Dzhokhar was also thriving. At Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, he was captain of the wrestling team and earned high grades. He spent a summer working as a life guard at a Harvard pool, and dressed like a typical teenager, wearing baggy pants and a floppy eared hat. A former wrestling teammate said of him: “He didn’t have any weird personality issues. He was a friendly kid.”
Yet, Dzhokhar’s parents never came to watch the wrestling matches, and he also never spoke about his brother, despite Tamerlan being an accomplished boxer. Dzhokhar seemed to make friends easily, but his brother did not. In a photo essay, “Will Box for Passport,” Tamerlan said he did not have any American friends, that he did not understand Americans. He could speak English, but not as well as Dzhokhar. And by 2009, there were signs that Tamerlan was becoming a more religious person, abstaining from alcohol and tobacco; meanwhile, his younger brother sometimes smoked cigarettes and pot.
While the brothers were different in many ways, by appearances, the Tsarnaev family was happy. Beginning in 2009, however, Tamerlan’s success began to unravel.
Falling from Grace
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev follows his brother down the route of the Boston Marathon, a bomb in his backpack. Photo via FBI
On the heels of winning the New England Golden Gloves, Tamerlan went to the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in Salt Lake City. He had taken time off from college to train, and on the first day of competition, in the last bout of the night, Tamerlan fought Lamar Fenner from Chicago. Despite a near-knockout punch from Tamerlan (which laid out his opponent for an eight count), judges awarded the match to Fenner, which drew boos from the audience. He arrived expecting to win and did not even make the semifinal round.
After the loss, he did not visit the gym for some time. He was arrested that year for assaulting his girlfriend, and when he returned to boxing, his attitude and manner were different. For example, he walked on the boxing mats in his street shoes, a rude violation of gym rules and etiquette.
Ruslan Tsarni is the brothers’ uncle, and in 2009, Tsarni had a troubling phone call with Tamerlan. He told NBC that he heard a marked change in Tamerlan’s views and thought there was someone persuading his nephew into extremist beliefs. He said:
“I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God. I question what he’s doing for work, (and) he claimed he would just put everything in the will of God. It was a big concern to me…It wasn’t devotion, it was something, as it’s called, being radicalized.”
At some point, the father, Anzor, left the United States and moved back to Dagestan. Acquaintances suggested that at this point, Tamerlan took on a more fatherly role to his younger brother. Dzhokhar graduated from high school in 2011, and because of his wrestling abilities, he was awarded a $2,500 educational scholarship from the City of Cambridge. Dzhokhar went on to study at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, living on the third floor of the Pine Dale dormitory. He no longer wrestled, and the New York Times reported that by the time of the attack, he was failing several classes.
Tamerlan said he had no American friends, but he did spend time with a fellow boxer, Brandon Mess. The two worked out together at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center. Like Dzhokhar, Mess graduated from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. On Sept. 12, 2011, police arrived at Mess’ second-floor apartment in Waltham, Mass. to find him and two others with their throats cut. The murder is still unsolved, and after the murder, Tamerlan stopped going to the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center.