Boston bombing suspect held in single-person cell

A week after he was caught in a manhunt, bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sat in a federal prison hospital in Ayer, Mass., confined to a small, single-person cell linked to the outside only by a narrow window and a slot for food.

The boat in which he had hidden was removed from a Watertown back yard by the federal investigators building a case against him.

Tsarnaev was transported to Federal Medical Center Devens from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where some victims and their families became upset that he was being treated in the same hospital. Dr. Kevin Tabb, chief executive at the hospital, said Tsarnaev was treated in a closed unit that had no other patients. No staff members refused to treat Tsarnaev, and some administered care to both the suspect and those he allegedly injured. Although doctors and nurses treated Tsarnaev like any other patient, Tabb said, the work was emotionally difficult.

Now, Tsarnaev is one of seven pretrial inmates in the Federal Bureau of Prisons hospital at Devens, consigned to a high-security section where he is receiving regular medical attention, said prison spokesman John Colautti. The all-male facility about 40 miles west of Boston holds 1,044 inmates and pretrial defendants on the former Army base. Other inmates include 300 chronic-care prisoners, some of whom need mental-health services, and individuals in the federal prison system's only residential treatment program for sex offenders. Twenty inmates are serving life sentences.

U.S. officials say Russian authorities secretly recorded a conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother.

Officials say a second call was recorded between the suspects' mother and a man under FBI investigation living in southern Russia.

They say the Russians shared this intelligence with the United States in the past few days. The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, there might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the suspects' family.

The Massachusetts native and attorney is managing the payouts from The One Fund, which was established to help victims of the explosions that killed three and injured 260.

Feinberg, 67, is experienced dealing with people facing profound loss, but he doesn't seek the work. "I must tell you every time I do one, you say to yourself, 'God I hope this is the last one,' " he said.

He handled victims' compensation after Sept. 11, the BP oil spill, the Virginia Tech shootings and the Colorado movie theater shootings. He's now advising a panel distributing money after the elementary school mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., and mediating Penn State's settlement discussions with the sex abuse victims of Jerry Sandusky.

He keeps saying yes in the same spirit of those who donate, he said. "Look at the amount of money that pours in from private people, private citizens," he said. "How do you say no if the governor calls, the mayor?"

Feinberg is a native of Brockton, about 20 miles south of Boston, and his Washington, D.C., firm specializes in mediation and dispute resolution. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who appointed Feinberg to handle the Sept. 11 fund, said Feinberg balances compassion with vigilance in managing the money. "I can't say exactly how he handles it emotionally and psychologically. I just know that he does it professionally," he said.

The experiences are wrenching, he said. And recipients invariably resent him, thinking he's trying to put a price on the priceless things they've lost. "Don't expect thanks or appreciation or gratitude, none of that," he said. "We have very emotional victims and you're offering them money instead of a limb, instead of the return of a family member. This is a no-win situation."