Jeremiah Kroll
Appearances
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
One of these crazy ideas is to hunt for clues not in fancy genetics, but in the manufacturing process of the envelopes themselves. They hadn't been lucky enough to get any obvious forensic clues.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
But Decker's wondering if a microscope could reveal anything else about these envelopes. Could there be something distinct about them that would differentiate them from the countless others with the same design? Each of the envelopes has a 34-cent ink stamp pre-printed on it by the United States Postal Service. So these are official envelopes created and printed by the USPS.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
That means they would likely have been purchased at a post office. So if Decker and the FBI can figure out which post office sold these envelopes, they might be able to pinpoint the anthrax killer's neighborhood. The bad news? They discover the Postal Service had printed 45 million of these envelopes in 57 different production runs over the last several years.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So Decker's monumental challenge now is to figure out which of those 45 million envelopes became the four that ended up with anthrax in them.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Nevertheless, they put those doubts aside and start looking for their needle.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
By taking it to the U.N., Powell means standing in front of the United Nations and asking them to go to war. So he's got to make that case. But there's something he wants to do before he goes out on that limb. His reputation is on the line.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
In the winter months of late 2004, Decker and another investigator drive out to the factory where the pre-stamped envelopes had been made. It's in central Pennsylvania, a state known for its legendary paper-making mills. And Decker feels right at home.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
He'd driven a lot of forklifts in his time there. But Decker also worked in quality control there, monitoring paper chemistry. Talk about the perfect person for the job. The man knows how to look at paper. And he knows that paper companies keep records. But when he goes to look at the paper mill's records, he hits a snag.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
All of the records starting right before October 2001, the exact weeks Decker needs, had been retired. And now, in 2004, are nowhere to be found. So he turns to the printer of the ink stamp on those same envelopes. The printer does have records, and those records show that the ink for the 34-cent stamp was reformulated in January of 2001, almost a year before the attacks. That is great intel.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Decker can now eliminate 9 million envelopes printed with the old ink before January 2001. Only 36 million more to sort through. But because the killer mailed the attack letters in September and October of 2001, the 5.5 million envelopes printed after that can also be crossed off the list. Boom. From what was 45 million down to 31 million. But that still leaves 31 million envelopes.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
This discovery that vinyl rollers wear down and need to be replaced means everything to Decker. It means that the printing on each and every 34-cent ink stamp on the envelope over time and almost imperceptibly starts to degrade.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
That 34-cent printed stamp is the image of an eagle with its wings outstretched, printed in royal blue ink directly on each white envelope. Decker's team wants an expert to hunt for any printing defects in that image. So he turns to an agency founded after the Civil War, the Secret Service.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Today, they're known almost exclusively for protecting federal officials, but the Secret Service also specializes in federal counterfeiting cases. It turns out they're very good at finding tiny telltale discrepancies that make all the difference.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
The answer is yes, they can. And incredibly, they find something. A microscopic printing defect on each of the anthrax envelopes. A slight blue line along the bottom edge of the eagle's right wing. To Decker, this is forensic proof that the letters came from the same batch of envelopes and the same person.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So if Decker's team can somehow find a record of which post offices that specific, slightly defective batch was shipped to, they can narrow their search and find the killer's location.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
We've just got to get there. The first step in this new phase is to get envelope samples from each of the relevant post offices. This results in almost 300,000 samples from post offices across the country. From there, they have to figure out if any of those envelopes had that telltale discrepancy, which means examining 300,000 envelopes by hand. It's a Herculean effort.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
There's no AI or computer scans to do this in 2004. So once again, the Secret Service gets to work.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Months go by. It's now 2005. Another summer. Another anniversary of the attacks. And then winter. By December, it's been a full year since Decker visited those printing mills in Pennsylvania. And then, he gets a call.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Then, on February 5th, 2003, with those assurances in hand and a special prop in his pocket, Powell makes his case to the UN Security Council.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
This is the moment Decker and his team have worked and hoped for. The shipping records show that this box of envelopes was mailed on March 21st, 2001 to post offices in just seven towns, all in the mid-Atlantic region. And one of those towns is Frederick, Maryland. Frederick, Maryland, you'll remember, is the home of Stephen Hatfield. That's one point for the Hatfield camp.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
