Jeremiah Kroll
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
There's something else concerning. The men in the emergency room had identified themselves as pilots.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI recognizes the patient's name, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, the same man who hijacked one of the planes on 9-11 and crashed it into a Pennsylvania field.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
This lead could unlock the case for the FBI. The 9-11 hijackers were living and taking flight lessons about an hour away from Robert Stevens. And the FBI has a credible witness who says those hijackers were trying to learn about crop dusters. So now, if this doctor's suspicions are correct, it means that at least one hijacker came into contact with anthrax in Florida before the attack on 9-11.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It's a gruesome scene. Mike crouches down right up close to the dead cows and takes a careful look at them. He knows then what he has to do, and he slowly cuts into one of the cows.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
If this was al-Qaeda and their goal was to use anthrax to kill Americans, their plan works.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It's been just three days since Robert Stevens checked into the hospital. Health Director Jean Malecki gets in her car and drives back to the Stevens home to be with Robert's wife and her family.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The family was trying to keep the news media out, but the blankets didn't stop the panic rising outside.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Now there's a fatality and a media frenzy. The FBI is in a jam. They'd already discovered the hijackers' potential anthrax skin infection, and that Al-Qaeda members have been training to fly crop dusters near Robert Stevens. But they still don't have proof that Al-Qaeda is behind this.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
But maybe the FBI was further along than they thought because they'd already found a lead that could link anthrax to Al-Qaeda. They just hadn't realized it yet.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Weeks earlier, in the hours right after the attacks of September 11th, the FBI had discovered that some of the hijackers lived in southern Florida.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Two of them lived in an apartment about 25 minutes from the home of Robert Stevens. The FBI raided their apartment the night of 9-11.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Gloria Irish. Agents had found her business card in the apartment, but her name didn't mean anything to them on the night of 9-11. But now, the last name Irish takes on a whole new meaning. Because of her husband.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
He could tell that both cows are affected by this strange infection. So Mike reaches inside one of them and takes out a biological sample. He carefully packages up the sample to take with him. Before he leaves, he tells the rancher to build a big, very hot fire and to burn the carcasses. Mike Vickers drives home and mails that sample to a veterinary lab.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI finally has a link, however tenuous, between Al-Qaeda, Florida, anthrax, and Robert Stevens. But agents can't figure out what that link means. Al-Qaeda just took down the Twin Towers. Would they really target a tabloid next? Then again, if you step back, it seems too weird to be a coincidence.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
But the FBI has no idea what that long-term plan could be. Like, in one world, al-Qaeda members were planning a second wave attack, but then accidentally exposed their real estate agent to some powder. And then she tracked it back to her husband, who must have accidentally infected his coworker in the AMI building?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Or maybe the AMI building really does matter to al-Qaeda, and Gloria Irish was just somehow their way in? Now one person is dead. But wouldn't al-Qaeda be going for mass casualties? So is there a link between the hijackers, anthrax, and AMI? Or is the FBI forcing these puzzle pieces together? There's at least one obvious next step. Agents go back to the 9-11 hijackers' apartments.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Then the FBI waits for results, hoping they will finally find proof that Al-Qaeda has anthrax. A few miles away, Dr. Larry Bush is completely unaware of what the FBI is up to. He's just trying to manage the mayhem that anthrax has unleashed on South Florida. He and his hospital are now at the center of the chaos.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Stephen's death was a gut punch to Larry. He was his patient. And now he's dealing with a ton of new patients who think they might have anthrax too. He hasn't thought much about his patient Martha and her theory that the AMI building was a target for Al Qaeda. It had sounded ridiculous to him.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Patient two's name is Ernesto Blanco. He's a worker in the mailroom at AMI. He's almost 74. He's a devoted dad, a nice, often funny guy by all accounts. And now he's got inhalation anthrax too.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It's suddenly clear to the FBI that the source of the infection is very likely inside the AMI building. And as ridiculous as it may sound to some, Gene Malecki gets why the tabloid could be a target.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And for Jean, alarm bells are ringing. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who've moved in and out of the AMI building in the last week. And a ton of people are still hard at work inside. She's got to test the building for anthrax, but she doesn't want to create any more panic than there already is. Jean knows who to turn to.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
