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- [00:02]
Vanessa Richardson
Hi, it's Vanessa. If you're drawn to true crime stories about disappearances, there's a new Crime House original you should check out. It's called the Final Hours, hosted by Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Sarah's an advocate for missing and murdered victims whose own sister disappeared in 2001. And Courtney is a true crime storyteller who's seen firsthand how crime can change a family forever. Together, they bring lived experience to every case, examining the moments just before a person disappears. The routines, the timelines, the small details that often get overlooked because every disappearance has a moment where everything still feels normal. Until it doesn't. Listen to and follow the final hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. This is crime house. Witnesses are a crucial resource in any murder investigation. When detectives talk to people about what they saw, who they saw and when they saw it, it helps shape the rest of the investigation. But how do you proceed when there are no witnesses, no. No surveillance footage, no forensic evidence of any kind, and where anyone in America, from an ordinary mailroom worker to the most powerful figures in media and politics, could be the next victim? This was the challenge the FBI faced in the fall of 2001. Just one week after the deadly 911 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. prominent journalists and senators started receiving anonymous letters. Inside were threats and a mysterious white powder. At first, no one paid much attention to the messages. But when people started getting sick and even dying, the authorities took a closer look. That's when they realized the letters contained a deadly bacteria called anthrax. These powder filled envelopes weren't a childish prank. They were an intentional act of bioterrorism. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Wednesday and Friday Prime, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. These cases are wild and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow so we can continue building this community together. And for early ad free access to both episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts Today, I'm talking about a terrifying act of bioterrorism. The 2001 anthrax attacks that fall, 72 people got sick after handling letters filled with the deadly anthrax bacteria. Five of those victims later died from their symptoms. The attacks brought fresh fear and anxiety to a country already reeling from September 11. The authorities wondered who was sending these poisoned letters and what their motive could be. Were they al Qaeda terrorists intent on continuing the bloodshed of 9, 11, or something else entirely? The FBI would spend the next several years and tens of millions of dollars chasing the answers to those questions. And when they finally found them, they led much closer to home than anyone expected. All that and more coming up.
- [04:12]
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- [04:14]
Vanessa Richardson
Congrats.
- [04:14]
Lemonade Pet Insurance Advertiser
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- [05:22]
Vanessa Richardson
The most infamous act of bioterrorism in US History began with a letter to Jennifer Lopez. It was Wednesday, September 19, 2001. Staff at American Media Incorporated in Boca Raton, Florida were checking their mail. American Media, commonly known as AMI, published a popular tabloid called the Sun. It was the sort of magazine you'd see in the checkout line at the supermarket. Lots of sensational cover stories and juicy celebrity gossip. One of the Sun's primary sources was reader submissions. Tips, stories, crazy pictures, that kind of thing. As a result, sorting and reading the mountains of mail they received was a big part of the job for AMI staff. On that Wednesday in September, a low level assistant named Bobby Bender opened a large envelope that contained a handwritten letter seemingly intended for pop star Jennifer Lopez. Bender couldn't recall the exact wording of the letter, but the gist was that the sender was in love with Lopez. They wanted the singer to call off her upcoming wedding to backup dancer Chris Judd. Whatever the specifics, the letter was weird enough that Bobby wanted to show it to his friends. So he took it to the nearby photo department where Assistant Photo Editor 63 year old Robert Stevens was working. Robert was born in England and moved to America in 1974, where he spent his entire career working for AMI Publications. He'd briefly retired in the year 2000, but he missed the job and his co workers so much that he decided to come back. When Bobby showed him the JLO letter, Robert brought it back to his desk to take a closer look. He quickly realized the large envelope contained more than just the letter. The sender had also included a cheap cigar, an empty tin of chewing tobacco, and a Jewish Star of David pendant. As Robert removed the pendant, a bunch of white powder poured out of the envelope and onto his desk and keyboard. Nobody thought much of it at the time. People always sent the son weird stuff. Robert cleaned up the powder, threw the letter away, and everybody went back to work. None of them knew their lives were in danger. Ten days later, on September 29, Robert and his wife Maureen were visiting their