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Official dispels anthrax theories

By TIMES WIRES
Published September 26, 2006

Seeking to clear up public confusion, an FBI official has reiterated the bureau's judgment that the anthrax in the letter attacks five years ago bore no special coatings to increase its deadliness and no hallmarks of a military weapon.

In theory, that finding could widen the pool of potential suspects in the unsolved case since the perpetrator would have required less skill and could have worked with more commonplace materials. What started as the largest criminal investigation in American history now, five years later, appears to be stalled.

The statement by Douglas J. Beecher, a scientist at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Va., contradicts an array of assessments over the years about the anthrax attacks, which in late 2001 killed five people and sickened 17 others. Tainted letters were dropped into a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., sending anthrax to several news media offices and two U.S. senators.

Soon after, a variety of public and private experts proclaimed the deadly spores to have been specially treated. Some experts called the anthrax military-grade.

Beecher disputed such claims as misguided in the August issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Charges filed against man in dragging death

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. - Prosecutors filed murder and kidnapping charges Monday against a man accused in the gruesome dragging death of his 49-year-old girlfriend.

Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36, faces charges of first-degree murder after deliberation and second-degree kidnapping. He also faces charges of forging and possessing a government-issued document. It was not clear what documents Rubi-Nava was accused of forging. He was being held without bail and has not yet entered a plea.

The battered and disfigured body of Luz Marie Franco Fierros was found Sept. 18 in a normally quiet subdivision about 20 miles south of Denver.

Evaluation ordered for woman in slain mom case

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. - A judge on Monday ordered a psychological examination for a woman accused of killing a pregnant acquaintance and cutting her fetus from her womb.

St. Clair County Associate Judge Heinz Rudolf entered not guilty pleas for Tiffany Hall, 24, on charges of first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child in the deaths of Jimella Tunstall, 23, and her fetus. Hall has not been charged in the death's of Tunstall's three children, but authorities say Hall told police that she drowned them. Funerals for Tunstall and her children are scheduled for Friday.

Three Egyptian exchange students ordered deported

OMAHA, Neb. - Three Egyptian students who sparked a nationwide search when they failed to show up for a college exchange program last month were ordered deported Monday.

Mohamed Ibrahim El Sayed El Moghazy, 20; Ahmed Refaat Saad El Moghazi El Laket, 19; and Moustafa Wagdy Moustafa El Gafary, 18, were among 17 students from Mansoura University in Egypt invited to an exchange program at Montana State University in Bozeman. Their lawyer, Amy Peck, has said the three decided to go sightseeing because they feared they would be sent home after some students left their group upon arriving in New York.

Only six students showed up for the program, prompting U.S. authorities to issue a nationwide search for the remaining 11 students. All were detained, but none were considered a terrorism risk.

Bus collision in Detroit injures 25 people

DETROIT - A Detroit Department of Transportation bus slammed into the rear of a coach from the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation on Monday morning, sending 25 people to hospitals, four with serious injuries, hospital spokespeople said. Police were investigating the cause of the crash, Detroit police Sgt. Omar Feliciano said.

[Last modified September 26, 2006, 00:43:22]