For anthrax victim, suicide opens questions

For years, Patrick O'Donnell didn't know who was behind the 2001 anthrax attack that sickened him and three coworkers at the postal distribution center in Hamilton, Mercer County.

Now, not only does he know the name of his attacker, he sees his face.

And it haunts him.

"I'm still trying to absorb what just happened," said O'Donnell, 42, who lives in Levittown and has worked for the postal service for 20 years. "I went for almost eight years not knowing what was going on and then - wham!"

"This opens up a whole new can of worms," he said. "There's a face now behind the crime and I'm freaked out."

In October 2001, O'Donnell was working at the big distribution center in Hamilton Township when tainted letters, whipping through sorting machines, released anthrax spores. O'Donnell, who had a nick on his neck from shaving, became infected and was quarantined at a Bucks County hospital.

Eleven days ago, O'Donnell got a call from an FBI agent, telling him of the suicide of Bruce E. Ivins, a 62-year-old government scientist at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.

"They said, 'We got our man,' " O'Donnell said.

The FBI brought O'Donnell and about a dozen other anthrax survivors to Washington Wednesday for a closed-door briefing with 40 agents.

"I felt like Paris Hilton," he said of all the attention from reporters pressing to find out what was said.

O'Donnell said he felt the FBI spelled out a credible case against Ivins.

"It's all circumstantial evidence, but they have so much stuff on this guy," O'Donnell said.

In total, 22 people across the country were sickened by the October 2001 anthrax attack, with five dying. O'Donnell was unable to work for years.

He returned to the postal service in late 2005, but works in a different annex building, a quarter of a mile away from the main distribution center, where he used to work.

"I requested not to go back to my old building," O'Donnell said.

The Hamilton center, a hub for sorting letters and packages, was closed for four years while being refitted with about $100 million worth of bioterrorism detection equipment. It has 700 workers.

O'Donnell said the information coming out in the wake of the suicide has provided answers, but not necessarily closure, for victims like him.

"I'm frustrated," O'Donnell said. He wonders if the FBI had moved in earlier on Ivins, he would be alive to answer the biggest question: Why?

"I feel good that I know who it is," O'Donnell said. "But I feel upset that I couldn't see justice."

O'Donnell said he asked the FBI agents at the briefing why they didn't take all their accumulated evidence to arrest Ivins. He said their answer was vague.

The FBI disclosed that Ivins, whose military job involved handling anthrax supplies, was battling depression and had been hospitalized for mental illness.

Right before anthrax-laced letters were mailed to journalists and politicians in October 2001, Ivins made late-night visits to his Army lab that went undocumented.

"He told agents he was having problems at home," O'Donnell said. "But there were no notes for what he was doing in the biological room."

"If that guy was so messed up in his head, why were they letting him play with biological weapons up until last year?" O'Donnell said. "Some one has to take the blame. Until then, it's not the end for me."