With the Boston Marathon bombing trial looming, the Tsarnaev family is engulfed in legal problems and drama
by Holly Bailey
Ailina Tsarnaeva, sister of Boston Marathon bombing suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has
been arrested in New York City for allegedly threatening to bomb a
Harlem woman. Police say that she is charged with aggravated harassment
for threatening the woman over the phone on Monday, Aug. 25.
On Aug. 25, a New York City woman caught up in a messy child
custody battle with her ex-boyfriend got into a fight on the phone with
her former flame’s new girlfriend. According to the police, heated words
were exchanged, and the girlfriend, who also has a child with the man,
was subsequently arrested and charged with harassment after she
allegedly threatened the other woman’s life.
It was an
altercation that likely would have been buried in the reams of other
ugly domestic disputes in New York. Except the accused was Ailina
Tsarnaeva, the 24-year-old sister of alleged Boston Marathon bombers
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And, according to police, she allegedly
threatened the other woman by telling her, “I have people. I know people
that can put a bomb where you live.”
Tsarnaeva appeared in New
York Criminal Court on Tuesday. She entered a not guilty plea to two
charges of aggravated harassment, a misdemeanor, for allegedly
threatening her boyfriend’s 23-year-old former girlfriend, who has not
been named in the dispute. (Tsarnaeva's friends have said the man is her
husband, but police have referred to him as her boyfriend.)
A
resident of North Bergen, N.J., Tsarnaeva turned herself in on Aug. 27
and was released on a desk appearance ticket, which allows a defendant
to bypass jail and appear in court at a later date. But she was led away
in handcuffs after her court appearance Tuesday after prosecutors said
she violated an order of protection by driving past the other woman's
home earlier this month. Her bail was set at $5,000.
Tsarnaeva's
brush with the law has renewed interest in an already troubled family
caught up in the Boston attacks, which remain largely shrouded in
mystery 17 months later.
Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, 21, faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the April
2013 dual bombings that killed three people and injured several hundred
near the marathon’s finish line. He’s also charged with shooting and
killing an MIT police officer days after the attacks while he was on the
run. His brother and alleged co-conspirator, Tamerlan, who was 26, was
killed during a shootout with cops when, according to federal
prosecutors, the younger Tsarnaev ran him over with a car while escaping
from police.
Last week, a
judge delayed Tsarnaev’s trial until January to give his attorneys
additional time to prepare his defense, but he is expected to make his
first court appearance in more than a year at an Oct. 20 status hearing.
Tsarnaev has entered a not guilty plea to the charges.
But
while Tsarnaev sits in a federal prison hospital outside Boston
awaiting trial, members of his family have been dealing with legal
skirmishes of their own as they navigate the infamy of being so closely
associated with the horrific attacks. They have largely avoided the
media, and associates say they’ve tried to lie low, but it hasn’t always
worked out — especially for Tsarnaev’s two sisters, who have been drawn
into the spotlight for run-ins with the law that occurred even before
the bombings.
In addition to
the latest incident in New York, Ailina Tsarnaeva is scheduled to go
before a judge in November in Boston, where she’s facing jail time for
allegedly lying to police investigating a counterfeit money ring back in
2010.
While she isn’t charged
with passing fake bills, police say Tsarnaeva knows the identities of
those behind the operation but misled investigators. A warrant was
issued for her arrest last year when she skipped a court appearance, but
in October 2013, she was released on $1,500 bail — though she was too
broke to pay it. Her attorney, George Gormley, told the court she was
“practically speaking, indigent,” and the court instead allowed her to
check in weekly with a Massachusetts probation officer in lieu of
posting bond.
In a brief
interview, Gormley declined to comment on the case or his client, except
to say that he is not representing her on the New York charge.
According to court filings, Tsarnaeva is being represented by Legal Aid,
an organization that works with clients who can’t afford to retain a
lawyer. On Tuesday, her attorney, Susan Marcus, told the court her
client did not have the means to post bail. She called the claims of
harassment "uncorroborated."
"My client is an easy target," Marcus told reporters outside the courthouse.
