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On Friday the Los Angeles Times named Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who killed himself Tuesday after learning that he would be indicted by the Justice Dept., as “the culprit [in five 2001 anthrax deaths].”[1] -- The New York Times made the story its lead on Saturday, and quoted Ivins’s lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, who maintained that his former client was innocent and who blamed “relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo” for his client’s death.[2] -- Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau said Ivins was “a Red Cross volunteer and amateur juggler who had won the Defense Department’s highest civilian award in 2003,” but also that “Dr. Ivins had been behaving bizarrely in the weeks before his death.” -- Motive has been a mystery in the case. -- But on Saturday the Los Angeles Times reported that Ivins “stood to gain financially from massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath.”[3] -- But what was to be gained — a few thousand dollars from a new anthrax vaccine Ivins had co-patented or more funding for research — seems out of proportion with the alleged crime. -- To some, the case was reminiscent of the death of David Kelly, the British weapons expert who died on Jul. 17, 2003, a death ruled to be suicide despite behavior by Kelly that seemed inconsistent with such an act. -- The New Haven (CT) Register, located near the home of the last of the anthras victims, reported that some of those who feel connected to the case do not consider the case to be closed, and in fact, “[p]rosecutors have not yet decided whether to close the investigation, officials said.”[4] -- But they are eager to paint Ivins as the principal culprit: “Prosecutors were prepared to seek the death penalty against Ivins, federal officials said. . . . [A]uthorities are still not certain whether Ivins acted alone or had help.” -- On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that “colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.”[5] -- Richard O. Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the Army lab, said: "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability, and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those." -- Whether Ivins stood to benefit financially from the anthrax attacks was also contested by experts. -- And “Jaye Holly, who lived next door to the Ivinses until she and her husband moved to New York a month ago, said she couldn't believe that her former neighbor, who was obsessed with grass recycling and who happily drove a 20-year-old faded red van, would endanger others for financial gain.” -- But “a government source said that the probe could be shuttered as early as tomorrow.” -- One of the most bizarre aspects of the case is the claim by a Frederick, MD, social worker who had Ivins committed after a group therapy session allegedly expressed a “homicidal plan and intention” to carry out mass murder of his co-workers, and that he was “a revenge killer” who “[w]hen he feels that he has been slighted, and especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings” and who had tried to kill people in the past; the tape of the court proceeding where the social worker made these charges was posted online by the New York Times and can be reached through the link below.[6] ...

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death, and the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator's office in Washington.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after ingesting a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague, who declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI.

The death -- without any mention of suicide -- was announced to Ivins' colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, through a staffwide e-mail.

"People here are pretty shook up about it," said Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for USAMRIID, who said she was not at liberty to discuss details surrounding the death.

The anthrax mailings killed five people, crippled national mail service, shut down a Senate office building, and spread fear of further terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax.

The payout to Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him in the mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.

Federal investigators moved away from Hatfill -- for years the only publicly identified "person of interest" -- and ultimately concluded that Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.

The FBI's new top investigators -- Vincent B. Lisi and Edward W. Montooth -- instructed agents to reexamine leads or potential suspects that may have received insufficient attention. Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing genetic properties of the anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two senators.

The renewed efforts led the FBI back to USAMRIID, where agents first questioned scientists in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings.

By spring of this year, FBI agents were still contacting Ivins' present and former colleagues. At USAMRIID and elsewhere, scientists acquainted with Ivins were asked to sign confidentiality agreements in order to prevent leaks of new investigative details.

Ivins, employed as a civilian at Ft. Detrick, earlier had attracted the attention of Army officials because of anthrax contaminations that Ivins failed to report for five months. In sworn oral and written statements to an Army investigator, Ivins said that he had erred by keeping the episodes secret -- from December 2001 to late April 2002. He said he had swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas that he suspected were contaminated by a sloppy lab technician.

