One of the nation’s top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the 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, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, with his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said.
Ivins had not been publicly identified as a suspect in the case that disrupted mail service and Senate business three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The Maryland scientist 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 also had helped the FBI analyze the powdery material recovered from one of the anthrax-tainted envelopes sent to a U.S. senator’s office in Washington.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after having ingested a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague who declined to be identified.
The death without any mention of suicide was announced to colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, through an e-mail.
“People here are pretty shook up about it,” said Caree Vander Linden, a spokewoman for USAMRIID, who said that 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 a 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 was essential to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.
