Episode 5: One Hundred Miles

Summary

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 5: One Hundred Miles
Release Date: April 16, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 5, titled "One Hundred Miles," of the gripping podcast series Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer, host Jeremiah Kroll delves deeper into the harrowing investigation following the anthrax attacks in the wake of September 11, 2001. This episode unravels the complexities of the FBI’s extensive probe, the emergence of false leads, and the profound personal impacts on innocent individuals caught in the crossfire of a relentless search for the truth.

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Yankees Game Three: A Momentary Respite

The episode opens on October 30, 2001, less than two months after 9/11. New York City is grappling with the dual terrors of grief and the anthrax attacks. Amidst this tension, the New York Yankees advance to the World Series, offering a brief moment of hope for the beleaguered city.

Jeremiah Kroll narrates, “The World Series had been delayed over fears of another terrorist attack... while the fans forget their worries, officials can't” (00:44).

To ensure the game’s safety, a top-secret biohazard detection system was deployed at Yankee Stadium. FBI Agent Scott Decker explains, “This program was working on a biosensor air sniffer” (02:27). The technology confirmed no biotoxins were present during Game Three, giving the city a fleeting sense of security.

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A New Anthrax Victim: Kathy Nguyen

Tragedy strikes less than 24 hours after the Yankees' victory. Dr. Marcy Layton, Assistant Commissioner for the Health Department, is alerted to a new case of inhalational anthrax involving Kathy Nguyen, a 61-year-old Bronx resident with no apparent ties to previous victims.

Marcy Layton laments, “61 year old Cathy Nguyen's death from inhalation anthrax is baffling investigators and complicating the entire anthrax investigation” (07:24).

As Marcy investigates, she discovers that Kathy leads a reclusive life, making it difficult to trace her exposure to anthrax. “Kathy immigrated from Vietnam in 1977 and... she doesn't go out that much” (06:53). Despite thorough searches of her apartment and usual haunts, no source of contamination is found, raising fears of a second anthrax attack.

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FBI’s Narrowing Approach: The 100-Mile Radius

FBI Agent Scott Decker makes a breakthrough by analyzing the anthrax-laced letters. The discovery that multiple letters share the same postmark from Trenton, New Jersey, suggests a localized origin of the attacks. Decker posits, “reasonable drive time is roughly 100 miles” (11:29), establishing a radius to focus the investigation.

Further analysis of the letters reveals meticulous details, such as the serifs on the number one in the date “911 01,” indicating a high level of precision. Dan Goldberg notes, “Somebody with a science background, a fairly good science background in order to make the weapon itself” (13:27).

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The Wrong Path: Irshad Shaikh’s Unwarranted Scrutiny

In a critical misstep, the FBI targets Irshad Shaikh, a medical epidemiologist from Chester, Pennsylvania. Despite lacking the necessary microbiological expertise, Shaikh becomes a prime suspect based on vague tips and superficial connections.

Irshad Shaikh recounts the traumatic experience: “They broke the front door, they went in and they went upstairs... They zip tied her hands behind her back at gunpoint” (16:15).

The FBI’s investigation damages Shaikh’s reputation and career, leading to unjustified accusations and lasting personal harm. “Irshad lost his faculty position... His name stayed on an airline watch list for years” (27:53).

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Discovery of the Leahy Letter: A Potential Lead

As the investigation stagnates, the FBI identifies another anthrax-laden letter addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy from a non-existent fourth-grade class in Trenton, NJ. This discovery provides a critical sample for forensic analysis.

Dan Goldberg highlights, “We had almost a full gram of highly purified powder, so that was a big moment for us” (24:26).

The letter's anthrax strain, identified as Ames, is subjected to rigorous testing at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRID). Bruce Ivins, a leading scientist, declares, “these are not garage spores” (25:37), dismissing theories that the anthrax could be produced outside a sophisticated laboratory.

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Conflicting Theories: Domestic Lone Wolf vs. Iraqi State

Amid the investigation, conflicting narratives emerge. While the FBI leans towards a domestic “lone wolf” with scientific expertise, the White House propagates theories implicating Iraq, citing the presence of bentonite in the anthrax—a signature of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.

Dan Goldberg explains, “The White House really thought Iraq was behind the anthrax letters” (32:13), yet further tests disprove this theory. The FBI concludes, “no chemical additives, which means no bentonite, which means no Iraq” (33:04).

These conflicting theories sow confusion and obscure the path to the true perpetrator, leaving the investigation floundering without concrete leads.

