Ricin case is ongoing

By April M. Silvaggio  

SEPTEMBER 18, 2009 4:06 a.m. (0)

It was six years ago last October since a threatening message on the outside of an otherwise unremarkable package caught the eye of an alert U.S. postal worker inside a leased mail-sorting center on the property of the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.

A typed message on the outside label said: “Caution ricin poison enclosed in sealed container. Do not open without proper protection.”

Six days later, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed a white powdery substance found inside a small metal vial inside the package was indeed deadly ricin.

A letter, typewritten to the U.S. Department of Transportation, appeared to explain why.

“To the department of transportation: I’m a fleet owner of a tanker company. I have easy access to castor pulp. If my demand is dismissed I’m capable of making Ricin. My demand is simple. January 2 2004 starts the new hours of service for trucks which include a ridiculous ten hours in the sleeper berth. Keep at eight or I will start dumping. You have been warned this is the only letter that will be sent by me.”

It was signed Fallen Angel.

Special agents in Washington, D.C., who became involved with the investigation following the discovery of a subsequent similar letter in November 2003, have followed hundreds of leads, said Lindsay Godwin, public affairs specialist for the Washington Field Office.

The $100,000 reward remains claimable, Godwin said.

One primary agent remains assigned to the case, with assistance available at any time from among several colleagues.

Denise Taiste, public affairs specialist in the FBI’s Columbia office, wouldn’t speculate about how the package with no delivery address and no postmark might have ended up at the facility, which isn’t open to the public. Nor would she talk about potential leads, possible suspects or the likelihood of the case ever being solved.

No one was exposed to the poison or injured by it. And within weeks, the mail-sorting center was operating again after being declared ricin free.

Less than a month later, a package described as nearly identical to the Greenville letter with the exception of being addressed to “The White House” turned up at a White House mail-processing facility in Washington, D.C. And just like before, it held a small vial of a white powder that ultimately tested positive for ricin. It bore a postmark from Oct. 17 in Chattanooga.

The message again was a threat directed at the U.S. Department of Transportation. It, too, was written by “Fallen Angel” and said “Department of transportation If you change the hours of service on January 4,2004 I will turn D.C. into a ghost town The powder on the letter is RICIN have a nice day.”

Controversy arose after officials with the U.S. Secret Service opted not to tell the White House, the FBI or other key agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until positive test results were received on Nov. 12. The public didn’t hear about the second package until more than three months later in February 2004 when a white powdery substance later determined to be ricin was found on a sorting machine in a mail room serving U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Investigators began immediately looking for any connection between the ricin found at Dirksen and the Fallen Angel letters. That confirmation never came.

FBI agents questioned numerous individuals, and looked closely in the autumn of 2004 at the case of an Illinois truck driver who killed himself during a standoff police after his wife’s body was found in a shallow grave. A search of Steven Aubrey’s home turned up a stockpile of weapons, explosives, chemicals and the makings of ricin. Officials would later say Aubrey worked for a private trucking firm that serviced the same post office where his wife worked.

Harry Spratlin, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in South Carolina, said because the ricin in the 2003 and 2004 cases was not ionized like the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks in the U.S. where letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others, a biohazard detection system installed by the U.S. Postal Service at its 385 mail sorting facilities across the country shortly after the incident here wouldn’t have alerted workers to any problem.

“This type was only deadly if it was ingested, and there was no danger of that unless the package was opened,” he said.