But Frederick is also just 11 minutes from USAMRID, the Army's bioterrorism lab. So several other scientists work and live nearby, including anthrax vaccine whiz Dr. Bruce Ivins. As far as the FBI is concerned, every scientist with the right clearance at USAMRID is now a suspect. But for Decker, it's one point for the Ivins camp.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
And there's another point against Ivins that now comes into sharp focus. One, it turns out the FBI had been following at a distance for years.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
You might remember hearing about one of the microbiologists who got this email. Her name is Dr. Nancy Hegwood.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Nancy had met with FBI agents way back in early 2002 and told them she had a strained relationship with her former colleague, Bruce Ivins, that he'd asked her too many personal questions, including about her college days and her sorority.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
She told the FBI back then that it was in one of those emails that Nancy had seen a photo that worried her. A snapshot of Ivan's making anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
After that photo and the attacks and then the FBI's email asking for help, Nancy realized that Bruce may not be who she'd thought he was.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
A couple of agents came out to talk to her. But at the time, in early 2002, the FBI had looked into hundreds of these kinds of leads. Agents had taken her report, took note of the photo, and that was sort of that. Soon after, Nancy saw on the news with everyone else that the FBI had turned its focus to Stephen Hatfield.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Over the years, the FBI occasionally followed up with Nancy and eventually started asking more and more questions about Bruce Ivins.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
By 2005, as agents probe further, they discover a whole new layer to her story. She tells the FBI that it all started while she was getting her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Ivins was there too, working as a postdoctoral fellow in a neighboring lab.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Agents discover that in one of her early conversations with Bruce, Nancy casually mentioned that she was advising her KKG chapter, the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, as an alumn.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
After that, for most of her PhD years, Nancy politely tolerated Bruce's eccentricities. Then in the late 1970s, he'd moved away to Maryland. And for all intents and purposes, that was the end of their interactions. But agents find out that after Ivan's moved, something strange happened to Nancy at her PhD lab.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Inside Nancy's notebook was months of work, which would all be lost if she couldn't get it back.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
The note was anonymous, but it seemed someone had taken her notebook for some reason and placed it in a mailbox downtown.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
No explanation as to why it was there. Nancy tells the FBI she'd been relieved and mystified about what had happened. And that an odd thought had crossed her mind at the time.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
He sits at a large desk in a dark suit and a red tie. Serious-looking men sit behind him.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Unless Bruce Ivins was visiting or had traveled the nearly five hours from Maryland to Chapel Hill, it didn't make sense to Nancy that it could be him. And yet, he was still the person that somehow came to her mind.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
As agents continue to question Nancy, they discover one other strange incident from her past. It happened in 1983, after she'd moved closer to Ivins in Frederick, Maryland for her postdoctoral fellowship. The editor of the local Frederick News Post had received a letter.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Nancy found that letter printed in the opinion pages, a letter to the editor defending hazing rituals conducted by Nancy's own college sorority, KKG. It was signed, Nancy L. Hegwood. Which surprised Nancy L. Hagwood, because Nancy L. Hagwood says she didn't write it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Nancy tells the FBI it seemed Bruce had assumed her identity and written as if he were a member of KKG. Bruce's interest in KKG interests the FBI.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
It's a commanding image, the four-star general soberly presenting the facts to a room full of world leaders.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Decker and the FBI no longer see Ivins as a harmless oddball. Turns out, underneath the surface, he has a history of obsessive behavior, possibly even stalking women and driving long distances to act on his grudges. Agents also see the seeds of a pattern that ties to anthrax. an imposter letter mailed to the media, and a post office used as a conduit for the crime. And then there's the kicker.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
The blue mailbox in Princeton, New Jersey, where the anthrax letters were mailed from?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So the mailbox with active spores that agents spent weeks scanning for in the dead of night was located right in front of the college's KKG chapter. If Ivins dropped the letters into that box, it would mean that he would have driven several hours from his home. It would mean he was extremely fixated and methodical. And for Nancy, that isn't out of the question.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Agents hope to turn Nancy's suspicion into evidence. So they come to her with a plan to see if she can help them catch Ivan saying something incriminating. They want her to wear a wire.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
That avenue is now closed to them. But Decker and his side of the FBI are now convinced Ivins is a solid lead. And there's now enough disenchantment with Hatfield that top leaders at the FBI make a change, too. In August 2006, Decker's direct supervisor, who'd been so emphatic about Hatfield's guilt for years, gets taken off the case.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
It's technically a promotion, but inside the FBI, there's a different feeling.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