daughter Casey in Charlotte, North Carolina when he started feeling under the weather. At first he was just unusually tired after a hike at a local state park. Then, while driving to visit Casey's boyfriend about 150 miles away in the city of Durham, Robert started shivering and his face turned red. Although Maureen and Casey were concerned, Robert insisted he was fine. But by the time they got to Durham, Robert was feeling so bad that he took a nap while the rest of the family went out for lunch. When they came back, Robert was running a fever. Maureen and Casey urged him to go to a doctor, but Robert refused. Instead, they drove back to Charlotte that night, and the following morning he and Maureen made the drive back to their home near Boca Raton, Florida. On their way, Robert had some trouble breathing and had to tilt his head back to keep his airway clear. But he still figured it was just a cold or some kind of bug he'd picked up on the road. When they got back home, Robert went upstairs to bed. Maureen hoped her husband would just sleep off his illness. But just after 1am she woke up to the sound of Robert throwing up in the bathroom. His pillow was soaked with sweat, and when she went to ask if he was okay, his response was incoherent. He was delirious. At this point, Maureen knew this was something a lot more serious than the common cold. She helped get Robert in the car and rushed him to the nearest hospital. He was admitted just after 2am on October 2nd 2nd, 2001. Initially, doctors diagnosed Robert with meningitis and pneumonia. The problem was he didn't respond well to treatment. Over the next two days, his condition only got worse. Soon, Robert had a seizure and had to be put on a breathing machine. Not long after that, he was showing signs of kidney failure. Doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong until they ran tests on his spinal fluid. They that's when they learned Robert was infected with a deadly respiratory bacteria called Bacillus anthracis, commonly known as anthrax. Armed with this knowledge, doctors rushed to treat Robert with an antibiotic called Cipro, which was known to be effective against the disease. But it was too late. On October 5, 2001, three days after he arrived at the hospital, Robert Stevens was pronounced dead. When doctors told the press his cause of death had been anthrax, they went out of their way to say there was no cause for alarm. Although anthrax is dangerous, it's not contagious. The only way to get infected is to come in contact with anthrax spores. If those spores are inhaled, they can cause fluid buildup in the lungs, skin sores, organ failure and swelling in the brain, among many other unpleasant symptoms. Fortunately, naturally occurring anthrax is rare. The spores usually grow on animal hides or under soil. So unless you work on a farm, you're not likely to get infected. Even then, it's extremely uncommon. There were only 18 confirmed cases in the US throughout the 20th century. Despite all this, Robert's death sparked a full blown panic. Because while anthrax is rare in the wild, it it's one of the world's most popular biological weapons. Starting in the early 1900s, countries including Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the United States have all studied anthrax as a weapon of war. And they all came to the same conclusion. Anthrax is effective because it's very deadly and very resilient. In 1943, British and American scientists said a herd of sheep loose on an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland then detonated several bombs filled with anthrax spores. Within 24 hours, every animal on the island was either dead or dying. When the experiment ended, the scientists set fire to the island to kill the spores. To their shock, the soil still tested Positive for anthrax. Even after the entire island had burned. It took another 40 years until the island was deemed safe for humans to visit again. So when word got out that an American journalist had died of anthrax, it was a major news story. Remember, this was just three weeks after September 11th. The terrorist group Al Qaeda had killed over 3,000 people by crashing airplanes into the World Trade center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The nation was already in a state of extreme paranoia, concerned that terrorists could strike again at any mom. Now there was reason to believe their new weapon wasn't planes, but disease. Public health officials did their best to stem the panic. They insisted Robert Stevens had contracted the disease while visiting a farm on his trip to North Carolina. But their efforts quickly fell apart, because before long, news broke that two of Robert's co workers had also been hospitalized with mysterious respiratory illnesses. 