female DNA on fragments of the pressure-cooker bombs that exploded at the marathon....
I was skeptical about her back on April 22:
I see you've got your brand-new leopard skin print hijab....

It's Katherine Russell, the widow Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  "She was just this All-American girl who was brainwashed by her super-religious husband. Nobody understands what happened to her." She was the daughter of a Rhode Island doctor and nurse. She "dreamed of going to college and joining the Peace Corps."

Brainwashed. Are you buying that or do you think that Peace Corps aspirationalists are just the kind of American kids who feel drawn to the idea of becoming the other?



I tend to think people are responsible for their own choices.
UPDATE: "Katherine Russell... has stopped co-operating with authorities as it emerged female DNA found on one of the detonated bombs does not belong to her."

43 comments:

Revenant said...

Given that the bombs blew up in a huge crowd of men and women, finding "female DNA" on the fragments seems kind of inevitable.

FedkaTheConvict said...

A few decades earlier and she could have been Barack Obama's mother.

Heather said...

I wanted to join the Peace Corps as a form of patriotism. Spreading the goodwill of the US.

SteveR said...

At some point we'll learn about her parents. There are a few obvious scenarios that explain the outcome we know of and perhaps more. Yes she is responsible for her own choices but still.

jimbino said...

As a religious person, she is no more brainwashed than any religious person who believes in talking snakes and donkeys, trinities, transubstantiation, virgin births and immaculate conceptions.

It's just that Muslims countenance violence as part of their cause, though Christians did too some 500 years ago, and Jews some 2500 years ago.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Is she "brainwashed" or is she a co-conspirator. I wouldn't jump on either bandwagon about the wife. Too little is known.

Tamerlane could have used her computer and as Revanant said, finding female DNA on the bomb doesn't mean much.

The one thing I found interesting was that she supposedly called Tamerlane to tell him he was being watched.

Sorun said...

"It's just that Muslims countenance violence as part of their cause, though Christians did too some 500 years ago, and Jews some 2500 years ago."

I'm in favor of continually reminding the Muslims of how backward they are.

edutcher said...

Well, they said they had about a dozen "persons of interest".

And she's as weird as the rest of them.

jimbino said...

As a religious person, she is no more brainwashed than any religious person who believes in talking snakes and donkeys, trinities, transubstantiation, virgin births and immaculate conceptions.

Or dialectical materialism or state capitalism or it's sooo much better in Europe because their sex is everywhere.

SteveR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nonapod said...

I believe that there exists a certain percentage of people out there who are highly susceptible to being influenced by others. Perhaps it's due to a general lack of intelligence and wisdom combined with a poor upbringing that results in this strange personality type. Who knows? But for whatever reason they don't have a good sense of self and feel the need to be defined by others, or at least are easily manipulated by others. When those others are morally bankrupt and/or insane individuals you can get cults, or other strange extreme behaivors.

I have no idea if this is what's going on here, and I don't really care honestly. It just doesn't interest me that much and I don't think it's germane to the atrocities in question.

rhhardin said...

I haven't sharpened focus on anything since I was a kid.

Hagar said...

I am sceptical of anything printed about this over-hyped case until someone cites some actual facts.

Cedarford said...

Isn't just the phone call. It's the fact that the small apartment, consisting of a bathroom, bedroom, and openspace with kitchenette was turned into a bomb factory over the course of several weeks. Small income and budget...yet had no idea that there were fireworks and expensive pressure cookers and pipes being hacksawed? Boxes of nails and BBs bought? In 3 rooms she was in each day???

And the Dhimmi wife noticed nothing and was shocked!!! her husband was setting off bombs.

Doesn't pass the smell test. You don't need positive DNA on bomb fragments to have serious doubts about the Dhimmi.

And you can be sure that at the top of the list of questions the FBI asked por sweet little misguided Dzokhar before Holder mirandized him was "who else knew?". Your friends, the wife, the contacts Tamerlan had? Who?"

And "while you were making the bombs, where was the Dhimmi wife?"

Supposedly she has now shut up and stopped talking with FBI.
Another thing the FBI will be doing, as they suck at stopping Jihad but are good at compiling evidence in cases is developing a timeline of where she was each hour of each day before the bombings, when the Jihadist stuff was downloaded based on timestamps, and where and when all the bomb components were bought, and by whom.