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A Technological Breakthrough: Whole Genome Sequencing

With traditional methods yielding limited progress, Agent Decker turns to cutting-edge science—whole genome sequencing—to trace the anthrax back to its origin. This ambitious endeavor involves partnering with a startup led by Claire Fraser of TIGR (The Institute for Genomic Research).

Marcy Layton describes the urgency: “How urgent it was and how much pressure they were under to come up with a lead that was going to be meaningful” (36:44).

The collaboration aims to map the genetic fingerprint of the anthrax strain, potentially linking it to a specific laboratory and, ultimately, the killer. However, this innovative approach introduces new challenges and complexities, setting the stage for further developments in the investigation.

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Conclusion: The Path Ahead

Episode 5 concludes with the FBI poised at a critical juncture. While they have dismantled erroneous leads like Irshad Shaikh, the real culprit remains elusive. The introduction of whole genome sequencing offers a promising yet uncertain avenue toward solving the case. As the hunt intensifies, the series teases forthcoming episodes that will explore deeper into the scientific pursuit and the unexpected proximity of the killer.

Jeremiah Kroll leaves listeners with a tantalizing preview: “Next time on the hunt for the anthrax killer... how close he already is” (37:35).

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Key Quotes

• Jeremiah Kroll: “These were fighting words for a city that was down and out.” (00:44)
• Marcy Layton: “61 year old Cathy Nguyen's death from inhalation anthrax is baffling investigators...” (07:24)
• Dan Goldberg: “We had almost a full gram of highly purified powder, so that was a big moment for us” (24:26)
• Bruce Ivins: “These are not garage spores.” (25:37)
• Irshad Shaikh: “I am not the anthrax killer.” (38:16)

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Production Credits

Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a collaborative production by Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, Dig Studios, and CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by Jeremiah Kroll and executive produced by Scott Tiffany, Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, Stephen Michael, Josh Block, and Joniel Kastner, among others. For more compelling true crime stories, visit CBC’s podcast portal.

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This detailed summary captures the intricate developments and emotional nuances of Episode 5, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with a comprehensive understanding of the unfolding investigation and its broader implications.

Transcript

[Jeremiah Kroll]

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army.

[Dan Goldberg]

But what no one would know for.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true?

[Dan Goldberg]

I'm Dan Goldberg.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

I'm from CBC's Personally Toy Soldier, available.

[Marcy Layton]

Now wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Dan Goldberg]

What is a New Yorker? I'll tell you this much.

[Irshad Shaikh]

Knock us down, not only do we.

[Dan Goldberg]

Get up, but we'll fight back twice as tough.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

These were fighting words for a city that was down and out. The date was October 30, 2001. It had been less than two months since 9 11. And New York City and the country were mourning. But like a scene right out of a movie, the New York Yankees had climbed their way into the World Series. And this is the ad that played just before game three.

[Dan Goldberg]

New York is still standing strong.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The World Series had been delayed over fears of another terrorist attack. And when the games did begin, New York played the Diamondbacks in Arizona for the first two matchups and got beat badly, losing both nine to one and then four to zero. It wasn't great. So in game three back in New York, the Yankees are up against it.

[Dan Goldberg]

It's going to be deafening tonight. Down two games to none. The fans are definitely giving me an advantage for the New York Yankees right here. And certainly tonight our attention is diverted to the Bronx, but our focus remains on Lower Manhattan, where it should be since the terrible acts of September 11th.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Of course, new York is also dealing with the terror of the anthrax letters. They've been sent to top media stations in the city, infecting about a dozen. In Washington D.C. thousands have been exposed. But tonight in Yankee Stadium, it seems NYC has hope. While the fans forget their worries, officials can't. They're concerned there might be more than hope in the air. So they've put in place a top secret technology that's working in the stadium unseen behind the crowds.

[Dan Goldberg]

And that was at the time, not public. That was close hold information. This program was working on a biosensor air sniffer.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's a brand new biohazard detection system that according to FBI agent Scott Decker, had been rushed to the city for the series. The operation was so classified that as far as we can tell, it's never even been reported in the press.

[Dan Goldberg]

I only knew it was being done in D.C. because I had a TS clearance and I was part of the program.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

TS meaning top secret.

[Dan Goldberg]

I had a need to know they were being set up on so called Quote, executive sites in Washington, D.C. you can read into that what you want. Mayor Giuliani asked that they also be brought into his city specifically for the World Series, which they deemed a terrorist target.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Officials want to safeguard that potential target, especially since there are rumors that President George Bush himself might show up at the game tonight to throw out the first pitch as a sign of support. Just the day before, the White House had issued a broad warning to all Americans about some kind of looming threat. So the President, making a public appearance, would be bold. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.

