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US: Ivins solely responsible for anthrax attacks
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-07 11:19 Ivins' cars and his safe deposit box also were searched as investigators closed in on the respected government scientist who had been troubled by mental health problems for years. According to an affidavit filed by Charles B. Wickersham, a postal inspector, the scientist told an unnamed co-worker "that he had `incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times' and 'feared that he might not be able to control his behavior.'" A mental health worker who was involved in treating Ivins disclosed last week that she was so concerned about his behavior that she recently sought a court order to keep him away from her. One FBI document said Ivins "repeatedly named other researchers as possible mailers and claimed that the anthrax used in the attacks resembled that of another researcher" at the same facility. The name of the other researcher was not disclosed. The documents painted a picture of Ivins seeking to mislead investigators beginning in 2002, when he allegedly submitted the wrong samples to FBI investigators. It wasn't until more than two years later, in March 2005, that he was confronted with the alleged switch, according to US Postal Inspector Thomas Dellafera, who added that Ivins insisted he had not sought to deceive. The victims of the attacks had little in common. Robert Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published in Boca Raton, Fla., was the first to die. Thomas Morris Jr. 55, and Joseph Curseen, 47, worked at a Washington-area postal facility that was a hub for sorting the capital's mail. Kathy Nguyen, 61, who had emigrated from Vietnam and lived in the Bronx, worked in a stock room at Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hospital. Ottilie Lundgren, 94, who lived in Oxford, Conn., was the last to die. |
