More on the Tsarnaev family history

From the Boston Globe:

“I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good,” Zaur Tsarnaev, who identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin, said in a phone interview from Makhachkala, Russia, where the brothers briefly lived. “[Tamerlan] was always getting in trouble. He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. . . . He was not a nice man.”

And, the younger brother?

The younger brother, Dzhokhar (pronounced Ja-HAR), seemed less troubled, people who knew him said, a friendly, relaxed teenager called “an angel” by his uncle and a party-loving “pothead” by some friends. But there were hints of something ominous underneath the surface: a message on Dzhokhar’s Twitter feed on Marathon Monday last year referred to a Koran verse often used by radical Muslim clerics and propagandists.

Their father and mother?

Their father, a lawyer before he emigrated, worked as an auto mechanic in the the United States, while their mother was a licensed cosmetologist.

Their older son, an accomplished amateur boxer described by some as arrogant or standoffish, aspired to be an engineer but dropped out of Bunker Hill Community College. His younger brother, a well-liked wrestling team captain and National Honor Society member in high school, is currently enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, living in a dorm on campus and studying to be a marine biologist.

Tamerlan was said to be "the best boxer in Boston."

He later said, in a photo essay about his boxing exploits, that he hoped to be selected for the US Olympic team, and that he dreamed of becoming a naturalized citizen. But he also lamented his alienation, saying, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.’’

And, the family atmosphere?

A next-door neighbor on Norfolk Street, who declined to provide his name, said he would constantly hear yelling and police would often show up at the family’s apartment. Another neighbor also described “screaming and arguments.”

Their mother?

The parents divorced, and spent extended periods of time back in Russia. The suspects’ mother, Zubeidat, was arrested in June 2012 in Natick and charged with shoplifting after a Lord & Taylor employee accused her of cutting the sensor tags out of several dresses, valued at $1,952, and hiding them in her shopping bag. The police report described her as unemployed and divorced.

I am sure this had nothing to do with his pot smoking:

Dzhokhar, who reportedly did well in high school, was failing many of his college classes, according to a university transcript reviewed by The New York Times. The transcript shows him receiving seven failing grades over two semesters in 2012 and 2013. Several UMass students recalled seeing him smoking or playing laptop video games in the common area of his hall.

The unemployed older brother Tamerlan drove a Mercedes?

In the photo essay about Tamerlan’s boxing, called “Will Box for Passport,” Tamerlan stops to answer a phone call while walking from his Mercedes to the martial arts center. He has a long wool scarf wrapped fashionably around his neck and gleaming white leather slip-on shoes and is carrying an Oceanfly dufflebag.

Dzcholar prides himself on being "stress free:"

less than 48 hours after the bombings, police said, Dzhokar was back on campus at UMass, working out in the gym on Wednesday and sleeping at his dorm. “I’m a stress-free kind of guy,” he wrote on Twitter, as investigators furiously worked to track him down.

Read the rest of this superb report here.