For Decker, this new direction is all about finding genetic and tangible proof to test the theory that Bruce Ivins is guilty. As for the other working theory in the government, that Iraq had been behind the anthrax attacks, or were at least producing other weapons of mass destruction, that was debunked entirely, but not without great cost.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
The UN already knows that Iraq admitted to having anthrax back in 1995. So as Powell continues on with his new intel on Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction, he has an opportunity to make that threat feel real. He calmly reaches over and picks up a prop, a small, transparent tube full of white powder.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
US forces had spent weeks, then months, then years searching for evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. When Colin Powell waved that vial of fake anthrax at the UN, he'd said he did it with the confidence that he was telling the truth. But the intelligence he was citing turns out to be as fake as the anthrax he was holding.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
But in show business, at that level, facts matter. And it turns out that what Powell thought were three or maybe even four separate and unique sources saying Iraq had WMDs was actually one flimsy rumor disguised to look like four different reports.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Ultimately, the U.S. never finds anthrax or any other WMDs in Iraq. Powell lived the rest of his life with the shame of that speech hanging over his head. But the consequences for the Iraqi people were far greater.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
As the war in Iraq raged on, Agent Scott Decker was fighting his own battle with disinformation, hoping his team can find definitive evidence that Dr. Bruce Ivins is either innocent or guilty.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Aftermath, The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer is a production of Wolf Entertainment, USG Audio, and Digg 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 Digg Studios.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Of course, the powder in that vial is not actually anthrax. And of course, Saddam Hussein has nothing to do with the anthrax attacks. The FBI had already repeatedly said that the anthrax that shut down Capitol Hill had nothing to do with Iraq. But none of that matters. In this moment, the leaders in that room are focused on what the equivalent of that vial has done to America.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Five deaths, thousands of exposures, a Capitol brought to its knees. But now, when a lot of people look back at this image today, they think about something else. They wonder if that vial of fake anthrax started a war. I'm Jeremiah Kroll, and from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 7, Pot of Gold.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
In the months leading up to Colin Powell's speech at the UN, Agent Scott Decker was frustrated with the direction the anthrax investigation was taking. There was beginning to be a kind of collective tunnel vision that was familiar to him from his days working in science labs.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
And for Decker, this is one of the trickiest parts of leading an investigative team, making sure that team faces the things that disprove the current hypothesis. And in early 2003, it's exactly what's happening with the evidence against Dr. Stephen Hadfill. FBI agents had searched his house. Dogs had sniffed for his scent. Divers plunged in a pond. The FBI then drained that pond.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Other than being splashed all over the national news, none of it led anywhere. And despite the fact that Hatfield was technically skilled in the lab with expertise in biological warfare, he didn't normally work with bacteria. He was a virus guy.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
It's early 2003 in the Oval Office of the White House, and Colin Powell, the U.S. Army General and now Secretary of State, is in a bind. After almost 18 months, the FBI still hasn't been able to point to the person behind the anthrax attacks. So in the absence of a clear answer, Powell's boss, President George W. Bush, has come up with his own.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So Decker's now leaning away from Hatfield, but his colleagues are divided.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Unfortunately for Decker, the pro-Hatfield camp includes his direct supervisor.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Decker is now starting to believe that the culprit is a scientist in their midst. That's where the evidence points. The letters, the psychological profile, the sophistication of the anthrax samples themselves. So if it's not Hatfield, it's got to be another scientist, someone they may have worked with. Someone Decker's somehow been missing.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
That's important. And there was someone in their midst who, looking back, struck Decker as odd. A scientist who'd been consulting with the FBI since the beginning of the case. The guy who strangely ended up volunteering to hand out coffee for the Red Cross during the search of the lake. The vaccine whiz, Dr. Bruce Ivins. He'd been there. He'd made sure to have been there every step of the way.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Ivins is the same guy who had told officials back in 2001 that the anthrax powder used in the attacks was light, high quality, and in his words, not garage spores. Now, Decker and the other agents who think Hatfield is innocent want to check Ivins out.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Thinking back to the beginning of the investigation, Decker now remembers an odd experience he'd had talking to Ivins after the Capitol Hill attacks. Ivins was telling him about an experiment he'd done on a monkey with aerosolized anthrax.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
And he calmed down. It had felt a little odd at the time. But sometimes scientists are a little odd. Now, though, Decker's wondering if there was more to it. On the other hand, Bruce Ivins and many of his colleagues at the US military's bioweapons lab, USAMRID, had already been on the FBI's watch list for months. They'd been checked out. Ivins himself had passed a polygraph.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