"In retrospect, although my concern for biosafety was honest and my desire to refrain from crying 'Wolf!' . . . was sincere, I should have notified my supervisor ahead of time of my worries about a possible breach in biocontainment," Ivins told the Army. "I thought that quietly and diligently cleaning the dirty desk area would both eliminate any possible [anthrax] contamination as well as prevent unintended anxiety at the institute."

The Army chose not to discipline Ivins regarding his failure to report the contamination. Officials said that penalizing Ivins might discourage other employees from voluntarily reporting accidental spills of "hot" agents.

But Ivins' recollections should have raised serious questions about his veracity and his intentions, according to some of those familiar with the investigation. For instance, although Ivins said that he swabbed areas near and within his personal office, and bleached surfaces to kill any spores, and that some of the swabs tested positive, he was vague about what should have been an essential next step:

"I honestly do not recall if follow-up swabs were taken of the area," Ivins said. "I may have done so, but I do not now remember reswabbing."

"That's bull----," said one former senior USAMRIID official. "If there's contamination, you always reswab. And you would remember doing it."

The former official told the *Times* that Ivins might have hedged regarding reswabbing out of fear that investigators would find more of the spores inside or near his office.

Ivins' statements were contained within a May 2002 Army report on the contamination at USAMRIID and was obtained by the *Times* under the Freedom of Information Act.

Soon after the government's settlement with Hatfill was announced June 27, Ivins began showing signs of serious strain.

One of his longtime colleagues told the Times that Ivins, who was being treated for depression, indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide.

Soon thereafter, family members and local police officers escorted Ivins from USAMRIID, where his access to sensitive areas was curtailed, the colleague said.

Ivins was committed to a facility in Frederick for treatment of his depression. On July 24, he was released from the facility, operated by Sheppard Pratt Health System. A telephone call that same day by the *Times* verified that Ivins' government voice mail was still functioning at the bacteriology division of USAMRIID.

The scientist faced forced retirement, planned for September, said his longtime colleague, who described Ivins as emotionally fractured by the federal scrutiny.

"He didn't have any more money to spend on legal fees. He was much more emotionally labile, in terms of sensitivity to things, than most scientists. . . . He was very thin-skinned."

FBI spokeswoman Debra J. Weierman said Thursday that the bureau would not comment on the death of Ivins.

Last week, FBI Director Mueller told CNN that "in some sense, there have been breakthroughs" in the case.

Ivins, the son of a Princeton-educated pharmacist, was born and raised in Lebanon, Ohio, and received undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a doctorate in microbiology, from the University of Cincinnati.

The eldest of his two brothers, Thomas Ivins, said he was not surprised by the events that have unfolded.

"He buckled under the pressure from the federal government," Thomas Ivins said, adding that FBI agents came to Ohio last year to question him about his brother.

"I was questioned by the feds, and I sung like a canary" about Bruce Ivins' personality and tendencies, Thomas Ivins said.

Ivins' widow declined to be interviewed when reached Thursday at her home in Frederick. The couple raised twins, now 24.

The family's home is 198 miles -- about a 3 1/2 -hour drive -- from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., where anthrax spores were found by investigators.

Willman reported from Los Angeles and Washington. Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.

SCIENTIST’S SUICIDE LINKED TO ANTHRAX INQUIRY
By Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau

[PHOTO CAPTION: A technician in 2001 at the biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, Md., opening a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy suspected of containing anthrax. Letters with anthrax killed five people.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: On October 16, 2001, the F.B.I. released a photo of letters sent to then-NBC anchor Tom Brokaw's office in New York and to Senator Tom Daschle's office on Capitol Hill. Both letters contained anthrax.]

WASHINGTON -- After four years pursuing one former Army scientist on a costly false trail, F.B.I. agents investigating the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 finally zeroed in last year on a different suspect: another Army scientist from the same biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.

Over the last 18 months, even as the government battled a lawsuit filed by the first scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, investigators built a case against the second one, Bruce E. Ivins, a highly respected microbiologist who had worked for many years to design a better anthrax vaccine.

