Picture of Tamberlan Tsarnaev as "Loser" with "No American Friends" Doesn't Wash

[alcibiades_mystery]

He certainly made the claim that he has "no American friends" and "doesn't understand" Americans. It's also true that he had no seeming means of support or career trajectory at 26. But that's where the narrative ends.

He had an American girlfriend, apparently for quite some time. He has a child with her. The friend who was murdered seemed to be a close neighborhood friend. He was American. Now, as more information comes out, it seems a lot of the guys at the gym liked him, too, and thought he was a good boxer, and tough.

Another American friend is now found saying "He was a big friendly giant. ... There was nothing weird about him, nothing alarming. He never went around and tried to force his views on anyone." (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/21/us/tsarnaev-brothers-relationship/index.html?hpt=hp_t1). A tough Boston Irish boxing trainer says he was "one of the best fighters he's ever trained. He won the open class heavyweight division for the New England Golden Gloves. The kid could've taken a gold medal at the Olympics, he said, but his immigration status prevented him from trying out for the U.S. Olympic team." Loser? If anything, the guy sounds skilled and motivated.

I grew up in a neighborhood like this, with boxing and tough guys and stoners and your buddy's moving a little weight from time to time. I have no doubt that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got radicalized and committed this horrible act. But I think the image we have of him so far is not really the truth. I think he was pretty close to a regular working class immigrant guy until fairly recently. And that makes this all very strange indeed.

[ZRT2209]

1. you're not pushing a false flag theory, are you?

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. I do hope you're joking...I don't go in for that kind of nonsense

Indeed, I say so explicitly in the post itself: "I have no doubt that Tamerlan Tsarnaev got radicalized and committed this horrible act."

The point of the post is that people are creating a narrative of the elder Tsarnaev that has tons of holes in it. We perhaps feel more comfortable if at least one of these guys seems to be a "no friends loser." But neither seem to be. They seem to have been engaged, moderately popular kids and people. It's better, I think, to start from that truth as we seek to understand this.

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. I agree with you - They did it. At least I have not heard any evidence to the contrary. But this is

a most odd case. I also find it impossible to grasp a political or religious objective in all of this. The Chechen separatist movement has been trying forever to generate sympathy for their cause in the United States. The Chechen separatist movement has never had any quarrel of any kind with the United States. If anything they would have leaned in the pro-American direction with hope that America might intervene on their side against their enemy - the Russians. Their enemy is Russia. But obviously Boston is not in Russia. If they had struck the Russian consulate or a group of Russian diplomats or any Russian interest - I could see how that would fit as an act of terrorism. Simply killing a bunch people without any stated or implied political or religious message or stated or implied political or religious agenda just doesn't fit the terrorist model at all. Of course suggestions that this is some kind of false flag operation are crazy. It really happened. Those two did it and they probably acted alone - at least based on anything known so far. But it is indeed a very strange case.

[sabrina 1]

54. Unless their parents are Russian. The mother is in Russia eg, not Chechnya. I agree with your

analysis that if they were Chechens Russia should have been their enemy, not the US. But it isn't it possible that their family was from Russia, living in Chechnya when the Soviet Union fell and Chechnya fought for their independence? It would probably not have been safe for Russians to live in Chechnya anymore at that point.

I have not seen much information on their actual background. One thing is for sure though, the older one 'Tam' was 15 when they came here, old enough to have experienced growing up in a war zone. The younger was eight old enough too, but possibly more easy for him to adapt to a different environment.

[scarletwoman]

3. ...

[Blue_In_AK]

27. I second your face palm

and agree that this is a most unusual case. So glad that the younger brother is alive or we might never know exactly what's going on here.

[Fumesucker]

4. Welcome to DU!

[LisaL]

5. He is the one who claimed that he had no American friends.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Yes, I know...that's how the post you're responding to starts out

He said it, but it doesn't wash with what we're learning about his life. We believe it because we want to, I think.