[Dan Goldberg]

The President of the United States.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's a patriotic moment. President Bush struts out to the mound, totally confident. Derek Jeter, the Yankees start shortstop, had been giving the President pro tips in the dugout. Bush gives a thumbs up to the crowd, steps on the mound, winds up his pitch, and nails it. He throws a strike. It's a good omen for the night. The game comes down to the wire in the bottom of the ninth. The Yankees are winning 2 to 1. One ball, two strikes. The Diamondbacks down to their final strike of the night. If the Yankees can shut this last hit down, the game is theirs. The Diamondbacks hit a grounder right to the Yankees famous shortstop, Jeter.

[Dan Goldberg]

Yankees win Game 3.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The Yankees get their win, and the biosensor works, confirming no biotoxins were present. For a moment, it feels like New York City is gonna be okay. That lasts a day. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 5100 miles less than 24 hours later, Dr. Marcy Layton, the assistant Commissioner for the Health Department, is once again dealing with a new case of anthrax.

[Marcy Layton]

A colleague of mine at one of our small hospitals here in Manhattan called because he was concerned that he had a case of inhalational anthrax in his emergency room.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Marcy had helped to diagnose the anthrax infections at NBC and the New York Post just a couple of weeks ago. And now a Bronx resident named Kathy Nguyen, who's 61 with no connection to any of those newsroom attacks, is struggling to breathe.

[Marcy Layton]

We were able to quickly confirm that she did indeed have inhalational anthrax. And it immediately raised the concern about whether there had been a second anthrax attack in New York City. Our biggest concern Was she the first, and were there going to be many more to follow?

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Marcy needs to speak with Kathy to figure out where this exposure could have come from. But when she arrives at the hospital, Kathy's already unconscious. The little information Marcy does have scares her.

[Marcy Layton]

She wasn't a postal worker. She wasn't anyone that anyone would have directly targeted.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

So where did Kathy come into contact with anthrax? Was it somehow loose in the city?

[Marcy Layton]

Unfortunately, we had very little information on where she had spent time during the 21 days before she got ill. So to try and figure out where she'd been, we went to her apartment looking for clues of things that she did, where she went to church, where she may have shopped recently. We were basically trying to put a timeline together of everywhere she was.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Marcy learns Kathy immigrated from Vietnam in 1977 and that she lives alone now and doesn't go out that much. When she does, it's mostly just to work and back or to the market to buy food. She cooks for herself and her neighbors.

[Marcy Layton]

You know, I think what was really hard about her case is that, you know, I was in her apartment, like, you sort of got to know her in this very personal way.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Getting to know Kathy makes it harder. When Marcy hears the news.

[Marcy Layton]

61 year old Cathy Nguyen's death from inhalation anthrax is baffling investigators and complicating the entire anthrax investigation.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Three days after she checked into the hospital, Kathy Nguyen is the fourth anthrax fatality.

[Marcy Layton]

How she could have come into contact with enough anthrax spores to kill her is anybody's guess.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

That guessing game is Marcy's job. She's got to consider any potential avenue of exposure, and there's one she dreads to even think about.

[Marcy Layton]

It has always been a concern that a bioterrorism attack would happen in a subway or one of the major train terminals. It was terrifying.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Marcy knows that Kathy took the 6 train to work every day. And with more than 3 million other people also riding the subway system every day, transferring lines, all of them interconnected, if there were anthrax fours in any one of those train cars, the reach could be catastrophic.

[Marcy Layton]

We felt like the right thing to do was to leave no stone unturned and trying to figure out how she was exposed because the concern about another attack in New York City was just.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

So high, if they close the subway for testing, they could cause real panic. So Marcy and the health department are discreet as they swab the walls near air vents at subway stops on the 6 trains route. They do this all along Kathy's usual path to work from the South Bronx to upper Manhattan. Then Marcy has to wait for the results.

[Marcy Layton]

I've had many anxious hours in this job over the years. Probably those were some of the most anxious.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Finally, the test results arrive.

[Marcy Layton]

We'd never found any evidence of anthrax anywhere around where we knew she had been. There was no anthrax in any of the stations we tested.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

This suggests that Kathy's subway route is safe. But then it leaves the giant question of how she got infected and what that danger poses to the city. While Marcy's working on the how, the FBI is focused on the who, and they're about to get a breakthrough. About a week before, the World Series, agents had discovered the letter that infected Johanna Houden, the reporter at the New York Post. Inside the newspapers offices, they sent the powder and the letter for testing. And now the results we're in.

