One of the nation's top biodefense researchers has died in Frederick, apparently in a suicide, just as the U.S. Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing assaults of 2001 that killed five, the Los Angeles Times has learned.
Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation said.
Ivins' name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, which disrupted mail service and Senate business three weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11. He had for years played a pivotal role in research to improve anthrax vaccines, preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.
Regarded as a skilled microbiologist, Ivins had also helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a senator's office in Washington, D.C.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after having ingested a large dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague who declined to be identified out of concern, he said, that he would be harassed by the FBI.
The death - without any mention of suicide - was announced to Ivins' colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, through a staffwide e-mail.
"People here are pretty shook up about it," said Caree Vander Linden, a spokewoman for USAMRIID, who said she was not at liberty to discuss details surrounding the death.
The extraordinary turn of events followed the government's payment in June of a settlement valued at $5.82 million to former government scientist Steven J. Hatfill, who was long targeted as the FBI's chief suspect despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax.
The payout to Hatfill, a highly unusual development that all but exonerated him of committing the anthrax mailings, was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.
Federal investigators moved away from Hatfill - for years the only publicly identified "person of interest" - and ultimately concluded that Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.
