Ricin poison sent to Mayor Bloomberg over gun control, NYPD says

Ricin sent to Mayor Bloomberg over gun control, NYPD says

By Matt Pearce and Tina Susman

May 29, 2013 4:12 PM PT

Letters threatening New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg over gun control laws have tested positive for the poison ricin, police said Wednesday.

An unspecified number of New York Police Department personnel reported minor symptoms from the poison that have since abated, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said in a statement.

The anonymous letters were opened at the city’s mail facility on Gold Street in Manhattan on Friday and by the director of Bloomberg’s gun control consortium, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, in Washington on Sunday, police said.

“The writer, in letters, threatened Mayor Bloomberg, with references to the debate on gun laws,” Browne said. “Civilian personnel in New York and Washington who came in contact with the opened letters remain asymptomatic.”

Preliminary tests on both letters came up positive for ricin, a poison that occurs naturally in castor beans and that can be fatal in small doses when inhaled or ingested.

Members of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit briefly suffered “minor symptoms” after dealing with the New York letter, which also tested positive for the poison at the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland on Wednesday, Browne said.

The FBI will handle the investigation, Browne said.

Bloomberg, one of the highest-profile figures in the nation backing stricter gun control rules, co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns in 2006.

He put out a harsh statement last month criticizing lawmakers in Washington who failed to vote for comprehensive background checks and other gun control measures advocated by President Obama after the Newtown, Conn., massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators.

In March, he launched a $12-million ad campaign -- some of it paid for out of his vast personal fortune -- to champion gun control legislation.

The letters to Bloomberg marked the second high-profile ricin scare this year. Federal officials last month arrested James Everett Dutschke of Tupelo, Miss., and charged him with manufacturing ricin and mailing letters tainted with the poison to Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge. Dutschke is also charged with trying to frame a rival who was initially arrested in the case.

Pearce reported from Los Angeles and Susman from West Virginia.

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Matt Pearce

Matt Pearce was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 2012 to 2024. He previously covered the covering internet culture and podcasting, the 2020 presidential election and spent six years on The Times’ national desk, where he wrote stories about violence, disasters, social movements and civil liberties. Pearce was one of the first national reporters to arrive in Ferguson, Mo., during the uprising in 2014, and he chased Hurricane Harvey across Texas as the storm ravaged the Lone Star State in 2017. A University of Missouri graduate, he hails from a small town outside Kansas City, Mo.

Tina Susman

Tina Susman, an Oakland native, is a former New York-based national correspondent who joined the Los Angeles Times as Baghdad bureau chief in January 2007. She got her start as a foreign correspondent with the Associated Press in South Africa, covering the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela. Dubbed by past editors “the master of disaster,” she has also worked in west Africa and done stints in Europe, Asia and Haiti. She is thrilled to now be in a city with quirky features, non-stop news, and functioning phones and electricity. She left The Times in 2015.

Ricin sent to Mayor Bloomberg over gun control, NYPD says

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