Cyanide Suspect Is Homeless Cancer Patient

Kathryn Schoonover, the 50-year-old woman who allegedly tried to mail 100 envelopes with sodium cyanide packaged to look like samples of a nutritional supplement, was described Monday as a homeless cancer patient living out of her van.

Investigators, who confiscated a list of potential recipients Sunday, said they worked through the night to contact the targets.

Authorities Monday continued to grapple with Schoonover’s motives. Many of the seized letters were apparently intended for people who work in either medicine or law enforcement, and Schoonover appeared to have known many of them, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said.

They said the woman denied mailing any brochures. They said she had a background in chemistry and “displayed a working knowledge of chemicals and compounds,” a sheriff’s statement said.

She was taken into custody by deputies as she was apparently about to mail the fatally toxic drug from a Marina del Rey post office.

Authorities said a majority of people on Schoonover’s apparent mailing list lived in the Los Angeles area, but some lived as far away as Albany, N.Y.

Also on the mailing list are members of the West Covina Police Department, against whom Schoonover may have had a grudge, investigators said. They would not say how many department members were on her mailing list.

West Covina Det. Pete Mena said the department had a single encounter with Schoonover in January 1997. “We received a call in January of a suspicious person acting bizarre in a van in a parking lot,” he said. “Her actions were such that the officers were afraid for her safety and the safety of people around her.” He said Schoonover was detained for 72 hours by county health officials.

Postal authorities said they believe that none of the letters that Schoonover brought to the Marina del Rey post office were mailed. Nevertheless, they said they were considering issuing a national Postal Service warning. In the past two months, four people on Schoonover’s mailing list, all living in New York state, had received letters from her containing a brochure and drug sample, authorities said. It was not known Monday whether those samples contained sodium cyanide or another poisonous substance.

The poison--identified as the same substance used in the gas chamber as part of government-sanctioned executions--causes almost instant death if consumed, officials said.

“I really want to emphasize that we do not know if any of this substance actually was placed into the mail,” said Pamela Prince, a spokeswoman for the postal inspector’s office. “After her arrest yesterday there was nothing found at this site that led us to believe that anything had been mailed from here recently.”

The letters included a promotional brochure for a legitimate health product supposedly appealing to athletes, authorities said. The brochures touted one of at least eight brand-name products, including Hawaiian Energizer, Diet-Phen Weight Loss Plan and Ginsana. Many were from GNC, a national health food chain, officials said.

Officials in the nutritional supplement industry--which often mails samples--were stunned by the case.

“It is a horrible story, a tragic story,” said Michael Q. Ford, executive director of the National Nutritional Foods Assn., representing 2,500 health food stores and 800 suppliers of health food and nutritional supplements.

At a news conference at the Marina del Rey post office branch Monday, Postal Service officials displayed an envelope similar to the ones used by Schoonover--grayish, legal-size window envelopes with no return address.

The bulky envelopes bore typewritten or computer-generated addresses, and contained a plastic bag full of a white powdery substance.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, police said, a customer in the Marina del Rey post office observed Schoonover at a public counter wearing protective gloves. The witness told investigators that she saw Schoonover place powder from a canister labeled “poison” into a series of envelopes.

Deputies called to the scene found Schoonover inside her van--parked in front of the post office--before she was able to mail the tainted envelopes, investigators said.

Schoonover was transferred Monday to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, where she is being held without bail on charges of attempted murder. Her arraignment was still pending Monday.

Sheriff’s deputies have been joined in their probe by U.S. postal inspectors and the FBI.

Officials warned that anyone receiving such a mailing should avoid touching the potentially lethal substance. Those who suspect they have received such an envelope should call postal inspectors at (626) 405-1200.

Times correspondent Sue McAllister contributed to this story.