More thoughts

Thinking about the Pence thing - something makes sense. The envelopes that the anthrax was maile in were purchased from a vending machine in a post office. The envelopes had certain subtle defects. Other envelopes with the same defects were sent to two post offices in VA, and one in Elkton, MD.

Elkton MD, incidentally is about 2 hours drive from Frederick. It is very near the border of MD/DE. It is NOT on the path from Frederick to Newark, although it is on the path from DC and points south (I-95). It is ALSO on the path from Florida to New York. Florida being the state where the terrorists were supposedly based in the US.

Anyway.. back to the envelopes - they are sold in packages of 5. Although only 2 envelopes were recovered from the initial mailing, which went out on 9/18/01, by following the trail of anthrax infections there is pretty compelling evidence that 5 letters were sent out.

The known letters in the first batch letters were sent to NBC (Tom Brokaw) and the NY Post newspaper. The other three are thought to have been mailed to ABC, CBS and American Media.

The second batch has only ever been mentioned as two envelopes. One to Leahy and one to Daschle. That leaves three extra (unknown) envelopes. And three additional politicians with trace amounts of anthrax found in their office.

So, what does this mean? I have no clue. But I do wonder why the other 3 were sort of swept under the rug?

One thing that I thought of while writing this, is the proximity of Elkton to Ft. Detrick and Trenton NJ. As I said above, it is not on the "normal" path. I do not believe that the killer would have stopped and picked up envelopes on the way to drop off the anthrax. The envelopes had to have been acquired before that. If nothing else, so the mailer could address them in that block printing. Plus, anyone with any familiarity with anthrax would not be carrying it around in their pocket till they got an envelope for it. PLUS it would be risky to do just before the drop time.

So the big question is - why Elkton? And why Princeton? What was the draw?

Here's another thing. Newark is enroute to NY. This guy made at least 2 trips from "wherever" to Newark. Maybe he travels from "wherever" to NY? Maybe he travels it often enough that no one would be suspicious of his travel? That is assuming of course, that the mailer is a legitimately employed person. The other possibility is that the person was a terrorist driving up whenever he felt like, from Florida to NY

Could it be someone who drives from say DC to NY rather frequently, who just hopped off the interstate in Elkton and found a post office and grabbed 2 stacks of envelopes. Then later (days? weeks?) he travelled again and jumped off the interstate again, found a nice mailbox box (In Princeton NJ) and dropped the letters? That would make more sense than someone from Frederick just randomly driving to Elkton to grab envelopes, then heading home. Then later driving up to Princeton on a totally different road, to drop the letters off.

One other thing (again) It just occurred to me that there was a three week gap between the mailings. Something is wrong with that. Why would the mailer have gone back to the same mailbox? He must have been worried that the authorities had figured it out and were keeping quiet about it - maybe watching the mailbox. (Certainly a paranoid person like Ivins would be thinking that.) I sure as heck would not have gone anywhere NEAR that box after the first letters were mailed. So - did the second letters go in that box? Or was it a different box? Or did the mailer have some way to know that it was safe to drop those envelopes in that box?

As with all the questions - who knows?

((disclaimer: I don't know why this case has suddenly caught my interest. I love a good mystery, but I barely paid any attention to it when it happened. Anyway, if the FBI or NSA or anyone else happens to stumble across this - I am not obsessive, I am not homicidal or psychotic. I am just a person who finds this interesting. Oh, and I really don't have anything against what ya'll do. Even though I think you messed this investigation up pretty bad - I don't think it was done with malice.))