The unmarked police cars that used to be parked down the block are gone. So are the satellite trucks. But every few weeks, a paparazzo turns up, training a long lens on a two-story ranch-style home that sits on a quiet, wooded cul-de-sac here, hoping to land the money shot of the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombings.
That’s why, neighbors believe, they don’t see Katherine Russell outside anymore — or her parents or two younger sisters. Not even on the warm days, when the family used to sit in lawn chairs smiling and laughing as Russell and Tsarnaev’s 3-year-old daughter, Zahara, happily scampered through the open backyard.
When a tabloid ran photos of one of those backyard jaunts last summer, family members retreated inside and have rarely been seen by the neighbors since. A space that had once felt so open and free was suddenly a prison where there was no privacy from the prying eyes of a world curious about how a seemingly normal girl and her family got caught up in a horrifying crime.
Everywhere Russell goes these days — to the Dunkin' Donuts, to the store, to the gas station — people stare and wonder and whisper about a woman who is still one of the most mysterious figures in the Boston Marathon investigation. Russell cannot escape the fact that she is an object of grim fascination. (Her lawyer said Russell has also received death threats.)
The hot glare of scrutiny extends beyond Russell herself. Since last April, when Russell, 25, was publicly identified as Tsarnaev’s wife, her family, friends, neighbors and virtually anybody who might have had any connection to her at all have been under siege by reporters hungry for details about a woman who largely remains an enigma to a world anxious for answers about the attacks.
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