He couldn't have known then what would happen decades later, the murder and mayhem and national panic that sample will cause when it falls into the wrong hands. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 2, Martha's Not Crazy. It's October 3rd, 2001. One day now since Dr. Larry Bush diagnosed his patient with anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Segrin and his team are tasked to go inside the AMI building to run tests. That means breathing the same air as two people who've been infected. So they clearly should wear hazmat suits.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
As soon as he's inside, Segrin sees a large framed photo that makes him cringe.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Right there in the lobby, a photo shows Bin Laden's face above the headline, Wanted, Dead or Alive, with or alive crossed out. The article claims Bin Laden had underdeveloped sex organs and that his hatred of the U.S. began, quote, when an American girl laughed at his problem.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
He puts that thought aside as they go further into the building.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
While all that's going on, Jean and her team interview Robert Stevens and Ernesto Blanco's colleagues. Stevens was a photo editor, and Ernesto Blanco worked in the mailroom. Keep in mind this is 2001. Email's in its infancy. So most readers of the tabloids are using snail mail for letters to the editor and to send comments. And because these are juicy tabloids, there's a lot of mail.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And it's someone's job to read all of it. Which must have been fun, by the way. Of all the avenues they go down, plus the side streets and alleyways, this is how the FBI gets its first major break. In the form of a letter about the pop sensation of the new millennium, Jennifer Lopez.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
White powder in an envelope. If you know anything about the anthrax attacks, you probably know that powder was sent through the mail. But at this point, only three days after Robert Stevens has died, no one knows anything like that. This is the first time that a point of contact starts to come into view.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
They now suspect it's an anthrax-laced letter sent through the mail that infected both of the victims.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
With the letter as a lead, Jean isn't surprised by the swab results she gets back from Segrin.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The health department wanted to be discreet only a day before, but now Jean has to take dramatic action.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Which means the works. Police cars, yellow caution tape, crews of emergency workers, and hazmat suits. The media jumps on it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Jean's attention now moves to the many people who've gone in and out of the AMI building in the last week.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI, meanwhile, are trying to find that J-Lo letter. Agent Decker sees how it might have infected Ernesto Blanco and contaminated a lot of the building.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Now the FBI's big question is, where is that letter? They look and quickly learn the answer.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
AMI doesn't have it, so the FBI won't get it. There's no way now to definitively prove how anthrax entered the building or know how many people could have been exposed. And then, right on cue, everyone's fears come true. Someone else from AMI is sick.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Stephanie Daly, a clerk at AMI, is case number three. She works alongside Ernesto Blanco in the mailroom. With another mailroom-related infection, the public is putting the puzzle pieces together as well. The only way that an infected letter could get to the mailroom is by way of the U.S. Postal Service. And the U.S. Postal Service is everywhere, which means anthrax could be spreading everywhere.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
So there's all that media and public panic, and there's still the actual investigation to deal with.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Dr. Segrin Pillai, the public health lab director who went into the AMI building, now has to process lab tests for hundreds of potential anthrax contaminations pouring in from hospitals all over South Florida. He can barely keep up. One night, he returns at 4 a.m. after working with almost no sleep the night before. Before he can even get into bed, he gets an urgent call.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Police officers are worried about white powder coming out of a box that's sitting in their office.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Meanwhile, FBI agents are waiting for Segrin to finish processing their own swabs.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
If these samples show the hijackers had anthrax, the FBI will finally have hard proof connecting this attack to al-Qaeda.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
That's zero evidence of anthrax anywhere near the 9-11 hijackers.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
As much time and energy as they'd sunk into the al-Qaeda angle, they'd found nothing.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
But how was that possible? What about the Florida connection and all those credible leads?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Dr. Larry Bush is feeling immense pressure. He's the chief of staff of the hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida. And he can't seem to stop his patient's health from deteriorating. Stevens is now in a coma. And the nation is in a panic.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
So, no evidence linking the death of Robert Stevens to Al-Qaeda. Those crop dusters? Nothing to do with anthrax. That hijacker really did just have a leg bruise. And the apartment rentals and the connection to AMI?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
On October 11th, 2001, the FBI's deputy assistant director shares their findings with a congressional subcommittee.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
