Boston Marathon Bomb Attack?!?!?

[RayThom]

I just finished reading a news website that castigated the Reddit website for erroneously "reporting" the names of whom they set up to be the BM bombers. One of these "suspects", Sunil Tripathi, a young man from Brown University who went missing many weeks ago, is the son of an old Westy management systems associate of mine. First, Akhil and his wife Judy, have had to endure their anguish of not knowing where Sunil may be and, now, they have to suffer the ridicule of uncaring people who think their son was mixed up in one of the worst atrocities in recent history.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/46040 ... ifying.htm
.............................
Oddly, and coincidentally, the images of Sunil were first brought to this forum's attention by that shitful, nonsense, conspiracy, website Gob linked us to the day after the bombings. It is shameful as to the depths of disregard that ethnic hate mongers will stoop just to get their skewed agenda out there. The InfoWars website continues to show these images, but worse of all, Sunil is STILL missing.

http://www.infowars.com/breaking-police ... n-suspects
......................................
And this just in: (1:45am) I feel in my gut that this, in fact, is going to be Sunil's body. Sad, very sad news, indeed. Oh, and fuck you InfoWars, I hope you're proud of yourself.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-575 ... -tripathi/

[Grim Reaper]

Bunch of wannabe Sherlock Holmes trying to "beat" the FBI at identifying the perpetrators. I was reading one of the threads where they identified some "suspects" that turned out to be security personnel.

[Jarlaxle]

And it is just this defense that will keep this "Jokar" off death row.

I'm inclined to think there's a good chance of that....

I very much doubt he could get off with the Svengali routine, but in the penalty phase, all they would need to do is convince one juror that he was sufficiently diminished in responsibility due to his being a pathetic weak willed follower of his brother that he should be spared the death penalty.

That's exactly what happened in the Malvo case:

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to all charges on the grounds that he was under Muhammad's complete control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Boyd_Malvo

It didn't work, but it got the jury to give him LWOP rather than the DP.

Of course in that case, the jury knew that John Muhammad had already been sentenced to death....

In this case White Cap (I use that rather than having to keep spelling the guy's name over and over) is the only one who can be made to pay with that penalty.

And there are other differences, (there was a larger age difference between Muhammad and Malvo, Muhammed had kept Malvo fairly isolated from other influences; White Cap had a pretty independent life, etc.) so maybe it wouldn't even work in the penalty phase, but I think there's a good chance it might.

Assuming of course there isn't a plea deal, but given the nature of the crime, (and the fact that this guy probably doesn't have any valuable information he can use to cut a deal) I think that's unlikely.

Jim, keeping them straight is easy! The dead one is SPEEDBUMP. The live one is DRY-DOCK.

[Lord Jim]

That works....

[Grim Reaper]

And the corpse has been identified as Sunil Tripathi , cause of death is still to be determined.

[RayThom]

... the family mentioned they were very concerned about his safety, and life. Sonny had a history of mental health issues and it was always feared he might hurt himself. I'll be really surprised if the ME rules this anything other than a suicide. A sad situation indeed.

All family on his father's side were Hindi. All family on his mom's side were Anglo. Torn between two religions and cultures, and the effect have proven deadly. He tried to please everyone but himself. RIP

[Gob]

Tripathi, who is from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania,

Now I wonder how the locals pronounce "Bryn Mawr"? ("large hill" in Welsh)

[kristina]

brin mawr...how close are we?

[Gob]

Pretty damn close, spot on I'd say

[Gob]

Listen to Bryn pronounced here..

Listen to "Mawr" pronounced here...

[RayThom]

... was navigating the haunts of Bryn Mawr. Just so you know, I pronounce it "brin mar."

BTW -- Bruce Springsteen made one of his first stage appearances (January 1973) on his path to musical respectability at the Main Point in "Brin Mar" and I watched his performance from an open kitchen door right off of the stage area.

[liberty]

Here is a possible scenario: They wanted to arrest him so that they could put more pressure on him so they provided a fight with insults and humiliations , but it got out of hand and they ended up shooting him. It wouldn't be the first time that police have acted like thugs. Think about this, as bad it is here it is much worse in the rest of the world; in some countries the people have no safe guards at all.




