This story was written by Jenna Russell, Jenn Abelson, Patricia Wen, Michael Rezendes, and David Filipov of the Globe Staff. 
 
 The two young brothers from Cambridge seemed to be on promising paths, one a scholarship student at college, the other fighting for a national title in amateur boxing. 
 
 And then, apparently with little warning, they veered violently off track, deep into the darkness, setting off deadly bombs, authorities are convinced, at one of Boston’s most iconic and joyful events. 
 
 To those who knew them, the apparent transformation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19 — ethnic Chechens, born in the former Soviet territory now known as Kyrgyzstan and transplanted to a working-class Inman Square neighborhood — seemed almost inconceivable. 
 
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 But as friends and neighbors pieced together recollections of the terrorism suspects and their family, a picture emerged of an older brother who seemed to grow increasingly religious and radical — and who may have drawn his more easygoing younger brother into a secret plot of violence and hatred. 
 
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 “I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good,” Zaur Tsarnaev, who identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin, said in a phone interview from Makhachkala, Russia, where the brothers briefly lived. “[Tamerlan] was always getting in trouble. He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. . . . He was not a nice man.” 
 
 The older brother dropped out of college, was seemingly unemployed, and faced a domestic violence charge in 2009. The younger brother, Dzhokhar (pronounced Ja-HAR), seemed less troubled, people who knew him said, a friendly, relaxed teenager called “an angel” by his uncle and a party-loving “pothead” by some friends. But there were hints of something ominous underneath the surface: a message on Dzhokhar’s Twitter feed on Marathon Monday last year referred to a Koran verse often used by radical Muslim clerics and propagandists. 
 
 The two young men, seven years apart, shared a keen intelligence and willingness to work hard, according to interviews with dozens of people who knew them. But there were stark differences between Tamerlan, who came to America as a teenager, and Dzhokhar, who was 10 or 11 when the family immigrated to the United States, and by all accounts thrived in their new American home. Their father, a lawyer before he emigrated, worked as an auto mechanic in the United States, while their mother was a licensed cosmetologist. 
 
 Their older son, an accomplished amateur boxer described by some as arrogant or standoffish, aspired to be an engineer but dropped out of Bunker Hill Community College. His younger brother, a well-liked wrestling team captain and National Honor Society member in high school, is currently enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, living in a dorm on campus and studying to be a marine biologist. 
 
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 “If someone were to ask me what this kid is like, I would say that he had a heart of gold,” said Larry Aaronson, who taught the younger suspect at the public Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. “He was as gracious as possible … This is all surreal to me.” 
 
 Family history 
 
 The Tsarnaev brothers were ethnic Chechens, born in the former Soviet Republic now called Kyrgyzstan. Whether they ever lived in war-torn Chechnya is unclear. Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, was described by family Friday as a former Russian amateur boxing champion. While the family was living in Kyrgyzstan, Anzor Tsarnayev said in an interview Friday by the Russian agency lifenews.ru, they had trouble with government authorities. 
 
 “In Kyrgyzstan we were oppressed,” the father said. “We wanted a quiet life. I was afraid for my kids and tried to save them.” 
 
 By 2001, the family had taken refuge in Makhachkala, the capital of the predominantly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, which borders Chechnya. There, the brothers briefly attended grade school. Anzor’s sister Maret Tsarnaeva told reporters that she wrote the refugee petition in April 2002 for the father, mother and youngest son, Dzhokhar, to receive asylum in the United States. The three other children, Tamerlan and his sisters, Alina and Bella, joined the family later. 
 
 With the family reunited in the United States, they seemed to be on the path to fulfilling their American dreams. The brothers attended high school and college and seemed to be succeeding, family members said. 
 
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 “Everything was perfect because Anzor is a very loving soft hearted father,” Maret said of her brother. 
 
 But Anzor Tsarnaev’s former boss at Webster Auto Body in Somerville saw a very different side of the man, describing him as “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever known.” 
 
 Joe Timko, a foreman at the repair shop where Anzor Tsarnaev worked several years ago, recalled seeing him changing a transmission in a car in front of his house in single digit temperatures and snow. Timko said he instilled that toughness in his sons, sometimes riding a bike to a boxing gym on Somerville Avenue, while Tamerlan ran alongside him, training. 
 
 Tamerlan, the eldest son, became an amateur boxer, emulating his father, who helped train him. Boxing as a heavyweight, he competed in the national Golden Gloves competition, said John Allan, owner of Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts in Allston, who remembered seeing him compete. 
 
