A top anthrax researcher has committed suicide just as the FBI and federal prosecutors were closing in on him. Prosecutors were about to hand down multiple indictments seeking the death penalty against Bruce E. Ivans, a top anthrax scientist for the military at Fort Detrick, Md.

Ivans ingested a huge dose of Tylenol mixed with Codeine and died a short time later at a Maryland hospital. The 2001 anthrax attacks killed five people and crippled the U.S. postal system while the country was still reeling from the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI is considering the theory that Ivans released the anthrax as a way to test a vaccine he’d been working on.

Ivans was no different than the al-qaeda killers who hit us on 9/11. He was such an incredible coward to hide out in his lab and mail packages of death to his fellow countrymen. Ground zero still smoldered, the Pentagon was in ruins, and 3,000 Americans lay dead, and this guy decided to make his contribution to the horror.

The fear in our country was quite palpable and I remember it like it was yesterday. It seemed like everything about life as we knew it was being turned upside down. The sound of a plane approaching caused people to look skyward, public places became possible bomb targets.

Then one day people began to die simply from opening the mail. I remember holding my breath and opening suspicious pieces of mail wearing latex gloves.