..FBI agent kills man after questioning him about Boston Marathon bombing
.
.By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News
Senior Media Reporter
..PostsEmailRSS..By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 2 hrs 20 mins ago....Email0Share0
Share0Print......
Ibragim Todashev (Orlando Police Dept.)
An unidentified FBI agent shot and killed a man in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday after questioning him about his link to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Dave Couvertier, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's Tampa field office, told Yahoo News the shooting is under investigation. He identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old Chechen-born Orlando resident and apparent acquaintance of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers suspected of planning and carrying out the terror attack at last month's Boston Marathon.

The shooting occurred just after midnight at an apartment complex in Orlando. The agent, along with two Massachusetts State Police troopers, were interviewing Todashev "in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual," Couvertier said. "An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C., and expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours."

The agent, Couvertier added, "sustained non-life threatening injuries."

Khusen Taramov, a friend of Todashev, told local television reporters that he and Todashev were interviewed by the FBI for three hours on Tuesday.

"They were talking to us," Taramov told WESH-TV. "And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back. ... He felt inside he was going to get shot. I told him, 'Everything is going to be fine, don't worry about it.' He said, 'I have a really bad feeling.'"

Todashev met Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston while competing in mixed martial arts, Taramov said.

"They met a few times because [Todashev] was an MMA fighter and [Tsarnaev] was a boxer," Taramov told WKMG-TV. "They just knew each other. That’s it."

Taramov said Todashev had planned to travel back to Chechnya. "He had a [plane] ticket to New York," Taramov said. "From there, he was going to go home. [The FBI was] pushing him to stay, saying, ‘We want to interview you one last time.'"

According to the Orlando Sun Sentinel, Todashev was arrested earlier this month on aggravated assault charges:

In that incident, Todashev told deputies he got in a fight with a man over a parking space at the Orlando Premium Outlet mall and "was only fighting to protect his knee because he had surgery in March," according to the arrest report.

The Sheriff's office report says that two men were fighting and one—later identified as Todashev—was leaving the scene in a vehicle, while the other was on the ground, appeared unconscious, and surrounded by "a considerable amount of blood."

Deputies pursued Todashev, pulled him over and ordered him out of his car at gunpoint, according to the report. The victim, who had a split upper lip and "several teeth knocked out of place," did not want to press charges, according to the report.

Four days after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a late-night shootout with police in Watertown, Mass. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombings, which left three people dead and wounded 275.

[Gob]

Thousands of runners have completed the final mile of Boston Marathon, five weeks after they were forced to abandon the race after two bombs exploded.



The event was billed as "OneRun", with the slogan: "We'll get our finish."

Three American flags and one Chinese were carried in remembrance of three people who died by the finishing line, and the policeman killed days later by the two brothers thought responsible.

One brother was killed in a shootout with police; the other was captured.

Last week, US media reported that the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had written a message in a boat where he was found which said the attack was retribution for the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the victims were "collateral damage".

Mr Tsarnaev is facing federal charges of using a weapon of mass destruction, as well as the malicious destruction of property resulting in death. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

OneRun spokeswoman Kathleen McGonagle said the event honoured the victims and emergency services personnel who helped in the aftermath of the attack on 15 April.

"For the runners that didn't get the chance to finish the marathon, this is the chance for them to experience the final mile that was taken away from them," she added.

OneRun organiser Alain Ferry told the Associated Press: "It was very emotional to run down this street and see all the people cheering."

"There were a lot of tears, and I can feel in my throat that there are going to be more. This was a scab for everyone that just was not healing.''

Another 35 runners will be given a ceremonial finish at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday.

[RayThom]

""Last week, US media reported that the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had written a message in a boat where he was found which said the attack was retribution for the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the victims were "collateral damage".""

Within hours of the BM bombing I referred to the victims as "collateral damage." Is it possible that Dzhokhar is a member of this fine august body of Einsteins and Quasimodos?


"I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell."


DIXI

[oldr_n_wsr]

and the victims were "collateral damage".

Ss who/what was the actual, intended target?

[RayThom]

The intended target would be the wonderful system of Jeffersonian democracy that we have all grown to love and cherish.