 “He was the best boxer in Boston,” said Allan. “He smoked all of the professionals.” 
 
 “He was noticeable because he was very relaxed, very smooth.” said Douglas A. Yoffe, the coach at the Harvard Boxing Club, who has seen Tamerlan box about half a dozen times over the past decade. 
 
 Yoffe also said Tamerlan stood out because he kept his distance from others in the clubs and at the tournaments where he fought. 
 
 “I remember he had that blase attitude,” Yoffe added. “For a very young fighter he was almost disdainful. He was very confident.” 
 
 Profiled in the Lowell Sun in 2004, Tamerlan said he liked the USA. 
 
 “America has a lot of jobs. That’s something Russia doesn’t have,” he told the newspaper. “You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work.” 
 
 He later said, in a photo essay about his boxing exploits, that he hoped to be selected for the US Olympic team, and that he dreamed of becoming a naturalized citizen. But he also lamented his alienation, saying, “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.’’ 
 
 Tamerlan attended Bunker Hill Community College part-time for three semesters, from the fall of 2006 through the fall of 2008, according to a school spokeswoman. But he never graduated and appeared to focus on his boxing career and a Rhode Island woman he is said to have met outside an Allston gym where he trained. 
 
 Dzhokhar, meanwhile, was a gifted student who earned good grades in high school but liked to smoke marijuana with friends, said those who knew him. He volunteered with the Best Buddies program, which pairs volunteers with people who have disabilities, and wore a red bow tie and matching vest with his black tuxedo at his prom in the spring of 2011. 
 
 On September 11th, 2012, a year and a half after his high school graduation, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a naturalized US citizen, according to government officials, after passing a criminal background check, a US civics and English test, and completing an interview with a federal immigration officer. 
 
 At the naturalization ceremony at the TD Garden, he stood with more than 2,500 immigrants to take the oath of US citizenship, raising his right hand and promising to defend the Constitution and laws “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” 
 
 “I don’t want to dwell on the anniversary today, of 9/11,” Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, wearing black robes, told the cheering crowd of immigrants from 132 countries. “But it seems to me that one thing we can say is the resilience of the United States after that attack is the result of the many different cultures which have blended together to provide continued strength for this nation.” 
 
 By contrast, Tamerlan had a green card, but was not a citizen. His father said in a New York Times interview that the domestic violence charges against him might have thwarted Tamerlan’s attempt to gain United States citizenship. 
 
 Growing extremism 
 
 In recent years, as discord rippled through their family, both brothers displayed signs of growing extremism. 
 
 Maret Tsarnaev told reporters at a press conference on Friday in Toronto that her nephew Tamerlan recently went from praying no more than once a day to praying five times a day. A neighbor and family friend in Cambridge said Tamerlan became a devout Muslim within the past few years. 
 
 “He started talking about religion,” said the family friend, who asked not to be identified. “He grew a long beard.” 
 
 The friend said Tamerlan urged him to be more observant, asking, “Why don’t you become a better Muslim? Why don’t you pray, why don’t you do your Islamic duties?” 
 
 When the friend joked about the beard, he said, Tamerlan became upset, asking “Why are you making fun of my religion?” 
 
 A next-door neighbor on Norfolk Street in Cambridge said he too noticed a change in Tamerlan’s appearance about a year ago when he began wearing long white linen garments. The neighbor, who asked not to be identified, characterized it as a striking change for the once hip-looking, urban young man, but said it only lasted a month. 
 
 Online, it appears, Tamerlan toyed with extremism. A YouTube account created in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name in August 2012 includes in one playlist a video dedicated to the prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan, which is apparently embraced by Islamic extremists. 
 
 In another video, featured on a playlist entitled “terrorists,” a speaker holds an assault rifle and wears camouflage fatigues while flanked by armed men wearing masks. 
 
 “There will always be a group of people who will stick to the truth, fight for that truth,” the speaker says in Russian with an accent common to the Caucasus region that includes Chechnya. “And those who won’t support them will not win.” 
 
 The Globe could not confirm that the user was the same person as the bombing suspect who was killed in a shoot-out. 
 
 At the end of 2011, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev contacted Brian Glyn Williams, a history professor at UMass Dartmouth who teaches a course on the history of Chechnya, expressing an interest in learning more about Chechen history. 
 
 “He wanted to rediscover his roots and his identity,’’ said Williams. 
 
 Williams called Chechnya “probably the most dangerous heart of darkness in the world.’’ The Russians, he said, have fought the Chechens since the 1700s and killed about 200,000 people — one fifth of Chechnya’s population — from 1999 to 2001. 
 
