As American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing premieres on Netflix, we explore what happened to the perpetrator’s wife, Katherine Russell.
Netflix have released several true crime documentaries under the Manhunt umbrella these past few years. This April, American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing joins the likes of Nail Bomber: Manhunt and Unabomber: In His Own Words, as it explores the motive behind the near-decade-old terrorist attack which rocked the United States.
We take a look at what happened to the wife of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon Bombing suspects, as the mini-series premieres on Netflix.
Who is Katherine Russell?
Katherine Russell was born in Texas, USA but grew up in North Kingstown, a town in Rhode Island south of Boston. She was born on February 6, 1989 making Russell currently 34 years old.
Russell was attending university in Boston when she met Tamerlan Tsarnaev, her future husband. They met in the late 2000s at a nightclub, according to her lawyer. They are believed to have married in 2009 or 2010, when Russell was around 20 years old.
Although she was raised in a Christian household, Katherine Russell converted to Islam after becoming Tsarnaev’s wife. Katherine adopted his surname while they were married, and became known as Katherine Tsarnaeva, according to Russian naming conventions which require that surnames be inflected for grammatical gender.
Bomber’s wife said she was unaware of her husband’s intentions before attack
On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, attacked runners and spectators of that year’s Boston Marathon.
The brothers planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs close to the finish line of the race, which detonated 14 seconds apart, resulting in hundreds of injuries. Three people died, Martin Richard, 8, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Lingzi Lu, 23 and over 200 were injured, including 17 spectators who lost limbs.
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Katherine Russell, who at the time worked seven days a week as a home health care aide, said she was unaware of her husband and brother-in-law’s plans. Her lawyer, Amato DeLuca, said she did not suspect her husband of anything although she had not seen him much in the days leading up to the bombing.
Russell learned her husband was a suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings by seeing it on TV, DeLuca explained in the week after the attack. Though she was the Boston Marathon bomber’s wife, due to her uninvolvement, Katherine Russell was never charged or tried in connection to the bombing.
What happened to Katherine Russell after the Boston Marathon Bombing?
Following the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev just four days after the bombing, Katherine Russell moved into her parents’ house with her daughter, Zahara. But religious differences got in the way. Eventually, Katherine and Zahara Russell moved to New Jersey to live with her ex-husband’s sisters, Ailina and Bella.
Katherine Russell remains under the radar. “She just wants to live a quiet life,” a source told People in 2015. “She wants to raise her daughter and live quietly, and put this all behind her.”
Ailina Tsarnaeva confirmed that Katherine Russell had remarried and had another child after the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
In the screen adaptation of the Boston Marathon Bombing, Melissa Benoist played Katherine Russell.
Watch American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing on Netflix now
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