WORCESTER – The body of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed in a shootout with police now lies in a Main South funeral home long known for burying the poor, loners and the unwanted. 
 
 The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev will remain at the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors until a cemetery willing to accept his body for burial can be found, a search that has proved fruitless so far. 
 
 The presence of the infamous remains inside the stately white Victorian building, on a busy stretch of Main Street lined by shops and business, attracted a vocal crowd of protestors by early evening – as well as a heavy police presence, a half-dozen television news trucks and a helicopter circling overhead. 
 
 Waving American flags and “Boston Strong” signs, protestors chanted “We don't want him here,” and “Shame on you,” eliciting supportive honks from passing motorists during rush hour. 
 
 "I'm not honoring a terrorist. I'm just burying a body," said Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors. 
 
 Mr. Stefan said everybody deserves a proper burial and that he would pay for whatever expenses the family couldn't cover. He said he does not plan to file an application for Safe Burial Funds, which often pay for burying the poor. 
 
 "He doesn't deserve it," Mr. Stefan said. 
 
 
 
 Meanwhile, a death certificate released today says Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to the head and torso. 
 
 Worcester Police Chief Gary J. Gemme said he likely will keep officers stationed outside the funeral home at 838 Main St. as a precaution as long as the body remains there, although he may reassess the need for them if the crowd of onlookers and media dwindles through the weekend. 
 
 "We are in discussions with the funeral home so they can absorb some of the cost," Chief Gemme said. 
 
 Members of Mr. Tsarnaev's family first contacted Graham Putnam a couple of days ago as authorities prepared to release the body. An uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland, went to the Worcester funeral home yesterday afternoon to work with Mr. Stefan on funeral arrangements. The body arrived there last night. 
 
 Mr. Stefan has not talked to Mr. Tsarnaev's widow, Katherine Russell of North Kingstown, R.I., about the funeral arrangements. 
 
 As word spread this morning that the remains of one of the suspected bombers was in Worcester, television news trucks from Boston and a few curious locals congregated on the sidewalk outside Graham Putnam, drawn by the spectacle of a story that has made headlines around the world. 
 
 Perhaps sensing a potential backlash, some prominent members of the neighborhood praised Mr. Stefan's three-decade history of providing funeral services for those who were addicted to drugs, shunned by society or short on cash. 
 
 "He's probably the only one in the state who would do this," said William T. Breault, chairman of Worcester's Main South Alliance for Public Safety. 
 
 Mr. Breault said he respects the funeral director's commitment to bury those who led troubled lives that left them without mourners, but feels Mr. Stefan went too far in accepting the suspected bomber's body. 
 
 "I told him to his face, 'Peter, you're wrong on this one,' He's just plain wrong to bring in a dead terrorist," said Mr. Breault, who paced the sidewalk across from the funeral home speaking to reporters all morning. 
 
 Among the neighborhood residents who also gathered there, chatting in the sunshine and answering questions about what was going on from passing motorists, opinions ranged from indifference to outrage. 
 
 "I think Peter is a brave man for taking on this responsibility," said Doug Medina of Worcester. "Somebody has to bury him. He can't hurt us any more now and it has to be done." 
 
 Nery Lopez, who heard the news in Maria's Kitchen down the street, called Mr. Stefan a good and decent man. 
 
 "This guy deserves to be buried, he's still a human and I'm sure his parents are suffering," Ms. Lopez said. 
 
 But Charlene Guinard, who lives in the neighborhood, said she was appalled to hear the funeral home had agreed to handle the burial. 
 
 "He should be overseas where he belongs," Ms. Guinard said. "He just bombed Boston. My kid was there the day before he bombed it. I can't believe he's in there, this is crazy." 
 
 Mr. Stefan said logistics and expense ruled out returning the body to Mr. Tsarnaev's native Kyrgyzstan or the Dagestan region of Russia, where his parents now live. 
 
 For now, while Mr. Stefan continues looking for a cemetery, the body is destined to remain in the Worcester funeral home. 
 
 Mr. Stefan, who has been a funeral director for more than 30 years, said he has handled arrangements for more than 100 Muslim burials, and is experienced in their religious rites. 
 
 "The Muslims have to wash his body," Mr. Stefan said. "We have the soaps, no animal fats, for the washing of the body. Then the body is wrapped in a shroud." 
 
 Several protesters showed up outside a North Attleboro funeral home Thursday night where Mr. Tsarnaev's body was taken initially following its release by the state medical examiner. 
 
 The Tsarnaev family has said they are trying to arrange an independent autopsy, which Mr. Stefan said could be performed at his funeral home if the family wishes. 
 
 As for the controversy swirling on the street outside and on social media about the funeral home handling the burial of an alleged terrorist, Mr. Stefan simply said the job of funeral directors is to bury the dead. 
 