No connection to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. It says two things at once. We've got no leads, but there isn't a wider attack. The FBI hopes that that second point will at least help calm some nerves.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It's easy to forget now what was happening in the American psyche at this moment. Just weeks before this, thousands of people had died in an attack that had previously seemed unimaginable. Before then, Americans had felt like terrorist attacks happened somewhere over there, not at home. The feeling after 9-11 was if that attack was possible here, literally anything was possible.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
So the panic or even paranoia that set in around this new attack felt reasonable. And Larry, just like everyone else, doesn't know if this one case of anthrax is a random one-off or if there are going to be hundreds or even thousands of other people getting sick. So he has to take everyone who shows up seriously, no matter what their symptoms are, which means he's seeing a lot of patients.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
AMI. That's American Media Incorporated. It's a newspaper publisher. They print tabloids. Most famously, the National Enquirer. You know the one in the checkout aisle at the supermarket that's got alien visitation stories and celebrity gossip? Yeah, that one. And a few others like it. AMI is also the place where anthrax patient Robert Stevens works.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
This is a CBC Podcast. I want to go back for a moment to an early spring morning more than 40 years ago, because that morning, in a way, is how this whole story begins. It's 1981. It's a breezy May morning in South Texas. A veterinarian is driving his truck through the green shrubbery and straight farm roads that he's grown up around. His name is Mike Vickers.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It sounded a bit ridiculous. Terrorists attacked her company just because it published bad stories about them? To Larry, it doesn't make much sense. At least, not yet. As panic rises in Florida, and now around the country, the White House is forced to call a press conference.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Remember, the last person in America who got critically sick from breathing in anthrax was a weaver who'd been working with contaminated wool from Pakistan, who then died. So the press had questions.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The fear behind these questions is, if there's no natural cause to pin this on, then it seems likely the country is under attack again by al-Qaeda. And the FBI has the same fear.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Agent Scott Decker and the FBI know something the White House isn't prepared to talk about yet, that this anthrax is a lab strain. But where that lab strain came from and who would have had access to it is still unknown. And the FBI knows that every second that ticks by, things could get a lot worse.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Agent Decker had now been moved from New York back to FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown D.C. He soon began to work the anthrax case full-time, trying to figure out how a photo editor for a tabloid newspaper in Florida came into contact with anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Part of keeping an open mind in this case means thinking about all the ways Stevens could have been infected. So the FBI has to find out all it can about that lab strain. Like, could an al-Qaeda lab make it? Agents go to their trusted scientist in Arizona, Paul Keim, to find out. He's the one who figured out it was a lab strain to begin with.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Paul thinks that the way the anthrax infected Stevens might help reveal where it came from. It infected his lungs. So he didn't drink it or touch it. Somehow Robert Stevens breathed it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
For Stevens to have breathed it in, the anthrax must have been made to be as light and dry as possible so that it could just float in the air. And that tells Paul a lot.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It makes sense. Biological weapons are designed for maximum reach. The more particles you can get to stay in the air, the more people you'll infect. That process is called aerosolization. So if Paul can figure out which labs have the ability to do that, to aerosolize anthrax, it'll help the FBI eliminate some of them from their list.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
But before he does that, Paul needs to pinpoint the particular strain of this anthrax to see which labs even use it. And when he does, his heart sinks.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And Mike has a mystery to solve this morning. He's treated a lot of sick animals in his day, but this call is different.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The Ames strain. If you're in the infectious disease business, you know this strain. The Ames strain got its name from a lab in Ames, Iowa. It was sent there after infecting thousands of livestock in the Southwest.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
It had come from a biological sample taken from a dead cow. Remember that veterinarian back in Texas, Mike Vickers?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And 30 years later, that organism, now called Ames, was known to be robust and highly concentrated. That made it ideal for testing vaccines and figuring out its military potential.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
So now all of those laboratories around the world are suspects.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The FBI now has to create that inventory from scratch, asking each lab to submit the anthrax they've got. But Paul considers another approach. He thinks he might be able to figure out what lab this anthrax came from by reverse engineering. Because making anthrax is a bit like making sourdough from a starter. You make the mother batch, and then other batches get made from that batch.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
All of those subsequent batches are largely made of the same stuff, but as they develop, there are subtle mutations between them. So in theory, if Paul could find the genetic differences that set this anthrax apart from the mother batch of AIM strain, the FBI could trace its origins back to a unique and specific batch somewhere in a specific lab.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