73 year old Ernesto Blanco was a mailroom clerk at AMI. He'd started feeling sick in late September. Around the same time Robert fell ill. And roughly 10 days after the Jennifer Lopez letter arrived at the office, he tried to power through it. But on October 1, one day before Robert went to the hospital, Ernesto was feeling disoriented at work. A colleague drove him to the hospital, where his condition got worse. Over the next few days, when staff at AMI heard Robert had died of anthrax, they realized Ernesto's case might be related. His coworkers notified the hospital, and sure enough, doctors discovered anthrax in Ernesto's system. At around the same time, Martha Moffatt, a librarian at ami, showed up at the hospital with a cough and difficulty breathing. Now that three people working at the same office had come down with similar symptoms, it was clear that Robert's infection hadn't been an accident. Straight away, county public health officials sealed off the AMI offices for testing. By October 7, they'd found anthrax spores all over the building, spreading and circulating through its ventilation system. That night, public health officials started calling all 500AMI employees, urging them and any loved ones who'd been in the building to get tested for anthrax. The following morning, a crowd of more than a thousand AMI employees and their family members showed up at the local public health office, where they were all given anthrax tests. Fortunately, no one tested positive, but every employee was sent home with a 10 day supply of Cipro in case they developed symptoms later. Not long after, these employees started getting visits and phone calls from the FBI. Agents wanted to know anything and everything that had been going on at the AMI offices in the past month. They were looking for a suspect and any sign that this attack was connected to 9 11. Soon, the FBI learned about the Jennifer Lopez letter, the Star of David pendant, and the mysterious powder. Investigators working with infectious disease experts came to believe someone had intentionally infected the powder with anthrax spores. Other employees who'd handled the envelope hadn't been infected, but Robert had spent much of the day sitting at his desk, inhaling spores from the powder residue that had gotten into his keyboard. Unfortunately, the letter and envelope had been thrown away weeks ago, so investigators couldn't analyze the handwriting, dust it for fingerprints, or check out the return address. Almost as soon as it started, the case was at a dead end. The only good news was that the other two employees who'd gotten sick were improving and on their way to making a full recovery. But any hope that Robert Stevens was the only victim disappeared on October 12, one week after he died. That was the day some of the most powerful people in media and politics started receiving their own letters full of deadly powder.
- [16:08]
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- [16:28]
Vanessa Richardson
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- [16:37]
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- [17:11]
Vanessa Richardson
On October 5, 2001, American Media Incorporated photo editor Robert Stevens died of a deadly disease called anthrax. When two of Robert's co workers came down with the same infection, public health officials and the FBI realized the office had been the target of a bioterrorism attack. The authorities launched an investigation which quickly reached a dead end. It turned out the letter and envelope that contained the anthrax had been thrown out weeks earlier without any promising leads. The Best the FBI could do was urge Americans to remain vigilant, be careful when opening mail, and look out for fine white powder. This led to an epidemic of false alarms and hoaxes. On October 10, a mail sorting facility in New Jersey was evacuated when a postal worker discovered an envelope filled with white powder. The powder later turned out to be harmless, just a prank pulled by someone with a sick sense of humor. Similar pranks played out across the country in the week after Robert Stephens death, with harmless powder mailed to addresses in Hawaii, Kentucky and Connecticut. But on October 12th, the threat escalated. 38 year old Erin O' Connor was an assistant to NBC Nightly News host Tom Brokaw in New York City, and she'd been feeling sick for most of October. She was exhausted, her lymph nodes were swollen, and she'd developed a strange inch long sore on her chest. When she went to her doctor, he took a sample and sent it away for testing. On October 12, one week after Robert Stevens death, the results came back. Erin had anthrax. She was immediately put on Cipro, the antibiotic for anthrax, and her condition improved. Meanwhile, her doctor notified the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who rushed to interview Erin. At first, she had no idea how she'd come into contact with anthrax spores. But then she remembered a letter she'd opened at work weeks earlier. Sometime between September 19 and September 25, Erin was going through Tom Brokaw's mail when she opened an envelope with no return address. Inside was a photocopy of a handwritten message, all in capital letters. It started with the date 9 1101, followed by the words this is next. Take penicillin now. