WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Victims of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks said Thursday that they are satisfied with the investigation that pinned the blame on an Army scientist.
“This investigation, as far as I’m concerned, is closed,” Maureen Stevens said Thursday during a news conference. Stevens’ husband, Robert, was a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid published by American Media Inc., who died after inhaling anthrax mailed to AMI’s headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla.
Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, the first of five people to be killed and 17 others to be sickened in the attacks.
Patrick O’Donnell, a postal sorter who was sickened, said he believes the government’s case is solid — but it took him by surprise. “I always thought it was al-Qaeda or something like that,” said O’Donnell, of Falls Township, Pa.
Mark Cunningham, a New York Post op-ed editor, one of three staffers there who were sickened, said he also was convinced about the government’s case against Bruce E. Ivins, who committed suicide last month. “The case is circumstantial but compelling,” Cunningham wrote on the paper’s website Thursday. “I’m glad they’re keeping the case open. . . . But I have my closure.”