But these differences are so tiny, Paul would need a microscopic map of the anthrax's DNA, a kind of genetic fingerprint, to tell any of the variants apart. And in the fall of 2001, that technology simply doesn't exist.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
prohibitively expensive, and technologically impossible. This has got to be frustrating. You know there's a specific thing you can do to figure out who the killer is. You just don't know how to do that thing yet. So Paul and the FBI get to work inventing this technology. It'll take years.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
So for now, the FBI is stuck with old-school, on-the-ground investigative techniques, chasing down leads and paper trails to figure out which labs could have put anthrax in nefarious hands. And there's one suspect on the top of their list.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The idea that anthrax found its way out of a lab by accident in the weeks after 9-11, it just doesn't feel likely. But did al-Qaeda even have aims? There's only one clue about that, and it's helpful and perplexing.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
As Mike drives toward those dead cows, he doesn't know exactly what to expect. He arrives at the ranch, meets up with a farmer, and they head out about five miles into scrubland.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
If someone did walk out with Ames, did they give it to al-Qaeda? At this point, no one knows. But there's one thing Paul does know for sure.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
That individual, Robert Stevens, back in Florida, wasn't doing well. He was still in a coma and now having an increasingly difficult time breathing. And the health officials trying to understand what had happened to him were operating in the dark.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Jean Malecki, the health director of Palm Beach County who'd first reported this case to the CDC, is now on high alert for more cases of anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
Jean's doctors are asking for leads on patients with anomalies, strange health incidents, anything that might suggest more cases of anthrax or some clues about how Robert Stevens got infected. And she gets a hit.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
And this doctor says that he thinks it's possible he'd seen a case of anthrax a little before 9-11. No one had heard this yet. And if it's true, it's major news. Gene immediately brings in the FBI.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
The doctor says in June he'd had two men from the Middle East visit his ER in Fort Lauderdale. One of them had a dark lesion on his left calf, about an inch wide, with raised edges that were red. The man claimed he'd bumped his leg. The doctor thought the wound was unusual, maybe some kind of infected bruise, but he didn't think much of it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 2: Martha’s Not Crazy
He treated it and gave the man a prescription for antibiotics. Yet now, with anthrax in the news, he's thinking the man's leg injury looked a lot like an anthrax infection, the kind you get from touching it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Colleen Rowley was an FBI agent in Minnesota at the time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The flight student's name was Zacharias Moussaoui. He was a Muslim French national. When FBI agents interviewed him, they learned his visa had lapsed. So they had him detained on an immigration violation. Agents suspected he was up to something, but they couldn't prove it. And remember, this is all before 9-11. So he's just one strange guy asking strange questions at a flight school.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
They couldn't even get a search warrant for his computer. Then September 11th happened.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
I think five black Suburbans in a row. While everyone else was trying like hell to get out of New York City, Decker drove all night to get in.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Now they get the search warrant and search his computer.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
A crop duster? A crop duster is a small plane used in agriculture to spray pesticides.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
What he's saying is that he is a member of al-Qaeda and that they were planning a second attack. The FBI already know the 9-11 hijackers were studying at flight schools around the U.S. So now agents worry that Moussaoui was part of a bigger plot still to come.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
That he was studying wind direction and crop dusters because he, and maybe the others, were planning to spray some kind of poison from the air. With all of this info in mind, President Bush and the Department of Justice take action, hoping to prevent whatever that second wave might be.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
They ground all crop-dusters across the country. That solves the immediate problem. But they still have a larger issue. Are there other extremist pilots out there waiting to launch an attack?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Announcing the names was a call for help to the public. If you'd seen something, say something.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Willie Lee is a crop-dusting pilot who had an eerily similar story to the one in Minnesota. Suspicious acting men from the Middle East asking unusual questions about planes.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
But Willie isn't in Minnesota. He's halfway across the country at a different crop dusting business. He'd been flying crop dusting planes for decades. On any given day during his regular job, he'd pack as much as 500 gallons of pesticides into his Air Tractor 502 crop plane. He'd fly incredibly low to the ground to avoid spraying homes and people.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