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great. Erin recalled that when she'd opened the envelope, a strange brown powder had poured out onto her desk. Thinking nothing of it, she brushed the powder into the trash, then put the letter into a file full of other threatening messages Brokaw had received. She started feeling sick about a week later. Hearing this, the CDC sprang into action. By midday on October 12, they'd evacuated NBC News headquarters at 30 Rockefeller center and started testing the building for anthrax. Soon they discovered spores in multiple locations throughout the sprawling news complex. CDC officials urged more than 1500 NBC News employees to get tested for anthrax. But before long, it became clear that NBC wasn't the only target in New York. When word got out about the exposure at NBC, other major news organizations in the city halted all mail collection. Over the next few days, investigators discovered that employees at multiple outlets in New York were sick with an unknown illness. Two staffers at the New York Post had been sick since late September, as well as an assistant to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and the infant son of an ABC News producer. When tested, they were all found to be suffering from anthrax. All of them survived after being given Cipro, but their infections showed just how wide ranging this attack was. The FBI combed through all the mailrooms, but in the end, the only letters they were able to recover were the ones sent to NBC News and the New York Post. Both had the same threatening message, and both had been postmarked at a mail sorting facility in Trenton, New Jersey on September 18th. Based on the timeline of the infections, investigators came to believe the sender had mailed all of the letters on this date. As investigators scrutinized the two recovered letters for clues, another batch of infected letters was delivered in Washington, D.C. so far, the letters had only targeted journalists. But now they were taking aim at politicians, too. On Monday, October 15, an intern for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was working at the Hart Senate Office Building, about a block away from the US Capitol. While going through the Senator's mail, the intern found an envelope addressed to him from a fourth grade class at the Greendale School in Franklin Park, New Jersey. The letter had arrived on Friday, October 12, and was postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey on October 9. But as soon as the intern opened the envelope, it became clear the senders weren't children. The letter Inside was dated 911 01, and like the letter sent to Tom Brokaw, it was a photocopy of a disturbing handwritten message. It read, you cannot stop us. We have this anthrax. You die now. Are you afraid? Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great. Like so many other unsuspecting victims, when the intern removed the letter from the envelope, a small amount of fine white powder poured out onto her desk. Thanks to the non stop news coverage of the other anthrax letters, the intern knew exactly what was going on. The Hart Office Building, which was home to the offices of 50 US senators, was now contaminated with anthrax spores. The intern immediately picked up the phone and called the U.S. capitol Police. Congressional medical staff evacuated the building, then rushed into Senator Daschle's office in hazmat gear. Meanwhile, police rounded up all the staff members who'd been in the office when the letter was opened, along with everyone in the office next door, which belonged to Senator Russ Feingold. This group of 70 very frightened congressional staffers was given nasal swabs to test for anthrax and were all instructed to begin taking Cipro immediately. The heart office building remained closed for the next several months as medical staff worked to decontaminate the entire nine story structure. Eventually, five other buildings containing the offices of senators and members of the House of Representatives were closed as well. And all incoming mail to members of Congress was put under quarantine and examined by experts wearing protective gear. Thanks to these procedures, investigators were able to recover a second letter from the killer before it was opened. This one was addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy. It was identical to Senator Daschle's letter. The return address was the fourth grade class at the Greendale School, which investigators later discovered didn't even exist. It was also postmarked from Trenton on October 9th contained the same message and the same small quantity of anthrax. But because of a processing error, the letter had been delayed until after the mail quarantine went into effect. In the end, more than 10,000 people working on Capitol Hill wound up being tested for anthrax. While 22 of them tested positive for anthrax spores. Nobody became infected, likely because they were quickly given Cipro. Unfortunately, the people who'd handled the letters before they reached their destinations weren't as lucky. The day after the letter to Tom Daschle was discovered, workers at the Brentwood postal sorting facility, two miles away from the Capitol, started to get sick. The first was 56 year old Leroy Richmond, who began feeling achy and fatigued on the evening of October 16th. By the 19th, he had a fever and difficulty breathing. That same day, he went to an emergency room where doctors diagnosed him with anthrax. One of Leroy's co workers, 53 year old Keith McKee, showed up at the hospital the following day with similar symptoms. As soon as hospital staff learned that he worked at the same postal facility, they admitted him and found that he had anthrax too. Both men were hospitalized for over a month, but managed to survive their infections. Sadly, two of their co workers didn't pull through. 55 year old Tom Thomas Morris went to the doctor on October 18th complaining of a fever, sweats and muscle aches. Thomas told his doctor he worked at a postal facility and May had been infected with anthrax. For some reason, the doctor dismissed his concerns and sent him home. Three days later, Thomas called 911 because he was struggling to breathe. