Home |  Elder Rights |  Health |  Pension Watch |  Rural Aging |  Armed Conflict |  Aging Watch at the UN  

Mission  |  Contact Us  |  Internships  |  Donate Now!  

back

DERBY, Conn., Nov. 21 — A 94- year-old woman from Oxford, Conn., who had mysteriously contracted inhalation anthrax died this morning as dozens of law enforcement and medical investigators began searching for clues as to how the widow who rarely left her house had become the country's fifth recent anthrax fatality.

The woman, Ottilie W. Lundgren, whose travels out of her house, friends said, typically took her no farther than the beauty parlor or the local library, died here this morning, five days after she was admitted to Griffin Hospital with what doctors first thought was a mild respiratory tract infection.

Tonight, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said tests had shown that the strain of anthrax that killed Mrs. Lundgren was indistinguishable from the strain found in the tainted letters sent to politicians and the news media that has left more than a dozen people sick or dead. But while federal officials in the past have said the indistinguishable quality of the bacteria might indicate that it comes from the same source, they have also conceded that this bit of scientific knowledge neither illuminates much about who has been spreading the anthrax spores nor discounts the possibility that there is more than one person or group involved.

But officials also said they would need much more information before they could determine whether the case here represented the tail end of the rash of cases that have occurred since September or the beginning of a new set.

The news of Mrs. Lundgren's death added to the shock that a case of inhalation anthrax had appeared in Connecticut. Teams of investigators from the F.B.I. the state police and the C.D.C. filtered into the small community of Oxford, population 9,800, to interview people Mrs. Lundgren knew, visit shops she frequented and collect swabs from her ranch- style home, her mailbox and the recent trash she had stored at a neighbor's house.

In Oxford, neighbors and family members mourned the loss of a still vibrant 94-year-old woman who was once married to a prominent lawyer. She was known for her love of mystery novels, her regular churchgoing, her smart dress and her faithful 11 a.m. Saturday appointments at the Nu-Look Hair Salon.

Though there was no initial evidence indicating that Mrs. Lundgren had been exposed through a letter or the mail, earlier anthrax infections of postal workers in Washington and New Jersey exposed to tainted letters led C.D.C. officials here to check two mail centers near Oxford for traces of anthrax.

The results are expected within two days. As a precaution, the 1,150 employees at the Postal Service's southern Connecticut processing and distribution center in Wallingford, and 48 workers at the Seymour, post office near Oxford, were offered antibiotics, said Jim Cari, a Postal Service spokesman. Most employees accepted the treatment.

Officials with the F.B.I. and the C.D.C. said they were not ruling out any possible source of her exposure, including the chance that she had somehow contracted the disease through contact with an agricultural source or the like.

"We'll look at every possible cause of exposure," said Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, director of the C.D.C. "We've made a list of every possible route that we can think of, of how anthrax might have been acquired by a 94- year-old woman who largely lives at home, and things that enter that home are certainly a prime suspect, and given recent history, mail is one of them."

Dozens of F.B.I. agents fanned out across the surrounding Naugatuck River Valley today trying to piece together a detailed portrait of Mrs. Lundgren's daily routines. They were checking, among many other things, what prescription drugs she might have taken for other ailments.

"They want to paint a picture of this lady's life for the last 30 days," said Lisa Bull, an F.B.I. spokeswoman in New Haven. "Something that really gives us a good idea of where she may have gone, who she may have talked to, what she may have received through the mail, in a chronological order."

But it appears investigators will have to work without a great deal of information from Mrs. Lundgren. Doctors took a medical history from her during her first two days in the hospital, but never got a detailed accounting of her routines and relationships before her condition deteriorated on Monday and she could no longer communicate.

Gov. John G. Rowland, though, has already concluded the case represents a crime.

"There's no question this is a homicide," Mr. Rowland said today in an interview at the Capitol in Hartford. "Clearly, I don't think that a 94-year- old resident of Oxford was a target, but there's got to be some kind of accidental discharge of anthrax," by someone who intended to use it as a weapon.

In certain respects, Mrs. Lundgren's case bears a resemblance with the equally puzzling case of Kathy T. Nguyen, the Bronx hospital worker who died of inhalation anthrax last month. She, too, seemed hardly an obvious target, and she had no obvious connections to the post office or media companies.

More than three weeks into the investigation of Ms. Nguyen's death, the authorities are still no closer to finding the source of her contamination, city health and police officials said. Her home and workplace have tested negative for anthrax, and a painstaking reconstruction of her activities has turned up few leads.

Today, it was clear that investigators were working hard on the mail Mrs. Lundgren received, its route, and whether it might have passed through sorting machines in postal buildings in Washington and New Jersey, where anthrax spores were found last month.

The Wallingford mail processing center and three others, in Stamford, New Haven and Hartford, were tested this month for anthrax as part a nationwide sweep of 279 Postal Service facilities. All four were found to be free of anthrax spores. Today, the Wallingford center and the Seymour post office, both of which service Oxford, were more thoroughly re- examined, Governor Rowland said.

Investigators were also seeking to determine whether Mrs. Lundgren had received any constituent mail from either of the state's two United States senators. Traces of anthrax have been found in the Washington offices of both Joseph I. Lieberman and Christopher J. Dodd. But aides to the senators said today that they could find no record of having recently sent mail to the Oxford woman.

Investigators have already interviewed Fred Raymond of Seymour, the letter carrier who delivered Mrs. Lundgren's mail. Mr. Raymond left a message on his answering machine saying he had no anthrax symptoms and was taking antibiotics.

Still, Mr. Rowland said he hoped some clues to Mrs. Lundgren's case would emerge before the weekend.

"Because she had such a limited travel schedule, if there was something she was affected by, you'd think it would at the house," he said.

The authorities have for the moment all but ruled out one possible source: Amir Omerovic, 27, of Derby, who was arrested this month and charged with mailing letters threatening anthrax contamination to Governor Rowland and to other state and federal government offices. No anthrax, however, was found in any of the letters.

And John A. Danaher III, the United States Attorney for Connecticut, said there was currently no evidence linking the man to Mrs. Lundgren's case and that investigators had determined that he had "neither access to nor expertise in anthrax."

Meanwhile in Washington, forensic scientists at an army biomedical research lab at Fort Detrick, Md. slowly examined the anthrax-contaminated letter sent to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the judiciary committee.

So far, investigators have photographed the outside of the envelope, but have not yet opened the letter or analyzed the anthrax spores.

"This is a treasure trove, and they want to make sure they get the most out of it," a government official said.