Almost all terrorism is based on collateral damage. It just doesn't matter who gets in their way of spreading fear and mayhem.

[liberty]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... up/276369/

Why Did the FBI Kill an Unarmed Man and Clam Up?
Law enforcement can't get its story straight in the worrisome case of Ibragim Todashev.
Conor Friedersdorf May 30 2013, 10:44 AM ET
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Reuters


What led an FBI agent, or some other law enforcement official, to shoot and kill an unarmed man in Orlando, Florida? The man, Ibragim Todashev, was being questioned about the Boston bombing, as well as an unsolved 2011 triple murder that he may or may not have confessed to committing. Does that sound sketchy? Don't blame me. Once he died, law enforcement started releasing anonymous, conflicting explanations so dubious that they warrant an inquiry all by themselves.

Here is a possible scenario: They wanted to arrest him so that they could put more pressure on him so they provided a fight with insults and humiliations , but it got out of hand and they ended up shooting him. It wouldn't be the first time that police have acted like thugs. Think about this, as bad it is here it is much worse in the rest of the world; in some countries the people have no safe guards at all.




..FBI agent kills man after questioning him about Boston Marathon bombing
.
.By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News
Senior Media Reporter
..PostsEmailRSS..By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 2 hrs 20 mins ago....Email0Share0
Share0Print......
Ibragim Todashev (Orlando Police Dept.)
An unidentified FBI agent shot and killed a man in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday after questioning him about his link to the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Dave Couvertier, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's Tampa field office, told Yahoo News the shooting is under investigation. He identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old Chechen-born Orlando resident and apparent acquaintance of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers suspected of planning and carrying out the terror attack at last month's Boston Marathon.

The shooting occurred just after midnight at an apartment complex in Orlando. The agent, along with two Massachusetts State Police troopers, were interviewing Todashev "in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual," Couvertier said. "An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C., and expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours."

The agent, Couvertier added, "sustained non-life threatening injuries."

Khusen Taramov, a friend of Todashev, told local television reporters that he and Todashev were interviewed by the FBI for three hours on Tuesday.

"They were talking to us," Taramov told WESH-TV. "And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back. ... He felt inside he was going to get shot. I told him, 'Everything is going to be fine, don't worry about it.' He said, 'I have a really bad feeling.'"

Todashev met Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston while competing in mixed martial arts, Taramov said.

"They met a few times because [Todashev] was an MMA fighter and [Tsarnaev] was a boxer," Taramov told WKMG-TV. "They just knew each other. That’s it."

Taramov said Todashev had planned to travel back to Chechnya. "He had a [plane] ticket to New York," Taramov said. "From there, he was going to go home. [The FBI was] pushing him to stay, saying, ‘We want to interview you one last time.'"

According to the Orlando Sun Sentinel, Todashev was arrested earlier this month on aggravated assault charges:

In that incident, Todashev told deputies he got in a fight with a man over a parking space at the Orlando Premium Outlet mall and "was only fighting to protect his knee because he had surgery in March," according to the arrest report.

The Sheriff's office report says that two men were fighting and one—later identified as Todashev—was leaving the scene in a vehicle, while the other was on the ground, appeared unconscious, and surrounded by "a considerable amount of blood."

Deputies pursued Todashev, pulled him over and ordered him out of his car at gunpoint, according to the report. The victim, who had a split upper lip and "several teeth knocked out of place," did not want to press charges, according to the report.

Four days after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a late-night shootout with police in Watertown, Mass. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombings, which left three people dead and wounded 275.

[Crackpot]

An interesting article (I thought anyway)
From here

A Family Terror: The Tsarnaevs and the Boston Bombing
A decade ago, a Wall Street Journal reporter happened to befriend the Tsarnaevs. The story of his surprise—and the family's—when the sons emerged as suspects in the attack.