 But Christopher Swift, who teaches national security studies at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and has studied the war in Chechnya for nearly 15 years, said it is unlikely that the Tsarnaev brothers were formally trained by Chechen Islamist militants, whose terrorist activities have always been focused on Russia. 
 
 “If there is any connection between these kids and the insurgency there, it will be the first time they have struck a target outside of Russia,” Swift said in an interview. 
 
 The brothers’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, said she never heard her sons talk about terrorism. She was quoted by CNN saying that one son got involved in religion about five years ago, but “he never told me he would be on the side of jihad,” she said. “How could this happen?” 
 
 Tamerlan’s turn to Islam came as the family seemed to be disintegrating, according to neighbors and court records. 
 
 A next-door neighbor on Norfolk Street, who declined to provide his name, said he would constantly hear yelling and police would often show up at the family’s apartment. Another neighbor also described “screaming and arguments.” 
 
 The parents divorced, and spent extended periods of time back in Russia. The suspects’ mother, Zubeidat, was arrested in June 2012 in Natick and charged with shoplifting after a Lord & Taylor employee accused her of cutting the sensor tags out of several dresses, valued at $1,952, and hiding them in her shopping bag. The police report described her as unemployed and divorced. 
 
 Yet the older brother had the beginnings of his own family. He was married to Katherine Russell, who grew up in North Kingstown, R.I. Russell began wearing Islamic clothing shortly after she started at Suffolk University, one neighbor said. Russell and Tsarnaev also had a child in the past few years, and the three of them were seen on and off at Russell’s parents’ home in Rhode Island. Her mother, Judith, Friday read a prepared statement from the home saying she was “sickened” by the knowledge of what Tsarnaev did. 
 
 “Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred,” said the mother. “In the aftermath of the Patriots Day horror we know that we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev.” 
 
 The family declined to answer questions when a Globe reporter came to the door. 
 
 Dzhokhar, who reportedly did well in high school, was failing many of his college classes, according to a university transcript reviewed by The New York Times. The transcript shows him receiving seven failing grades over two semesters in 2012 and 2013. Several UMass students recalled seeing him smoking or playing laptop video games in the common area of his hall. 
 
 About two years ago, the father, Anzor, returned to Dagestan and his former wife also returned to Russia sometime later, according to CNN, leaving the sons on their own. The parents went back and forth to the United States numerous times to visit their children, their aunt said, and another relative said the older brother, Tamerlan, also spent a lengthy period in Russia last year. 
 
 Cousin Zaur Tsarnaev said he most recently expressed his concerns about Tamerlan — the alleged bomber pictured in a dark hat in FBI videos released Thursday — to Dzhokhar when the younger brother visited last summer. He added that Dzhokhar went to mosque sometimes but he was “never an extremist.” 
 
 “Dzhokhar is a sweet boy, innocent. He was always smiling, friendly and happy,” Zaur Tsarnaev said. “I don’t know how he is involved in this.” 
 
 Tamerlan, by contrast, had seen his share of troubles. 
 
 Gym owner Allan said that Tamerlan had once introduced him to an American, Brendan Mess, whom Tamerlan described as his best friend. 
 
 Two years ago, Mess and two other men were brutally killed in a Waltham apartment where they were found by police with their throats slit and their bodies covered with marijuana. The murders remain unsolved. 
 
 Tsarnaev hadn’t been to Allan’s Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in years, instead going to another nearby boxing gym. 
 
 Until this month. 
 
 Allan, who is currently traveling in Thailand, said he got an e-mail within the past week saying Tsarnaev showed up at the gym acting rude and disrespectful, using other people’s equipment, walking on the mats with his shoes. 
 
 “It was a clear indication that something was up,” Allan said. “He was becoming a complete [expletive].” 
 
 In the photo essay about Tamerlan’s boxing, called “Will Box for Passport,” Tamerlan stops to answer a phone call while walking from his Mercedes to the martial arts center. He has a long wool scarf wrapped fashionably around his neck and gleaming white leather slip-on shoes and is carrying an Oceanfly dufflebag. 
 
 He said in the essay that he quit smoking and drinking because “God said no alcohol.” He worried that “there are no values anymore . . . people can’t control themselves.” 
 
 People who knew the suspects struggled Friday to reconcile the young men they thought they knew, who lived on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, with the acts of terrorism they are accused of committing. 
 
