Widow of anthrax victims discusses evidence

WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- Maureen Stevens met with the FBI yesterday, and says she is now 100% convinced that Bruce Ivins is the man who murdered her husband.

"This investigation as far as I'm concerned was closed yesterday," said Stevens, speaking in front of her lawyer's West Palm beach offices.

"They had so much evidence, and I keep hearing it was circumstantial, but there was so much of it."

Robert Stevens was a worker at AMI in Boca Raton and became the first of five people killed by the anthrax tainted letters sent to the tabloid and to federal lawmakers' offices.
Mrs. Stevens has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the federal government, suspecting all along that given the strain of the the anthrax that killed her husband, it must have been someone with access to the U.S. military lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

Ivins commited suicide last week as the FBI announced it was close to making an arrest in the case.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Stevens says the goverment presented her with evidence placing Ivins' prints on a postage stamp, as well as evidence he had spent unusually long hours in the lab during the days leading up to the anthrax attacks.

They also showed her evidence, she says, that Ivins was mentally unstable.

"I'm curious as to why he was even working there," said Stevens' lawyer Richard Schuler, "A person like that, working in a place like this? I mean, that just defies the imagination."

Schuler says he's hopeful that with many of the documents now unsealed, they'll finally be able to move forward with their lawsuit.

Mrs. Stevens says it's been a long seven years coming to this point, and is now confident her husband Robert believes Robert was not specifically targeted.

She now knows who killed him, she says, but with no suicide note, and no trial, she may never know Ivins' full motive.

"Maybe he didn't mean to kill someone," she says, "Maybe he didn't, but he killed five people."