FBI confirms letters to Obama, others contained ricin
By Ed Payne. Matt Smith and Carol Cratty, CNN
updated 9:11 PM EDT, Thu April 18, 2013
Ricin letter also sent to local judge
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Man charged "vehemently denies the allegations against him," his lawyer says
- No illness reported from the letters yet, the FBI says
- Suspect Paul Kevin Curtis is charged with sending threats
- Envelopes were addressed to President Obama, a judge, Sen. Roger Wicker
(CNN) -- The FBI said Thursday it confirmed the
presence of the deadly poison ricin in letters sent to President Barack
Obama, a U.S. senator and a judge.
Earlier, an Elvis impersonator charged in the case appeared in federal court in Oxford Mississippi.
During a four-minute
hearing, Magistrate Judge S. Allan Alexander ordered Paul Kevin Curtis
-- who appeared in court with attorney Christi McCoy -- to remain in
custody until a grand jury issues an expected indictment and a
preliminary and detention hearing on April 29.
In confirming the letters
tested positive for ricin, the FBI said it was "not aware of any
illness as a result of exposure to these letters."
Further tests were being conducted, the FBI statement said.
Curtis, 45, a resident of Corinth, Mississippi, was charged with sending a threat to the president.
Curtis' attorney, Christi McCoy, told CNN in an e-mail that "Mr. Curtis vehemently denies the allegations against him."
A criminal complaint
charged Curtis with "knowingly depositing for conveyance in the mail and
for delivery from any post office any letter, paper, writing or
document containing threats to take the life of or to inflict bodily
harm upon the President of the United States."
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The federal complaint
further charges him with sending "communications addressed to other
persons, and containing a threat to injure the person of others."
Curtis was to appear Friday in U.S. District Court in Oxford, Mississippi, for a detention hearing.
An affidavit in support
of the criminal complaint cites the mailing of envelopes containing
typewritten letters and "a suspicious granular substance" to Sen. Roger
Wicker, R-Mississippi, the president and Sadie Holland, a Justice Court
judge in Lee County, Mississippi.
According to the department, all three letters were typed on yellow paper and read as follows:
"No one wanted to listen to me before.
There are still 'Missing Pieces'
Maybe I have your attention now
Even if that means someone must die.
This must stop.
To see a wrong and not expose it,
is to become a silent partner to its continuance
I am KC and I approve this message"
The letter addressed to
Wicker and bearing no return address was intercepted by the U.S. Senate
Mail Facility in Landover, Maryland, and the FBI was alerted of it
Tuesday, the affidavit says.
Three of four field
tests conducted on the powder inside the envelope addressed to Wicker
tested positive for a protein that later tests determined to be ricin, a
lethal toxin, it says. A fourth test proved inconclusive.
Capitol Police learned
from Wicker's staff that Curtis had sent similar messages to the senator
and that Curtis had posted on his blog in 2010 that he was writing a
novel about black-market body parts titled "Missing Pieces," the
affidavit says.
Letters to Obama and Holland also cited the book, it adds.
A similar letter --
bearing no return address and postmarked April 8 -- was sent to Holland
at her office in Tupelo. It too contained a "suspicious granular
substance" that has yet to be tested, the affidavit says.
A similar substance found Tuesday in an envelope addressed to Obama tested positive for ricin in a field test, it says.
The three letters all contained "the same verbiage, font, style and paper color," it says.
The letters were
postmarked Memphis, Tennessee, which is typically the postmark that
letters mailed from northern Mississippi bear, it says.
On his Facebook page,
Curtis posted the same quote: "To see a wrong and not expose it, is to
become a silent partner in its continuance," the affidavit says.
Sgt. Corrie Robbins of
the Booneville Police Department in Mississippi told investigators that
Curtis had been investigated several times since 2007, the affidavit
says. It adds that Curtis' ex-wife reported to police in 2007 that he
was "extremely delusional, anti-government, and felt the government was
spying on him with drones."