Last weekend, after learning that federal prosecutors were preparing to indict him on murder charges, Dr. Ivins, a 62-year-old father of two, took an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. He died in a Frederick hospital on Tuesday, leaving behind a grieving family and uncertainty about whether the anthrax mystery had finally been solved.

The apparent suicide of Dr. Ivins, a Red Cross volunteer and amateur juggler who had won the Defense Department’s highest civilian award in 2003, was a dramatic turn in one of the largest criminal investigations in the nation’s history. The attack, the only major act of bioterrorism on American soil, came in the jittery aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. It killed five people, sickened 17 others, and set off a wave of panic.

In the early days after the letter attacks, in September and October 2001, Dr. Ivins joined about 90 of his colleagues at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in a round-the-clock laboratory push to test thousands of samples of suspect powder to see if they were anthrax. Later, in April 2002, he came under scrutiny in an Army investigation of a leak of potentially deadly anthrax spores outside a sealed-off lab at Fort Detrick. He later admitted he had discovered the leak but not reported it.

Whether the focus on Dr. Ivins had resolved the case of the anthrax letters was unclear. A federal law enforcement official said that Dr. Ivins had been regarded as a strong suspect and that agents had been nearing an arrest, and a lawyer familiar with the investigation said he believed that prosecutors had planned to charge only Dr. Ivins. The link between Dr. Ivins’s suicide and the federal investigation was first reported on Friday in the Los Angeles Times.

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined on Friday to make public its case against Dr. Ivins, noting that evidence was under court seal as part of a grand jury investigation. Officials said they were briefing the victims of the anthrax letters -- those who recovered, as well as family members of those who died -- and would need to go to court to have evidence unsealed before it could even be summarized for the public.

A lawyer who had represented Dr. Ivins since May 2007, Paul F. Kemp, insisted that Dr. Ivins was innocent and had been driven to suicide by false suspicions.

“For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him,” Mr. Kemp said in a written statement, calling the microbiologist “a world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army.”

“We assert his innocence in these killings and would have established that at trial,” Mr. Kemp said. “The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation.”

Mr. Kemp was clearly referring to the case of Dr. Hatfill, who was the focus of intensive F.B.I. and news media attention in the case beginning in mid-2002 and received a $4.6 million settlement from the government in June to settle a lawsuit accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of destroying his career and personal life with leaks.

Whatever the cause of his suicide, Dr. Ivins had been behaving bizarrely in the weeks before his death. He was hospitalized briefly for depression and, according to a complaint filed with the police, threatened to kill a social worker who had treated him in group therapy, among others, in rants referring to his expectation that he would be charged with five counts of capital murder.

“It’s out of character,” said Norman M. Covert, a former spokesman and historian for the Army biodefense center who served with Dr. Ivins on an animal care committee. “But if the F.B.I. was really leaning on him, what a tremendous load that was on him.”

A spokesman for the Frederick police, Lt. Clark Pennington, said he could not say whether Dr. Ivins had left a suicide note because the anthrax investigation remained open.

Investigators in the huge inquiry traveled to many countries and by late 2006 had conducted 9,100 interviews, sent out 6,000 grand jury subpoenas and conducted 67 searches, the F.B.I. said. But the prime focus steadily narrowed: first to the Army infectious diseases laboratories, apparently linked to the letters by genetic analysis, then to Dr. Hatfill, a medical doctor who had become a bioterrorism consultant, and finally to Dr. Ivins, who worked in the same building as Dr. Hatfill and lived two blocks away from him outside the gates to Fort Detrick.

Two puzzles have haunted investigators from the beginning: the motive of the perpetrator and his skills. Because the notes in some of the letters mailed to news media organizations and two senators included radical Islamist rhetoric, investigators initially believed the letters might have been sent by Al Qaeda.

But the F.B.I. quickly settled on a different profile: a disgruntled American scientist or technician, perhaps one specializing in biodefense, who wanted to raise an alarm about the bioterrorism threat. That theory accounted for the letters’ taped seams and the notes’ use of the word anthrax, a warning that allowed antibiotic treatment -- not to be expected from a Qaeda attack intended mainly to kill.

