Suspected Boston Marathon bomber may have been schizophrenic

The Verge/December 15, 2013

By Casey Newton

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead older brother and one of the suspected masterminds behind the Boston Marathon bombings heard voices in his head and may have been afflicted with schizophrenia, the Boston Globe reports in a comprehensive new investigation into the Tsarnaev family. A five-month investigation by the Globe depicts a family that imploded in the wake of its members' personal failures, creating a toxic environment that may have led them to gravitate toward violence. "Taken together," the Globe reports, "these findings suggest that the motivation for the Tsarnaev brothers' violent acts is more likely rooted in the turbulent collapse of their family and their escalating personal and collective failures than, as federal investigators have suggested, on the other side of the globe."

The detailed family portrait describes psychiatric problems extending to the suspected bombers' parents, particularly father Anzor, who said he had been captured and tortured by Russian troops during the civil war in Chechnya. The Globe suggests that Anzor made up or exaggerated stories that the family had been persecuted in Chechnya in order to win asylum in the United States. "In any case," the Globe writes, "the family from which two alleged bombers emerged very likely should not have been here at all."

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