[Dan Goldberg]

It was the same strain of anthrax.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Considering all they're up against, for Dekker, finally getting some information is a big win. And even though it's a small sample, this trace amount of anthrax tells the FBI a lot.

[Dan Goldberg]

Under an electron microscope, the morphology of the spores was very, very similar. Crude, clumpy. So it appeared that the same person or persons had mailed both envelopes. New York Post and Brokaw.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

And the letters themselves reveal clues about that person. First, the white six and a half inch envelopes look identical. And more telling are the markings on the outside of the envelopes.

[Dan Goldberg]

The letters were postmarked in New Jersey.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

If you haven't mailed anything in a while, a postmark is that official ink stamp the post office puts on the outside of envelopes. And both of the New York anthrax envelopes are stamped with the same one. September 18th, Trenton, New Jersey.

[Dan Goldberg]

That is, they were mailed at the same time. Definitely picked up by the letter carrier at the same time.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decker and the FBI also find that in addition to the New York Letters, the D.C. letter addressed to Senator Daschle passed through that same processing center. It's Postmarked TRENTON, NJ, Oct 9, Three weeks after the letters that went to New York. All of this tells agents that the Trenton, New Jersey area is likely the location of the mailer, or at least a place the mailer has relatively easy access to. To Decker, that means the mailer probably drove to Trenton.

[Dan Goldberg]

You have a weekend to do it. You know you have to do it and get back to work the next morning before somebody notices you're missing. So it's based on drive time. What would be considered a reasonable drive time?

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decker believes that reasonable drive time is roughly 100 miles. So theoretically, he now has a working radius to hone in on the killer. 100 miles in any direction is hardly a pinpoint, but it's a hell of a lot narrower than anyone anywhere in the world. And on top of that, the FBI now has some clues inside the letters as well. Linguistic and behavioral experts examine the words to create a new tool in the investigation, a psychological profile.

[Dan Goldberg]

Some of the words in the note were misspelled. Penicillin was misspelled. They felt that the misspelling was on purpose to mislead us, make us think somebody who wasn't a native English speaker wrote it. So they said that was probably a red herring done on purpose. Allah is great. Death to, you know, Israel. That kind of thing.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

According to Decker, this assessment suggests the author is trying to pose as a foreigner. That idea confirms what he and other agents have suspected and reveals for the first time a specific kind of suspect.

[Dan Goldberg]

It was not Al Qaeda, but it was what they call a lone wolf. An individual domestic here in the US Working by himself with no other people.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

A lone wolf domestic person in the US Working alone. From this angle, Decker thinks the letters do seem strange. Phrases like Allah is great seem to be trying maybe too hard to tap into the fear of September 11th. The letters themselves are actually dated 911 01. And that date stands out not just because of the reference to 9 11, but for the way the number one is written. It's not just a vertical line. Whoever wrote it added the serifs, the small lines at the top and bottom of each number one. To some analysts, that suggests someone who's formal, detailed, meticulous, like a scientist, obviously.

[Dan Goldberg]

Somebody with a science background, a fairly good science background in order to make the weapon itself.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decker and the FBI now know a potential location of the killer and what kind of person they're hunting.

[Dan Goldberg]

Somebody non confrontational. That was not necessarily violent. That was a bad person, but not a confrontational person.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Their suspect is a quiet, meticulous scientist in the United States with detailed knowledge of bioweapons. A person a lot like Agent Scott Decker and the scientists he knows personally, which to him means one thing.

[Dan Goldberg]

We've got to search among our ranks and find out a quiet person who's pretty clever and knows about anthrax and microbiology. And it very likely could be somebody we know.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

This could be an inside job, possibly a scientist working for the government who lives or works around Southern New Jersey. The net is tightening. And then agents get a tip. Someone calls the FBI about their neighbor. He's a Middle Eastern looking man. Who's been mixing a strange cloudy liquid with a silver canister in his backyard. They know he also works for the government and is close friends with a disease scientist. The two men live in Chester, Pennsylvania, a small historic city that's only 50 miles from the mail center outside Trenton, New Jersey.

[Dan Goldberg]

It's not far from where the letter was mailed. You know he was in that 100 mile radius. What's a reasonable driving time to leave Chester, drop a letter and get back to Chester?

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's about a two hour round trip. Certainly seems possible. So Agents spring into action. On an early morning in November 2001, about 30 FBI agents with guns and battering rams and a hazmat team in gas masks jump out of black SUVs and rush the scientist's house.