 "Who buried Timothy McVeigh? Who buried Jeffrey Dahmer? Who buried Lee Harvey Oswald? Who buried Ted Bundy?" Mr. Stefan said. "Somebody had to do it." 
 
 If he can't find a cemetery willing to accept the body, Mr. Stefan said he will have to ask the government to intervene. 
 
 Mr. Stefan said he will be responsible for filing the death certificate in Boston after the burial. The state medical examiner's office has not released the cause of death for Mr. Tsarnaev. 
 
 Former District 4 Councilor Barbara G. Haller called Mr. Stefan a kind, gentle, nonjudgmental man who has served on the board of directors for a local homeless shelter. She said she understands that having Tsarnaev's body in Worcester will be hard for some, but someone has to oversee services for the family. 
 
 "He takes people who don't fit into the mainstream," she said. "He's just going about his business." 
 
 Shamil Mohammed, president of the Worcester Islamic Center, said today that no one from the family of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed in a shootout with police contacted his center about funeral arrangements. 
 
 Worcester does not have an Islamic cemetery, so usually a family member of a deceased Muslim in the area will contact the center, and the center will make arrangements, Mr. Mohammed said. 
 
 Muslims typically bury the body quickly. The process entails washing the body and wrapping it in a simple garment. There will be a short prayer over the body, and then it is moved to the burial grounds. Compared to the more ceremonial Christian burial, the Muslim process is more simplistic, he said. 
 
 The center has spoken out critically against the marathon bombing brothers, yet it can't lower itself to not afford a person his basic right to a proper burial, Mr. Mohammed said. 
 
 “This is not acceptable for any human being,” Dr. Imad Khreim, a center board member, said of the attacks. “I have three boys who were in Boston and they were watching the marathon. What do you think I felt?” said Dr. Khreim, who was speaking as a member of the Muslim community and not for the board. “There's no decent human being who will accept this kind of indiscriminate, violent behavior.” 
 
 "(But) where you bury him and how you bury him - I think somebody has to bury him,” Dr. Khreim said. 
 
 The local men spoke after today''s main weekly prayer session at the center on East Mountain Street. 
 
 Mr. Mohammed said his center was more focused on doing its work to have a positive impact on both local Muslims and the general Worcester community.He said it wants to make sure children have the right understanding – that the bombings were not condoned by Muslims.The local Islamic community is grieving in two ways, he said. 
 
 First, the religion has been tainted through the brothers setting off the bombs in the name of Islam, he said. Second, local Muslims identify with being Bay Staters, and many of their children are Red Sox and Celtics fans who identify with Boston. 
 
 In the coming weeks, he said, grief counselors who have many been understandably focused on helping Boston area Muslims cope with the tragedy will be dispatched to Worcester to hold sessions with kids and adults. 
 
 Bob Kievra, Brian Lee and Scott J. Croteau of the Telegram & Gazette staff and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
 
 Contact reporter Thomas Caywood at tcaywood@telegram.com or follow on Twitter @CaywoodTG ||||| Protesters gathered across the street from the Worcester funeral home where the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is being kept. 
 
 WORCESTER — An independent autopsy on the body of Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was scheduled to be performed Sunday, a step requested by Tsarnaev’s parents, who believe their sons were framed by the US government. Preposterous as it may sound to Bostonians, that view is catching fire on the ground with some in Russia. 
 
 The Tsarnaevs say the autopsy results could undermine the US officials’ account of Tamerlan’s death by showing that he was not run over by his brother, Dzhokhar. That, the parents believe, would throw into question law enforcement officials’ entire account of the case. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 In a telephone interview last week, the suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev, dismissed the charges that his sons plotted to set off the bombs as “a complete fabrication.” His contention is picking up popular support in Russia, particularly in the semiautonomous region of Chechnya and other restive territories in southern Russia, where the Tsarnaevs have relatives and roots. 
 
 Posters with Dzhokhar’s picture have appeared on walls in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, and a fund-raising drive for the family has sprung up. Many members of the Russian-language social media site VKontakte have replaced their profile pictures with a photo of Dzhokhar with the words, “Totally Innocent.” 
 
 Thousands of miles away, Boston and US law enforcement officials have no doubt that the Tsarnaev brothers are responsible for the Marathon attacks, which killed three people and injured more than 260. What remains uncertain is where the final resting place of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body will be. 
 
 On Saturday, the body lay in a cooler in the basement of a funeral parlor in Worcester. The Tsarnaev family wants Tamerlan to be interred in the Boston area. Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnum & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, vowed to secure a plot quickly. 
 
 “This ends Monday,” Stefan said. “We will find a cemetery by the end of the day Monday.” 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Stefan said he was determined to give Tsarnaev a proper Muslim burial in a cemetery with what he referred to as a designated Muslim section. The Gardens at Gethsemane in West Roxbury and Knollwood Memorial Park in Canton have said no so far, he said. Neither cemetery had a comment. 
 