By ALAN CULLISON
Updated Dec. 13, 2013 11:40 p.m. ET
The Tsarnaevs from top left to right: The father, Anzor; his brother, Ruslan Tsarni; Anzor's wife, Zubeidat; and their sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar. In the background: the Boston bombing in April and a scene from Grozny in 1995. Photo Illustration by Gluekit; Reuters (Anzor Tsarnaev, Ruslan Tsarni, Boston bombing); Associated Press (Zubeidat Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev); Agence France-Presse/Getty Images (Grozny); Getty Images (Tamerlan Tsarnaev)
When I first met Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now familiar as the elder of the two alleged Boston Marathon bombers, he gripped my hand like he was wringing out a rag. It was 2004, and Tamerlan had been in the U.S. for about a year, but he already had an outsize American dream. He planned to box for the U.S. Olympic Team one day, and he wanted to earn a degree, perhaps at Harvard or MIT, and to hold a full-time job at the same time, so he could buy a house and a car. I suggested he forget the house and the car during college, as most American students do. He didn't see why he should.

I was on sabbatical that year, taking classes at Harvard on a journalism fellowship, and had wanted to meet some of the refugees from Russia's war to reconquer the breakaway Muslim region of Chechnya. I expected to write about Russia's Islamist insurgency in the future, and I thought some Chechen expatriates might help me with my stories.

A friend told me that his mother had rented an apartment to some Chechens. He drove me to a weather-beaten three-family home crammed between others in a tattered corner of Cambridge, Mass. I was led up a narrow stairway, littered with shoes and slippers, to their third-floor apartment—the start of a relationship that came full circle last April, when I encountered the Tsarnaevs again under very different circumstances.

A decade ago, there was nothing about the Tsarnaevs to suggest any involvement in Islamist extremism. But they already seemed like "losers," as their successful Americanized uncle told reporters after the attack. They were out of place in the U.S., and my relationship with them developed because they needed so much basic advice about how to get by. I didn't sense impending danger in their household, but looking back, I can see now that I glimpsed a new type of threat to the U.S., one that we have only recently begun to confront.

The father, Anzor, was a lean man with a square jaw who seldom smiled. The mother, Zubeidat, was a wide-eyed rapid talker with a low-cut dress and high heels who waved her arms and teased her black hair like the pop singer Cyndi Lauper. Their two daughters and younger son, Dzhokhar, then 11, greeted me and retreated to a corner of the room.

The parents sat me in a chair before a meal of dumplings and chicken soup—typical fare of Russia's North Caucasus region—and we spoke Russian, while Tamerlan stood in the doorway with his arms folded. They interrogated me about America while I ate. What was a good profession for young men in America? What was the difference between state and private colleges?

I had questions for them too: What did they think about the rebellion that the Russians had crushed in Chechnya? Tens of thousands of Chechens were seeking asylum in Europe, and a few, like the Tsarnaevs, had ventured farther, to the U.S. The father, Anzor, just frowned. Tamerlan remained indifferent. They were both worried about practical matters nearer at hand, like finding work and making money.

Indeed, Anzor's work gave me the closest bond to the family. He had been a mechanic back in Chechnya, he said, and wanted to open his own garage in America. Anzor seemed to be the only man in Boston who would work on my aging 1964 Buick Wildcat, a car whose leaking and primitive engine reminded him of the Soviet machinery that he had mastered. It was a pleasure, he said, to work on a car that contained no computer chips.

For a few weeks, tightening up my car with Anzor became my escape from academic routine. Anzor had no garage, so finding a place to work was a frequent problem. In good weather, we jacked the car up in the street and lay down beneath it on a piece of cardboard that he'd brought along. In a half-dozen meetings, we replaced my car's alternator and brake pads and went over the whole electrical system, but we never did learn why the air conditioner blew hot air.

I paid Anzor what he said he thought he was worth—$10 an hour. He refused more, and even this sum was hard to give, as he waved the money away, saying "It's nothing." I knew that Chechen hospitality demanded that he offer to do everything for a friend for free, so I pushed the bills into his shirt pocket and the ashtray of his car. He never acknowledged the cash and pretended not to care, but as he wrestled with my engine and cursed in Russian, I knew he had plenty of troubles. He was learning English slowly. Even if he were the best mechanic in Boston, I was probably the only person who would ever know it.

His status inside his family seemed to be slipping. One evening, soon before I left Boston, I dined at their home, and as Anzor and his wife walked me to the door she praised me as a "real dzhigit"—or "warrior." The moment was awkward. I replied, "No, your husband—he is the dzhigit." She waved her hand dismissively, while Anzor just frowned at something on the floor.