[Marcy Layton]

At 24, I lost my narrative. Or rather it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. Follow reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's early in the morning and Farah Sheikh is asleep. Suddenly the sounds of her front door being kicked in jolt her awake.

[Irshad Shaikh]

They broke the front door, they went in and they went upstairs. So she is in her bedroom. She has no idea what is happening. There are agents with Uzis and moon suits with gun in front.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's the FBI and they're barking orders at Dr. Irshad Shaikh's wife. They zip tie her hands behind her back at gunpoint.

[Irshad Shaikh]

You would think like it's a bad dream that you are in and she had no idea what it was also, but she said, I have not done, we have not done anything wrong.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Ershad served as the city of Chester's health commissioner. He's not a lab guy, but he is a medical epidemiologist, a disease detective who investigates viruses. And these FBI agents have questions for him about anthrax at his home. His wife tells him the truth. Irshad isn't there. He's already at his office in city Hall. Soon, federal agents descend on his workplace.

[Irshad Shaikh]

They are in suits and I think a few of them had an FBI badge.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

But it's all a mystery to Irshad. He has no idea why the agents are there. But being from Pakistan and not yet a US Citizen, he's terrified. The mayor's office down the hall jumps in to help.

[Irshad Shaikh]

We thought this was just a serious misunderstanding and nothing else. And then city solicitor came down and the mayor. And she said, the mayor has advised me to have an attorney. And we said, why an attorney? We didn't do any. She said, this is United States. Half of the FBI field office from Washington is at your home.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

At his home, agents are tearing through his house, turning everything inside out, looking for clues.

[Irshad Shaikh]

They had made a sort of a camp outside our homes in that small garden that we had. And they were hauling things from inside and testing them. And they had my wife in those plastic handcuffs.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Agents lead his wife out of the house, and she watches cuffed as they dig through all of her belongings.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I sat down in my chair and I thought, this is it.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

This is.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I'm done.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Inside Irshad's office that morning, FBI agents dig into his history.

[Irshad Shaikh]

They had questions about 9, 11 and anthrax, what I was doing in Pakistan, what I knew, what we do, and how long we have been here.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The we Irshad is talking about is his brother Masoud, who lives with them and works for the city, too. What they don't know is that at the exact same time, another team is searching the office of their friend Asif Qazi, who's an accountant in the city's finance department.

[Irshad Shaikh]

His father and my father were friends. They worked in the same government department. So, you know, it was that sort of a friendship and brotherhood.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

That brotherhood has caught the attention of the FBI, who now suspect that Irshad, his brother, and their friend Asif may be tied to the anthrax attacks.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I'm cooperating fully. Whatever the question they had, I answered.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Agents ask him about that strange cloudy liquid in the silver canister. Far from anything sinister, Irshad claims it's dish soap. Asif had been fixing his broken dishwasher. But the FBI has a no stone unturned policy on this case, so they keep the questions coming. Yashad tells them he isn't the scientist they seem to be looking for.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I teach in public health and I teach health information systems. Nothing clinical at all. But they were trying to ask me about my knowledge of anthrax, and I said, I have no idea. But of course, I'm a medical doctor. So we did read about cutaneous anthrax, but I've never even seen a case.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Irshad has a point. His background is studying disease patterns. And neither Irshad nor his brother or Friend are experts in microbiology. So those points don't square at all with the FBI's profile. After four hours, the agents say he's free to go home for now. But when he starts to leave, he finds that word has gotten out.

[Irshad Shaikh]

And as I open the door in the reception or lobby of my office, there are at least 50 to 60 reporters and tak, tak, tak, tak, tak. And I said, oh, my God. They came in, and I cooperated with them fully. Whatever answers they wanted, I gave them. And if there's anything more, they'll come back and talk to me. But in the meantime, I'm getting back to my work, and I have my work to do. Thank you.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

FBI agents questioned him for hours in his City hall office. Delaware county detectives later left the office with Dr. Shaikh's computer and plastic bags full of papers. FBI agents dig into the men's backgrounds. The question their friends and family members, and they search for anthrax in their homes.

[Irshad Shaikh]

This was the scene yesterday as agents.

[Marcy Layton]

Dressed in protective gear checked out an apparent allegation that linked the property somehow to anthrax.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Agents set up decontamination tents and donned protective gear to search two homes within blocks of each other. One of the homes, an apartment house on Edgemont Avenue, belongs to the city's health commissioner, Dr. Irshad Shaikh. Those hazmat teams scour Irshad and his friends and family's homes and businesses, but they struggle to find anything even related to anthrax. No writings, no manuals. Agent Decker suspects he knows why this lead isn't panning out. He knows well that tips from the public aren't always credible, especially when they're reported against someone with darker skin.

