Suspected anthrax killer had critics — and friends

By David Dishneau
Associated Press
Published: Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008 12:24 a.m. MDT
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FREDERICK, Md. — Bruce E. Ivins was a juggler, a gardener, a church musician, a Red Cross volunteer — and a suspected multiple murderer, according to federal authorities.

Some people who knew him scoffed at the government's assertion that Ivins sent the anthrax letters that killed five people and sickened 17 in the fall of 2001. But court documents indicate the outwardly mild-mannered Ivins had a menacing side.

Documents show that Ivins recently received psychiatric treatment and that he was ordered last week to stay away from Jean C. Duley, a social worker who counseled him. In her handwritten application for a protective order, Duley wrote that Ivins had stalked and threatened to kill her and had a long history of homicidal threats.

Ivins, 62, committed suicide this week as federal prosecutors zeroed in on him as a suspect in the 2001 attacks. They were planning to indict him and seek the death penalty.

Now, prosecutors are mulling whether to close the anthrax poisoning investigation this week, possibly as early as Monday or Tuesday. If that happens, court documents detailing newly developed scientific evidence that recently led the government to Ivins may be unsealed.

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The Army refused Saturday to say whether it had been reviewing the security clearance of the chief suspect in the anthrax attacks. Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. But it was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab at the time of his death.

Ivins' brother Tom, who said he had not spoken to Bruce since 1985, was not shocked to hear that his brother was accused of making death threats, and he conceded the possibility that Bruce may have been the anthrax mailer.

"It makes sense, what the social worker said," Tom Ivins said. "He considered himself like a god."

Duley testified at a hearing in Frederick on July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins. The New York Times obtained a recording of the hearing and posted it on its Web site Saturday.

Duley told the judge she was "scared to death" of Ivins.

Some who knew Ivins said the scrutiny of the investigation was too much for him to bear. But they also asserted his innocence.

"The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways," his attorney, Paul F. Kemp, said in a statement. "In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death."

Ivins had worked for the past 35 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick. For more than a decade, he worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that worked even when different strains of anthrax were mixed, which made vaccines ineffective.

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Bruce Ivins, gives a juggling demonstration at Mullinix Park in Frederick, Md., on May 9, 1983. Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against Ivins before he killed himself. (Sy, Associated Press)
Sy, Associated Press
Bruce Ivins, gives a juggling demonstration at Mullinix Park in Frederick, Md., on May 9, 1983. Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against Ivins before he killed himself.
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