In fact, Ivins was an altogether unlikely suspect. He was one of the most respected anthrax scientists in the country, who regularly lectured at conferences and had published over 40 scientific papers. He was active in his Catholic church, playing the keyboard in the band. He was well-liked by his colleagues.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
On top of that, the FBI had just publicly accused someone who, so far, despite all of their efforts, wasn't panning out.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
While Decker turns his attention away from Stephen Hatfield and toward new suspects, the highest offices in America had come up with their own culprit.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
And yet that direction, going after Iraq, evidence be damned, is exactly where they're headed. On March 19th, 2003, five days after Colin Powell's speech at the UN, President Bush makes an announcement that will change the geopolitical landscape forever.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
The invasion of Iraq is a horrific distortion of the anthrax investigation at home. The Secretary of State held up a vial of anthrax to the world, essentially saying, without actually saying it, that perhaps Iraq is to blame for the anthrax attacks and all the related chaos and fear on U.S. soil.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
And now, even though the FBI has been saying for months that Saddam had nothing to do with the attacks, Iraqis are paying the price. All Decker, the FBI, and the scientists working on the case can do is keep grinding away. And about a month after the invasion of Iraq, they get some unexpected help.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
President Bush has a personal history with Iraq. His own dad had launched a war there when he'd been president. And that war is where Colin Powell had made a name for himself. He turned into a decorated war hero, a trusted military veteran. So now the younger Bush is coming to Powell, his secretary of state, wanting to use that trust.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Dr. Francis Collins announces a major breakthrough in human DNA. The essentially complete set of genes in a human cell called a genome have been decoded for the first time. And it gives real hope to the idea that anthrax, too, could be mapped genetically. One of the most striking revelations of the Human Genome Project was that a tiny amount, just 0.1% of our genes, make each of us unique.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So Decker and the FBI want scientists to explore the genetic map of anthrax to decode the figurative 0.1% that made this particular sample unique.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Claire Frazier and her team at Tiger had been pursuing this genetic fingerprint for more than a year now.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
So the process wasn't going quickly. But the payoff, if they can get it right, is huge. If Tiger can identify the unique microscopic differences, the genetic fingerprint of the anthrax from the letters, they could trace it back to its mother batch somewhere in a lab, which could point them to the workplace of their killer scientist.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
They're doing this critical work at a lab in USAMRID, the same place Bruce Ivins and Stephen Hatfield have worked. And it's here in the lab where the first major genetic breakthrough happens, entirely by accident.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Basically, she'd left some anthrax test samples in the oven too long. Typically, this would ruin the sample, and she thought she'd have to start over. But...
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
Claire and her team had found a faint microscopic variant between the original strain of Ames found in Texas and the Ames strain that had been mailed. Just one tiny difference in a genetic map of over 5 million cells. That alone doesn't tell them much, but the fact that they've found that difference means it's possible to find more differences.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 7: Pot of Gold
It finally seems they might be able to get that full DNA fingerprint, which would point them to the lab of the killer. While Claire's team's doing that, Decker has another idea. This one, a little more old school.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
So, as they'd feared, the intern was indeed exposed to anthrax. And so were many of the people who were in the office with her when she opened the envelope. But then the news gets worse. The test results show that several people who were working down the hall from Daschle's office were infected, too. Agent Scott Stanley's fears about the ventilation system may be coming true.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And then, when the rest of the test results come in, the really bad news comes.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
So they now know there's anthrax not just in multiple rooms of Daschle's building, but in several neighboring buildings as well.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Nothing like this has ever happened. The last time Congress was interrupted and the Capitol shut down was more than a century earlier, for the War of 1812.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Joby Warwick, the Washington Post reporter, saw all of this unfold over the next few days in real time, just blocks from his office.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Agent Scott Stanley watches hundreds and then thousands of people line up in another building to get nasal swabs and a three-day supply of Cipro.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
A few days after Thomas' colleague at the mail facility handled that letter with powder in it, Thomas started feeling achy and came down with a headache. And now it's 4.39 a.m. on a Sunday, and he can't stop vomiting. He tells the 911 operator how all week he's been hearing from his bosses that there's nothing to worry about.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
