making a mountain out of a mole hill. i walked past this guys apartment complex two days after he was arrested and they still had at least 30 cops/firemen there along with a hazmat truck and some other stuff. jeez all he had was a small vial of ricin. Original Article Man toted deadly vial for protection June 7, 2005 By Beth Lucas, Tribune Cutler A Mesa man arrested Saturday on suspicion of making a highly lethal substance in his bathroom told federal and local authorities he wore a small vial of the deadly biotoxin ricin around his neck to protect himself and to poison anyone who attacked him. On Monday, authorities continued to clean up and inspect Casey Cutlers small Dobson Road apartment. And, confident that there is no terrorist threat, a number of federal agencies are converging in Mesa to take advantage of the rare opportunity to deal with the uncommon substance. Cutler, 25, told authorities he carried the poison for self-defense after three men attacked him April 28 outside of his Emerald Apartments home at 1030 S. Dobson Road. At least two witnesses say they saw the three men kick and beat on Cutler before stealing his wallet, a Mesa police report, released Monday, says. Cutler told authorities that "if he was attacked again he could use the ricin in the vial as a defensive weapon," according to court documents released Monday by the U.S. Attorneys Office and the FBI. He told investigators that he believed "if the assailants took the vials, believing them to contain cocaine, and snorted the substance, they would get their just deserts. " Police say they learned that Cutler was manufacturing ricin after Jeffrey Durham, a friend of Cutlers for the past two years, sought medical help Thursday at Mesas Banner Desert Medical Center, fearing he was sick from ricin after he entered Cutlers apartment to retrieve a typewriter. Hospital officials called Mesa police. Durham told officers on Friday that Cutler, who attended Mesa Community College in 2002, went to the schools public computers where he easily found a recipe for ricin on the Internet. According to court documents, Cutler admitted to police he made a crude form of ricin using castor oil and acetone that he let dry into a white powder. He told authorities he placed one jar of ricin on top of his safe. Another was open and drying under a bathroom shelf when authorities entered his home after his arrest. Cutler was arrested Saturday in a parking lot at Main Street and Alma School Road by federal agents. An Arizona Department of Public Safety hazardous material team searched his apartment that same day, also confiscating a bag of beans from the kitchen and a white powdery substance found on a bathroom mirror. Over the weekend, technicians at the Arizona Department of Health Services lab confirmed that three samples collected from Cutler tested positive as being ricin. Additional testing is still being conducted. FBI special agent Deborah McCarley said traces of methamphetamine were also found in the three samples that have tested positive as ricin. On Sunday, the U.S. Attorneys Office filed a complaint in federal court, charging Cutler with producing and possessing a biological toxin for use as a weapon. If convicted, Cutler could face life in prison. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. today. On Monday, Emerald Avenue just off Dobson Road was closed as FBI agents and Mesa firefighters wearing white biohazard suits slowly took apart Cutlers 400-square-foot studio in search of evidence and to clean any residue. Residents watched as the teams walked in and out, past a yellow tent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would use for testing any suspicious substances. "It makes you wonder what else is going on behind closed doors," said Gloria Ramirez, whose apartment is above Cutlers. She and friends said they were "kind of freaked out" but grateful for the police intervention. The incident brought key FBI agents from the agencys Quantico, Va., headquarters as well as from Los Angeles and Dallas. Public health experts with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also expected to arrive and take samples for testing. State epidemiologist David Engelthaler said he expects the nations eye to remain on Mesa as several key health and safety agencies take advantage of what can be a learning experience as terrorism remains a national threat. Ricin is difficult and only purposefully made and rarely found internationally, he said. "Its rare to be dealing with a chemical like ricin," said Mesa fire deputy chief Mary Cameli. "Its a good experience for us to be working with the FBI on an incident this rare." Mesa detective Tim Gaffney said police have dealt with Cutler six times prior to his reported assault, but he has never been charged with a crime. Records show he was a witness in cases involving domestic violence, a car crash and a driver using fictitious plates. He was also questioned about public consumption of alcohol, urinating in public and in an auto theft case. Shortly after the April attack, Cutler