 Pamala Rolon, a senior at UMass Dartmouth and a resident assistant at the Pine Dale dorms on campus, said she knew Dzhokhar for the past year and finds it incredible that he could have played any role in the bombs at the Boston Marathon. 
 
 “He studied. He hung out with me and my friends,” she said in a telephone interview Friday. “I’m in shock.” 
 
 Rolon, 22, said the 300 or so students at the dorm were evacuated this morning by school authorities as the campus was shut down. 
 
 Rolon said when she returned from class Thursday afternoon, she and her friends watched the television news broadcast showing the images of the suspects, including one that she thought looked faintly like the student she knew on campus. 
 
 “We made a joke like – that could be Dzhokhar,” she said. “But then we thought it just couldn’t be him. Dzhokhar? Never.” 
 
 In fact, less than 48 hours after the bombings, police said, Dzhokar was back on campus at UMass, working out in the gym on Wednesday and sleeping at his dorm. “I’m a stress-free kind of guy,” he wrote on Twitter, as investigators furiously worked to track him down. 
 
 In another posting, the day after the bombs, Dzhokar left a cryptic message. 
 
 “There are people that know the truth but stay silent,” he wrote, “[and] there are people that speak the truth but we don’t hear them cuz they’re the minority.” 
 
 Peter Payack, the assistant wrestling coach at Cambridge Rindge & Latin where Dzhokhar graduated, said the youth wrestled on the team for three years and was captain for two years and a Greater Boston League all-star. Though he graduated from Rindge & Latin, he came back to wrestle with the team in February, he said. 
 
 “He was a dedicated kid, and all the kids loved him,” Payack said. 
 
 “He wasn’t a loner, the complete opposite. . . . He seemed like one of the most well-adjusted kids on the team. 
 
 “Never in a million years did [we] expect anything like this,” Payack said. 
 
 Payack, who has run the Boston Marathon 24 times and often wears his blue-and-yellow Marathon jacket, said he was particularly saddened that Dzhokar would target the race. 
 
 “It was like a bomb going off in my heart this morning because he’s one of our wrestlers. I said ‘That guy looks like my guy.’ ” 
 
 The capture of Dzhokhar and the bloody shoot-out that resulted in his brother’s death has triggered questions about their origins. 
 
 The state news agency of Kyrgyzstan said the brothers are ethnic Chechens who lived in the Central Asian country until “roughly 2001,” when they moved to Dagestan, on the border of Chechnya in southern Russia. A spokesman for School No. 1 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, told Russian news agencies that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a pupil in the first and second grade. 
 
 The Russian social media website VKontakte has a profile of a Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who identifies himself as a resident of Boston and a member of the class of 2011 at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. 
 
 According to the profile, Tsarnaev is a member of the group “Everything About the Chechen Republic.” 
 
 The profile lists Dzhokhar’s languages as English, Russian, and Chechen, and lists him as a Muslim. The last post was made in 2012. 
 
 While the brothers are Chechens, the press secretary of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow government told the official Russian news agency Interfax that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev have no recent connection with Chechnya. 
 
 The US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, said US diplomats in the Central Asian nation were scrambling to learn more about the brothers’ roots. 
 
 “We are following this issue very closely,” said Christian Wright, the embassy’s public affairs officer. 
 
 Back in the US, speaking to reporters outside his Maryland home on Friday, the uncle of the two suspects lashed out at his nephews for the shame they brought upon their family and country and “on the entire Chechen identity.” 
 
 Then the uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, apologized to the victims. 
 
 “I’m ready to kneel in front of them, seeking their forgiveness,” he said. 
 
 Maria Sacchetti, Mark Arsenault, Brian Ballou, Maria Cramer, Lisa Kocian, Sean P. Murphy, Matt Carroll, Gideon Gil, Tracy Jan, Bob Hohler, Michael Kranish, Doug Most, Sarah Schweitzer, Noah Bierman, Jonathan Saltzman, Todd Wallack, Meghan E. Irons, Bryan Bender, Lisa Wangsness, and Michael Levenson of the Globe staff as well as correspondents Leanne Poirier, Todd Feathers and Haven Orecchio-Egresitz contributed. Arsenault can be reached at marsenault@globe.com ||||| Boston (CNN) -- They might have fulfilled every immigrant's dream, fleeing a war-torn part of the world and settling into a quiet life in America, one buoyed by aspiration and a will to succeed. 
 
 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, loved to box. And he was talented. At 196 pounds, he represented New England as a heavyweight in the National Golden Gloves boxing tournament. He wanted to make it on an Olympic team. 
 