About 36 hours after the Dasha letter was opened, much of the U.S. Capitol complex is evacuated and closed. But in this catastrophe, there's a tiny silver lining for the FBI. They now have another envelope, this one with some anthrax remaining in it, and now a second letter.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The FBI compares the D.C. letter to the New York letter, and there are striking similarities. First, some of the letter's wording, death to America, death to Israel, Allah is great, is the exact same language. And so is the way it's written.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
This basic evidence is a big break. It's the first time the FBI can really start to hone in on the person who's mailing these letters. And on the envelope, Decker finds even more.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
So with the help of the Postal Service, they can now use these barcodes to trace the exact path the Dasher letter traveled after it was mailed. It first arrived in D.C. in a mail bag at a sorting facility called Brentley.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The mail in that bag got separated into bins after midnight on October 12th, and the letter was scanned at 7.10 that morning and moved on a metal cart to one of the facility's giant high-speed mail sorters, this one called Machine 17. Machine 17 can sort about 37,000 letters an hour. It spat out the Daschle letter, and then mail carriers delivered it to the Hart Senate building around noon.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
All of this tells the FBI how the Daschle letter got to Capitol Hill. But it's the mailing facility itself that grabs everyone's attention. Because Brentwood, the place that processed and delivered the letter that shut down Capitol Hill, it's still open and running.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The Brentwood Mail Processing and Distribution Center has about 2,000 employees. It's a massive building with two floors and 14.5 million cubic feet of space. And for a long time, this station has been a steady source of union jobs for D.C. workers. The staff at Brentwood, unlike that at The Hill, is largely made up of people of color. For these families, the U.S. Postal Service is a way of life.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Joan Jackson's brother, Joe, had followed in their dad's footsteps and spent his entire career working for the Postal Service. He even leads a Bible study group at the postal facility.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Officially, these really huge machines are called delivery barcode sorter machines, or DBCS machines. And the DBCS machine Joe worked that day was machine 17. That's the machine that had sorted the envelope with anthrax in it addressed to Tom Daschle. Even without knowing any of these details, his sister Joan was worried.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The U.S. Postmaster General pulls together a press conference to address concerns.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Note that this is the day after most of the Capitol complex was shut down.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
One letter handled there contained anthrax. After consulting with the CDC, the USPS decides the mail facility is still safe to remain open, that its employees are safe.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The key phrase there is appropriate testing. The USPS chooses not to test everyone for anthrax. They don't see a reason to.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
His tendency not to believe these people is well-earned. Their actions are about to put many people's lives in danger. Because these people, Thomas' bosses, oversee a mail facility with more than 2,000 employees, all of whom are now at risk of exposure to whatever has made Thomas sick.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
But two days after that press conference, Joan Jackson gets a call from her brother's wife.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It's a Saturday, and he stays in bed all day. But he's a devoted Catholic and wants to attend Mass that evening. Joe's family attends Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It's a church founded by Black Catholics, and it sits on a hill with a panoramic view of DC.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Yet Joe presses on through the end of church. And then, never wanting to miss work, he does his shift at Brentwood that night. The next day, though, he's feeling so bad, he drives himself to a hospital, where he's diagnosed with stomach flu. They send him home. There, his wife Celeste sends him to bed.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Joan is so worried she can't bring herself to watch the news. And then when Monday morning comes and she hasn't heard anything, she fears something is very wrong.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Seven days after the capillary was infected, postal worker Joe Kersine dies. He was 47.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
That weekend that Joe was sick was a terrible time for postal workers at Brentwood. Two other employees from the facility show up in a D.C. emergency room with flu-like symptoms. At least one of them had been working in the same area around Machine 17 near Joe. And that Sunday morning is when Thomas Morris, another one of Joe's co-workers, made that call to 911.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And on top of that, the mail that comes through this facility gets delivered right to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., right to the Supreme Court and the entire U.S. Congress. I'm Jeremiah Kroll. And from Wolf Entertainment, this is Aftermath, the hunt for the anthrax killer. Episode 4, Machine 17.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Thomas Morris Jr. had been working as a mail sorter for the U.S. Postal Service for 28 years. Part of his job was to verify the Senate's mail by hand and place it into a particular tray. By the time he called 911, he'd been home for a couple of days with what doctors had told him was a virus. They'd so far suggested only Tylenol. Now, it's 4.40 in the morning on a Sunday, and he's worried.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
He tells the 911 dispatcher about a suspicious letter, not the one that made it to Daschle, a different letter with powder in it that one of his colleagues had opened near him.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
