Statistical probabilities point to the guilt of Dr. Bruce Ivins in the mailing of deadly anthrax spores in 2001. We at M.O. Mystery do believe that a preponderance of circumstantial evidence, all taken together, does yield a high probability that Dr. Ivins was guilty of mailing the lethal substance in September and October, 2001, sent to the offices of media and political figures. But the file is multi-layered, and sometimes confusing or contradictory, revealing one fascinating issue—psychological, scientific, forensic, legal, and moral—after another. The essential evidence against Ivins is said to be “circumstantial,” which it is, but quite compelling in our view.
It basically falls into three categories:
A) Background and Psychological Profile. Ivins had long revealed, to counselors and therapists, a complex, troubled, and even dark side to his personality. He was apparently aware that alongside the “good Bruce,” the cheerful, somewhat eccentric scientist who entertained at parties with his juggling skills, lurked a “bad Bruce,” just out of sight most of the time. Was it because his father had been an alcoholic, his mother a rare, near-homicidal case of temper who physically abused his father? Everyone’s family closet contains psychological skeletons, and stresses manifest in unpredictable ways. For the most part any tortured side to Ivins was kept below social radar all his life…but there were signs.
People walk by a brick office building 20 Nassau St., in Princeton, N.J., Monday, Aug. 4, 2008. A sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, has an office in this building. Former Army scientist Bruce Ivins, the top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday. (AP Photo/Mike Derer)
For example, the bad Bruce had developed a bizarre “obsession,” his own word, for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority after being rejected by Kappa girl Nancy Haigwood many years before. On multiple occasions he drove hundreds of miles to stalk Kappa houses, sometimes breaking in surreptitiously, even armed, (a felony) and stealing their secret Codebooks. At one point he impersonated Haigwood, writing provocative letters about KKG under her name, for which she was blamed. He’d vandalized her car and home, spraying KKG around with paint. She was becoming a professional scientist in her own right, but her biggest scare in graduate school was when her lab notes—the whole key to her dissertation and professional degree—went missing. Anonymously a note told her what town mailbox (yes, a mailbox…) they’d been dropped in and they were recovered…Ivins admitted to the twisted act years later. Ivins developed obsessions with other women as well, e.g., his colleague Pat Fellows, his young assistant, Mara Linscott. When Linscott moved on and moved hours away he was crushed, plagued her with unwanted emails, drove long distances to give her small gifts but also, apparently, took poison for her along on one drive, torn as to whether to to use it.
Although Ivins reached late middle age with no criminal record, his many fixations and transgressions added up to bright red flags. (We’ve offered only a digest of representative incidents and examples here, obviously not every detail, which would involve a lengthy report.) The powerful conclusion is not simply that Ivins was much less balanced than most adults, sometimes “paranoid” or “delusional” in his later self-assessment, but the ways in which his peculiar nature was manifest dovetail with the person sought in the investigation. His particular history and behavior patterns offer a good match for an Anthrax mailer, and an early FBI profile outlines a person that fits him surprisingly well. He harbored jealousies and animosities, and found devious ways to get even. He had a history of sending illicit letters with false return addresses, from remote mailing locations. He was unfazed by the need to drive long distances, round trips that might take all night, to stroke his psychological agendas. He hinted that his surface mischief was only the visible tip of a much darker psyche. And in the “too-clever-by-half” stye of the bright and arrogant, he was convinced he could outwit those around him and carry out his fantasies unscathed.
B) Evidence of Means, Opportunity, and Connection in 2001
If the Background and Profile Section above point to the plausibility of Ivins as capable of the anthrax crime, then the question: what are the odds that someone of this profile would meet all of the following criteria at the time of the crime itself?
1) According to documents released by the FBI, and never challenged to the best of our knowledge, his private, evening hours in a bio-containment lab spiked just before both anthrax mailings. They had never, before or since, shown that pattern. He had no convincing explanation for the spike in hours. In simple street language, that’s just one hell of a coincidence.
2) Ivins had no alibi for the blocks of hours it would have taken him to have made the furtive drive to the mailbox on the edge of the Princeton campus in New Jersey. Most people would have some proof of whereabouts for large blocks of hours, but not Ivins. Remember, his history was one of such drives, and his wife led an almost separate life and had no clue.
3) The mailbox used as the drop was only a couple of hundred feet from an administrative office of the KKG sorority. The percentage of U.S. mailboxes right under the nose of KKG offices must be a small fraction of one percent. (NOTE: One detractor of the FBI mocks the KKG connection in New Jersey, observing that mailboxes not too far from KKG chapters would have been available to Ivins much closer to home, in Maryland or Delaware. But that misses the point: Ivins was crafty enough not to mail from quite close to home, and Princeton in the Trenton area would be just about right—far enough to direct attention away from his Ft. Detrick base, but within his known cruising range.)