The bitch may well end up in Supermax the rest of her life. Sure, you can count on her lawyers trying to use the old female "abuse excuse"..but I don't think it will work this time if the FBI shows she was a long term participant and her "fear" of Tamerlan was just one phone call to the cops away from ending before all those Americans were killed and maimed by the Tsarnaevs and their accomplices.

madAsHell said...

Wasn't she a battered wife as well??

Shanna said...

expensive pressure cookers

Are pressure cookers expensive?

I do agree that if she was in a small apartment with bomb making equipment it would be kind of impossible not to notice. I don't think we have enouhg information one way or the other to know if she was cowed, brainwashed or willing co-conspirator.

JAL said...

Sigh.

C4 has good points.

gerry said...

A native of Rhode Island? Odds are she was prepped to hate America and what it stood for by the time she graduated from grammar school. All she needed was a jihadist with muscular arms to sweep her into a Burqa and a pressure-cooker relationship.

JAL said...

Wasn't she a battered wife as well??

IIRC that was the other girlfriend the same year he impregnated and married Katherine.

JAL said...

If she really wasn't onboard with the whole Muslim thing and was shocked! *shocked* by the bombings and loves America, why didn't she rip off that damned burka on Day One.

virgil xenophon said...

CNN reports that since she received the news that the DNA is not hers she has stopped cooperating with the FBI--which brings up the subj of goodwill, loyalty to country, sense of citizenship and intent. If she were truly a patriotic American she would continue to cooperate with the FBI, no? But this sudden lack of cooperation demonstrates (to me, at least) a divided loyalty at the very least or that she was part of the conspiracy (or had foreknowledge of it) at worst. She does not seem to be the innocent housewife "kept in the dark"--not by a long-shot..

(PS: I considered that her sudden lack of cooperation could simply be on advise of counsel, but I'm sure he would have advised her to clam up way before this. To my mind the fact that she was at first "cooperating" and now NOT once she is shown to be "in the clear" DNA-wise indicates she was involved, didn't know how much the FBI had on her, so was cooperating as possible ploy to reduce her sentence if they had the goods on her. Now? Screw you, she's saying in effect: "I ain't talkin', Sheriff." If totally innocent why not continue cooperating?)

JAL said...

Are pressure cookers expensive?

Maybe they were from Williams-Sonoma.

Unknown said...

I'm all for jailing or capital punishment for every person who can be proven guilty of this bombing whether directly or indirectly. I just wonder if the older brother's wife will be given as much sympathy as Joker has gotten.

The degree of slack being cut for him because he has curly hair, soulful eyes and pouty lips is horrifying.

mariner said...

Sorun,
I'm in favor of continually reminding the Muslims of how backward they are.

I'm in favor of continually reminding anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigots just how far ahead of Muslims Christians and Jews are today.

edutcher said...

madAsHell said...

Wasn't she a battered wife as well??

Yes, but it was good battered, not battered battered.

virgil xenophon said...

@wyo sis

You're SO judgmental..

Don't you know that's not cool these days?

virgil xenophon said...

PS to wyo sis:

UNLESS, of course one is a white, Christian "heteronormative" male, that is--then all bets are off..

ricpic said...

At the local mosque after the brainwashing they throw in a waxing for free.

Seeing Red said...

Why is her last name Russell & not her husband's?

KCFleming said...

"Why is her last name Russell & not her husband's?"

Welfare abuse?

Cedarford said...

The smirking Dhimmi bride was merely canning beets with the (4) pressure cookers she bought with her modest income or previous welfare dole.

Yes, multiple pressure cookers are a common sight in many American lower incomer's kitchens!!

And her living in a small appartment with a bedroom, open area with kitchenette and bathroom does not mean she noticed the pressure cookers, large pipe sections, boxes of nails, BBs. fireworks, or when she swept the gunpowder from opened fireworks off the kitchen table as she did "Muslim women duties" cleaning the 3 rooms each day in what, for several weeks, was a bomb factory.

With apparantly no concern about if all that bomb making shit may not be ideal for a 3-year old to be around.

And poor fearlful women, she just didn't call police and have Beloved Tamerlan taken away because she was just such a smirking, abused Victim!.