[LisaL]

7. Why would he lie about not having American friends?

I think it's very simple. He might have known people, and they might have liked him. But he didn't consider them friends.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Meh, people say a lot of things

Not everything people say is either a lie or the truth; people exaggerate, say things to be provocative, and a million other inflections.

He also is quoted referring to Brendan Mess as his "best friend." Why do you believe the one statement, and not the other? Because that's what you want to believe, I think.

Best friend statement: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022721986

[LisaL]

16. Brendan Mess would be the same guy that was viciously murdered?

And whose murder remains unsolved?

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Indeed

[LisaL]

22. Throat slit. Sounds like it was a pretty grizzly murder to me.

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. Indeed...nasty business, that

[LisaL]

28. Triple murder, I imagine a very bloody crime scene.

How is it possible that the cops couldn't solve it? No DNA? No fingerprints? With three peolple killed by having their throats slit?

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. Happens all the time

Wonder if they'll revisit.

[LisaL]

30. I would certainly hope so.

[alcibiades_mystery]

31. I don't think

Their throats were "slit," but stabbed.

A grisly scene in any case, to be sure.

One would think this will be on the question list for young brother.

[LisaL]

33. I've seen it reported that way.

"Two years ago, Mess and two other men were brutally killed in a Waltham apartment where they were found by police with their throats slit and their bodies covered with marijuana. The murders remain unsolved."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/murder-of-brendan-mess-the-best-friend-of-boston-bombing-suspect-tamerlan-tsarnaev-2013-4#ixzz2RABKrL33

[alcibiades_mystery]

34. Yes, and other reports

closer to the scene refer to the throats being stabbed and the weapon possibly being an ice pick, a device with which it is exceedingly difficult to "slit" somebody's throat. I suspect this distinction will become important.

[LisaL]

36. Autopsies just called it "sharp force injuries to the neck."

"The victims, Brandon Mess, 25, of Waltham, and Cambridge residents Eric Weissman, 31, and Teken, were allegedly killed by “sharp force injuries to the neck,” according to autopsy results released last week by Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone."

Read more: Community mourns Brookline HS alumnus killed in Waltham homicide - Brookline, Massachusetts - Brookline TAB http://www.wickedlocal.com/brookline/news/x985870552/Community-mourns-Brookline-HS-alumnus-killed-in-Waltham-homicide#ixzz2RAF0Ykkg
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
Follow us: @WickedLocal on Twitter | 119311408344 on Facebook

[alcibiades_mystery]

37. Right, which could mean stabbed or slit, though the same paper reports it as stabbed at the time

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x110332078/Three-Cambridge-natives-mourned-after-brutal-Waltham-murder#axzz2RAFjb9Ak

Brendan Mess, 25, Erik Weissman, 31, and Raphael Teken, 37, were allegedly stabbed in the neck, authorities said after an autopsy last week.

And, again, "slit" with an "knife or ice pick." I wonder whether whichever journalist wrote that sentence has ever seen an ice pick. Stabbed sounds more plausible. Curiouser and curiouser.

[DeltaLitProf]

41. Note their bodies were found covered with marijuana

And Tsarnaev is very very anti-drug and alcohol in the interview he gave to the college magazine, the one in which he says he can't understand Americans. One can well imagine him doing the killing, then pouring their drugs all over them to make a statement: this is why I killed you.

[uppityperson]

44. How much is needed to cover a body? A sprinkle? No skin showing? Just noticing the phrase could

be taken in a number of ways.

[alcibiades_mystery]

46. Or in a messy, disorderly crime, whatever cannabis happened to be out

got knocked over everything.

The whole "sprinkled" with pot thing doesn't play right. Just as likely they were bagging up a QP and it all got knocked over in the struggle.