That theory of a biodefense insider placed many scientists at the infectious diseases institute and other laboratories under scrutiny, even as they helped the F.B.I. analyze the anthrax powder in the letters.

“The F.B.I. would be remiss not to look at us, especially those of us who worked with anthrax,” said John W. Ezzell, an anthrax researcher who hired Dr. Ivins at the institute and knew him well. “We were all subjected to lie detector tests. We were all interviewed.”

Mr. Ezzell called Dr. Ivins “intense about his work, but a popular guy.” Asked whether he was aware that Dr. Ivins had become a more serious suspect, Mr. Ezzell declined to comment.

The other puzzle involved the skills necessary to produce the high-quality aerosol powder contained in the letters addressed to the senators, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

Scientists familiar with germ warfare said there was no evidence that Dr. Ivins, though a vaccine expert with easy access to the most dangerous forms of anthrax, had the skills to turn the pathogen into an inhalable powder.

“I don’t think a vaccine specialist could do it,” said Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff, a physician who aided the F.B.I. investigation when he worked at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

“This is aerosol physics, not biology,” Dr. Zelicoff added. “There are very few people who have their feet in both camps.”

Mr. Ezzell said Dr. Ivins had worked on many projects involving anthrax spores and the toxin they produce, including experiments in which animals were exposed to anthrax to test vaccines. But he said the experiments, to his knowledge, involved anthrax spores in liquid and not in the dry powder form used in the letter attacks.

By their own admission, the F.B.I. and the Postal Inspection Service had little expertise in biological weapons in 2001, when they first loosed hundreds of agents on the investigation. Since then, at least 19 government and university laboratories have worked on the investigation, using clues like the genetic fingerprints of the anthrax, and radioactive isotopes in the water used to grow it, to try to trace it to a source.

The source, several officials said, was the infectious diseases institute, where the trail led to just a handful of vials in a single lab.

But the scientific evidence, some of it found using new methods, now may never be tested in a criminal trial, leaving questions about just how compelling it is.

“I would urge the bureau to publish its evidence if it declares the case solved and closed,” said Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett, the former director of the Institute for Genomic Research, where the anthrax genome was decoded.

On Capitol Hill, where anthrax contamination in 2001 led to the evacuation of many offices, several members of Congress voiced skepticism about reports that the hunt for the anthrax killer might be over.

Representative Rush Holt, a Democrat whose district includes the Princeton, N.J., mailbox where investigators believe the letters were mailed, said the F.B.I. should provide a full briefing.

“What we learn,” Mr. Holt said, “will not change the fact that this has been a poorly handled investigation that has lasted six years and already has resulted in a trail of embarrassment and personal tragedy.”

--William J. Broad and Nicholas Wade contributed reporting, and Jack Begg, Kitty Bennett and Barclay Walsh contributed research.

ANTHRAX SCIENTIST BRUCE IVINS STOOD TO BENEFIT FROM A PANIC
By David Willman

[PHOTO CAPTION: DOORSTEP: Police in Frederick, Md., talk with Bruce Ivins’ widow, Diane. A former colleague says that he suspects Ivins was the anthrax culprit, but that he wouldn’t have meant to kill anyone. The suspect in deadly mailings, who killed himself this week as the FBI closed in, could have collected patent royalties on an anthrax vaccine.]

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the *Los Angeles Times* has learned.

Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines.

Ivins, 62, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide in Maryland. Federal authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to the mailings would be filed.

As a co-inventor of a new anthrax vaccine, Ivins was among those in line to collect patent royalties if the product had come to market, according to an executive familiar with the matter.

The product had languished on laboratory shelves until the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings, after which federal officials raced to stockpile vaccines and antidotes against potential biological terrorism.

A San Francisco-area biotechnology company, VaxGen, won a federal contract worth $877.5 million to provide batches of the new vaccine. The contract was the first awarded under legislation promoted by President Bush, called Project BioShield.