 George Milley, president of Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, said the Tsarnaevs should consider alternatives, such as cremation or shipping the body back to Russia. 
 
 “I think this family has distressed enough people,” Milley said. 
 
 Stefan’s funeral home, a stately white Victorian on Main Street, became the center of a bizarre scene over the weekend as protesters waved signs, police arrived to stand guard, and traffic slowed to a crawl for a half-mile in each direction. 
 
 Stefan, 66, held court in his second-floor office, fielding calls from international media while neighbors stopped by with muffins and doughnuts. 
 
 “If they had asked me to bury Adolf Hitler, I would have buried him,” Stefan said. “It’s what we do.” 
 
 Russians who believe American law enforcement officials are lying cite a 30-second section of grainy video that has gone viral. The voices are unclear, and the origin of the clip is not apparent. In it, two voices seem to be saying, “We give up” and “We didn’t do anything,” followed by repeated gunshots. The Tsarnaev family argues that the video depicts Dzhokhar and Tamerlan trying to surrender to police. 
 
 Yuri M. Zhukov, a fellow with the National Security Studies Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, said “innocence campaigns” after the detention of young men accused of rebel activity are common in the North Caucasus, along Russia’s southern rim. The region has seen two devastating civil wars in Chechnya, where Moscow has sought to quell an Islamic insurgency. 
 
 “Counterinsurgency and policing practices there have traditionally been quite indiscriminate, with most evidence and intelligence collected through coercive interrogations,” he said in an e-mail. “The local population is inherently skeptical of charges leveled against suspected terrorists, in part because, in the North Caucasus, the evidence used in such cases is often not reliable.” 
 
 The quick apprehension of the Tsarnaev brothers, he said, has added to the perception that they were set up. 
 
 There is also general anti-Americanism in the region because of the unpopularity of the US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. For years, Russians have used reports of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay to defend their own practices, Zhukov said. 
 
 Conspiracy theories about US intentions abound in the region, he said, although different political factions ascribe conflicting motives to the Americans. The belief, for example, that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” is more mainstream in Russia and the North Caucasus than in the United States, he said. The “free Dzhokhar” movement follows in the same tradition. 
 
 “It is not clear what Washington gains by setting these boys up, the story goes, but clearly they are up to something,” Zhukov said. 
 
 Stefan, who has been criticized for taking Tsarnaev’s body, has said that it will be washed according to Islamic tradition following the completion of the second autopsy. He said he plans to file a death certificate and burial permit with the city of Boston on Tuesday. 
 
 If no cemetery will take Tsarnaev, Stefan said he will call the FBI, Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, and Governor Deval Patrick and urge them to help. 
 
 He also said the City of Cambridge may be obliged to bury Tsarnaev, as a former resident with nowhere else to be buried. The Cambridge mayor and city manager did not respond to requests for comment Saturday, and the cemetery superintendent could not be reached. 
 
 Outside the Worcester funeral home, protesters said Tsarnaev should be cremated or, as Osama Bin Laden was after he was killed in a raid by US Navy SEALs, buried at sea. 
 
 One of the protesters, Darlene Olsen of Leicester, carried a sign that said, “Bury the Garbage in the Landfill.” 
 
 “He just doesn’t belong here,” she said. 
 
 “Just burn him and throw him in the sewer,” said a young man who was walking by. 
 
 Stefan said he has not discussed cost with the family, but if relatives cannot afford a burial, he will cover the costs himself. 
 
 He said that at least 10 people had called offering to donate money for the burial. But he said the home is not accepting money, and if any arrives, it will be sent to the One Fund to benefit bombing victims. 
 
 Kheda Saratova, a human rights activist in Russia who has been helping the Tsarnaev brothers’ parents, said the family has considered bringing Tamerlan’s body back to Russia if no one in the United States will bury him. But they would rather not, she said. 
 
 “According to Muslim custom you must do everything possible to bury the body as soon as possible,” Saratova said by telephone from Russia. 
 
 She said the family has been receiving money and support from “all over the world.”
– The death certificate of Tamerlan Tsarnaev apparently will hold no surprises. While Massachusetts officials have yet to release it publicly, the owner of the Worcester funeral home with his body said it lists the cause of death as "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities" and "blunt trauma to head and torso," reports CNN. That gibes with what authorities have previously said: Tamerlan was hit by police bullets and run over by Dzhokhar as the younger brother fled their shootout in a stolen SUV. The certificate lists the time of death as 1:35am on April 19, reports AP. The funeral home, meanwhile, is still striking out in finding a cemetery willing to take the body. "There’s a fear there,” owner Peter Stefan of the Graham Putnam and Mahoney funeral parlor tells WBZ. "Will people want to go to the cemetery, or will people be upset that somebody who’s a terrorist will be buried next to their Uncle Freddy.”