If convicted, Curtis will face a maximum of 15 years in prison, $500,000 in fines and three years of supervised release.
Wicker said Thursday
that he met Curtis about a decade ago. "He's an entertainer," the
senator said. "He's an Elvis impersonator, and he entertained at a party
that my wife and I helped give for a young couple that was getting
married. He was quite entertaining."
The Clarion-Ledger of
Jackson, Mississippi, posted photographs of a man it identified as
Curtis. In one photograph, he is shown under an "Elvis" sign holding a
microphone as he appears to be singing. He is wearing a white suit and
sporting long sideburns and swept-back hair.
A Kevin Curtis Live
Facebook page describes him a "Master of Impressions performing 'Tribute
to the Stars' for audiences of all ages!"
The FBI arrested him on Wednesday at his home in Corinth.
Letters put focus on Texas chiropractor's words
The line in the letters
about exposing "a wrong" comes from John Raymond Baker, a longtime Texas
chiropractor, his wife said. It's been widely quoted online, but Tammy
Baker sounded surprised that it was used in the letters under scrutiny
in Washington.
When contacted by CNN,
she said that she was not aware of the letters and that the phrase
refers to her husband's general philosophy of care.
She said their office phone rang frequently Wednesday afternoon, which was "kind of freaking out our other employee."
A 2006 post on a blog
for Baker's office said the comment originally was a criticism of
insurance companies. Since then, the site said, it "has been a quote
that has been picked up and quoted (sometimes without attribution)
around the net" and "people are using it about all kinds of injustices."
The medical effects of ricin
How dangerous is ricin?
Letter to Obama tests positive for ricin
Envelope to senator positive for poison
Mail for members of
Congress and the White House has been handled at off-site postal
facilities since the 2001 anthrax attacks, which targeted Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vermont, and then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota.
On heightened alert
Suspicious letters in Michigan and Arizona, too
Investigators are trying
to determine whether suspicious letters found at Senate offices
elsewhere in the country came from the same source, federal law
enforcement sources said.
Sen. Carl Levin,
D-Michigan, said one of his home-state offices received a
"suspicious-looking" letter and alerted authorities. "We do not know yet
if the mail presented a threat," said Levin, the chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
A staffer for Arizona
Sen. Jeff Flake flagged "suspicious letters" at the freshman
Republican's Phoenix office, Flake spokeswoman Genevieve Rozansky said
in a statement, but "no dangerous material was detected in the letters."
Phoenix Fire Department
spokesman Jonathan Jacobs said the envelope contained a powder. The
person who found the envelope was being treated at a Phoenix-area
hospital for a pre-existing condition and stress from the event, and
others in the immediate vicinity were examined as well.
In a statement issued
Wednesday, the FBI said it has no indication of a connection between the
letters and Monday's bombings at the finish line of the Boston
Marathon.
Ricin is easily made
Ricin is a toxic
substance that can be produced easily and cheaply from castor beans. As
little as 500 micrograms, an amount the size of the head of a pin, can
kill an adult. There is no test for exposure and no antidote.
Experts say it is more effective for use against individuals than as a weapon of mass destruction.
Ricin was used in the
1978 assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. The author, who
had defected nine years earlier, was jabbed by the tip of an umbrella
while awaiting a bus in London and died four days later.
A ricin scare hit the
Capitol in 2004, when tests identified it in a letter in a Senate mail
room that served then-Majority Leader Bill Frist's office. The discovery
led 16 employees to undergo decontamination; none was sickened, Frist
said.
CNN's Rachel Streitfeld, Stephanie Goggans,
Barbara Starr, Joe Johns, Jessica Yellin, Dana Bash, Tom Cohen, Terry
Frieden, Deanna Hackney, Elwyn Lopez, Lisa Desjardins and Rachel
Streitfeld contributed to this report.
end quote from:
New Yorker
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