Amerithrax

"YOU CAN NOT STOP US. WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. ARE YOU AFRAID?"

Amerithrax, also known simply as the 2001 anthrax attacks, was an American bio-terrorism case. The perpetrator has sometimes been nicknamed "The Anthrax Mailer".

Brief Case History
The first five Amerithrax letters were sent on September 18, 2001, one week to the day after the 9/11 terrorist attack. They were postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey and sent to ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, and The New York Post in Morgan, New York and to National Enquirer at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida. The first known fatality was Robert Stevens, a photo editor who worked at the Sun, a Florida-based tabloid, at the AMI building and handled one of the letters. The letters addressed to the New York Post and NBC, which were the only ones that were recovered, read:

09-11-01 THIS IS NEXT TAKE PENACILIN[sic] NOW DEATH TO AMERICA DEATH TO ISRAEL ALLAH IS GREAT

The highlighted letters are believed to have spelled out nucleic acids, three of which combined become an amino acid. Based on this theory, the three sets of three letters spell either FNY or PAT.

The second wave of letters, which contained aerosolized anthrax spores, were postmarked on October 9 and sent to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, both Democrats, in Washington, D. C. They were also postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey. The return addresses on both were "4th Grade Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ, 08852", a fake address. Leahy's letter was misdirected to the State Department in Sterling, Virginia due to a misread ZIP code. A U.S. Postal Inspector working there, David Hose, was infected. The letter was found on November 16 in an impounded mail bag and opened later in a secure lab. The Daschle's letter was opened on October 15 by Daschle's aide, who threw it away in a trash can. The Hart Senate Building, where Daschle's office was located, was evacuated and people who worked in the area were tested for anthrax. Twenty-five of them tested positive and were treated with antibiotics.

The FBI's investigation, during which over 9,000 people were interviewed, spanned across six continents. They codenamed the perpetrator "Amerithrax", a portmanteau of "America" and "anthrax". In February of 2002, Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York and biological arms control expert, wrote a number of articles criticizing the FBI and claiming they had suspected for months that the anthrax attacks were the result of an inside job. Don Foster, a writing analyst working as an English professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, was contracted by the FBI and, based on the Amerithrax letters' word usage, found Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill, a virologist and bio-weapons expert working for the Science Applications International Corporation, to be a possible suspect. During a press conference in August the same year, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Hatfill a "person of interest" in the case.

Hatfill himself strongly maintained that he was innocent, but was more or less tried by the media in a manner similar to the way Richard Jewell was suspected of the Olympic Park bombings. He filed lawsuits against Foster, Vanity Fair (for publishing an article written by Foster about his involvement in the investigation), and even the U.S. Department of Justice. In the meantime, the FBI, which in March 2008 exonerated Hatfill, pursued another lead: Dr. Bruce Edward Ivins, a senior bio-defense researcher at Fort Detrick. In late July, he was informed that he would be prosecuted for the case. On July 27, he overdosed on Tylenol and died two days later in a hospital. His death was ruled a suicide, though no autopsy was performed. On August 8, 2008, less than two weeks after his death, Dr. Ivins was declared to be the perpetrator of the attacks by federal prosecutors, even though there was little solid evidence implicating him. On February 19, 2010, the FBI officially closed the Amerithrax investigation. The case remains unsolved.

Suspects

 * Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins, PhD. (1946-2008)
 * Microbiologist
 * Vaccinologist
 * Biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
 * Had a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science and PhD. degree in Microbiology from the University of Cincinnati
 * Had two anthrax-related patents, one of which was a method for producing an anthrax vaccine
 * Died of a Tylenol overdose in 2008 in an apparent suicide shortly after being informed that he would be prosecuted. Prior to that, he had been treated for depression and "[showed] signs of serious strain".
 * Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill, M.D. and PhD. (b. 1953)
 * Physician
 * Virologist
 * Bio-weapons expert
 * Studied biology at the Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas
 * Served in the U.S. Army between 1975 and 1977
 * Exonorated
 * Dr. Ayaad Assad
 * Egyptian-American
 * Former U.S. Army microbiologist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
 * Researcher at Fort Detrick
 * Senior scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency
 * Was accused of being a potential bio-terrorist in an anonymous letter sent to the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on September 26, 2001. The writer proved to have intimate knowledge of Assad's work and is believed to have been a coworker.
 * Notes: It was theorized that Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack a week before the Amerithrax campaign began, was responsible. Mohamed Atta, one of the masterminds of the operation, had gone to a flight school near the AMI building in Boca Raton along with two other Al-Qaeda operatives.