One executive who was familiar with the matter said that, as a condition of its purchasing the vaccine from the Army, VaxGen had agreed to share sales-related proceeds with the inventors.

"Some proportion would have been shared with the inventors," said the executive, who spoke anonymously because of contractual confidentiality. "Ivins would have stood to make tens of thousands of dollars, but not millions."

Two years after the contract was awarded to VaxGen, the pact was terminated when the company could not deliver its batches on schedule. The termination meant that VaxGen was not paid, nor were Ivins and his co-inventors.

Ivins also was listed as one of two inventors of another biodefense-related product that has won federal sponsorship.

According to their still-pending application for a U.S. patent, the inventors hoped the additive would bolster certain vaccines' capacity to prevent infections "from bioterrorism agents."

From December 2002 to December 2003, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency committed $12 million for additional testing of the experimental additive. That research money was designated for Coley Pharmaceutical Group, which was developing the additive. The company was acquired last fall by Pfizer Corp.

Samuel C. Miller, a Georgetown Law Center professor who is a patent-law expert, said that the extent to which Ivins stood to gain from the two issued patents or the one that remains pending hinges on the terms of the related contracts.

On Friday, colleagues and critics of Ivins pondered the mystery within the mystery: If Ivins did it, why?

One former senior official with Ivins' employer, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, whom the FBI questioned at length about Ivins, said he believed his former colleague wanted more attention -- and resources -- shifted to biological defense.

"It had to have been a motive," said the former official, who suspects that Ivins was the culprit. "I don't think he ever intended to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove 'Look, this is possible.' He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those envelopes and kill those postal workers."

Of the five people killed by the mailings, two worked for the U.S. Postal Service in the Washington, D.C., area; one was a photo editor in Palm Beach County, Fla.; another was a hospital supply provider in New York City; and the last known victim was a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut.

Several letters were addressed to prominent people -- two U.S. senators and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, for example.

For nearly 30 years, Ivins served far from the limelight, a PhD microbiologist who drew a civil servant's pay while handling some of the most deadly pathogens on Earth -- live spores of anthrax.

The deadly mailings of anthrax-tainted envelopes transported Ivins from the backwater of government scientific research at Ft. Detrick, Md., to the center of the nation's fledgling war on terrorism. It also spurred multibillion-dollar national security initiatives.

Ivins was thrust into the federal investigation of the mailings as well. He helped the FBI analyze anthrax recovered from a letter addressed to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

He also played a lead role in helping a private company, BioPort, win regulatory approval to continue making the vaccine required for U.S. service personnel deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions.

From 2000 to early 2002, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID helped BioPort resolve problems related to the potency of the vaccine. Because of those and other manufacturing difficulties, production had been suspended. The efforts of Ivins and his colleagues helped BioPort win FDA approval to resume production.

At a Pentagon ceremony on March 14, 2003, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID were bestowed the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary employees of the Defense Department.

"Awards are nice," Ivins said in accepting the honor. "But the real satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on line."

The *Times* sought earlier this year to obtain annual financial disclosure statements filed by Ivins with his employer. USAMRIID spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden said last month that Ivins had filed financial reports exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Ivins' apparent suicide and the Justice Department's decision to bring criminal charges against him were first reported Thursday night by the Times. On Friday, Ivins' lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, defended his client and said that Ivins had cooperated fully with the FBI.

"We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial," Kemp said, implicitly confirming that Ivins had been about to be formally charged. "The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people. . . . In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death."

DOUBTS LINGER ABOUT UNSOLVED ANTHRAX ATTACKS IN 2001
By Luther Turnelle and Michelle Tuccitto Sullo

Connecticut residents were filled with a mix of relief and skepticism over Friday's news that there may have been a macabre resolution to who was behind the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed an elderly Oxford woman and left workers at a Wallingford postal facility in a state of high anxiety for months.

Federal prosecutors investigating the attacks were preparing to indict Bruce E. Ivins, a top Army microbiologist, in connection with anthrax mailings, which killed Ottilie Lundgren, 94, and four other people. But the scientist, who was developing a vaccine against the deadly toxin, committed suicide this week.