After I returned to my reporting job in Moscow that summer, I kept tabs on the Tsarnaevs through my friend. He told me that his mother, the family's landlady, lent them money, tutored the children and helped them apply to the right schools. At first her news was hopeful: Through them I learned that the Tsarnaevs got Section 8 housing funds, Zubeidat started a stay-at-home business giving facials, and the family found an ideal new apartment with a garage below, where Anzor finally could work on cars.

But a welter of tribulations soon followed. Health inspectors found lead-based paint in the apartment above the garage, and they had to abandon it. Zubeidat's business floundered. Their two teenage daughters married Chechen men, and then both got divorced.

Tamerlan was doing worst of all, my friend told me. He had dropped both boxing and college, and was living at home with his girlfriend, who was pregnant. Only the younger son, Dzhokhar, was supposedly adjusting and would be going to college (as I later learned, to the University of MassachusettsDartmouth).

Then came the attack in Boston last April. And although I was stunned to hear police say that Tamerlan and his brother were the bombers, it fit with the profile of terrorists I'd encountered in my work. The failed suicide bombers I'd interviewed in Afghan prisons were mostly young men with no prospects. One told me he was planning to kill himself because he had no job or family, and some Islamists persuaded him to try to take out some American soldiers while he was at it. He was arrested for stopping his bomb-laden car on the shoulder of a road to urinate.

Three days after Tamerlan died in a shootout with police on April 19, I reunited with his parents, flying to meet them in Dagestan, a troubled province in southern Russia where they had moved months before. Dzhokhar was in police custody and would later plead not guilty to federal charges against him. Defense lawyers for Mr. Tsarnaev didn't respond to requests for comment. From the parents and other family and neighbors, I have been able to piece together a fuller picture of what had happened to Tamerlan in the intervening years.

“ In 2004, they already seemed like 'losers,' as their uncle told reporters after the attack. ”

The Tsarnaevs had come to America thanks largely to Anzor's younger brother Ruslan, who, as the family told it, was a rich and successful lawyer. He lived near Washington, D.C. and for a time was their model in adapting to the new world. I had known little about Ruslan when I was in Cambridge, but now, reporting on the family after the bombing, I learned his story.

When I met him in Washington last summer, he looked the part of the rich uncle. He picked me up in a silver Mercedes and drove me to Off the Record, a bar in the Hay-Adams hotel near the White House, where we talked for three hours.

Ruslan was indeed successful in ways that his older brother wasn't. They grew up in the penurious former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, where Ruslan excelled in school, learned English, landed a white-collar job in the capital of Bishkek, and met and married the daughter of a retired high-ranking CIA officer, who was there advising the government on privatization. Soon he had a U.S. passport and was studying law at Duke University.

In Kyrgyzstan, Anzor married Zubeidat, whom his family didn't approve of, partly because she wasn't Chechen. Anzor found sporadic work as a car mechanic and was jailed when the Kyrgyz government began a broad crackdown on Chechens. Ruslan said he worried that his brother and his family might not do well in America, but that he could be in danger in Kyrgyzstan. "I gave him the money for the tickets, and I said to Anzor, 'You know, by changing countries, you don't change everything,'" he said. But, he said, his brother was determined to try.

In most Chechen families, it is the older brother who helps the younger one. It seemed to me that Ruslan's success grated on the Tsarnaevs, who were soon failing in America as badly as they had in Kyrgyzstan. Anzor never found a steady job as a mechanic; he soon turned to drinking and complaining about mysterious stomach cramps. Zubeidat was arrested for shoplifting, though she said it was simply a misunderstanding with store staff.

Ruslan said he worried about Tamerlan, especially because he had arrived in the U.S. too late to learn English well before college. He feared that Tamerlan wasn't living up to his potential, that he was getting depressed, was turning to drinking and doing drugs. Twice he tried to persuade him to move out to either live with him in his own home, or go to college, which he offered to pay for. Each time, Ruslan said, his parents intervened to discourage him from accepting the offer. His parents said that Tamerlan just wanted to stay with them.