But these men didn't sound like they wanted that experience. They were asking about tank capacity and flight distances. It sounded off. So six weeks before September 11th, Willie called the police.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
But the police didn't do anything about it. They couldn't really. No one had done anything illegal. After 9-11, when Willie saw the names and pictures of the hijackers on television, he knew he'd been right to be suspicious. Because some of the men who'd visited him were the same men who flew the planes into the Twin Towers. In fact, one of them was Mohammed Atta, the chief U.S.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
operative who directed the attack. Willie and his team called the FBI. This time, they took action. So now the FBI has a question to answer. Why were Al-Qaeda members in at least two different places around the country trying to learn how to fly crop dusters? And meanwhile, there's another team with a question the FBI hasn't heard about yet.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Dr. Bush and his colleagues, who are trying to figure out how a man in suburban Florida has anthrax. And now those two mysteries are about to collide. Because the airfield that the 9-11 terrorists visited, Willie's airfield, it's less than an hour away from the home of anthrax patient Robert Stevens. Back in that hospital, Robert Stevens' health is deteriorating.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And Dr. Bush still doesn't know for certain what he's dealing with.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
They arrived outside Manhattan near dawn. But those orange letters were right. New York City was closed. Even to the FBI. Bridges were shut down. Landlines were out. And cell phones weren't working well. So Decker went to an FBI field office in New Jersey, just across the river.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The people he works for are high up on the chain. In an instant, the CDC calls the National Department of Health, who calls the White House, who calls the Department of Justice. And now, finally, the FBI learns anthrax is in Florida. Because of his background in science, Agent Scott Decker knows an anthrax infection shouldn't have happened in Florida.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
So for the FBI, who'd been worried for weeks about some kind of biological attack, likely from the air, maybe involving crop dusters, if this isn't the work of the same 9-11 terrorists, who they now know took flight lessons at an airfield only an hour away, it's an awful lot of coincidences.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And in order to do this, prove its terrorism, Decker and the FBI need to know what kind of anthrax this is. Because anthrax comes in strains, like the flu. And if they can figure out the strain, that might tell agents where or how Stevens got infected.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
FBI agents head to the state park to look for any signs that Stevens could have been infected in nature. But the scarier scenario is that the anthrax came from a laboratory. Because if it's from a lab, there's a good chance somebody spread it on purpose. To figure this out, the FBI knows exactly who to turn to.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Dr. Paul Keim hoped to find the source of the anthrax in a biological database he'd been creating for decades.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
So as Robert Stevens is lying in a coma, investigators put a sample of his spinal fluid on a private jet and fly it halfway across the country directly to Paul.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
A few hours later, Paul gets in his truck and heads to the small local airport in Flagstaff. He doesn't know quite what to expect.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Paul may not be in a Hollywood movie right now, but in a way he is a detective. And in this very moment, the fate of American biosecurity is quite literally in his hands. So he takes that package and drives it back to his lab. And there he goes into the biosafety suite and opens the box.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
And inside that is a vial with the spores found in Robert Stevens' spinal fluid.
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Once Paul knows that, he needs to figure out what strain it is.
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Think about this. Here's a college science professor, an expert in theoretical bioterrorism. And now he's seeing right up close anthrax from what appears to be an actual bioterrorist.
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Paul's lab is the only place in the world that now knows the very threat weighing on Agent Scott Decker and the FBI is the real deal.
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For the moment, the story hasn't spread to the media. Paul Keim and the FBI have only a short window to try to get answers before the bad news spreads. And they're all wondering the same thing. Was it the 9-11 hijackers who deployed this anthrax? Jean Malecki, the health director in Florida, worries about that too.
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If there was an aerial attack, is it possible the 9-11 hijackers, or people working with them, had dropped anthrax in an area that included Robert Stevens' backyard? Is that how it ended up in his system? Stevens' home was less than a mile from an airstrip, so his house could have easily been in the path of travel.
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Jean takes a biohazard crew to scour the property from top to bottom.
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The powder is so fine that if it was sprayed from the sky, it could be anywhere.
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He landed near ground zero and, like everyone there, struggled to make sense of what had just happened.
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On the surface, nothing looks suspicious. There's no obvious white powder anywhere. But Jean sends samples she's taken to her lab. She then heads back to the hospital to check on Robert Stevens and discovers... A deadly disease putting a Lantana man in the hospital... The story was out.
