The feds are getting out the check book to cover an anthrax lawsuit filed by the wife whose husband — a Florida tabloid photo editor — was killed in 2001 by an anthrax letter.
The Associated Press reports that the U.S. government has agreed to pay widow Maureen Stevens $2.5 million to settle a lawsuit she filed.
The suit claimed the government failed to set in place security measures to assure that no one at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. got a hold of a the deadly anthrax strain that was used to kill her husband and four others.
As part of the agreement, the wife has agreed to drop all other claims relating to the death of her husband Robert Stevens.
For years, some at the FBI were convinced that Ft. Detrick scientist Steven Hatfill was the culprit. But eventually investigators turned their attention toward Bruce Ivins, a scientist in the lab who committed suicide in July 2008, shortly before the feds planned to charge him in the deadly mailings that killed 5 and sickened 17 others.