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, but by then it was too late. He died of anthrax six hours later. That same weekend, 47 year old Joseph Kerstein became feverish and fainted during a church service. His wife took him to the doctor, who diagnosed him with dehydration and sent him home. By the following morning, Joseph's wife woke up to find him disoriented and struggling to breathe. When she took him to the hospital, doctors found that his system was overwhelmed with anthrax. He died within hours of being admitted. In the wake of these tragedies, the FBI and public health officials came under fire for their slow response to the Brentwood facility. The authorities had closed six buildings surrounding the Capitol and tested 10,000 congressional employees after the Daschle letter arrived. And yet they didn't close down the Brentwood facility until four people were seriously ill, even though they knew the Dashiell letter had been handled there. According to critics, this showed the government cared more about protecting congressional staff, who were mostly white, over the Brentwood postal workers who were mostly black. While public health officials acknowledged some missteps, investigators at the FBI said they'd been caught off guard. They'd underestimated how dangerous the anthrax letters were. But now they knew the killer was upping their game. When investigators examined the letters sent to Daschle and Leahy, they could tell the sender was perfecting their methods. The powdered anthrax hidden in both envelopes was much purer and more concentrated than the samples sent to the journalists in Florida and New York. And while the powder used in the New York attacks had been thick and clumpy, the powder in the Daschle and Leahy letters was so fine that it wafted up and out of the envelopes as soon as they were opened. It was the perfect consistency to spread the spores far and wide, infecting as many people as possible. That was what happened at the Brentwood facility. The powdered anthrax was so fine and so highly concentrated that a huge number of spores leaked out of the envelopes as they ran through the sorting machine machines at the facility. That meant the killer's letters weren't just a danger to the people who opened them now. They were a danger to anybody who even got close to them during their journey through the mail system. And as the next two victims will show, sometimes it was hard to predict who was at risk. On October 28, Kathy Nguyen, a 61 year old hospital worker in New York City, started feeling sick. She was achy, exhausted, and struggling to breathe. Soon, her condition was so bad that she asked one of her neighbors to drive her to the hospital. When she was admitted, doctors found that she was suffering from an anthrax infection and deteriorating incredibly fast. Although staff rushed to save her life, Kathy's organs started to fail and she died three days later on October 31st. Investigators struggled to understand why Kathy had been infected. She didn't work for a news organization or the government. She worked in the stockroom at an ear, nose and throat clinic in Manhattan. They wondered if she'd accidentally come in contact with a poisoned letter. But they determined she hadn't gone into any of the office buildings that had been contaminated. And when experts from the CDC tested Kathy's home, office and mailbox, they found no evidence of anthrax spores. The source of her anthrax infection was a mystery, but another death three weeks later was even stranger. In late November, 94 year old Otillie Lundgren, who lived in Oxford, Connecticut, developed a cough and a low grade fever. When her symptoms grew worse after two days, a relative brought her to the local hospital where she tested positive for anthrax. Five days after being admitted to the hospital, she passed away on November 21. Ottilie's case made even less sense than Cathy Nguyen's. She lived in a rural area outside of a small town. She was retired and seldom left the house. Investigators searched her home inch by inch and found no anthrax particles anywhere. After eliminating all other possibilities, the FBI concluded that both women had been infected by cross contaminated mail. As part of her job in a clinic stockroom, Cathy Nguyen sometimes delivered packages from the mailroom. Presumably, one of the items she handled had passed through a facility contaminated by an anthrax letter, where it picked up enough spores to infect her. And following some painstaking detective work, investigators also had an answer for Ottilie Lundgren's death. Trace amounts of anthrax were found on some of the sorting machines at a mail distribution center in Manhattan where several anthrax letters had been found. Some of those must have contaminated an envelope that was later delivered to Ottilie's home in rural Connecticut. Ottilie and Cathy were a chilling reminder of just how deadly anthrax could be and how difficult it was to control the risk of infection. If the killer continued their bioterrorism campaign, nobody would be safe. But then, at the height of the panic, the letters just stopped. Attili Lundgren was the last victim of the anthrax attacks. But the story wasn't over. Although the killings had ended, the manhunt only intensified. And the FBI wouldn't rest until they had the culprit behind bars.