 His brother, Dzhokar, 19, graduated in 2011 from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, the alma mater of actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The city awarded Dzhokar a $2,500 scholarship. And he, too, was an athlete -- a wrestler. He was named student athlete of the month and made the state playoffs. 
 
 But something went wrong somewhere. 
 
 This week, the brothers Tsarnaev became the target of a massive manhunt after police identified them as the suspects behind Monday's Boston Marathon bombings. 
 
 Tamerlan died early Friday after a night of ferocious gun battles. The world watched live on television Friday night as police laid siege to Watertown, Massachusetts, and finally captured Dzhokar. 
 
 It was unclear what might have motivated the brothers to commit the heinous crime they are suspected of carrying out. All day Friday, reporters sought out people who knew them, trying to understand one thing: Why? 
 
 What unfolded was a story typical of the American immigrant narrative: A family originally from the Russian republic of Chechnya fled the brutal wars in their homeland in the 1990s. They moved to neighboring Russian republics before at last arriving in the United States. 
 
 The youngest, Dzhokar, came first with his parents, according to his aunt, Maret Tsarnaev. The older son, Tamerlan, was initially left behind with his two sisters. 
 
 Eventually, they were reunited -- a family of six whose American journey contained elements of a struggle to fit in and success in making a new life. 
 
 Analysis: Older suspect grew increasingly religious 
 
 Hints of unhappiness 
 
 Another familiar narrative also emerged Friday: a high-profile crime followed by a crusade to find out who did it. First, there were photographs, then names attached to the images. And shock. 
 
 Friends and acquaintances of the Tsarnaev brothers expressed disbelief. The two men were nice, friendly. Quiet. The kind of guys you'd never even notice or look at twice if you passed them on the street. 
 
 Their aunt spoke with Canada's CTV and described the boys' childhood as perfect. Their father, Anzor, was a loving, soft-hearted man. She said he and his wife, Zubeidat, have moved back to Dagestan, which borders Chechnya. 
 
 Dzhokar came to America on July 1, 2002, as a tourist and asked for asylum, a federal official told CNN. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on September 11 last year. 
 
 There was some dispute over when his older brother arrived. The U.S. official said he came four years later on September 6, 2006, and held a permanent resident visa. But another federal official said Tamerlan first entered the United States on July 19, 2003. 
 
 Alyssa Lindley Kilzer said she often visited the apartment at 410 Norfolk St. in Cambridge, where the Tsarnaevs lived. Kilzer used to get facials from Zubeidat at a local spa but, after she was fired, Kilzer began going to her house. 
 
 She wrote about her experience on her Tumblr blog and said the staircase was crowded with shoes and the house was filled with the noise of arguments, cooking and other household chores. It was hardly spa-like but Kilzer thought Zubeidat gave great facials. 
 
 But she became increasingly uncomfortable going to the apartment because of Zubeidat's growing religious fervor. 
 
 "She started quoting conspiracy theories, telling me that she thought 9-11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims," she wrote. 
 
 Zubeidat told her: "It's real. My son knows all about it. You can read it on the Internet." 
 
 Kilzer said she met Tamerlan only once -- he wasn't friendly, she thought. 
 
 He was a dapper dresser and drove a Mercedes, according to an online photo gallery titled "Will Box for Passport." 
 
 "I'm dressed European style," Tamarlan said in a caption accompanying a photo of white leather shoes. 
 
 FBI agents interviewed bombing suspect in 2011 
 
 Photographer Johannes Hirn shot images of Tamerlan at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center on Brighton Street in Cambridge. That's where he trained before the Golden Gloves. 
 
 He was a good boxer, said Gene McCarthy from the Sommerville Boxing Club, who'd coached Tamerlan since he was 16. 
 
 He was more than 6-feet tall, with long arms and determination written all over him. Once, he fought in a New England championship match even though he had the flu and fever blisters covered his lips. He won. 
 
 Tamerlan had been boxing since he was a kid -- his father began training him while they were still living in the Caucasus region. 
 
 His younger brother started coming to the gym from the time he was 10, McCarthy said. Dzhokar followed Tamerlan around like a puppy. He'd be just behind him, doing calisthenics. 
 
 Tamerlan told Hirn, the photographer, that he gave up drinking alcohol and smoking in accordance with Muslim values. His aunt said he had become more devout a few years ago and started praying five times a day. 
 
 His mother told Russian TV channel RT that her oldest son embraced Islam but never spoke of anything extreme; never said he was on the side of jihad. Her son, she said, would never keep secrets from her. She would've known had he been involved in unsavory activities. 
 