The president of the Greater Connecticut Area Local of the American Postal Workers, John Dirzius, said Friday's news "puts a tragic end to a tragic time." But to fully appreciate the closure it provides to local U.S. Postal Service employees, Dirzius said people need to remember that two of the five people killed in the anthrax attacks were Washington, D.C., Postal Service employees.

"There was a lot of fear among our people," Dirzius said. "We were on the front line."

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of ongoing grand jury proceedings, said that Ivins, 62, was under investigation to determine whether he released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine.

Prosecutors were prepared to seek the death penalty against Ivins, federal officials said.

Ivins died Tuesday in a Frederick, Md., hospital from what family members said involved an overdose of the painkiller Tylenol.

Despite the circumstances of Ivins' death, a postal worker who has worked at the Postal Service's Southern Connecticut Mail Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford since 1995 said the news brings him a sense of closure.

"It makes me feel better to know that this person who harmed so many people can never hurt anyone again," said Frank Vincent, of Wallingford. "And by taking his own life, he has punished himself."

"I always wondered if the perpetrator had any remorse or guilt over the deaths," said William Powanda, vice president of support services at Griffin Hospital, where Lundgren died Nov. 21, 2001. "Now, unless they have something to convince the public that (Ivins) was the guy, I think we'll always remain open to the idea that it could have been someone else. I think there will still be uncertainty."

Ivins' attorney, Paul F. Kemp, asserted his client's innocence and said he had cooperated with investigators for more than a year.

"We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law," Kemp said.

For years, the only known suspect in the investigation dubbed "Amerithrax" had been Steven Hatfill, a colleague of Ivins who has been exonerated. Ivins had worked 18 years at the Army's biological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Md., before his death.

Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to close the investigation, officials said, meaning authorities are still not certain whether Ivins acted alone or had help. One official close to the case said that decision is expected within days.

If the case is closed soon, one official said, that would indicate Ivins was the lone suspect.

"I was surprised that there has been an investigation going on," said Margaret Crowther of Oxford, who was a friend of Lundgren. "It is sad that the man took his life so he couldn't give his side of the story. Life goes on, and I hope this will be the end of it."

But from the perspective of the U.S. Postal Service, the investigation continues.

Postal Service officials in Connecticut declined to comment on Friday's news, and limited access to the grounds of the Wallingford facility.

"We still consider this to be the site of an active investigation," said Maureen Marion, a Postal Service spokeswoman for the state.

Lundgren was admitted to Griffin Hospital on Nov. 16, 2001, because she was suffering from flu-like symptoms, including fever. Her condition worsened, and medical staffers did tests, which showed anthrax was the culprit.

Powanda said the anthrax case was "one of the most unbelievable" incidents in Griffin's history.

"It was a moving experience for all of us involved here," Powanda said. "It defied logic as to how a 94-year-old living a quiet life in a small rural town could possibly be a victim of a terrorist act. She was an unintentional and chance victim, because her mail happened to cross paths with someone who was an intended target."

Oxford First Selectwoman Mary Ann Drayton-Rogers said Friday she feels the latest development "helps bring closure to the residents of Oxford, especially those who knew her (Lundgren)."

"I hope it will allow her to rest in peace," Drayton-Rogers said. "Now, the person who did this has to answer to a higher authority, which allows us in Oxford to go on and not have it hanging over our heads."

Drayton-Rogers had hired Lundgren's husband as an attorney when she bought land in Oxford many years ago.

"I knew her husband, but didn't know Ottilie personally," Drayton-Rogers said. "She was a first-class lady from everything I've heard about her."

Bill Sihau of Prospect, widower of Lundgren's niece, Elaine Sihau, said Friday he had just heard the news on television. He said his wife died in 2002.

"I didn't even think they were even looking into it anymore," Sihau said. "I hope the investigators will continue to look into it and will be successful in learning who was responsible, even if it turns out that it was this person who just died."