4) The pre-stamped envelopes used had printing anomalies only found in envelopes sold in a few counties near Ivins’ home base. He maintained a mailbox at one such source.
5) The note in block lettering offered up phrases—i.e., “death to America, death to Israel” similar to what Ivins had used in other communications, such as emotional emails warning about the wave of terrorism.
6) The addressees of the mailings—media and political figures—were quite consistent with persons Ivins had mailed in the past with citizen opinions.
7) One of the contrived return addresses—”4th Grade, Greendale School”– echoed a memory Ivins would have had of an interaction with a grammar school of a similar name
8) The apparent use of bold letters as possible DNA ‘codes’ is consistent with Ivins’ history of mischievous play with codes.
Probability and Statistics
Another section of our Website discusses the under-utilized tool of statistical probability in the analysis of mysteries in greater detail. For our purposes here: The science of probability is simple, established math: what are the chances that the flip of your penny will come up ‘heads’ four successive times? .5x.5x.5x.5= .0625, or one-sixteenth of a chance of that occurring, simply 2x2x2x2=16. Less clear and more subjective is how to give values to unlikely events or clusters of “coincidental” events.
But let us stipulate that two of the facts above, the lab hours and the KKG proximity, seem so unlikely as make a 1/20 chance generously conservative, and assign a 1/5 chance to all other occurrences, also probably conservative, and the math would suggest: 20x5x20x5x5x5x5x5= an impressive 6,250,000 as the odds against all those things occurring by raw chance. Again, there’s no question that assigning those values has an element of subjectivity. If you disagree with our numbers, what odds would you place against each fact? Then use those in your multiplication. Note that even if you put the highly conservative, low value of a 1/3rd chance on all of these facts, the eight items would still multiply out to 6,561 as odds against. Most of us would have little more enthusiasm risking our lives on a one-of-six-thousand chance of survival than we would of one in the millions. With circumstantial evidence, it’s often the cumulative effect, or as prosecutor Rachel Lieber stressed repeatedly, it’s not so much one fact in this case as all the facts and circumstances, a large number of them, taken as a whole.
C) Neutral to Mildly Incriminating Circumstances
Those who challenge the government’s conclusion on the case often opine that yes, many a circumstance looked very bad for Ivins, but so many other factors just didn’t fit, and practically point to his innocence. We disagree with that interpretation. In our view, evidence or circumstances which do not fall into a highly incriminating category at least fall into a mildly incriminating, or at least neutral zone.
Take the matter of “the science,” primarily the origin of the spoors produced and slipped into the envelopes that made history. The FBI erred in overstating their scientific certainty, insisting that in Ivin’s repository of anthrax (infamous flask RMR-1029) they essentially had “the murder weapon.” The independent National Academy of Sciences review found that, simply put, it’s not certain where the anthrax came from, too many variables, too much sharing of samples over the years. This “undercuts the FBI’s case” breathlessly offered one national journalist, while a major contributor to the best documentary on Amerithrax concluded that “The foundation of the case is in jeopardy.”
No, not really. Let’s be crystal clear here—by no means did the National Academy find the microbial science exculpatory for Ivins. They found that their analysis might not live up to the high expectations for closure— “It’s very important for us to understand the limits of science in an investigation such as this,” concluded the NAS chair, Dr. Alice Gast.
In a culture where CSI-type programs fill our television airwaves we’ve come to expect a crisp scientific conclusion about a crime, and sometimes we get it, through a positive DNA match, for example. But sometimes the scientists can’t be sure, and we’re left with old-fashioned evidence, and critical thinking. The scientific evidence by no means pointed away from Ivins, it just didn’t nail him and button up the case. As the grandfather of the Ames-strain anthrax flask, as one of a small fraternity of ultra-knowledgable “anthrax whisperers” he was still a fully logical suspect to have been the producer of the airborne, breathable product.
Unanswered questions about precisely where and how he produced it? Yes. He had a lyophilizer—a drying machine—but the cumbersome thing sat outside his secure biolab area and would have been hard to use in the open. Other drying methods were available but not necessarily easy to execute in a small, private lab. Also, the extremely light, extremely floatable final product (especially of the second mailing) was hard to contain, likely to leak into areas surrounding it’s production, or be traceable to someone’s person or car. Or infect someone who worked in the same offices, which never happened. A thorough scouring of Ivin’s car and home and the like came up empty, but that was years after the fact.
Back at the time, however, he’d raised eyebrows for doing lots of disinfecting of his lab and office environments, without at first following protocols and informing supervisors. A friend and colleague, scolding him, told him that made him look god-awful, perhaps guilty of something. We put all this in the mildly incriminating category, and find it plausible that an anthrax expert of his calibre could have produced the spores and cleaned up after himself as he went, especially given the loose security and surveillance of USAMRIID, his workplace, at the time.
Taking all facts and perspectives together, we think the guilt of the late Bruce Ivins in the Amerithrax case is almost certain.