SUPREME JUSTICE?
The Case of the Poisoned Cookies
02/07/07
It
was an odd weaponized delivery system: a
sugary-sweet homemade cookie. In April 2005,
all nine U.S. Supreme Court justices got
one in the mail along with a bluntly worded
note along these lines: “I am going
to kill you. This is poisoned.”
They weren’t the only ones. Similar
threats were sent to the FBI Director and
Deputy Director and to the chiefs of staff
of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The 14
letters each had messages typed and signed
with a different name, and each contained
one cookie or piece of candy.
Because the FBI is responsible for investigating
threats against Supreme Court justices and
other national leaders, our Washington office
opened a case in May 2005, led by FBI Special
Agent Monica M. Patton.
Here’s how her investigation
played out:
- Her first step: to
send all the letters to the FBI Laboratory
in Quantico, Virginia, for testing. The
Lab found that, yes, this was no joke:
each homemade cookie or candy contained
bromadiolone rodenticide, a rat poison.
Our Lab analysts also found fibers from
clothes in a few of the letters, but no
usable DNA evidence or fingerprints.
- How about the return addresses? A
dead end, at least at first. The names
and addresses were real, but interviews
by agents around the country turned up
no viable suspects. “It was looking
like an unsolvable case,” Patton
said.
- Until an agent in Florida made
a telling discovery. “When
one of our agents showed a woman a list
of all the other names used on the return
addresses, she turned pale,” Patton
said. Why? Because seven of them were
in her Florida college sorority class
of 1967!
- Agents re-interviewed these sorority
class members and found a common thread: a
woman named Barbara March in Bridgeport,
Connecticut. We also learned that
the other seven names were connected to
March: an ex-husband, a brother, three
other classmates, an old roommate, and
a former coworker. March had a grudge against
all 14 people and was apparently trying
to get them in trouble with the law. We
moved quickly, as March had two prior violent
felony convictions.
- Using a search warrant, agents went
to her apartment and found clothes that
the FBI Laboratory later forensically matched
to the fibers found in some of the letters.
They also found a list of first names and
states that matched the list of senders.
Entries on another list included “type
letters”, “have a plan” and “candy & tape—no
fingerprints—plastic gloves.” Strange…and
very incriminating.
- March didn’t have a typewriter—but
Patton, along with a Bridgeport agent,
discovered three at a nearby library. Bringing
the case full circle, Patton sent the ribbons
to our Lab, where forensic experts reconstructed
the return addresses and contents of five
letters. Case closed.
And
quickly. Just
two months after sending the letters, Patton
worked with Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela
Schmidt to obtain an arrest warrant. March
pled
guilty and
was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October
2006.
In the end, it was a classic case of good old-fashioned
detective work and interagency partnerships
blending with our modern scientific expertise
to catch the villain.
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