"She was a lady and a very nice person," Crowther said. "She loved life and especially enjoyed children and being around young people."

--The Associated Press contributed to this story. Staff reporter Luther Turmelle can be reached at lturmelle@nhregister.com or 789-5705. Staff reporter Michelle Tuccitto Sullo can be reached at mtuccitto@nhregister.com or 789-5707.

SCIENTISTS QUESTION FBI PROBE ON ANTHRAX
By Joby Warrick, Marilyn W. Thompson, and Aaron C. Davis

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick's Army medical lab lived in a curious limbo: They served as occasional consultants for the FBI in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, yet they were all potential suspects.

Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins's former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away.

The FBI eventually focused on Ivins, whom federal prosecutors were planning to indict when he committed suicide last week. In interviews yesterday, knowledgeable officials asserted that Ivins had the skills and access to equipment needed to turn anthrax bacteria into an ultra-fine powder that could be used as a lethal weapon. Court documents and tapes also reveal a therapist's deep concern that Ivins, 62, was homicidal and obsessed with the notion of revenge.

Yet, colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

"I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,'" said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons."

Investigators are so confident of Ivins's involvement that they have been debating since Friday whether and how to close the seven-year-old anthrax investigation. That would involve disbanding a grand jury in the District and unsealing scores of documents that form the basis of the government's case against Ivins.

Negotiations over the legal issues continue, but a government source said that the probe could be shuttered as early as tomorrow. The move would amount to a strong signal that the FBI and Justice Department think they got their man -- and that he is dead, foreclosing the possibility of a prosecution. No charges are likely against others, that source added.

Once the case is closed, the FBI and Justice Department will face questions -- and possibly public hearings -- from congressional oversight committees, which have been largely shut out of the case the past five years. The investigators have cited the ongoing nature of the case, as well as accusations of leaks to the media, for the information blackout to Capitol Hill.

One bioweapons expert familiar with the FBI investigation said Ivins indeed possessed the skills needed to create the dust-fine powder used in the attacks. At the Army lab where he worked, Ivins specialized in making sophisticated preparations of anthrax bacteria spores for use in animal tests, said the expert, who requested anonymity because the investigation remains active.

Ivins's daily routine included the use of processes and equipment the anthrax terrorist likely used in making his weapons. He also is known to have had ready access to the specific strain of Bacillus anthracis used in the attack -- a strain found to match samples found in Ivins's lab, he said.

"You could make it in a week," the expert said. "And you could leave USAMRIID with nothing more than a couple of vials. Bear in mind, they weren't exactly doing body searches of scientists back then."

But others, including former colleagues and scientists with backgrounds in biological weapons defense, disagreed that Ivins could have created the anthrax powder, even if he were motivated to do so.

"USAMRIID doesn't deal with powdered anthrax," said Richard O. Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the Army lab. "I don't think there's anyone there who would have the foggiest idea how to do it. You would need to have the opportunity, the capability, and the motivation, and he didn't possess any of those."

Another scientist who worked with Ivins acknowledged it would have been technically possible to manufacture powdered anthrax at Fort Detrick, but unlikely that anyone could have done so without being detected.

"As well as we knew each other, and the way the labs were run, someone would discover what was going on," said the scientist, "especially since dry spores were not something that we prepared or worked with."

Scientists, co-workers, and people who for years have researched the anthrax investigation, only to encounter frustration, misinformation, and false leads, say law enforcement authorities should lay out their case as soon as possible. They want authorities to explain how Ivins, who led a seemingly normal life as a family man, churchgoer, and volunteer, could have been responsible for one of the nation's most notorious unsolved crimes.

Authorities cast doubt yesterday on reports that Ivins had acted for financial gain based on patents and scientific advances he had made. Experiments by Ivins, working with several other Fort Detrick colleagues, led to two patented inventions considered crucial in the development of a genetically modified anthrax vaccine made by VaxGen, a California company that secured large government contracts after the 2001 anthrax attacks.