[Dan Goldberg]

It was the public. They would call these things in because an olive complected guy was supposedly surveilling a store with the intent to do harm. Well, he wasn't. He was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

They keep looking, but the nagging suspicion remains. Have they turned a man's life upside down for nothing? As the agents in Pennsylvania continue their investigation of Irshad, agents in Washington, D.C. are hunting for that second anthrax letter that Decker's colleague suspects was sent to the Capitol.

[Dan Goldberg]

Well, we've got I don't know how many hundreds of bags quarantined over on Capitol Hill that contain mail from that weekend. I'll bet there's another letter in those bags now. How are we going to find it?

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Agents know that if that letter is there, it's a ticking time bomb. Lethal if it leaks. Or gets opened. Their answer is to build a custom clean room in a warehouse to safely sort through all that mail.

[Dan Goldberg]

They put plexiglass windows in it and seal it real tight. And actually they have airflow handling system they put in it so it has negative pressure, which means when you open the door to this makeshift laboratory, air flows in, not out. So if spores get loose in there, they'll stay in there. They won't come out.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The capital system processes more than 250,000 letters a week, so trying to find one letter is tough.

[Dan Goldberg]

The EPA had trained agents, and they donated those agents to help search for the envelope. And even the elite hostage rescue team at Quantico, they volunteered to come up and do the decontamination.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

They want to neutralize the threat of that unopened letter. But there's another reason they're anxious to find it.

[Dan Goldberg]

We had hardly any of the powder left. It had been spilled whenever it was open, so we didn't have too much of that.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decker and the FBI need more anthrax powder so they can study its makeup and figure out who made it. In order to find it, they start the painstaking process of carefully opening and testing 642 individual mailbags by hand.

[Dan Goldberg]

You had probably the best law enforcement tactical team in the country doing this very mundane part of a hazmat operation.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

And then two weeks in, one agent yells out. He's holding an envelope with blocky writing, just like the other letter in D.C. the return address is from a fourth grade class at Greendale School in New Jersey, which doesn't exist, and it's addressed to a different senator.

[Dan Goldberg]

We found Patrick Leahy's letter, which was unopened.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Inside this envelope addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy, they find exactly what Decker and the FBI had been hoping for.

[Dan Goldberg]

We had almost a full gram of highly purified powder, so that was a big moment for us.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

In order to analyze this new sample, they turn once again to the scientists at usamrid, the military's top biological weapons lab. The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. USAMRID had pretty much been the only game in town ever since it had made a name for itself and for anthrax. In the early 1990s, back then, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was known to have been experimenting with and stockpiling anthrax. So the US Government turned to its USAMRID researchers to develop an anthrax vaccine that would protect their soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. And it had been successful.

[Dan Goldberg]

I believe the threat is real, and we have a way to Counter the threat and to offer protection to the men and women in uniform. And it's the fully FDA approved anthrax vaccine.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

One of the co inventors of the vaccine was a scientist named Bruce Ivins who still worked at usamrid. And when he takes a look at this new sample closely, he's stunned. He says, quote, these are not garage spores.

[Dan Goldberg]

People used to say, well they can do it in their garage. It's not that easy.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Another top scientist at USAMRID says, I've never been this scared in my life.

[Dan Goldberg]

The stuff is done well and it's weaponized correctly, which is not easy to do.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Unlike the anthrax sent to New York, this powder from the Washington Letters mailed three weeks later is extremely light.

[Dan Goldberg]

It told us that whoever had done this had really refined their technique between mailings. They really figured out what they had done wrong in the first mailing and they got it right on the second one. So they're obviously technically very astute in the laboratory.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

All of that casts serious doubt on the involvement of public health expert and non lab guy Irshad Shaikh.

[Dan Goldberg]

He really didn't have the expertise in bacteriology and especially anthrax to be able to do this.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The FBI rules him, his brother Massoud and their friend Asif Kazi out as potential suspects. It seems the FBI had in fact acted on a bad tip. But for Director Robert Mueller, it was just a matter of the FBI doing its job.

[Dan Goldberg]

Every threat is taken seriously.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Every threat receives a full response. We have no choice but to assume.

[Dan Goldberg]

That each reported instance is an actual bio threat.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

A lot of tips sent to the FBI were bogus, especially since post 911 Islamophobia at an all time high. Some of the calls were well intentioned, others misguided, but some were weaponized.