His understanding that, at least in this moment, the only person looking out for Thomas is Thomas. It turns out that letter had been sent off for testing and had come back negative. But somehow, Thomas is still sick. The 911 operator sends an ambulance to his home in Maryland. Later that day, he dies of inhalation anthrax at the age of 55.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Thomas Morse and Joseph Kersine are the second and third victims to die of anthrax inhalation in less than three weeks.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Brentwood finally closes, and the CDC runs tests. The results are both surprising and not surprising.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Those hot spots are clustered on the first floor, all right around one spot. Delivery barcode sorter machine 17. Agent Decker says that it was only in the weeks that followed that the CDC and the FBI uncovered, too late really, a heartbreaking discovery.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Which means it didn't matter that the Daschle envelope had been sealed, even well-sealed. These machines had squeezed the anthrax spores out, and the compressed air hoses had sprayed them into the air for mail workers like Thomas and Joseph to breathe.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
That's only one of the ways the anthrax could have ended up in the lungs of Joseph, working machine 17, or Thomas, who rifled through the mail by hand. But what's clear to many is that the Postal Service's faith in a sealed envelope was misplaced. And now many of their other choices are called into question.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The difference between the way the two threats in D.C. were handled was striking.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Two weeks before that 911 call, FBI agent Scott Decker and all of America had watched as one man died of anthrax. And now, at least eight more people are infected in Florida and New York.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The Brentwood facility was kept open four days after most of Capitol Hill was shut down. Two other postal workers went to the ER that week and were diagnosed with anthrax. Their cases were more mild. They both lived. On Capitol Hill, despite what seemed at first like a death sentence, Senator Daschle's intern, Grant Leslie, who opened the letter and got anthrax all over her, she survived.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
She was one of 30 people on Capitol Hill who were exposed to anthrax, and none of them died. All of them were treated immediately with Cipro. That simple step may have saved lives in the postal facility. About two weeks after the Daschle letter showed up on Capitol Hill, Joseph Christine Jr. 's funeral is held at his same beautiful church overlooking the city.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The Archbishop of Washington, D.C. presides over the service. The mayor shows up, and scores of postal workers attend to honor their fallen colleague. Ultimately, decontaminating Brentwood would take 26 months and cost $130 million. Machine 17 was dismantled and destroyed in the process. Today, the Brentwood Mail Center is called the Joseph Kersine Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Processing and Distribution Center. On the very same day as Joseph's funeral, there's a major development in the Bush administration's fight against terrorism.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act, the legislation that had been fiercely debated for weeks before the attacks, now passes.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
President Bush links the deaths of the postal workers directly to his efforts to stop the growing terror in America.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And that effect helped pass a controversial law.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
For better or worse, the Senate Majority Leader and Anthrax target got the votes to pass the Patriot Act, which is still largely enforced today. The bill gave the government more power to spy on its citizens' phone calls and emails, and it let the government collect Americans' financial records and track them online.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
At this moment, the FBI has essentially no evidence, zero suspects, and a lot of pressure to solve this. Pressure from the public, from the White House, and especially from Decker's boss, the FBI's new director, Robert Mueller.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It's still only late October 2001. In less than a month, the anthrax letters have killed three people and now help change American law. For the FBI, the stakes couldn't be higher, but they're still largely outmatched.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
As for Agent Decker, he knows what the playbook should be. Focus on the evidence. But it's not that simple.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Decker is working with Mueller at FBI headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown D.C. The director's office is just a few steps down the hall, and Decker can almost feel the weight of Mueller's expectations bearing down on him.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
He just looked at you and you knew you better get your butt in gear. Decker's spending long nights at the office, too. He'd just separated from his wife, so he's throwing himself into the anthrax case. And the stress was getting to him.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
To catch the anthrax mailer, Decker and the FBI need to figure out what the mailer wants. So far, there are no demands. And the best physical evidence they have is a letter sent to NBC calling for death to America and the now empty envelope it came in. Not a lot to go on. And on top of that, their job has just gotten much more complicated because the American public has become paranoid.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
People start seeing what they think is anthrax everywhere.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
This anxiety over powder spills is making it hard for the FBI and local officials to know what's real and what's not. But even more alarming and more strange, letters with white powder start showing up in cities all over the country, filled with laundry detergent or baking soda or really any white powder folks can get their hands on.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