- [32:11]
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- [32:42]
ALMA Advertiser
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- [33:42]
Vanessa Richardson
People who didn't do what John of God wanted them to do they usually disappeared. John of God was once Brazil's most famous spiritual healer, but in this limited series podcast, we uncover the darker truth behind his global empire of faith and fear. From exactly right and adonde Media, this is Two Faced John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. During September and October of 2001, an unknown murderer terrorized America by mailing powdered anthrax to journalists and politicians. The anthrax letters infected 22 people and killed five in New York, Washington, D.C. and Florida. The last victim died on November 21st. After that, the letters suddenly stopped coming. Just like that, the crisis was over. But now the hunt for the the killer was on. Over the next seven years, the amerithrax Task Force, made up of FBI agents and US Postal inspectors, left no stone unturned. They carried out one of the most complex investigations in American history. Agents interviewed more than 10,000 witnesses on six continents and reviewed over 6,000 pieces of evidence. From the very beginning, the task force had one question on their had these attacks been carried out by the same people who targeted America on September 11? There were plenty of reasons to suspect that Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that planned and executed 9 11, was also behind the anthrax attacks. The first batch of letters was mailed just one week after 9 11. And the letters sent to Tom Brokaw and the senators explicitly referenced 911 and used jihadist expressions like death to America. In the wake of the anthrax attacks, members of the US Intelligence community even publicly speculated whether the bacteria had been supplied by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But that theory was short lived. Within the first couple of months of the investigation, the FBI ruled out the possibility that a foreign terrorist group was behind the attacks. Although the anthrax mailings had been frightening and disruptive, they had been relatively small in scale. Just a few letters mailed to a few targets, causing five deaths. The terrorists who'd targeted America on 911 were more interested in large scale mass casualty attacks. As one FBI agent put it, if this were Al Qaeda, they would have sent a thousand letters. Beyond that, cultivating highly concentrated potent anthrax spores like the one sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy takes a lot of technical skill and education. Foreign terrorist organizations didn't have access to the sort of laboratories and specialists necessary to conduct an attack like this. Finally, the wording of the letters themselves showed that the attacker wasn't from the Middle East. The letters sent to Tom Brokaw and the senators both included the phrase Allah is great. Linguists quickly pointed out that a terrorist who was motivated by a radical interpretation of the Islamic faith would use the phrase Allahu Akbar. This means God is greatest in Arabic. These clues helped the FBI determine that the killer was most likely American born, with no ties to foreign terrorist groups. The suspect had simply referenced the recent 911 attacks in hopes of throwing investigators off the trail. Working from these data points, FBI profilers eventually determined that their suspect was probably an adult male with a scientific background, someone who had access to anthrax through his work. They also thought he was most likely a non confrontational person who held grudges for a long time and had a history of stalking and harassing his enemies through the mail. Now that investigators had an idea of who they were looking for, all they had to do was find him. Fortunately, they had a good idea of where to start looking. All the recovered anthrax letters had been postmarked in the same processing facility in Trenton, New Jersey. To narrow down the sender's location, the FBI tested 621 mailboxes in the surrounding area for anthrax. They only found anthrax spores in one of the boxes located at 10 Nassau street in the nearby town of Princeton. Investigators were confident the tainted Letters had originated there. So they used proximity to this mailbox to help narrow down their suspects. Working from the profile they'd built, the FBI compiled a list of a thousand potential suspects. They were all well educated men with backgrounds in the biopharmaceutical, biopesticide and agricultural industries. And they all lived within a few hours drive of the anthrax tainted mailbox in Princeton. FBI agents spent the next 10 months working their way through this list, eliminating suspects one by one. Finally, In August of 2002, U.S. attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference. He announced that investigators had finally identified a person of interest in the case, a pathologist and biological weapons expert named Dr. Stephen Hatfill. Hatfill fit the FBI's suspect profile to a T. Between 1997 and 1999, he worked as a civilian employee at the U.S. army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where he specialized in the study of anthrax. During his time there, he was one of the only people with access to a specific strain of anthrax known as the Ames strain. This was