Midnight mailbox raids, bloodhounds, and ice divers all lead the FBI to a former CIA contractor. But despite photo evidence, fingerprinting, and DNA testing, nothing adds up. Then, one clue changes everything.
Chapter 1: Who is Ted Hamm and how did bloodhounds become part of the anthrax investigation?
This is a CBC Podcast. In the 1990s, Ted Hamm was a veteran search and rescue worker living in Southern California. Most of his work involved tracking down hikers or hunters who'd gone missing. Until one day, two strangers approached him and his team.
They introduced themselves, and they were both detectives from the Sheriff's Homicide Bureau. And they said, hey, we'd like to talk to you guys for a few minutes. You got some time?
That moment led Ted down a career path he'd never imagined, using an unusual and pretty special tool.
Basically, what they were pitching is they wanted to start trying to use the dogs to help solve murders.
Ted had gotten interested in bloodhound dogs a few years back. He was so impressed with their abilities. Some experts say they can track a scent for nearly two weeks. So he began training them and using them in his search and rescue efforts. And since then, he's always had his dogs close. In fact, it's hard to talk to Ted without them making their presence known.
But until that moment with the detectives, he'd never considered using the dogs in criminal cases. But the idea appealed. To Ted, at least.
Almost universally, the people in the team said, no way. We don't want anything to do with that. We don't want to get shot at. Yada, yada, yada. Me, my brain's going, that sounds like fun. The first year I worked with him, we would have successes on these criminal cases, the word spread.
Ted and his dogs got a reputation for finding criminals who were long gone, simply from the scent they'd left on items they'd touched. Which is why, in late 2002, the FBI got an idea. Could Ted and his dogs track a scent from a letter? Specifically, a letter sent by the anthrax killer?
It's just one of those times you're going, we're working the biggest case the FBI's got. Because what? Oh yeah, because we've got a couple dogs.
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Chapter 2: What role does the United States Postal Inspection Service play in the anthrax case?
All the mail was postmarked with a Trenton postmark.
Now that they have a location, the postal inspectors and the FBI develop a theory about how the killer mailed the letters.
It's very unlikely that they're going to go to the clerk and give it to them. So that meant that the mail was dropped off.
If you're going to drop off mail, you'll either do that at the post office itself or at one of those little blue mailboxes you see on street corners. It would make sense that the anthrax killer wouldn't want to be seen at a public post office.
Our best guess was that it was probably put into one of the blue collection boxes. And there were several hundred blue collection boxes in the Trenton area.
625 blue collection boxes, to be exact. Postal inspectors and the FBI put the boxes under surveillance. They decide they need to check every single blue mailbox to see if they can find any anthrax spores. Specially trained FBI hazmat agents from Philadelphia, Boston, and as far away as San Francisco are brought in to help.
But once again, they have to balance their need to test in public places with the risk of creating panic.
You can imagine the concern to citizens if they see a group of people in hazmat suits showing up in their neighborhood and testing their local mailbox. You know, people were on edge as it was. We didn't need to make it any worse.
they decide to test all of those mailboxes under the cover of night. Here's what that looks like. Teams of disease detectives, two each, decked out in white Tyvek suits, purple nitrile gloves, rubber boots, and respirators, fanning out into the quiet suburbs around Trenton, New Jersey, in the dead of night, using Q-tips to test the mailboxes for anthrax.
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Chapter 3: How did the FBI use forensic profiling to find the anthrax mailer?
We sent it to the American Society of Microbiology.
They're looking for matches. It's like, desperate FBI seeks adult male loner, non-confrontational, quiet, and knows a lot about microbiology.
It was really the first place to go looking for somebody. You wouldn't go to a physics lab, you know, or a nuclear station. You'd go to a microbiology lab where they did this for a living.
Given the crowd, a lot of the guys there might fit that profile. But if it works, it would be a quick way to narrow down the field of suspects.
Just hoping that it would trigger somebody to pick up the phone and call with information that may have not seemed important at the time, but maybe it was important.
And it works. They get some hits. One of them comes from anthrax vaccine whiz Bruce Ivins at USAMRID, the Army's biological weapons lab in Maryland.
He tells them about a scientist at USAMRID. He was an expert in anthrax. He knows how to make anthrax spores. And by the way, he now works at a company in central New Jersey near Princeton.
Princeton is just 11 miles from Trenton, New Jersey, where the anthrax letters were postmarked. It's a promising lead, and yet the FBI had just experienced a media frenzy when they questioned an innocent public health expert from Pakistan. The attention from being a potential suspect had nearly ruined his life, not to mention made the FBI look terrible.
They've got to be even more careful to make sure they're separating solid leads from racism or personal grievances, those poison pen leads.
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Chapter 4: Who is Stephen Hatfield and why was he considered a suspect?
One of the flashpoints in Africa. Tonight, the war against communist-backed guerrillas, a struggle the United States is watching with mounting anxiety.
The search warrant also records that during his time serving there, the rebel-held areas of Rhodesia experienced the worst anthrax outbreak in world history. It killed 182 people and infected more than 10,000.