 However, she said the FBI was checking on him, following his moves on the Internet. 
 
 "How could this happen? They were controlling every step of him, now they are saying this is a terrorist act," she said Friday. 
 
 FBI agents interviewed Tamerlan two years ago and looked at his travel history, checked databases and searched Web postings, but found no connection with terrorist groups, an FBI official told CNN. 
 
 Tamerlan traveled to Sheremetyevo, Russia, in January 2012, according to travel records provided by a U.S. official. He returned six months later, those documents show. 
 
 A YouTube page in his name had links to Islamic websites, videos from a radical Australian preacher and rap music. 
 
 What their family has to say 
 
 He had quit college, gotten married and had a daughter two years ago, said his aunt and father. 
 
 In an interview Friday with the Russian national TV network Zvezda in Dagestan, Anzor Tsarnaev said his sons had been framed. He said he had been trying to call Dzhokar but his phone is switched off. He'd spoken with Tamerlan the day before. He wanted to make sure Tamerlan was taking care of his brother; that he was studying hard. 
 
 This was Anzor's belief: that if his sons did not get an education, they would be left to toiling their entire lives. 
 
 But there were hints that all did not sit well for Tamerlan in his new country. 
 
 He said this during the photo shoot with Hirn: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them." 
 
 And in 2009, Tamerlan, then 22, was arrested for domestic assault and battery after allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, according to Cambridge Police records cited by the website spotcrime.com. 
 
 'I cried ... when they named him' 
 
 Dzhokar's friends included Torrie Martinez, 20. 
 
 Friday, Martinez stood on Cambridge Street looking down Norfolk Street, where the Tsarnaev brothers made their home. Martinez used to catch the city bus with Dzhokar every day to school and was on the wrestling team with him. 
 
 "I wish I could say he was a bad kid," said Martinez, still trying to absorb the news. "But he was a nice kid from what I knew of him. I talked with him on a daily basis. I practiced with him." 
 
 He was a sophomore when he met Dzhokar, who was a year behind him. They talked about stuff high school boys talk about; it never got too personal. Martinez didn't know Dzhokar was Chechen. 
 
 And they talked wrestling. "He was a smaller kid, but he did well for his weight class," Martinez said. 
 
 A smile appears beneath his scruffy, unshaven face. 
 
 "Between me and him, I would pin him." 
 
 Now he wished he'd whupped him a little harder. The smile vanishes from Martinez's face. 
 
 "I cried ... when they named him." 
 
 It will be hard to trust anyone again. 
 
 Larry Aaronson, a former teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, said he had taken pictures of Dzhokar wrestling. 
 
 "There is nothing in his character, in his deportment, in his demeanor that would suggest anything remotely capable of any of these things that he is now suspected of doing," Aaronson said. 
 
 "He was so grateful to be here, he was so grateful to be at the school," he said. "He was compassionate, he was caring, he was jovial." 
 
 He described Dzhokar, whom he saw in the neighborhood nestled between Harvard and MIT a few weeks ago, as "a lovely, lovely kid." 
 
 Construction worker Joey Barbaso, 50, has lived in the neighborhood since he was 5. His pants are worn from hard work and stained from years of paint. That's the kind of people who live here -- along with college students. 
 
 "It's just, I dunno," he said. "You never know who you're living next to." 
 
 Robin Young, host of radio's "Here and Now," said Dzhokar was her nephew's best friend. She called him a beautiful boy. 
 
 But now he was a man despised by many. 
 
 As Boston reeled, younger suspect partied 
 
 Tweeting even after the bombings 
 
 Dzhokar had been more public about his life than his brother. More people have stepped forward with accounts of their relationships with him than about Tamerlan. 
 
 Dzhokar had a page on the Russian equivalent of Facebook on which he described his worldview as Islam. 
 
 Active on Twitter. "Ain't no love in the heart of the city. Stay safe people," he tweeted just hours after the bombings. 
 
 Tuesday, he called "fake" a story about a woman who died in Monday's bombings and was found by her boyfriend who was planning to propose. 
 
 His friend, Giovanni, who wanted only his first name used, said Dzhokar was even joking on Twitter about "how he had like a dream about eating a cheeseburger and then he was like, 'And the next day, what did I have next?' 
 
 "And I responded (on Twitter) in a joking way, 'A hot dog?' 
 
 "And here I am, like, having a conversation with this guy not knowing what he was doing or what he did." 
 
