Philadelphia » She married young and badly. She bounced checks at Pizza Hut and the grocery. She hit the bottle to excess sometimes, talked to her cats and once attempted suicide.

And, as "Jihad Jane," she spewed violent-sounding vitriol online for all the world -- including law enforcement -- to see.

From what's known about her so far, Colleen Renee LaRose is not coming off as the sharpest jihadist in the suburbs.

The life of the Pennsburg, Pa., woman who is due in federal court Thursday on terrorism charges is sounding ever more sad than scary.

"She's had a hard life, so tough that her life story is like a country music song," said a person close to the investigation.

LaRose, 46, is scheduled for arraignment next week in federal court in Philadelphia, accused of conspiring to support Islamic extremists and plotting to assassinate a Swedish artist.

Arrested in October and kept under federal wraps since, LaRose became international news Tuesday when her indictment was unsealed.

All of which has left many, including the man with whom she lived, scratching their heads.

"We were together about five years," said former boyfriend Kurt Gorman of Pennsburg. Had anyone accused her of terrorism, he said, "I would've thought it was a joke."

Yet federal authorities say LaRose flew to Europe Aug. 23 "with the intent to live and train with jihadists, and to find and kill" Swedish artist Lars Vilks, whose 2007 portrait of the prophet Muhammad as a dog outraged some Muslims.

Last summer, Gorman traveled with her to the Netherlands, but soon afterward, his ailing father, whom LaRose took care of, died of a heart attack. The day after the funeral in August, Gorman came home to find LaRose gone. On Aug. 23, authorities say, LaRose went back to Europe. She was arrested Oct. 16 at Philadelphia International Airport as she stepped off a plane.

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'Mainly in shorts and T-shirts' » In 1980, according to records, she was 16 when a justice of the peace in the Fort Worth area married her to a man twice her age. Eight years later, she was back at the altar to wed Rodolfo Cavazos, a union that lasted a decade before ending in divorce.

Her divorce lawyer, William R. Moore, remembers the couple. Cavazos played cards for a living but "didn't appear to me to be a big thug type; he wasn't a drug dealer or anything."

Moore had not connected that woman to the story he read in the newspaper until it was brought up in an interview.

"She seemed like a pretty decent person from the lower side of life," he said. "She was always nice, said 'yes, sir,' 'no, ma'am,' all that other kind of stuff."

LaRose was fined for criminal trespass in 1985 and got a drunken-driving charge in 1997, the same year she passed four bad checks -- three for groceries, one to Pizza Hut -- totaling $390.71. On May 21, 2005, LaRose, drunk and depressed over her father's recent death, swallowed eight to 10 prescription muscle relaxers. Pennsburg police Officer Michael Devlin, now chief, reported that LaRose's sister near Dallas summoned police after a long-distance call.

LaRose told Devlin, "She does not want to die," the report said. She was taken to a hospital in Quakertown. Police told LaRose's boyfriend she seemed very depressed and suggested getting her counseling.

Her Pennsburg neighbor, Kristy Newell, who used to live across the hall, said LaRose kept to herself and talked loudly to her two indoor Persian cats. "She would say things like, 'Oh, my babies,' at the top of her lungs," Newell said. She said she never saw LaRose in any Muslim attire. "When I saw her, she was mainly in shorts and T-shirts."