But sources familiar with details of the Army's patent process said it was unlikely that Ivins or the other scientists would reap a big financial windfall from VaxGen's vaccine production. They say the government restricts income from inventions produced in its laboratories to no more than $150,000 per year, but the amount is often considerably less.

Jaye Holly, who lived next door to the Ivinses until she and her husband moved to New York a month ago, said she couldn't believe that her former neighbor, who was obsessed with grass recycling and who happily drove a 20-year-old faded red van, would endanger others for financial gain.

"I can't imagine him being involved in a scheme to make money or to make a profit, especially one that would put people at risk or even die," Holly said. "That's not the Bruce we knew. He was sweet, friendly. I mean, he was into grass recycling."

Court records obtained yesterday shed further light on the concerns of a mental health professional who met Ivins during his final months -- a period when, friends say, he fell into depression under the strain of constant FBI scrutiny. The records also suggest that a Frederick social worker, Jean Duley, passed on her concerns to the FBI after receiving death threats from Ivins.

Duley became so worried that she petitioned a local judge for a protective order against Ivins. According to an audio recording of the hearing, she said she had seen Ivins as a therapist for six months, and thought he had tried to kill people in the past.

"As far back as the year 2000, [Ivins] has actually attempted to murder several other people, [including] through poisoning," she said. "He is a revenge killer, when he feels that he's been slighted . . . especially towards women. He plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings," she told a judge.

She described a July 9 group therapy session in which Ivins allegedly talked of mass murder.

"He was extremely agitated, out of control," she said. Ivins told the group he had bought a gun, and proceeded to lay out a "long and detailed homicidal plan," she said.

"Because he was about to be indicted on capital murder charges, he was going to go out in a blaze of glory; that he was going to take everybody out with him," she said.

--Staff writers Carrie Johnson and Paul Kane and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE AUDIOTAPE: IVINS WAS A PSYCHOTIC “REVENGE KILLER’
By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer

In a chilling audiotape, a former therapist of anthrax-case suspect Dr. Bruce Ivins warns a Maryland judge that Ivins is a psychotic "revenge killer" who boasted of buying a gun and killing his co-workers.

The New York Times exclusively obtained the audiotape of a court hearing in which therapist Jean Duley told a judge that she feared for her life. She testifies that, at a July 9 group-therapy session, Ivins announced that he had bought a gun and a bulletproof vest and was plotting to kill his co-workers at the Fort Detrick Army research laboratory.

“He was going to go out in a blaze of glory, that he was going to take everybody out with him,” Duley said. The tape, released to the *Times* by the Maryland District Court in Frederick, is a recording of the recent hearing at which Duley successfully sought a restraining order against Dr. Ivins.

“He is a revenge killer,” Ms. Duley told a Maryland District Court judge on the tape. “When he feels that he has been slighted, and especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings.”

Duley ran group-therapy sessions, and Dr. Ivins was a patient. She said on the tape that she had been cooperating with the FBI in its anthrax investigation and was planning to testify against Ivins before a federal grand jury.

She said that on July 9 Dr. Ivins showed up at the group session in Frederick and was "extremely agitated and out of control." He then described a "long and detailed homicidal plan" regarding his co-workers, Duley said. He also revealed that "he had been roaming the streets of Frederick trying to pick a fight" with a stranger so that he could stab him.

Duley called the FBI and other officials after the troubling group session, and helped have Ivins committed to a mental hospital. She said that Ivins then began calling her, from the hospital, and left threatening messages at 4 in the morning. Ivins was "ranting" and "thanked me for ruining his life" and for enabling the FBI to prosecute him for the anthrax murders.

Duley also told the judge that Ivins had mental problems that began in 2000, when he "attempted to murder several other people" through "poisoning." She didn't elaborate, and NBC News has not been able to locate any old criminal charges against Ivins.

"He has been forensically diagnosed . . . as a sociopathic homicidal killer," Duley added. "I'm scared to death," she said.

The judge quickly agreed to Duley's request, and ordered Ivins to stay away from his former therapist. Ivins was later released from the mental hospital, and killed himself days later.