[WinkyDink]

56. Because his best friend was MURDERED.

[bettyellen]

9. he's an unemployed drop out who was supposed to be devout, but knocked up his GF... left her family

to care for her and the baby, because he never worked enough to make a home for them. Screwed up his prospects of boxing by beating on a woman and losing his citizenship. His brother never even talked about him, his uncle said he was an aimless loser.
Yeah, the few friends he would have would be when he was a contender, the one that saw him after he "retired" said he had fallen apart.
I'm guessing the few people who liked who he was the last few years of his life are all hiding under rocks right now.

[LisaL]

19. She is his legal wife, not his girlfriend.

Presumably it's o'key for a devout Muslim to knock up his legal wife, no?

[bettyellen]

20. not when she got pregnant, she wasn't.

his family was quite upset about it.

[LisaL]

21. His family seem to be upset about quite a few things.

[HipChick]

17. He might have had no once close to him that he considered a close friend..

Remember the woman who passed away in her home? She was there for 4 years before anyone found her body, she had friends, people that knew her, but none close enough to check on her..It happens

It is much easier for an immigrant to feel isolated in this country...

[upi402]

8. His uncle seemed to be avoiding a witch hunt at his door

He seemed to be doing some CYA so he didn't get the Republican radicals on his doorstep with pitch forks. Pretty angry guy.

[bluedigger]

11. Pretty scared guy.

I don't blame him.

[upi402]

23. Yes, it sure is understandable. n/t

[bluedigger]

12. The truth about people is rarely simple.

I can't read the mind of a dead man, so his own words have to carry some weight.

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. No doubt

[HooptieWagon]

15. Setting off bombs and killing cops probably didn't get him many American friends...

It appears to me the guy started out OK, ran into a few rough bumps, started blaming others, and turned to religion to deflect his inner conflicts. Sounds like a loser to me...

[seabeyond]

25. a lot of times a depressed person can feel he is not loved, have no friends regardless

of reality. i think he started setting himself apart from his peers and that allowed him to feel as he did.

he was on the track to success, and in a short time hooked up with a gal that was contentious, arrest that prevented him from meeting goals and seems like had a person in his life that convinced him of beliefs that isolated him and allowed him to believe he had the answers and everyone else was wrong.

i think his life absolutely patterns what his uncle was saying.

a lot of fail, and excuses for those fails.

[HiPointDem]

51. his uncle is saying something different lately -- he's saying more or less that the guy was led

astray politically by someone he met in the US -- an armenian.

[riderinthestorm]

26. Don't forget his own brother was/is an American... nt

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. I don't know

I suspect that he may have been fairly alienated and very much a loner. He may have been telling the truth when he said "I don't have any American friends". Sure, he had acquaintances at the gym, and they maybe respected him as a tough and skilled boxer...but that doesn't mean they were friends or that they socialised outside of that context. It seems like his life was derailed by being denied citizenship over a domestic violence arrest...which took with it his hopes of boxing for the USA in the Olympics (he was replaced on the New England Olympic qualifier team by the guy he'd beaten in the Golden Gloves championship). If I were looking for some sort of trigger for his radicalisation...it would be that.

[alcibiades_mystery]

35. I don't doubt that this transformation (seemingly noticed by everybody)

led to alienation, etc., and that perhaps the description was pretty close to where he was over the last year, plus. But I think it specifically refers to that last year or two. I think this guy was relatively innocuous and normal until very recently. That's what I find interesting here. I'm certainly not suggesting that this guy was a high achiever (though he was competitive at a difficult sport at a fairly high level) or one of the promising sons of Cambridge. But i think he was fairly social and "normal" until whatever triggering event set him down this path.

[flamingdem]

38. So the two issues to examine could be:

1. the way in which and the speed with which radicalization can occur, how can there be an intervention in those cases
2. can a person seem to be assimilated but really feel alienated and thus vulnerable to remedies that include radicalization

[alcibiades_mystery]

39. I think that's right...both are also very scary, which is why the "friendless loser" narrative

may seem more comforting.