significant. Scientists had determined that the Ames strain was the type of anthrax used in all of the poisoned letters. During interviews with the FBI, Dr. Hatfill insisted that he had nothing to do with the attacks and cooperated with fully with the investigation. The bureau repeatedly searched his Maryland home and never found any physical evidence directly tying Hatfill to the anthrax attacks. But investigators found a lot of circumstantial evidence that made them suspicious. Over the course of the investigation, eight of Hatfill's former co workers told the FBI they believed he was responsible for the attacks. According to them, during his time at the Army's Medical Research Institute, he often bragged that he knew how to effectively weaponize anthrax. He authored multiple research papers about how anthrax could be distributed by mail and even wrote an unpublished novel about a bioterrorism attack in the United States. Not only that, but investigators learned that Hatfil had filled multiple prescriptions for the anti anthrax drug Cipro around the time of the attacks. The FBI suspected that Hatfill was trying to protect himself after exposing himself to the bacteria while mailing the letters. Investigators later determined that Hatfill had gotten the antibiotics to fight a respiratory infection he was suffering from at the time. Like all of the other suspicious details about his potential connection to the anthrax killings, this was just an unfortunate coincidence. As the investigation dragged on, Hatfill's life was turned upside down. His professional reputation suffered and reporters followed him everywhere he went. The FBI tailed him, too. On one occasion, a team of agents accidentally ran over his foot with their car. When the police showed up, they ticketed Hatfill for getting in the way of the vehicle. Hatfill would eventually sue the US Government and multiple media outlets for defaming his character. It took until 2007, five years after he was named as a person of interest for the FBI to eliminate Hatfill as a suspect. That was when a scientific breakthrough pointed the finger at another infectious disease expert. When the anthrax investigation began in 2001, all the FBI knew was that the anthrax spores in the letters had come from the Ames strain. But there were many different samples of the Ames strain at laboratories around the US if investigators could tell which sample the spores in the letters had come from, they'd have a much better chance of narrowing down their suspect pool. Unfortunately, at the time, it was impossible to trace individual spores back to their original sample. So for the next six years, government scientists worked to make make it possible. Eventually, researchers developed a new form of genetic analysis specifically for the Amerithrax investigation. Through this method, in early 2007, the FBI was able to prove that the spores used in the attacks had come from a single sample. That sample was known as RMR 1029. It was stored in a laboratory flask at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the same place Dr. Hatfill used to work. However, Dr. Hatfill didn't have access to the facility where RMR 1029 was kept. Instead, the FBI took a closer look at the man who'd created RMR 1029 and had sole access to the sample. At the time of the attacks. He was a 62 year old microbiologist named Dr. Bruce Ivins. Dr. Ivins had worked at the Army's Medical research institute for 18 years, rising to the rank of senior Biodefense Researcher. He'd spent much of his career there studying anthrax and was involved in the creation of two different anthrax vaccines. For his efforts, he'd been awarded the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest award given to civilian employees of the Department of Defense. Dr. Ivins was one of the foremost anthrax experts in the United States. But as investigators took a closer look at his life, they learned he was a troubled man with many long standing mental health issues. He'd been in a therapy group for years. He had a history of making death threats dating back to his days in Graduate school. School. And when the FBI got a warrant to search through Ivan's emails From the past 10 years, they found messages showing he'd been overcome by paranoia and obsessive thoughts. One of those obsessions was the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Investigators learned he'd become fixated on the organization ever since a member turned him down for a date when he was in college 40 years earlier. In Ivan's spare time, he would drive for hours to the sorority's chapter houses on college campuses in other states. Once he arrived, he'd sit outside staring at the house for a few minutes, then turn around and go home. In the 1980s, he broke into multiple KKG houses, stole documents detailing the sorority's secret initiation rituals, then attempted to get the information published in popular magazine magazines. In later years, he even started an online blog where he claimed to be a former KKG member and spread false rumors about the organization. This inexplicable 40 year grudge against a college sorority was exactly the sort of behavior FBI profilers expected the anthrax killer to show. After years of dead ends, investigators finally felt like they were on display. Something. Throughout 2007, the FBI continued its covert investigation into Dr. Ivan. They put GPS trackers on his car, went