Anthrax killer Bruce Ivins drove from MD to Princeton.
Keith videocafeblog | FromAugust 01, 2008
Keith tOberman talks to David Willman of the LA Times about the (then) (recent) news on the anthrax investigation./nDaily Princetonian. A Nassau Street mailbox has secured its place in the FBI’s books.
Last Friday, the Amerithrax Task Force issued its final report on the 2001 anthrax scare last Friday, closing an investigation that lasted more than eight years. The task force, which included FBI special agents, U.S. postal inspectors and other law enforcement officials, alleged that Bruce Ivins committed the bioterrorist attacks.  
Laced with lethal spores, the letters infected 22 people, killing five and exacerbating the nation’s post-9/11 panic. The tainted envelopes were addressed to Tom Brokaw, The New York Post, then-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
The task force confirmed early in its investigation that the letters originated from a mailbox at 10 Nassau St., across the street from the Rockefeller College dining hall. Last week, this detail was incorporated into the official report of the anthrax scare.
In 2001, the revelation of the letters’ origin raised a stir on campus, which was already shaken by the World Trade Center attack only an hour’s drive away. The Daily Princetonian published more than a dozen articles on the incident during the 2001-02 academic year.
But nearly a decade later, the memory of the incident has not remained with most students.
Agreeing with the prevailing sentiment among her classmates, Veena Putcha ’11, had not heard that the letters were sent from Princeton, she said, and found the news “shocking and truly frightening.”  
“Wow, I had no idea,” Ellen Chu ’12 similarly noted in an e-mail.
The immediate question surrounding the 2001 finding was why the letters were sent from Princeton.
The Amerithrax report suggests that Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, may have driven more than three hours from his home in Frederick, Md. to mail the letters because of several connections to the University. His father graduated from the University, and he was alledgedly obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, which has a chapter on campus. The Amerithrax report noted that Ivins established a pattern of visiting Kappa chapter houses at different universities.   
Current Kappa members declined to comment.

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