 Giovanni said he played video games with Dzhokar, but hadn't seen him in person since January. He said his friend had told him he was engaged to be married, even showing him a photo of his supposed fiancée on his phone. 
 
 "He was always just quiet, quiet in a nice (way)," Giovanni said. "You just wouldn't suspect that he'd do something so messed up." 
 
 And he said Dzhokar was particular about his identity. 
 
 "He used to tell us he's the only Chechen ... we'd ever come across," Giovanni said. "Sometimes they'd call him Russian and he'd always correct me." 
 
 He said he didn't know much about Tamerlan; only that Dzhokar had said his older brother was a boxer. 
 
 "A year ago when I met him ... to think. I had no idea I'd be friending such a messed up person. You just think, 'Oh, he seems nice, he seems innocent.'" 
 
 Dzhokar worked for a time as a lifeguard at a pool at Harvard University, said George McMasters, who hired him about 2½ years ago. 
 
 McMasters was impressed with Dzhokar's work ethic. 
 
 "He showed up on time, he watched the water, he rotated from position to position fine, got along well with others." 
 
 "He seemed like a very quiet, unassuming young man," McMasters said. "It is very surprising and shocking to see the destruction that he has brought to the city." 
 
 Last year, McMasters was deployed to Afghanistan with the Army National Guard and, when he returned to the pool job in August, Dhzokar was no longer on the staff or the schedule, he said. 
 
 Manhunt began with intense firefight in dark street 
 
 'Losers' 
 
 Not everyone had good things to say. The harshest comments Friday came from the brothers' uncle. 
 
 Ruslan Tsarni told reporters outside his home in Montgomery County, Maryland, that he had not seen the Tsarnaev family since December 2005 and last spoke with them in 2009. 
 
 Asked what might have motivated the people who did the attack, he said: "Being losers; hatred to those who were able to settle themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine." 
 
 Though the family is Muslim, their religion played no role in the attacks, the uncle insisted. 
 
 "Anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it's a fraud, it's a fake," he said. 
 
 He described the family as peace-loving, ethnic Chechens. 
 
 "Somebody radicalized them, but it's not my brother, who just moved back to Russia, who spent his life bringing bread to their table, fixing cars," he said. "My family had nothing to do with that family. Of course, we're ashamed, yes, we're ashamed they're children of my brother." 
 
 Tsarni said he noticed changes in the religious views of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as far back as 2009. He recalled a 2009 phone conversation where in response to some life advice he had given, Tsarnaev called him an "infidel." The young man also told his uncle he was not concerned about work or studies because God had a plan for him. 
 
 The Brothers Tsarnaev, said Tsarni, had brought shame on the Chechen people. 
 
 CNN's Wayne Drash reported from Boston. CNN's Deborah Feyerick, Mike Ahlers, Tricia Escobedo, Rose Arce, Paul Courson and Elise Labott contributed reporting. The story was written by Moni Basu and Tom Watkins in Atlanta. ||||| Lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asserted Friday that his older brother and alleged accomplice had been encouraged by the FBI to be an informant and to report on the Chechen and Muslim community, according to court records. 
 
 “We seek this information based on our belief that these contacts were among the precipitating events for Tamerlan’s actions during the week of April 15, 2013, and thus material to the defense case in mitigation,” the lawyers said in their court filing. 
 
 “We base this on information from our client’s family and other sources that the FBI made more than one visit to talk with Anzor [his father], Zubeidat [his mother] and Tamerlan, questioned Tamerlan about his Internet searches, and asked him to be an informant, reporting on the Chechen and Muslim community. 
 
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 “We do not suggest that these contacts are to be blamed and have no evidence to suggest that they were improper, but rather view them as an important part of the story of Tamerlan’s decline. Since Tamerlan is dead, the government is the source of corroboration that these visits did in fact occur and of what was said during them.” 
 
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 The lawyers suggested that Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have misinterpreted his interactions with the FBI as pressure from the agency, and that they could have “increased his paranoia and distress.” 
 
 The defense wants to investigate those factors as it seeks to portray Tamerlan as a dominating family figure who may have pushed the younger Dzhokhar to take part in the April 15 bombings last year. Tamerlan was killed days after the bombings in a confrontation with police in Watertown. 
 
 The lawyers’ allegation, based on conversations with family members and other sources, was made in a 23-page court filing Friday in which the lawyers sought a court order forcing prosecutors to turn over more evidence in the case. 
 
 Specifically, they want additional evidence about Tamerlan’s radical views, which would be useful in the lawyers’ defense against the death penalty. 
 
