Mixed emotions from anthrax survivors

There are times, especially when he’s struggling to walk uphill, that Leroy Richmond still can almost feel the anthrax that nearly killed him in 2001. He senses how it saps his 64-year-old body of strength, how it forces him to rest for two or three minutes.

And now with reports that government scientist Bruce E. Ivins, who died last week in an apparent suicide, has been linked by authorities to the anthrax attacks, Richmond has another feeling.

He feels like this is the end of the mystery.

“I am totally relieved. This brings a lot of closure,” said Richmond, who retired as a Washington, D.C., postal worker after the 2001 attacks. “It may not have brought the closure that others may have wanted, to see this person face justice as opposed to take his own life . . . but I think they have the right person.”

Authorities were preparing to file criminal charges against Ivins, 62, a scientist at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., when he died Tuesday of a massive dose of prescription medication. The Justice Department said Friday that there had been “significant developments in the investigation,” but declined to comment on the focus on Ivins, which was first reported Thursday by The Times. Documents in the case are under court seal, and a department spokesman said Saturday that there were no plans to ask a judge to unseal them this weekend.

Victims of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people, expressed mixed emotions about the developments in the case. Richmond’s certainty was offset by the wait-and-see attitude of Mary Morris, whose husband, Thomas Morris Jr., died from the lethal spores that seeped out of letters processed at the postal facility where he and Richmond worked.

And the lawyer for the family of another victim, Bob Stevens, said they felt both vindicated at the apparent confirmation of their belief that a government biodefense worker was behind the attacks, and suspicious that Ivins might be a fall guy in a bungled investigation.

“He fits the profile that we had advanced, but they would like to see the evidence,” said lawyer Richard D. Schuler, of West Palm Beach, Fla. He has filed a lawsuit, pending in the Florida Supreme Court, seeking damages from the government for the wife and three children of Stevens, a photo editor for the Sun tabloid who died after inhaling anthrax sent to the Boca Raton, Fla., offices of American Media Inc.

“The family definitely wants to be able to see the evidence that the FBI has accumulated, that they’re not just trying to make this guy a scapegoat . . . allowing them to close their file and be done with it,” Schuler said.

The Times reported Saturday that Ivins was listed as the co-inventor on two patents for an anthrax vaccine and stood to gain financially from federal spending on vaccines in the aftermath of the deadly anthrax attacks.

But Morris, who now lives in Beach Park, Ill., said she wasn’t ready to jump to any conclusions.

“I am just like Joe Friday. He said, ‘Just the facts. Just the facts,’ ” Morris said. “So we gather the facts and then we ponder the facts and . . . we just wait and see what develops.”

Although the death of her husband is with her every day, she said she forgives whoever was responsible. She also feels for Ivins’ family.

“My head and my heart says that saying anything detrimental, unkind, toward this man only hurts his family because they’re the ones left to sort through and to wade through all of this,” Morris said. “We have to remember they lost someone they loved also.”

Richmond, of Stafford, Va., said a money motive sounded “plausible.” But he would like to hear details of the case from the authorities.

In the meantime, Richmond deals with the fatigue and short-term memory loss he said the anthrax still causes him. But until the recent reports, he thought about the attacks only when he felt the lingering physical effects.

“Those are the only times when I consider the fact that this is not normal,” he said. “This is not the type of person I was seven years ago.”

Richmond said he talked with his friend Morris on the phone Friday, praying together and reflecting on a past they know cannot be changed by any new investigative developments.

“This is like the final chapter,” he said. “This is the like the end for us.”

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jim.puzzanghera@ latimes.com