through his garbage, and interviewed his co workers and supervisors at the army's research lab. And the more they learned, the more suspicious Ivins looked. Investigators discovered that throughout 2001, Ivan's had been growing in increasingly paranoid about the state of his career. He was afraid that the government was going to discontinue its research into anthrax vaccines, which would put him out of a job. The FBI started to suspect that Ivins may have convinced himself that the best way to protect his research was to make the American public very afraid of anthrax. And the terrorist attacks on 911 presented him with the perfect opportunity to push the blame onto a foreign enemy. From talking to Ivan's co workers, the FBI knew he never worked late or stayed at the lab after hours. There were just two exceptions, fellow researchers recalled. Dr. Ivan stayed late at the lab long after everyone else went home. On the days leading up to September 18th and again on the days leading up to October 9th. Those were the dates both sets of anthrax letters were mailed. On those nights, he was all alone with samples of the spores that would go on to kill five people. And the mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey, where all of the anthrax letters were sent from. It was 175ft away from a Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter. House. The FBI went public with their investigation of Dr. Ivins on November 1, 2007, when they showed up at his front door with a search warrant. Inside, they found plenty of evidence. There were multiple guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a vast collection of letters he'd written to members of Congress and media organizations over the past 20 years. Under questioning from FBI agents, Ivins maintained his innocence. But he struggled to explain why he'd stayed late at the lab on the days before the anthrax letters were mailed. And in the months following the search at his house, his behavior only grew more suspicious. Now that he knew the FBI was monitoring his communications, he started sending emails, trying to implicate longtime friends and co workers in the attacks. And in group therapy sessions, he ranted about how angry he was at the people investigating him. By the summer of 2008, the FBI had gathered enough evidence to indict Ivins for his role in the attacks. And when his lawyers informed him of this, Ivan's behavior got even more erratic. During a group therapy session on July 9, he went on a long rant. He said he planned to go out in a blaze of glory, targeting co workers who he felt had wronged him by cooperating with the investigation. The psychologist running the therapy session was so concerned about these statements that they called the police. That day, Ivins was arrested and taken to a mental health facility for observation. Despite objections from his psychologist, Ivins was discharged from the hospital on July 24. But federal prosecutors were already preparing to indict him on bioterrorism charges. Dr. Ivins wouldn't be a free man for much longer, so he took matters into his own hands. On July 27, Ivins took a fatal dose of Tylenol mixed with codeine. His wife discovered him after he lost consciousness and rushed him to the hospital. But by the time Ivins got there, it was too late. He died two days later, on July 29th. And with that, the long running Amerithrax investigation finally came to a close. When the first anthrax letters started arriving in the fall of 2001, it was a front page news story that accelerated the country's post 911 paranoia. But by the time Dr. Ivins took his own life in the summer of 2008, it barely made a ripple in the news. What made the anthrax attacks so frightening was the uncertainty. Americans, freshly traumatized by 911 were wondering whether this was the new normal. A world where everything from getting on an airplane to opening your mail was a life or death situation. But Once the letters stopped and life went back to business as usual, everyone moved on. By the time the anthrax investigation wrapped up, it had gone from an urgent manhunt for a deadly terrorist to a mostly forgotten footnote in America's long running war on terrorism. And the man responsible for spreading so much fear and death had been exposed as nothing more than a petty coward with an axe to grind. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next week. Week we'll decode the episode together and hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly does make a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad free. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a Crime House original powered by P. Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzovsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Truman Capps, Leah Roche and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening. Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right. And the best part? They accept Discover. Accept Discover In a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times. Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. Hi, it's Vanessa. If you're drawn to true crime stories about disappearances, check out the new Crime House original, the Final Hours, hosted by Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Listen to and follow the final hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. 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