As Tamerlan's options dwindled, he started to take an interest in conspiracy theories, according to neighbors and his former brother-in-law. He saw silent, unseen forces working against him. When the family's landlord allowed me into their old apartment over the summer, I was able to examine Tamerlan's books and a ring-binder full of articles that he had copied and marked up: material from a course on how to seduce women quickly, a manual on how to hypnotize people, some collected biographies of famous Jewish actors, and pages filled with racial theories purporting to explain why Jews were so successful.

Tamerlan's former brother-in-law told me that, in 2008, Tamerlan was fascinated by the cult film "Zeitgeist," which suggested that the Sept. 11 attacks were organized by shadowy financial elites. Around the same time, Tamerlan began searching for a copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the notorious czarist forgery positing that the world is controlled by a Jewish cabal. The landlady let me look at Tamerlan's copy, which he had marked up heavily, filling the back cover page with 22 words that he had translated from English to Russian, beginning with "gentile" and ending with "Mason."

Zubeidat, the boys' mother, told me that she was the one who got Tamerlan interested in Islam, because she worried he was becoming wayward and was partying too much with American friends. But even Islam didn't give him a place in society that he could keep. In Cambridge, he was told to leave the local mosque because he couldn't control his outbursts against speakers whom he considered too moderate, according to a spokeswoman for the mosque.

In 2012, Tamerlan went to Dagestan and Chechnya to get acquainted with his roots, but he had some difficulty fitting in, his parents said. He stayed only briefly in Chechnya, in part because he didn't speak the language (his mother, after all, was Dagestani, and the family spoke Russian at home).

In Dagestan, locals said he appeared strange and perhaps too American. In the capital of Makhachkala, he clashed with the congregation at the hastily-built red brick mosque on Kotrova Street, a magnet for radical Islamists. He showed up for prayers after greasing his hair with olive oil and wearing dark eye makeup, apparently in an effort to copy contemporary jihadist fashion. But that fashion isn't popular in Dagestan, and outside the front door, his father told me, he nearly got into a fistfight with some young men who accused him of playing dress-up.

In the end, Boston police say, Tamerlan turned to an article called "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," published in an online al Qaeda magazine. I suspect that nobody wanted to work with him, not even other suspected terrorists. As many experts now tell us, "lone wolf" killers are a fearsome new threat, in large part because they are so much harder to track down than conventional terrorists who belong to organized extremist groups.

When Tamerlan returned to Boston later that year, friends and family said he kept largely to himself, caring for his infant daughter while his wife took care of an elderly invalid couple. Tamerlan developed a friendship with one of the invalids, Donald Larking, who had been shot in the head in a convenience-store robbery 40 years before and, as his faculties declined, had become interested in conspiracy theories. (Mr. Larking could not be interviewed because of his mental condition, but a lawyer for the family confirmed this account.)

Psychologists suggest that conspiracy theories often serve as a crutch for emotionally needy people, allowing them to feel good about themselves for seeing truth where others don't. They believe the world is being taken over by hidden forces, that an apocalyptic battle is at hand and now is the time for heroes to act.

For an unemployed ex-boxer who spent most of his time in a grubby third-floor walk-up in Cambridge, such theories could have provided purpose, a relief from his troubles. People who escape this frame of mind generally do so with the help of family. But when I saw the Tsarnaevs in Dagestan, it seemed unlikely that they could have helped their son. They, too, were filled with thoughts of conspiracy.

They arrived near midnight at the apartment I was renting in the capital. Anzor was exhausted and thinner than when I knew him before. From an overstuffed chair he would sit up periodically and say that his sons had been framed in the bombings, but then collapse back down, semiconscious. Zubeidat was a different woman from what I remembered. Cocooned in a hijab and long black dress, she insisted that her sons were the victims of vast, unseen interests that were taking over America.

She had hoped religion would straighten the family out, she said, but she also said it might have been a mistake to go to America at all, because the adjustment was too much for her children. "We tried, but I wouldn't do it again," she said. "I don't know if we would have done it if we had known."

[RayThom]

... it's not for everybody.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Sue U]

Thanks, Crackpot; that was a very interesting insight to a very troubled family. The story we're so used to hearing is about immigrants who come to the US with nothing and through hard work and perseverance ultimately achieve the American Dream. We seldom hear about those who struggle and don't make it, and the terrible consequences of that failure.