It had been believed that that was an intentional biological attack by the Selva Scouts. Long story short, Hatfield claimed to be part of that group.
So the FBI questions Hatfield in March 2002. And Decker says he's cool.
Hatfield was not nervous, calm. He denied doing it. He said to do whatever he could to help with the investigation.
Hatfield wants to help with the investigation so much that he agrees to have the FBI search his house, his car, and a storage locker he rents.
If he was guilty, he was not going to break. He stuck to his story.
But his story seems to have holes. Hatfield tells agents he had taken the antibiotic Cipro in early 2001. Cipro is the drug you take before or after an anthrax exposure. It's what Congress took after the Daschle letter and what Johanna was clamoring for at the drugstore with her fellow New Yorkers. Cipro works on other bacteria too, so there are plenty of reasons Hatfield might have taken it.
But he specifically says he hadn't taken any in the couple of months leading up to 9-11 and the anthrax attacks. But when the FBI reviews his pharmacy records, they find a different story. Hatfield had filled prescriptions twice in those months, exactly two days before the New York letters were mailed, and again, two days before the Capitol Hill letters were mailed.
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Chapter 5: What evidence did the FBI find during the searches of Hatfield's property?
Every place he goes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he is followed by squads of FBI agents.
So that started the suspicion that this was a person who might have a motive.
Everybody was suddenly talking about this scientist Stephen Hatfield.
Joby Warwick of the Washington Post was deep into the anthrax story at the time.
It was kind of a poorly kept secret that he was a major suspect. And people in the scientific community were talking about him.
But despite all this momentum, there still isn't any hard evidence against him.
The search of his apartment didn't get much, if anything.
No anthrax residue, no handwriting that matched the letters. They were hoping for more. On the other hand, would one really expect a highly educated scientist to grow anthrax at his home? Or leave incriminating handwriting around his apartment? But there still might be some forensic clue waiting to be found in Hatfield's apartment. So the agents decide to take things to the next level.
What was it exactly that brought FBI agents and U.S. postal inspectors to the Maryland apartment of a former bioweapons researcher last week for a second search? The answer, it turns out, is dogs.
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Chapter 6: How were bloodhound dogs used to track the anthrax letters to Hatfield's apartment?
Chapter 7: What challenges did investigators face with the use of dogs and public testing in the anthrax investigation?
The scary part about this whole thing, we had four letters that came in, you know, a short period of time. But nobody knew if there were more out there.
But at the very least, if the Postal Inspection Service could find spores in one of those blue mailboxes, they'd have pinpointed the exact spot the anthrax killer mailed those letters. And if they knew that, they could start to search for other clues there. There might be closed-circuit cameras, fingerprints, or eyewitnesses even who saw something.
Scanning 625 blue collection boxes night by night might be the long way of getting there. But if it works, the payoff will be huge. While that painstaking search is underway, the FBI, in the hopes of finally getting some leads, makes a bold choice.
Remember, weeks ago, the FBI had sent off copies of the anthrax letters to their forensic psychologists, and that team had come up with a profile of the killer. So far, agents had kept it to themselves to avoid tipping that person off, wherever they might be. But now, two weeks later, still without any real suspects, the FBI shows its hand.
The FBI made the profile of the mailer public.
That's Agent Scott Decker.
It was done with the hope that somebody would call and tell us who had done this.
After sharing the profile wide, leaders in the FBI, like Assistant Director Van Harp, push for somebody, anybody, to speak up.
We believe there's someone out in the country somewhere that may have information, that may have mentored, may be aware of what this person is doing, may have a little piece of information that would help complete the puzzle for us.
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Chapter 8: How did the media and public react to the suspicions around Stephen Hatfield?
The FBI reached out to Ted Hamm and his team in Southern California. They're hoping his dogs can track a scent on the anthrax case that's now three months old.
So it was a little bit humbling and, you know, millions and millions of dollars were being spent.
so that these dogs could get out and work. Agents collect a human scent from the actual anthrax letters, and they go to Hatfield's apartment complex so the dogs can sniff for that scent. There are three bloodhound teams, and they all search at different times so the dogs don't give each other any spoilers.
For his part, Ted isn't told where he's going or who the suspect is, and he's banned from using his cell phone. He arrives in the neighborhood he's told to go to, ready to sick his new dog, Knight, on the case.
He slobbered more than any bloodhound I've had. And this dog smelled so bad. He stunk. And he was. He did not work at anything more than a slow walk. But he was methodical and he was good. So I start my dog and we kind of amble through a neighborhood. And then we get into an apartment complex.
This is where Ted's dog marks a particular step with that pile of poop. And for Ted, standing there in that stairwell, thinking about his history with Knight, that poop means something. He's not wanting to leave.
I told the guys, I said, look, I think they're sent here. So assuming my dog is correct and my interpretation of what my dog is doing is correct, it's one of these four doors. And he said, well, let's not talk about it here.
To Ted, it's clear his dog smells some connection between the anthrax envelope and this landing.
We walked back to the street, and when we got back to our cars, now, like, the whole team's there. And they said, well, now that you guys have all finished, you all did the same thing. But you approached it from three different directions. But they all ended up on that same landing spot.
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