[Dan Goldberg]

We get that a lot in the FBI. It's called a poison pen. You know, I don't like this person, but I bet I can get them to go interview him and get the FBI to give this guy a hard time. And you go and interview the guy, his wife and kids see the FBI talking to their dad and you know, people will see that, the neighbors will talk. It can cause harm where there shouldn't.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Really be any harm caused and there was harm.

[Irshad Shaikh]

Honestly, if I think it ever happened to me again, maybe I will have a heart attack. But really I do not know how we survived it.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Irshad lost his faculty position at Johns Hopkins where he'd worked for seven years. And he was banned from a promotion with the federal government because he was still on a DOJ watch list. Irshad says his neighbors stayed suspicious of him until he eventually moved away. Both brothers had applications for U.S. citizenship get blocked. And Irshad's name stayed on an airline watch list for years.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I would land, people would take things from the overhead bin, and then the pilot would announce, I knew the drill. Please go back to your seats. Every passenger, go back to your seat. Customs want to come on the plane. They would come on the plane, haul me away from the plane in front of 400 people, and everybody would think, wow, this guy was a terrorist. He was sitting just next to me.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Despite all of that, somehow Irshad has made peace with what happened.

[Irshad Shaikh]

I can say, you know, I'm honored, proud to be calling myself a US citizen.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Heading into late November 2001, as the FBI was still investigating Irshad and looking for the Leahy letter, the anthrax killer struck again. The place and the victim could not be more improbable. A rural town of fewer than 10,000. Another patient has symptoms of inhalation anthrax. This time it's not in the nation's capital or in the news center of America. It's in rural Connecticut, about 80 miles northeast of New York City. A 94 year old woman named Ottilie Lundgren arrives at the hospital with what seems to be a mild illness. But a few days after she's admitted, doctors confirm she has inhalation anthrax. And then her pastor, Richard Mizell was with her today just before she died on November 21, 2001. Ottilie Lundgren is victim number five. It's just now hard to imagine how.

[Marcy Layton]

A 94 year old woman in Connecticut.

[Dan Goldberg]

Became the latest victim of anthrax. Ottilie Lundgren wasn't a big politician or a media name. She didn't work at the post office. In fact, she didn't work anywhere. She didn't even drive. She rarely left her home. According to her niece, she went to church and to the hairdresser.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Ottilie's lifestyle and location don't match any of the previous targets. Yet Dr. Marcy Layton, who tried to solve Kathy Nguyen's death after the Yankees game three weeks earlier, feels like this new investigation in Connecticut mirrors her own.

[Marcy Layton]

They did something very similar to us, where they really looked very hard for any evidence of anthrax at the patient's home and other places and did not find evidence.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Two more deaths in less than a month and neither case has any envelopes to examine or any real way to know how they happened. Marcy forms a worrisome theory about how Ottilie and Kathy got sick. She thinks trace spores of anthrax infected them at home.

[Marcy Layton]

For these two people, it was like the one in a million chance. Maybe they ripped the envelope in a certain way and there was a few spores on the outside of an envelope that had touched the machines that had touched the other letters. And that's possibly how they were exposed.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

If it's true that the US Mail is carrying trace spores of anthrax along its path, it could mean that anyone with a mailbox between D.C. and the Northeast is now at risk. As if the pressure to find the anthrax killer isn't enough, an unexpected hurdle has now thrown the case into chaos. ABC News broke the story from three well placed but separate sources tonight. ABC News has been told that initial tests on the anthrax sent to Senator.

[Dan Goldberg]

Daschle have found a telltale chemical additive whose name means a lot to weapons experts. It is called bentonite.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Bentonite is a mineral used in chemical engineering that can help make anthrax fluffier and float more easily. And ABC calls it telltale because there's someone in particular who's known to mix it into anthrax. It is a trademark of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. It does mean for me that Iraq becomes the prime suspect as the source for the anthrax used in these letters. ABC News says that well placed sources believe the anthrax is made by Iraq. And those sources are about as well placed as it gets.

[Dan Goldberg]

The White House really thought Iraq was behind the anthrax letters.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The federal government now has two very different theories out there. The FBI believes it's a single, well trained scientist in the US and the White House is saying it's Iraq using the same kind of anthrax Saddam Hussein allegedly used in the 1990s against his own people.

[Dan Goldberg]

We were continually being asked by the higher ups and by the administration why couldn't Iraq have done this? Why didn't they do this? We kept saying, because there's no indication that Ames exists in any laboratory in any place in the country of Iraq.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

So the strain doesn't match Iraq's. But what about bentonite, that telltale sign of Saddam's handiwork? The FBI decides to run more tests and quickly come to a conclusion.