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State and federal health officials hurry to put together press conferences to address everyone's concerns.
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As one of those well-trained physicians, Dr. Larry Bush is called upon to answer some tough questions.
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Larry knows that, historically, inhalation anthrax is likely fatal. But he's conflicted about sharing the worst-case scenario.
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Meanwhile, the press keep on with their questions, and the CDC seems entirely focused on hitting the same reassuring note over and over again.
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If the hope was to keep people calm, to reassure the media that this situation was nothing to worry about, It didn't work.
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But Decker isn't looking at the scene the same way as most first responders. In fact, he's there for something else. What the public didn't know at the time is that there was another looming threat.
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The chaos Dr. Larry Bush was afraid of is here.
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Everyone is now watching Larry's team closely to understand what this one case of anthrax might mean for the rest of the world. And the news he has is not looking good. Bob Stevens is in the ICU. He's not doing well. Robert Stevens' health is failing quickly, and Larry fears the worst. With the story out in the world, panic is going to grow. And the public wouldn't be wrong to worry.
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It seems Robert Stevens may be patient zero of a colossal new attack. Agent Decker and the FBI now face what could be the largest bioterror threat in American history. So the question on their minds is, if al-Qaeda does have anthrax, what will they do with it next?
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But it seems that agents are closing in on their suspects fast. The confirmation of a plan for a second wave attack, the pilots learning about crop dusters, the airstrip near Stephen's house, it's all adding up. The FBI just needs a little hard evidence, a link that proves who did this so they can stop more deaths.
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But of course, it's not going to be that easy. The information they're about to get will send the FBI down a rabbit hole of false suspects, shocking twists, and damning revelations, including a liar in their midst. This season on Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer.
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Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio and Dig Studios in collaboration with CBC Podcasts. The series is hosted by me, Jeremiah Kroll. It's created, written and executive produced by Scott Tiffany and me at Dig Studios.
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Aftermath is executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment, Josh Block at USG Audio and Janiel Kastner at Spoke Media. The series is produced by Kelly Kolf. Story editing by Janiel Kastner. Sound design and mix by Evan Arnett. Original composition by John O'Hara. Production by Spoke Media. Production support for USG Audio by Josh Laulangi.
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There was reliable intelligence from the weeks right before 9-11 that al-Qaeda was planning a different kind of attack in addition to September 11th, one involving the release of biotoxins into the air. A second attack was going to be coming at any moment. Decker was part of the FBI's new hazardous response team.
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Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer. Or you can binge the whole series ad-free by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.
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So while everyone else was looking at the wreckage, he was on high alert, searching for signs, like unusual illnesses, that this second attack, this time biological, was already underway. What no one knew at the time is that they were looking in the wrong city.
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Deadly anthrax spores sent through the U.S. mail. One of the most lethal weapons of all time comes from an almost indestructible bacteria called anthrax. And in the fall of 2001, envelopes laced with powdered anthrax started showing up in the mail.
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The anthrax attacks created chaos. The U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court were contaminated and shut down. Thousands of buildings across the country were evacuated. And innocent people died just from opening their mail.
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What's weird is that almost 25 years later, most Americans still have no idea who was behind these attacks. Anthrax was on the nightly news for months. And then it's like the story just disappeared. I've talked to hundreds of people about it. And no one, it seems, remembers what happened with this case. Who mailed those letters? Do you know? My name's Jeremiah Kroll.
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I'm a documentary filmmaker, and I was living and working in New York when all this happened. In those weeks right after 9-11, I remember the stillness of the streets and the collective sense of raw outrage and sadness in the city. And then, anthrax. I felt the fear those letters created, the terrifying way they just kept coming, one after another.
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Almost two decades later, when the pandemic hit, I felt that same sense of unpredictable terror in the air. It reminded me of the anthrax story. And I wondered, what ever happened with that? So my team and I started digging into it. We tracked down people who were involved, either affected by the attacks or part of the investigation, FBI agents, victims, wrongly accused suspects.
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And the stories they shared, many for the first time, surprised me. They painted a picture of these events and their aftermath that revealed how, at its core, this was all so personal. Like stories about investigative mistakes right from the start, about civil liberties trampled, and about lives destroyed.