Meanwhile,
her older sister, Bella, 26, is still under legal scrutiny after she
was arrested in December 2012 and charged with drug possession and
distribution charges after police responding to a domestic violence
incident at her Fairview, N.J., apartment found marijuana there. Bella
Tsarnaeva and her live-in boyfriend, Ahmad Khalil, reached a plea deal
with prosecutors last fall that allowed her to avoid a criminal record
by participating in a pretrial intervention program, as long as she
stayed out of trouble. She recently announced through a friend on
Facebook that she’s pregnant with her second child, a girl due in
February.
For their part,
Tsarnaev’s parents, Anzor and Zubeidat, remain in Dagestan, Russia. They
have said repeatedly that they want to come back to the United States
to visit their son in jail, but so far they have not. Zubeidat Tsarnaev
has told reporters she fears being detained on an outstanding arrest
warrant for a 2012 shoplifting charge in Boston. The threat of arrest,
she says, could keep her from attending her son’s trial.
Besides
details that show up in court filings and small snippets of gossip and
family photos that have been leaked out through friends and a network of
online supporters of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in recent months, little is
known about the daily lives of the Tsarnaev family in the aftermath of
the bombings. Associates say Tsarnaev’s sisters have faced death
threats, and their connection to the case has made it difficult for them
to find work. It’s unclear how they pay the bills.
For
more than a year, the Tsarnaev sisters shared an apartment in New
Jersey, but at some point in recent months, Ailina and her two toddlers
moved in with another familiar face caught up in the Boston drama: Katherine Russell, the 25-year-old widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev who also remains under scrutiny in the bombing investigation.
Russell
and her 4-year-old daughter, Zahara, had retreated to her parents' home
outside Providence, R.I., after the attacks, but she moved to New
Jersey at some point this year and lived undetected until a Boston
television station was tipped off to her whereabouts
in late August — just days before Ailina Tsarnaeva’s arrest. Russell’s
parents — who have separated, according to a family friend — sold their
home in June. Friends of Russell were caught off guard by her move to
New Jersey, speculating that it might have been spurred by tensions over
Russell’s decision to remain a practicing muslim and the scrutiny she
and her family have faced since the attacks.
Russell’s
decision to move in with her sister-in-law also raises questions about
her own theories about the Boston bombings, including Tamerlan
Tsarnaev’s alleged involvement. Through her attorney, Russell has long
denied any advanced knowledge of the bombing plot and has expressed
shock at the allegations of her late husband and brother-in-law's
involvement. In a joint statement released hours after Tamerlan
Tsarnaev’s death, the Russell family said they felt they “never really
knew” him at all.
But the
Tsarnaev family has refused to accept the government’s version of events
in the marathon attacks. They have suggested that the brothers were
wrongly accused — in spite of prosecutors’ assertions that Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev readily admitted his involvement after his capture. Speaking to
reporters camped outside her New Jersey apartment last month, Ailina
Tsarnaeva told Boston’s WHDH-TV, “My brothers got framed. Everybody knows that.”
Yet
it’s unclear what Russell thinks — or what her day-to-day life is like
as her brother-in-law prepares to go on trial. Approached by a reporter
outside the apartment she shares with Ailina Tsarnaeva last week,
Russell ran away before a question could even be asked. She has yet to
be formally cleared by federal investigators in the Boston Marathon
bombing case, and her attorney, Amato DeLuca, did not respond to
requests for comment.
Neighbors
say that until recently they used to see Tsarnaeva, Russell and their
children in the local park and taking walks in the quiet, mostly
Hispanic neighborhood located just 20 minutes across the Hudson River
from Manhattan. “They were just two young women who smiled but never
said much,” one neighbor, who declined to be named, recalled.
But
after the recent spate of publicity, the women have retreated inside,
with their shades drawn — rarely seen except when they are walking to
and from their car or taking out the trash. Occasionally, people have
been seen knocking on their door, but nobody answers, a man who lives
nearby said. And after word of Tsarnaeva’s alleged bomb threat spread,
neighbors noticed unmarked police cars cruising the block more
frequently. Whatever sense of ordinary life the two women enjoyed
appears to be in limbo, amid a new round of scrutiny.
“When I see them now, they always look around like they are being watched,” one neighbor said. “I guess it’s because they are.”
