Transformed: Katherine Russell, the American wife of marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is pictured above in her school book and, below, leaving the house she shared with her husband in Cambridge. (Daily Mail)

Katherine Russell, the widow of Boston bomb suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was ‘an all-American girl who was brainwashed’ by her extremist husband according to one schoolfriend.

Today MailOnline has gained the first glimpse and pictures of the early life of the woman who, according to those who knew her best, was ‘totally transformed’ by Tsarnaev.

At high school her personal motto was ‘Do something about it or stop complaining’. She dreamed of going to college and joining the Peace Corps.

She urged her friends to ‘lighten up and enjoy the small things,’ in life.

Instead she met Tsarneav, 26, a disenfranchised man who came to America from his troubled homeland of Chechnya who rapidly had her in his thrall.

By the time she was 21 she had married him and borne his child, Zahara, now three. She had converted to Islam, hidden her tumble of chestnut hair beneath the hijab and undergone a change so profound that today few friends profess to truly understand it.

Yesterday Katherine, who has been staying at her parents’ home in Rhode Island, returned to the Cambridge, Massachusetts home which she shared with her late husband.

Dressed in a leopard print hijab she darted into the white shingle house to collect some belongings and her pet cat while her daughter waited in the car.

Today she was back home, accompanied by armed federal agents who first interviewed Katherine and her family on Friday.