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And even after all of that, after the seven-year odyssey the FBI went on to try to solve this case, some people still wonder if the FBI got it right. I would not consider the case to be closed. In my mind, it certainly is not solved.
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This is a story about people who have to look at chaos and try to make sense of it while it's still happening and how hard it is to get that right.
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It's about the stories we tell ourselves and the price we pay when we tell the wrong ones. We're going to go inside one of the largest FBI investigations in history to figure out why we all lost track of this case and to explore the aftershocks we still feel today. From Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 1, Isolated Incident.
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I want to go back to the beginning of this story, to a time when most Americans never gave much thought to face masks or deadly particles in the air. It's October 2, 2001, three weeks after the attacks of 9-11, and we're in suburban Florida. It's the middle of the night, and a man named Robert Stevens wakes up feeling sick. He has chills and a fever. Robert Stevens is 63.
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He's a newspaper photo editor who lives in Lantana, Florida. That's a coastal town about an hour north of Miami. He's raised a few kids and is getting close to retirement. But when he wakes up that night, he feels disoriented, dizzy, and things seem to be getting worse. His wife, Maureen, is worried.
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Dr. Larry Bush was chairman of infectious diseases and chief of staff at the JFK Medical Center in West Palm Beach, the hospital closest to Robert and Maureen Stevens' house.
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Robert's condition gets worse. He goes into a coma. Larry and his team suspect that he has meningitis, an infection that makes the brain swell. So he looks at Robert's spinal fluid.
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In a healthy patient, Larry shouldn't see much of anything.
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Larry can't get his head around this. Most of us are now familiar with anthrax largely because of this case. But back then, in 2001, this was nuts. Most people didn't think about anthrax at all. And for doctors, it was something you read about in textbooks, not something you expected to see in a patient.
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But it just doesn't make sense. Anthrax is a natural bacteria that usually only infects livestock. Cattle tend to catch it in dry rural areas. They eat or breathe in anthrax cells called spores while they're grazing. So it's not like a guy in suburban Florida is going to just accidentally breathe this stuff in while going about his life.
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And if he did somehow, he'd be the first person in the entire U.S. in almost 25 years. And that person had gotten it from inhaling anthrax spores off of wool shipped over from Pakistan. Larry runs more tests.
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It was the evening of September 11th, about 12 hours after the terrorist attacks, and Scott Decker, a special agent with the FBI, was already on the move. He'd packed his bags and said goodbye to his family in Virginia.
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He sees tiny, blue-stained bacterial rectangles all in a line. Imagine looking down on a train from high in the air.
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In retrospect, now knowing how everything would play out... This is the moment that it all began. Right here, for the first time in 25 years, it seems that someone in America has anthrax in their lungs.
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Imagine you're him right now. You're the chief of staff for the whole hospital, and you're very sure that what you see is one thing. But that one thing is so rare and so deadly that when you tell people about it, they'll either not believe you or panic. My fear was creating chaos in the hospital. Chaos not just in his hospital, but also likely all of Florida and probably the nation.
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After 9-11, the whole country was bracing for another attack. Larry's afraid that this could be it.
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He has to risk creating that chaos. So he does. Larry calls Dr. Jean Malecki, a friend and colleague who's the health director for all of Palm Beach County. But she was busy at that moment.
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Larry tells Gene he thinks Robert Stevens has anthrax. They both know more tests need to be done to prove it. So Jean calls up the Centers for Disease Control. But the CDC pushes back. They refuse to believe anyone could catch anthrax in suburban Florida.
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Despite the CDC's hesitancy and the testing that still needs to be done, Larry and Jean have little doubt that it's anthrax. The real worry on their minds is that this could be the beginning of another attack by al-Qaeda. And what they don't know is that the FBI is worried about another attack, too.
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FBI Special Agent Scott Decker is one of only a few agents to have investigated nearly the entire case. And he's got skills few other FBI agents have, a Ph.D. in genetics with a postdoc from Harvard. So that's why he's on the FBI's new hazmat team that was deployed at Ground Zero.
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And one reason they even had Decker and his team on site is because of something odd that had happened earlier that summer. In August of 2001, weeks before the Twin Towers fell or anyone got sick in Florida, the FBI uncovered something in Minnesota. And that discovery would ultimately set the stage for the entire anthrax investigation. One of Decker's FBI colleagues was right in the middle of it.