Marathon Was 'Target of Opportunity,' Bombs Built at Home, Sources Say

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  The body of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerian Tsarnaev was reportedly picked up at the Boston Medical Examiners office by a Dyer-Lake Funeral home hearse and brought to the North Attleboro, Mass., funeral home on Commonwealth Ave. early Thursday night.MARK STOCKWELL/THE SUN CHRONICLE

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  Tamerlan Tsarnaev. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun, Julia Malakie)AP2010

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The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was claimed on Thursday.

A representative of the Dyer-Lake Funeral Home in North Attleboro, Mass., confirmed to The Sun Chronicle that Tsarnaev's body was brought to the funeral home from the Boston Medical Examiner's office by one of its hearses.

Local Boston station WFXT reported that the hearse believed to be carrying Tsarnaev's body  was escorted away from the funeral home by police escort late Thursday. Its destination was not immediately known.

Local police were dispatched to the funeral home where media gathered. According to The Sun Chronicle, it is unclear why the funeral home was involved. 

Department of Public Safety spokesman Terrel Harris said a funeral home retained by Tsarnaev's family picked up the 26-year-old's remains. He had no more information.

The medical examiner determined Tsarnaev's cause of death on Monday, but officials said it wouldn't become public until his remains were released and a death certificate was filed. It was unclear on Thursday evening whether the death certificate had been filed.

Tsarnaev's widow, Katherine Russell, who has been living with her parents in North Kingstown, R.I., learned this week that the medical examiner was ready to release his body and wanted it released to his side of the family, her attorney Amato DeLuca said days ago.

Tsarnaev's uncle Ruslan Tsarni, of Maryland, said Tuesday night the family would take the body.

"Of course, family members will take possession of the body," Tsarni said. "We'll do it. We will do it. A family is a family."

Tsarnaev, who had appeared in surveillance photos wearing a black cap and was identified as Suspect No. 1, died days after the bombing.

The April 15 bombing, near the marathon's finish line, killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Authorities said Tsarnaev and his younger brother later killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer and carjacked a driver, who escaped.

Authorities said the Tsarnaev brothers during the gunfight with police set off a pressure cooker bomb and tossed grenades before the older brother ran out of ammunition.

Police said they tackled the older brother and began to handcuff him but had to dive out of the way at the last second when the younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, drove a stolen car at them. They said the younger brother then ran over his brother's body as he drove away from the scene to escape.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later, wounded and bloody, hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard. He is in a federal prison and faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill.

The Tsarnaev brothers' mother insists the allegations against them are lies.

Three of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friends, college classmates, were arrested and were accused of helping after the marathon bombing to remove a laptop and backpack from his dormitory room before the FBI searched it.

A top Republican senator on Thursday asked President Barack Obama's administration to explain how one of the students, who's from Kazakhstan, entered the United States without a valid student visa.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a three-page letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, asked for additional details about the student visa applications for Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, college roommates from Kazakhstan charged with obstruction of justice in the marathon bombing case, and how Tazhayakov was allowed to re-enter the United States in January.

Tazhayakov was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth when he left the country in December. In early January, his student visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed by the university.

The third student arrested, Robel Phillipos, was charged with willfully making materially false statements to federal law enforcement officials during a terrorism investigation.

The lawyers for the Kazakh students said their clients had nothing to do with the bombing and were just as shocked by it as everyone else. Phillipos' attorney said the only allegation against him is "he made a misrepresentation."

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Mark Wahlberg disgusted over Boston Marathon tragedy

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  Cast member Mark Wahlberg poses at the premiere of "Ted" at the Grauman's Chinese theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on June 21, 2012.Reuters

Mark Wahlberg was in a somber mood at the New York premiere of his new film, "Pain and Gain"— still grappling with the tragedy that struck his hometown in Boston.

Earlier Monday two bombs went off near the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and at least 140 were injured.

"I really didn't even want to come tonight. I hadn't really heard much — I spoke to my mom, and most of my family seems to be OK. It's such a big event, there's so many people there. It's horrible man. It's (expletive) disgusting, man. I just - I'm very upset," Wahlberg said Monday night.

"You try to put everything in God's hands and whatever happens here is out of our control and there's a bigger picture. But it's still obviously upsetting," the 41-year old actor said on the red carpet before going into the premiere hosted by The Cinema Society.

New York rapper 50 Cent was a guest at the premiere and before going inside, he expressed his dismay.

"Why is it even happening? But there's no explanation. We don't even know what happened (yet)," 50 Cent said.

He added: "When you see kids involved in it, I can't write it off. I can't say maybe (it was) karma that is why the kid was where he was."

An 8-year-old boy was among the dead.

But the rapper said the tragedy doesn't make him feel less safe than usual.

"If anyone is feeling that way they have to allow themselves accept the reality that we don't have control of our fate," he said.

Before coming to the premiere, "Nurse Jackie" star Peter Facinelli was running on his treadmill when he saw the news on television.

"My heart goes out to the families and the victims. I don't know who caused it, just like everyone else, I'm in the dark. I'm waiting to get to the bottom of it," he said at the event.

"If it was terrorism, people are going to need to know they're not going to stop us," he added. "We're not going to be afraid. So for me, the best thing to do is to not hide inside. Proceed with caution but live your life."

Authorities still don't know who is responsible for the attack.

Some 23,000 runners took part in the race, which attracts more than 500,000 spectators and finishes up in the heart of central Boston, near the landmark Prudential Center and the Boston Public Library. It is held on Patriots Day, a Massachusetts state holiday which commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution in 1775.

