Man Charged in Anthrax Phone Calls to Hospital

Federal prosecutors Wednesday charged a Sierra Madre man with threatening to release the deadly biological agent anthrax during four calls to Arcadia Methodist Hospital.

Christopher J. McCoy, 24, in calls made last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, told hospital operators that anthrax would be released into the hospital’s air-conditioning system, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

McCoy was arrested Sunday after authorities traced a threatening telephone call Saturday to his parents’ Sierra Madre home. The caller told an operator “in five minutes a bomb will go off in one of the units, and anthrax is in the system,” according to the affidavit.

During an interview with the FBI, McCoy allegedly acknowledged using drugs and making calls to the hospital but initially declined to say he made the threats. But later, according to the affidavit, he told an agent, “I don’t have the technology, it was only words.”

McCoy’s grandmother was being treated for a fracture at the hospital when he made the calls.

McCoy could face life in prison if convicted.

More than 30 anthrax threats have been reported in Southern California in the past few months.

Last month, a Calabasas accountant, Harvey Craig Spelkin, was arrested after he allegedly admitted to the FBI that he phoned in an anthrax scare to a U.S. Bankruptcy Court building to avoid a court date there.