Poor Victim!! The usual feminist suspects are tripping over themselves already trying to explain how victimized and innocent any women surely must be!!

cubanbob said...

jimbino said...
As a religious person, she is no more brainwashed than any religious person who believes in talking snakes and donkeys, trinities, transubstantiation, virgin births and immaculate conceptions.

It's just that Muslims countenance violence as part of their cause, though Christians did too some 500 years ago, and Jews some 2500 years ago.

5/3/13, 3:28 PM

Howzabout we stay on current time and not dwell on centuries ago.
And lets not forget that secular religion that still commits violence where it is still practiced, the one you seem to be an adherent of.

As more information and details come out this is going to be a huge cluster for the Zero Administration. Soon enough there will be demands for Napolitano and Holder to resign at the minimum. it's starting to look like the second term is going to be Nixonian as the SHTF. Would not be surprise in the least if after the 2014 election and the scandals are open if the House were to impeach Obama, Holder and Napolitano if Holder and Napolitano haven't resigned by then. Even if the republicans pick up the Senate in 2014 there is no way they would remove Obama but certainly would Holder and Napolitano. As for Hill, her presidential ambitions died on Benghazi Hill. Interesting times are coming in the next four years. Fasten your sealt belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Anonymous said...

radical Islamist materials

I thought the FBI had purged those evil islamophobic (Booshie) concepts out of their lexicon.

Which is part of the reason the bombing happened...

virgil xenophon said...

cubanbob you are FAR more optimistic than am I. The Donkeys stick together like glue (eg the Clinton impeachment vote in the Senate) while the Elephants rightly think they would be painted by the MSM as raaaacists (in the case of Obama & Holder) and anti-women in the case of Big Sis (we won't even go the anti-lesbo route) And unfortunately the majority of the morons who elected and re-elected Obama would believe them. Facts and logic have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with this; the general public has too much psychic energy invested in Obama to admit they were wrong--they will ignore everything to protect--as the Political Scientist V.O. Key coined-- the "pictures in their head" from being proved wrong. It is a quasi-religious experience we are dealing with here (hell, strike "quasi.")

Hagar said...

Listened to the evening news, and it is still just moonshine and horse feathers.

sane_voter said...

If she did have anything to do with this, including some knowledge of what hubby was doing, I hope they make a huge example of her and lock her up for a loong time. Might scare off a few white girls from going down this road.

William said...

There must have been dozens of friends, fellow students, and family members who recognized these two brothers when their pictures were broadcast. But no one came forward. That's troubling. These men were mass murderers. It's ok to snitch on mass murderers.

Gospace said...

"And "while you were making the bombs, where was the Dhimmi wife?""

FBI training materials have been purged of words like "Dhimmi". The agenets wouldn't know how to properly phrase the question. Probably never even asked the surviving bomber (I refuse to refer to his name, preferring he be never remembered) if he was on a jihad mission, for that word is also on the official government newspeak verboten list.

kentuckyliz said...

I wouldn't cooperate at all. Attorney. Subpeona. Fifth Amendment. I would expect the authoritehs to twist every innocent word I said.

Anonymous said...

@William
There must have been dozens of friends, fellow students, and family members who recognized these two brothers when their pictures were broadcast.

The three classmates who are now charged with obstruction not only did not snitch, but tried to destroy evidence to protect Dzokhar.

Michael K said...

" madAsHell said...
Wasn't she a battered wife as well??"

No, he battered another girl he was screwing while doing the wife thing.

Polygamy is part of the religion of peace.

Anonymous said...

An old friend's son turned 21 recently. He's a strapping kid, all excited by life, and decent enough if a little spoiled. But he, as well as his circle of friends, feel no affection or loyalty for America, any more than they do for the highway system.

American is there, they enjoy it and take advantage of it, but they don't care. If anything, they feel America owes them something because it's so rich and guilty of so much from the past.

Some people are concerned that we are not assimilating immigrants, e.g. the Boston bombers. But it's worse than that. We are not assimilating our own children to be part of the vision of America.

MayBee said...

I'm confused by their living arrangements. Did she usually live with him, but just happened to be in Rhode Island when her husband bombed the marathon?

Hagar said...

There has not been any coherent story published. The reporters are just grabbing whatever scraps come their way and puff them into a column.