In Tsarnaev trial, defense witnesses testify about Tamerlan's violence

BOSTON (MyFoxBoston.com) -- Friends have already described Tamerlan Tsarnaev's relationship with future wife Katherine Russell as rocky, but, now there is testimony it was also violent.

Amanda Ransom was Katherine Russell's Suffolk University roommate for several years

She testified that Tamerlan once reduced Katherine to tears, joking with her after they had sex that he had AIDS.

Amanda also told the jury about a horrifying night in December 2009, when she heard Katherine screaming from a first floor bedroom, followed by the loud sounds of things being thrown.

Amanda said she tried to help, but through a door, Katherine told her to mind her own business.

Back in her own bedroom, she said she was terrified as Tamerlan angrily demanded Amanda to come downstairs, saying, "If I ever see you again ..."

Instead, Amanda pushed her desk in front of her bedroom door, and then later grabbed her other roommate, and the two of them escaped the apartment in their pajamas, never to return.

Dzhokhar's lawyers say Tamerlan was the mastermind of the 2013 bombings. Tamerlan died in a police shootout.

He remains the central figure in the savage murders of three men in Waltham on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The bodies of the mutilated men were discovered with their throats slashed, nearly decapitated.
 
High grade marijuana and thousands of dollars in cash were strewn over the bodies.

There has never been an arrest, but Tamerlan Tsarnaev, even in death, is someone authorities have considered as a suspect.

On Tuesday the defense tried to get the unsolved Waltham murders inserted into testimony.

One of Dzhokhar's high school friends said her boyfriend lived across the street from victim Brendan Mess, and that she once met Brendan with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The defense asked her if she knew what happened to Brendan. He was murdered, she said.

The government objected.

Then the defense asked if Tamerlan went to Brendan's funeral.

The government objected again, and the friend never answered, but the issue of the Waltham murders, on one minor level, made its way to the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jury.

A psychiatrist who treated the Tsarnaevs' father Anzor from 2003 to 2005 testified that he diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. Later in the day, a historian testified in the trial, saying the area of southern Russia where the family has roots has had centuries of conflict and is very patriarchal.

Cox Media Group