Modus Operandi
The Amerithrax perpetrator used anthrax spores (bacillus anthracis) of the so-called Ames strain as weapon, delivering it via letters, which were often disguised as common letters but also sometimes contained messages from the perpetrator. Both cutaneous anthrax (which attacks through the skin) and inhalation anthrax were used. The perpetrator sent the letters from different locations and, in the later letters, used a fake return address to cover his tracks. The targets were senator's offices and media offices. Symptoms of anthrax include respiratory infections with flu-like symptoms, gastrointestinal infection, fever, and the appearance of black, necrotic, boil-like ulcers on the skin.

Profile
The FBI's psychological profile of the Amerithrax perpetrator says that he is most likely an organized, non-confrontational adult male who, if employed, has a job that allows him to work with little contact with other people, possibly in a laboratory. He likely keeps to himself and any relationships he has are likely self-serving. He is comfortable working with extremely hazardous substances and probably has a scientific background, or at least a very strong interest in science. He has access to anthrax and the equipment required to handle it and has the scientific expertise required to do so. He has probably also taken precautionary actions to ensure his own safety, such as taking anthrax vaccines and medications. He is familiar with the Trenton, New Jersey area, but may not live there. After the 9/11 attack, he may have displayed a lack of interest in the events and also have become secretive. After the letter campaign ended, in particular after some key dates such as the first fatality or unplanned casualties, he may have displayed anxiety, suffered noticeable mood swings, become more withdrawn, absent and preoccupied, and may also have shown an atypical media interest.

Known Victims
Note: The dates denote which day the laced letters were postmarked.
 * 2001:
 * One killed and another nine infected by the September 18 letters:
 * Boca Raton, Florida: Robert Stevens, 63
 * New York City, New York :
 * Ernesto "Ernie" Blanco, 73
 * Stephanie Dailey, 36
 * Johanna C. Huden, 31
 * Erin O'Connor, 38
 * Teresa Heller, 32
 * Unnamed seven-month-old baby
 * Casey Chamberlain, 23
 * Claire Fletcher, 27
 * Mark Cunningham
 * Two killed and another eight infected by the October 9 letters:
 * Washington, D.C.: Two killed and two more infected at the Brentwood mail sorting facility:
 * Thomas Morris, Jr., 55
 * Joseph Curseen, 47
 * Leroy Richmond, 56
 * An unnamed victim
 * Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey: Four infected at the regional mail processing plant:
 * Norma Wallace, 45
 * Patrick O'Donnell, 35
 * Jyotsna Patel, 43
 * Norma Wallace, 57
 * The U.S. State Department mail-sorting facility, Sterling, Virginia: David Hose, 59
 * The Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.: William R. Paliscak
 * Unknown sources of infection:
 * New York City, New York: Katherine Nguyen, 61
 * Oxford, Connecticut: Ottilie Lundgren, 94
 * Possible victims:
 * Unspecified location in New Jersey: Richard Morgano, 39
 * New York City, New York: Unnamed mailroom New York Post employee, 34

On Criminal Minds
The Amerithrax case was first mentioned in Lessons Learned, where a terrorist organization were planning an anthrax-based attack and Reid uses the amount of anthrax spores found in one of the Amerithrax letters as an example of how fatal they are.

The episode Amplification, in which the unsub used anthrax, specifically referred to the case several times:


 * One of the investigators, U.S. Army General Whitworth, is mentioned to have been highly critical of the FBI's handling of the Amerithrax investigation, in part of because of how Dr. Hatfill was publicly declared a suspect in the media, among other things.
 * While examining a crime scene, Morgan and Prentiss mention that the unsub may have targeted the park because of some personal connection and that the Unabomber, who sent bombs to locations in which he had lived or worked, and Amerithrax, who (apparently) sent tainted letters to politicians whose policies he opposed, did so.
 * In a video recording, Dr. Lawrence Nichols mentions the fatalities of Amerithrax and tells the National Defense Committee that they should count their blessings that so few died and that the perpetrator used letters and not a crop-duster, which was not an uncommon nightmare scenario in the aftermath of the letter campaign.

In promotional summaries for Season Eight, the most recent BAU member, Alex Blake, is mentioned to have had some involvement in the Amerithrax investigation and had to take the fall for some mistake with the linguistical aspect of the case. The case is indeed mentioned in The Silencer, the episode that introduces Blake, a few times. In the episode, it is revealed that Blake took the fall when the FBI arrested a suspect in the case who turned out to be innocent (likely a reference to Dr. Hatfill). The case is once again mentioned in Carbon Copy, where Erin Strauss apologized to Blake for letting her take the fall during the investigation. The case is later indirectly mentioned in #6. In The Replicator, the case is mentioned again, when it turns out that John Curtis, a.k.a. The Replicator, had been with Blake on the same team that investigated it, and that the case was a major catalyst in shaping Curtis into a serial killer. Also, Curtis used the Amerithrax case as the basis for one of his attacks, although he used a different type of poison to lace on the sent letter and the victim wasn't killed by it.