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 Lawyers argued that, now that prosecutors have declared they will seek capital punishment, Dzhokar should be allowed to present evidence of mitigating factors that would tilt a jury against the death penalty. 
 
 Those factors include evidence about his age at the time of the bombings, which was 19, his lack of criminal history, and the possible influence of others, specifically a radical older brother, court records said. 
 
 “The underlying data concerning the brothers’ activities, state of mind, and respective trajectories is critical,” the defense said. “Evidence that shows Tamerlan to have had a substantially longer and deeper engagement than his younger brother with extremist and violent ideology is mitigating for the light that it sheds on their relative culpability.” 
 
 Prosecutors did not immediately respond to the defense request, though defense lawyers conceded that they have a March 14, 2014, letter in which prosecutors said they had “no evidence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was solicited by the government to be an informant.” 
 
 Although the FBI does not comment on court matters, the bureau cited a statement Friday that it made Oct. 18, 2013, which said, “The Tsarnaev brothers were never sources for the FBI, nor did the FBI attempt to recruit them as sources.” 
 
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 Dzokhar Tsarnaev, now 20, faces a 30-count indictment in his alleged role in the bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 260. He and Tamerlan also allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer before the confrontation with police in Watertown. 
 
 Tsarnaev is being held at the federal prison at Fort Devens in Ayer. He is slated to go to trial in November. 
 
 Prosecutors have described him as a young Muslim extremist who wanted to carry out jihad, or holy war, against the United States. They alleged the brothers learned to build the bombs through websites that supported Al Qaeda. 
 
 In court requests filed late Friday, the defense lawyers sought a court order to force prosecutors to turn over a list of records, including reports related to the fatal shooting of MIT police Officer Sean Collier, the Watertown confrontation, and any evidence that an MBTA police officer was shot by fellow officers, rather than by Dzokhar Tsarnaev, who the lawyers say was unarmed. 
 
 The request also targets records of the brothers’ Internet searches. 
 
 One of the court requests asked for any information prosecutors collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act including any surveillance of Tamerlan’s return visits to Dagestan and the Chechnya region before the bombings. 
 
 A recent US House of Representatives homeland security report indicated FBI officials in Moscow may have collected “electronic communication” between Tamerlan and a jihadist named William Plotnikov. 
 
 “Any surveillance, evidence, or interviews showing that Tamerlan’s pursuit of jihad predated Dzhokhar’s would tend to support the theory that Tamerlan was the main instigator of the tragic events that followed,” the defense lawyers argued. 
 
 The lawyers are also seeking the immigration records of Tsarnaev’s family members, including his mother, father, and brother. 
 
 His father, Anzor, sought the family’s asylum in fleeing torture in Kyrgyzstan close to two decades ago, and the defense lawyers argued that the records would illustrate Tsarnaev’s family history. 
 
 They also said that Tamerlan’s immigration records could yield more evidence about his encounters with federal authorities, specifically after his visits to Dagestan that caught the attention of Russian officials. 
 
 The lawyers said they plan to argue that the unknowns about Tsarnaev’s “formative environment and relative moral culpability” and the possible “psychological domination” by his brother would support their case against the death penalty. 
 
 Globe correspondent Haven Orecchio-Egresitz contributed to this report. Milton J. Valencia can be reached at MValencia@globe.com.
– As the speculation continues into what turned the Tsarnaev brothers into alleged terrorists, a common theme is emerging in stories about Tamerlan, 26, and Dzhokhar, 19. As the Boston Globe puts it: A "picture began to emerge Friday of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an aggres­sive, possibly radicalized immigrant who may have ­ensnared his younger brother—described almost universally as smart and sweet — into an act of terror. The New York Times has a story with a similar tack, headlined "Boy at Home in U.S., Swayed by One Who Wasn't," that plays off this paragraph: "The older one, who friends and family members said exerted a strong influence on his younger sibling—'He could manipulate him,' an uncle said—once told a photographer, 'I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.'" In its profile of the brothers, CNN writes that Dzhokhar started going to the gym at age 10 to be with his boxer brother: "Dzhokar followed Tamerlan around like a puppy. He'd be just behind him, doing calisthenics." One reason why all this might matter: If Dzhokhar's defense team makes the case that it was Tamerlan who was the driving force behind the plot, it could mean the difference between life and death for him. "If he says my intent was to please my brother, they could raise the question of federal jurisdiction," says attorney Alan Dershowitz in a separate CNN story. If the case remains under state jurisdiction as a result, Dzhokhar would escape the death penalty, which isn't in place in Massachusetts.