Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 (AP)
NORTH KINGSTON, RI — The widow of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev took off with federal agents this morning, in the first big sign she’ll sing like a canary about the dead terrorist.
Katherine Russell, 24, and defense lawyer Amato DeLuca left her parents’ Rhode lsland home, accompanied by three federal agents.
The pair met inside the house for about 15 minutes, before they emerged and were met by the feds.
Russell and DeLuca drove away in the lawyer’s silver Lexus, as the three feds calmly followed close behind in their own car.
Russell wore an olive green coat and leopard print headscarf. She did not wear sunglasses.
The widow returned home about three and a half hours later, this time in a Nissan Versa, operated by her mother Judith. Their car was escorted by the same three federal agents.
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“She is doing everything she can to assist in the on-going investigation,” DeLuca said in a prepared statement today, outside his law office in Providence.
His legal partner, Maria Weizenbaum, said Russell still can’t grasp her loved ones’ involvement in last week’s incredibly sad event.
“The injuries and loss of life to people who came to celebrate a race and a holiday has caused profound stress and sorrow to Katie and her family,” Weizenbaum said
“The reports of involvement by her husband and brother-in-law came as an absolute shock to them all. As a mother, sister, daughter, a wife, Katie deeply mourns the pain and loss to innocent victims.”
The lawyers say Russell is “trying to come to terms with these events.” Russell’s lawyers didn’t say if she spoke to investigators this morning.
Before today, the widow had appeared unwilling to chat with investigators about last week’s deadly bombing linked to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
DeLuca yesterday said he had spoken with authorities and they were “deciding what to do.”
Russell, mother of Tsarnaev’s 3-year-old daughter, Zahara, was oblivious to Tsarnaev’s deadly plan, DeLuca has insisted.
“She knew nothing about it at any time,” he said.
Russell learned from TV news reports that her husband and brother-in-law were suspected in the attacks, her lawyers said.
Agents camped out yesterday in front of the Russell family’s colonial-style North Kingstown, RI, home.
DeLuca said yesterday Russell isn’t opposed to chatting with investigators.
“She understands the need for doing it,” he said. “It’s a threat to national security, and she gets that.”
Russell’s parents put their home up for sale Friday.
The fresh-faced Russell was a student at Suffolk University in Massachusetts when she met Tsarnaev at a nightclub.
They dated on and off before Russell dropped out of college, cut off contact with her friends, converted to Islam and married Tsarnaev in June 2010.
Additional reporting by Jeane MacIntosh and David K. Li in New York. With AP