[KittyWampus]

40. Absolutely nothing you posted contradicted him as more of a loner alienated from American lifestyle.

So he got an American girl pregnant. He also apparently beat her or some other woman and THAT'S why he couldn't get citizenship. He was arrested for domestic abuse.

And just because he was a good fighter means nothing. And the people associated with him in boxing just knew him as a sportsman.

And sociopaths are very good at getting along with people enough to manipulate them.

Furthermore, as some have pointed out- we have no idea where he was getting his money.

[defacto7]

47. "sociopaths are very good at getting along with people"

This is what I see. I've said it before, sociopaths are just like the best friend next door, helpful, will feed your fish while you're on vacation, invite you for dinner, say "Hey neighbor" over the back fence.... then someone finds the bodies in their basement.

[Bluenorthwest]

57. He is married and has a child and his in laws share their home with him freely

That's a tad more than 'got a girl pregnant'. She married him, she converted to Islam and her parents supported that.
A loner with a wife, child and in laws with whom he lives? With a brother he spends the rest of his time with?
How is this a loner?

[applegrove]

42. Sometimes when recent immigrants

say 'American' they mean old established wasp kids. Don't know if that is the case here.

[cynatnite]

43. He set himself apart whether it was because he felt his values were superior...

or because he felt he couldn't fit in with American society.

In his mind, he felt he had no friends.

It's not uncommon for a person to have perceptions of the world around them that doesn't fit with reality.

[dkf]

45. Maybe he had "no American friends" because he had just murdered them...

“Boston Bomber's” Former Friends Suspect Him In Triple Murder

Former associates of slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamarlan Tsarnaev now believe he may have been involved in a 2011 triple murder that claimed the life of his closest American friend, Brendan Mess.

"At the time none of would have thought it was Tam. It was just so emotional and we thought we had someone else who had done it. Tam's name wasn't coming up at all," said one of their mutual friends, who asked to be identified by his first name, Ray.

"Tam wasn't there at the memorial service, he wasn't at the funeral, he wasn't around at all," Ray said. "And he was really close with Brendan. That's why it's so weird when he said 'I don't have any American friends.'"


Police believe there were two other men in the apartment sometime before the murder, but those two men have never been identified. Ray said following the murder, he was questioned by detectives who told him Tsarnaev may have been with Mess either the day of or the night before, although Middlesex County District Attorney's Office said they could not confirm any relationship between Mess and Tsarnaev.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/boston-bombers-former-friends-suspect-him-in-unsolved-triple

[alcibiades_mystery]

48. Yes, we are discussing this issue at length in this very thread, but notice how many people hung out

with "Tam from Cambridge" ("me and all my bros used to chill with for like 3 4 years streight (sic)" and "all thought this dude was cool," and the whole article is derived from a discussion with "Ray," yet another admitted American friend of a guy who supposedly had no friends.

Yet another friend: "This is so crazy. Lots of us knew the older suspect. UNREAL AND TERRIBLE,"

And a dude who actually knows him agrees with my assessment here: he was really close with Brendan. That's why it's so weird when he said 'I don't have any American friends.'"

Weird, weird stuff.

[dkf]

49. You define who your friends are.

You may think you have a friend but if the guy turns around and murders you, were you friends?

[HiPointDem]

52. there's no evidence that he murdered those three people.

[alcibiades_mystery]

55. Very weak sauce

Friends, lovers, spouses, and other people with genuine feelings toward each other kill each other all the time. Indeed, far more often than strangers. We don't have to pretend to not know things in order to make a case.

I'll also echo Hi-Point Dem in saying that there's no actual evidence (save the deeply circumstantial) against Tsarnaev in this crime. (That said, I think he did it...

[Recursion]

50. Maybe, but if Columbine is any indication, we're stuck with it

I'm seeing all over this board stuff that was put out in the first couple of days after Columbine, refuted very quickly and retracted, but is still what everybody thinks.

[alcibiades_mystery]

53. It's very difficult to move people off of

things they desperately want to believe.