But hoax or not, every time the FBI gets a call about a white powder threat, Decker and his colleagues have to investigate.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And unfortunately, it's only going to get worse. A few miles away from FBI headquarters, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is heading into work on Capitol Hill. It's Monday morning, October 15th, and now about a month after 9-11, as he arrives at the Capitol that morning, the senator from South Dakota gets news that brings America's fears right to his doorstep.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It's October 21st, 2001. Thomas Morris Jr. is calling for help.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
That intern is a young woman named Grant Leslie, who works in Senator Daschle's main offices on the fifth and sixth floors of the Hart Senate building. Their office had been crowded that morning, so Grant had taken a chair to the middle of the room and started opening a big pile of mail in her lap.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
In an interview with PBS Frontline a decade later, she's still able to recall in vivid detail the moment one particular letter caught her eye.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
She gently moved the envelope far from her face.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The FBI arrives within minutes. We were escorted up to the suite where the letter was opened. Arriving on the scene is another FBI special agent named Scott. This one, Agent Scott Stanley.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And just like Agent Scott Decker, he's a scientist with a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Agent Stanley takes stock of the room, still crowded with members of Daschle's staff.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
First, he's got to safely get that envelope out of this room. So a hazmat officer carefully places it in a container, and they send it to the lab for testing to make sure this is indeed anthrax. Then, first responders give Grant, Leslie, and everyone in the room nasal swab tests and a detailed decontamination. Showers, their clothing gets bagged, and they're given a three-day supply of Cipro.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Then they have an agonizing wait to know if they've been infected. Test results could take up to 24 hours. And they may not be the only ones exposed. Because looking around the room, Agent Scott Stanley sees a problem. Air vents.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Thomas tells the operator that about a week earlier, he'd been close by when a co-worker opened a suspicious letter.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
At all costs, the FBI wants to contain the anthrax. Because if it gets into the ventilation system, it's not only this building they've got to worry about. Unless you're an insider, you wouldn't know this, but there are underground ventilated tunnels that connect a bunch of the buildings in D.C., including Senate offices within the Capitol itself.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And inside those Capitol buildings, as many as 20,000 staffers, lawmakers, and visitors walk in and out every day. They shut the air conditioning off. But it might be too late. Stanley, the FBI, and the White House can only hope they've done enough.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Joby Warwick is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covers national security for the Washington Post.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
Joby had investigated biological and chemical weapons threats in war zones and dicey basement labs all over the world. But he never expected this.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
It's a little hard to remember now, but hazmat suits, PPE, even the idea of interacting with an airborne invisible killer were all extraordinarily rare then. So the moon suits, the panic, the very strangeness of this attack, it almost felt like an alien invasion, like you'd see in a movie.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
And just like one of those movies, it's now playing out in Washington, D.C., the country's leaders pretty much powerless against an unknown, amorphous, and formidable enemy that might just take over. And Agent Scott Stanley knows the stakes are high. If anthrax spreads through Capitol Hill, what's going to happen? Or not happen.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
With all the recent news, 911 was already getting a lot of panicked calls.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The Senate decides to stay in session. Senators relocate to different areas of the capital complex so they can keep working. And top of mind for them, now more than ever, is a controversial piece of new legislation that President Bush has been urging Congress to pass. Created in the wake of 9-11, this bill is meant to give the government more power to track down its enemies.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The bill the Senate has been debating is called the USA Patriot Act. And as Senate Majority Leader, the weight of this bill is falling heavily on Tom Daschle.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
— Some senators, like Daschle, do see it as security versus privacy. They're afraid the Patriot Act may go too far in loosening privacy laws. But anthrax showing up in the Capitol has turned up the pressure.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
While Congress is debating the legislation to fight terrorism, the FBI is reckoning with the actual impact on the ground. They're still trying to figure out the reach of the anthrax spores from Daschle's office.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
But Thomas' call is different, because he's an employee of the U.S. Postal Service. And America's mail system over the last two weeks has been transformed into a kind of terrorism delivery service. It turns out that there's another letter.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
To do that, the FBI and the CDC have to test for anthrax in other parts of Daschle's building, and neighboring buildings, too.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 4: Machine 17
The day after the Senate makes its stand, the test results from Daschle's office are officially confirmed.