[Dan Goldberg]

Once we looked at the spores harder, we could find no additives, no chemical additives, clay, silicon, nothing like that.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

No chemical additives, which means no bentonite, which means no Iraq.

[Dan Goldberg]

But those rumors certainly were spreading. Now, how it got into the press? I don't know. But there was no basis in fact for it.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

That doesn't stop more rumors, though, or the insistence by the White House that Iraq is involved.

[Dan Goldberg]

We repeatedly told the boss, the director, there is absolutely no connection that we can see to Iraq. We have no evidence at all to point in that direction.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's been almost exactly one month since the New York Yankees won that third game. They won the next night, too, but they lost the series. Remarkably, in that month, anthrax has killed two more people. The FBI has raided the homes and offices of innocent suspects. And the White House has begun tossing around Iraq as a central suspect, despite the FBI disproving it. But agents have no evidence to prove their own theory either, and they're running out of ideas. So Decker turns to what he knows best. Science. If they can crack the genetic code of the anthrax, it could lead them to the killer's lab. It's a long shot until he gets a call from a startup.

[Dan Goldberg]

They were at the cutting edge of DNA sequencing at the time. In the country, they were the best. They were probably the only place that was trying to do whole genome sequencing.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Unbeknownst to him and the FBI, Dr. Paul Keim from Arizona had sent this startup a sample of the anthrax cells from Robert Stevens, the very first anthrax victim. And this startup had been working on trying to find a genetic fingerprint of the AIM strain that infected him.

[Dan Goldberg]

They thought they found 17 mutations between Stevens isolate in the strain they had sequenced. And they were fairly excited about that.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Let me translate that, startup. They're onto something. So far, to oversimplify it, the key info the FBI has been able to extract from the powder is that the anthrax was Ames and that it's from a lab. But remember, dozens of labs around the world use that strain. And the FBI wants to trace the anthrax back to its exact source because that source can tell them who made that batch of anthrax. So to match the mailed anthrax to its source, the FBI needs to do what's called whole genome sequencing, basically mapping an organism's DNA. And in 2001, it just isn't possible until that startup called.

[Dan Goldberg]

It was run by a scientist named Claire Fraser, who was accomplished in the DNA, and she started her company to develop whole genome sequencing with the thought of using it for evolution studies. It's called tigr.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

TIGR is an acronym and a pretty cool name for a lab. It stands for the Institute for Genomic Research. And they'd actually been working on cracking the DNA of anthrax for years. And now Claire Fraser, a microbiologist and the president of tigr, meets with the FBI for the first time.

[Marcy Layton]

When we walked into that meeting with the FBI, for one thing, they were all wearing suits, and that's not a bad thing. But scientists typically don't get awards for fashion. You know, it's jeans and a T shirt. So you already saw that it was a different culture. They were under a tremendous amount of pressure. So there was no kidding around.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Decker and the FBI know that with the Leahy letter, they've just found there's enough anthrax powder for Tiger to start mapping the DNA.

[Marcy Layton]

What was very clear in every one of our meetings with the FBI once we engaged with them was how. How urgent it was and how much pressure they were under to come up with a lead that was going to be meaningful. We felt like we had one chance to get this right.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

It's a chance the FBI wants to take.

[Dan Goldberg]

There was absolutely no guarantee that was going to work out at all. So all this is going on with no guarantee of success.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

But Decker knows if they can crack that code, they could find the killer.

[Dan Goldberg]

So we knew we were going to have to do something novel and unique and develop a better technology than we had that day.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

What they don't know is that building that technology will take them on a path they never imagined. And they have no idea how far they are from identifying the real culprit, but how close he already is. Next time on the hunt for the anthrax killer. Decker and the FBI find a bioweapons expert for the US government whose security clearance was suspended just two weeks before 9 11.

[Dan Goldberg]

All those things came together as a perfect picture of who we were looking for. I was certainly on the suspect list.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

Every place he goes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he is followed by squads of FBI agents.

[Dan Goldberg]

I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, I am not the anthrax killer.

[Jeremiah Kroll]

The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio and Digg Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by Me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Digg Studios. Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio and Joniel Kastner at Spoke Media. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf, story editing by Janiel Kastner, sound design and mix by Evan Arnett Original Composition by John O'Hara Production by Spoke Media Production support for USG Audio by Josh Lalonghi Tanya Springer is the Senior Manager of CBC Podcasts. Arif Narrani is the Director of CBC Podcasts. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for an all new episode of the Hunt for the Anthrax Killer. Or you can binge the whole series ad free by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.