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White House Believes Deadly Boston Marathon Bombing 'An Act of Terror'

DEVELOPING: Multiple casualties are reported after at least two explosions rocked the area near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to the Boston Herald. 

Witnesses reportedly heard booms that sounded like two claps of thunder near the finish line inside the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel. 

The explosions occurred just before 3 p.m. Video of the scene showed a number of emergency crews in the area tending to victims and blood on the ground near the finish line. 

"I saw two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising," Boston Herald reporter Chris Cassidy, who was running in the marathon, told the newspaper. "I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something...There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads.”

A photographer with Fox affiliate WFXT reported seeing a number of victims with lost limbs.

Competitors and race organizers were crying as they fled the chaos. Bloody spectators were being carried to the medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners.

"There are a lot of people down," said one man, whose bib No. 17528 identified him as Frank Deruyter of North Carolina. He was not injured, but marathon workers were carrying one woman, who did not appear to be a runner, to the medical area as blood gushed from her leg. A Boston police officer was wheeled from the course with a leg injury that was bleeding.

About three hours after the winners crossed the line, there was a loud explosion on the north side of Boylston Street, just before the photo bridge that marks the finish line. Another thunderous explosion could be heard a few seconds later.

Runner Laura McLean of Toronto said she heard two explosions outside the medical tent.

"There are people who are really, really bloody," McLean said. "They were pulling them into the medical tent."

Cherie Falgoust was waiting for her husband, who was running the race.  "I was expecting my husband any minute," she said. "I don't know what this building is ... it just blew. Just a big bomb, a loud boom, and then glass everywhere. Something hit my head. I don't know what it was. I just ducked."

Click for more from MyFoxBoston.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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MARATHON STANDOFF: 'No Rush' to Raid Hideout Of Suspected Killer of 4

HERKIMER, N.Y. –  A man neighbors said rarely spoke to them started a fire in his apartment on Wednesday, shot four people dead at a couple of businesses in his hometown and a neighboring village and then exchanged gunfire with police officers who surrounded an abandoned building where he apparently was holed up, authorities said.

Police officers were fired on from the upstate New York building on Wednesday afternoon while looking for 64-year-old Kurt Myers, state police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said. At least one officer returned fire, and later it was unknown if Myers was still alive, D'Amico said.

"We're in no rush to bring this to a conclusion," D'Amico said, adding that the main objective was to make sure no one else was hurt.

Police said Myers' rampage started with a fire in his apartment in the nearby village of Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. D'Amico said Myers then drove to John's Barber Shop around the corner and used a shotgun to kill two customers, whom he identified as Harry Montgomery, 68, and Michael Ransear, 57, a retired corrections officer. The shop's owner, John Seymour, and another customer, Dan Haslauer, were listed in critical condition at a Utica hospital.

D'Amico said the gunman then drove to Gaffy's Fast Lube in nearby Herkimer and used the shotgun to kill Thomas Stefka, an employee, and Michael Renshaw, a customer who was a 23-year veteran of the state Department of Corrections.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a press conference in Herkimer, called it "truly an inexplicable situation."

"There's no apparent motive to the best of our knowledge at this time to provoke these attacks," he said.

D'Amico said police had not had any communication with Myers, whose only known police record was a 1973 drunken-driving arrest.

Police positioned in front of a block of small businesses topped with apartments in the village of Herkimer were still looking for Myers on Wednesday evening.

A local businessman, jeweler Fred Weisser, said police were trying to get people out while Myers was believed to be in a building next door.

"They're sending in a robot to check the place out," he said by telephone. "I guess we're stuck. We're between him and the cops. I don't want to step out and get clipped by a sniper."

Myles Smith, who lives in one of the apartments above the shops, said by cellphone he had heard police trying to talk to Myers.

"The snipers on the roof are sitting there," Smith said. "I ain't seen a whole lot of movement. I heard about five gunshots. I keep hearing them trying to talk him out, but I don't think he's coming out."

The rear of the small building where Myers lived was burned out, and police continued to guard the building, where they found guns and ammunition. It was unclear if they were in his apartment.

Neighbors said they barely knew Myers, who rarely spoke, left every morning in his red Jeep and came back.

Traci Randall said the only time she remembers speaking to her next-door neighbor was when he yelled at her son because he thought he had shot an air pellet at his Jeep.

"He would walk by himself. He was kind of a loner. No wife," she said.

Neighbors said he never had visitors or friends. Gary Urich said Myers wouldn't even say much as `Hi' to him when walking by his porch.

"I said, `How are you doing?' No response. He just walked by," he said.

Michele Mlinar, a bartender at Cangee's Bar and Grille in Herkimer, said Myers frequently went in and had a bottle or two of Coors Light and left without speaking to anyone. She said he was always alone and she didn't even know his name until police released his mug shot on Wednesday.

Cangee's owner Candy Rellin called Myers "just an odd little man."

The two villages are about 65 miles east of Syracuse, on opposite sides of the Mohawk River in a region known as the Mohawk Valley.

James Baron, the mayor of Mohawk described his village as close-knit and friendly, "the kind of place where you'd say, `Oh, it would never happen here."'

Elizabeth Cirelli was shocked by Stefka's slaying. He was a neighbor in Herkimer.

"He was a great guy, a really nice person. This is horrific. We really couldn't believe it," she said.

Herkimer County Community College lifted a lockdown during the afternoon, and all but a few schools near the scene also were releasing students. D'Amico said most of the three-block neighborhood around the search scene was evacuated.

Herkimer is a village of 7,700 named for the German immigrant family that settled in the western Mohawk Valley in the 1720s. The economically distressed villages are 2 miles away from Ilion, where a 2-century-old Remington Arms gun plant is a major employer.

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