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Once Paul knows that, he needs to figure out what strain it is.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Jean takes a biohazard crew to scour the property from top to bottom.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The powder is so fine that if it was sprayed from the sky, it could be anywhere.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
He landed near ground zero and, like everyone there, struggled to make sense of what had just happened.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
State and federal health officials hurry to put together press conferences to address everyone's concerns.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
As one of those well-trained physicians, Dr. Larry Bush is called upon to answer some tough questions.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Larry knows that, historically, inhalation anthrax is likely fatal. But he's conflicted about sharing the worst-case scenario.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
Meanwhile, the press keep on with their questions, and the CDC seems entirely focused on hitting the same reassuring note over and over again.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
If the hope was to keep people calm, to reassure the media that this situation was nothing to worry about, It didn't work.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
The chaos Dr. Larry Bush was afraid of is here.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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?
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
In a healthy patient, Larry shouldn't see much of anything.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
He sees tiny, blue-stained bacterial rectangles all in a line. Imagine looking down on a train from high in the air.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
After 9-11, the whole country was bracing for another attack. Larry's afraid that this could be it.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Aftermath: Hunt for the Anthrax Killer
Episode 1: Isolated Incident
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Colleen Rowley was an FBI agent in Minnesota at the time.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
They couldn't even get a search warrant for his computer. Then, September 11th happened.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Now they get the search warrant and search his computer.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
A crop duster? A crop duster is a small plane used in agriculture to spray pesticides.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
What he's saying is that he's a member of al-Qaeda and that they were planning a second wave attack. They already know the 9-11 hijackers were studying at flight schools around the United States. So now agents worry that Moussaoui was part of a bigger plot still to come.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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?
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Announcing the names was a call for help to the public. If you'd seen something, say something.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
operative who directed the attack. Willie and his team called the FBI. This time, they listened. So now the FBI has to figure out why were Al-Qaeda members in at least two different places around the country trying to learn how to fly crop dusters? And then, totally separately, there's the question that Dr. Larry Bush is asking. How does a man in suburban Florida have anthrax?
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
And these two mysteries are about to collide. Because the airfield that the 9-11 terrorists visited, Willie's airfield, it's less than an hour from the hospital where Robert Stevens is in a coma. Back in that hospital, Robert Stevens' health is deteriorating. And Dr. Bush still doesn't know for certain what he's dealing with.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
While everyone else was trying like hell to get out of New York City, Decker drove all night to get in.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
He hung up. 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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Dr. Paul Keim hoped to find the source of the anthrax in a biological database he'd been creating for decades.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
And inside that is a vial with the spores found in Robert Stevens' spinal fluid.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Once Paul knows that, he needs to figure out what strain it is.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Paul and his team work through the night. By morning, they have an answer.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
For the moment, the story hasn't spread to the media. Paul Keim, Scott Decker, 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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Jean takes a biohazard crew to scour the property from top to bottom.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
The powder is so fine that if it was sprayed from the sky, it could be anywhere.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
State and federal health officials hurry to put together press conferences to address everyone's concerns.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
As one of those well trained physicians, Dr. Larry Bush is called upon to answer some tough questions.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Larry knows that historically inhalation anthrax is likely fatal, but he's conflicted about sharing the worst case scenario.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
The chaos Dr. Larry Bush was afraid of is here.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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. 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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
So the question on their minds is, if al-Qaeda does have anthrax, what will they do with it next?
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
He landed near Ground Zero and, like everyone there, struggled to make sense of what had just happened.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
There's a warning. Take penicillin now.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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, whatever 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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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 2nd, 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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
In a healthy patient, Larry shouldn't see much of anything.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
These bacteria suggest a cause of infection that shocks Larry.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
Chaos not just in his hospital, but also likely all of Florida and probably the nation. After 9-11, the whole country was bracing for another attack. Larry's afraid that this could be it.
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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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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Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
FBI Special Agent Scott Decker is one of only a few agents to have investigated nearly the entire case. And he's got skills that 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.
Casefile True Crime
Introducing Aftermath: Hunt for The Anthrax Killer
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.