Seven weeks of terror
Whodunit?
Anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 17, caused widespread alarm, challenged the nation's public-health system, and left FBI agents hunting for clues.
Oct. 5: Robert Stevens, a photo editor at American Media in Boca Raton, Fla., dies of inhalation anthrax.
Oct. 12: NBC announced that an aide to news anchor Tom Brokaw has cutaneous (skin) anthrax caused by a letter sent to NBC from Trenton, N.J.
Oct. 15: A letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) from Trenton tests positive for anthrax. In New York, the infant son of an ABC employee tests positive for cutaneous anthrax after she brings him to work.
Oct. 18: An aide to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and a New Jersey letter carrier test positive for skin anthrax. A day later, the New York Post says an employee has skin anthrax. Another New Jersey postal worker tests positive for skin anthrax.
Oct. 21-23: Two Washington D.C., postal workers, Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen, die of inhalation anthrax. A postal worker in Hamilton, N.J., is hospitalized.
Oct. 25-28: A U.S. State Department employee and a New Jersey postal worker are diagnosed as having inhalation anthrax.
Oct. 31: A New York woman, Kathy T. Nguyen, dies of inhalation anthrax.
Nov. 16: FBI finds an anthrax letter addressed to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that is similar to the one received by Daschle.
Nov. 21: Ottilie W. Lundgren, a 94-year-old retiree, dies of inhalation anthrax in Connecticut. She is the last known anthrax victim.
This story appears in the April 15, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.