As the shaken city remembered the victims at church services Sunday and Massachusetts prepared to hold a moment of silence on Monday at the time the first bomb went off, a fuller portrait of Tsarnaev emerged, one that authorities described as chilling.
Zach Bettencourt, a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth — where Tsarnaev was enrolled — said Tsarnaev casually discussed the bombing with him only a day later. Bettencourt, 20, noticed Tsarnaev sitting on a bench at the gym, listening to his iPod.
When Bettencourt brought up the bombing, he said that Tsarnaev responded, “Tragedies like this happen all the time.” He said that the two of them then discussed the issue but that he did not remember the exact words of their conversation.
Law enforcement officials confirmed that Tsarnaev went back to school after the marathon bombing, before the FBI released pictures of the two brothers to the world on Thursday and described them as suspects. Tamerlan died after a night of mayhem in which the brothers allegedly carjacked a Mercedes-Benz sport-utility vehicle and fatally shot an MIT police officer.
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