moved to his mothers house in the 400 block of East Royal Palm Drive, where neighbors said he was quiet and kept to himself. Jerry Coran, who lives across the street, said he was surprised to receive a community notification from Mesa police advising that ricin had been found in the area. "When I did see him, he was just a normal person," Coran said of Cutler. "He didnt do anything outrageous or crazy." Contact Beth Lucas by email, or phone (480) 898-6373 http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0607ricin07.html Mesa ricin suspect tells feds poison was for self-defense Man says he hoped attackers would think vial held cocaine Dennis Wagner The Arizona Republic Jun. 7, 2005 12:00 AM The Mesa man arrested Saturday and accused of manufacturing a biological weapon of mass destruction got his ricin recipe from the Internet and cooked up the toxic chemical in his apartment bathroom, authorities say. That's how easy it is to set Arizona's counterterrorism forces in motion, creating a public reminder that homeland security threats come from all kinds of angles and weapons. But authorities say that 25-year-old Casey Cutler is hardly a terrorist and that he produced only a small amount of deadly powder. Ricin, an extract from the common castor bean, is fatal if ingested, inhaled or injected. Just a tiny dose, 0.2 milligrams, causes agonizing death. It is many times more poisonous than cyanide and can be administered in powder, mist or liquid form. On Monday, FBI special agents from as far away as Quantico, Va., searched Cutler's apartment in white hazardous-materials suits, collecting evidence and samples for testing. They were backed by officials from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and Mesa firefighters who decontaminated investigators as they exited Emerald Apartments at Dobson Road and Southern Avenue. Residents were not evacuated over the weekend, but Mesa police spent Sunday going door to door handing out information. Because of difficulty in weaponizing ricin, it is not regarded as a major threat in terms of mass killings. However, it has proved effective as a tool of assassination as well as furthering the terrorist's primary objective: spreading fear. An FBI affidavit says Cutler had neither motive in mind when he used a Mesa Community College computer to look up instructions for making the substance. Rather, he told police he concocted ricin for self-defense and perhaps to get even with a trio of assailants who beat him up in April. A Mesa police report says Cutler suffered cuts and bumps when attackers kicked him and punched him in the face while stealing his wallet. An affidavit by FBI Special Agent Philip Thorlin says that Cutler put some of the crystallized chemical into a vial he wears on a necklace, planning to use the substance as a weapon in future attacks. "Additionally, he believed if the assaulters took the vials believing them to contain cocaine, and snorted the substance, they would get their 'just desserts,' " the affidavit says. Cutler, who was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court this morning, faces a maximum life prison sentence. Agent Deborah McCarley of the FBI stressed that the defendant has no known political agenda, and investigators do not believe he sold or gave away any of the chemical. "We don't have anything to suggest any terrorist nexus whatsoever," she added. Brad Benson, a 19-year-old acquaintance, described Cutler as a "misguided" young man who wouldn't want to hurt anyone. "He's just melodramatic. He always wants to be at the center of the attention and thinks his problems are bad," Benson said. "I guess he had no idea how serious ricin was. "He's definitely no terrorist. He always likes to take little things and make them like a big deal." Authorities would not disclose how much ricin Cutler manufactured but said it was not enough to pose a major public health threat. Medical experts emphasized the chemical's limited value for large-scale attacks. "Ricin would be a very poor weapon of mass destruction," said Charles Schable, director of the coordinating office of terrorism preparedness and emergency response at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "If you wanted to make ricin and bump off your neighbor, that's different." According to the FBI affidavit, Cutler was unable to obtain castor beans or plants, so he processed old-fashioned castor oil, normally used as a multipurpose medicine. Castor oil contains much less of the toxin than raw beans. Numerous samples were taken from Cutler's apartment. Powder from the locket tested positive for ricin, though the purity was not immediately known. According to the FBI affidavit, authorities were tipped off to the ricin stash by Jeffrey Durham, a former Cutler roommate who showed up at Desert Banner Hospital in the pre-dawn hours of June 3. Durham told medical workers that he was ill and feared exposure to ricin during a visit to Cutler's apartment several days earlier. Hospital employees were unable to determine whether Durham's sickness was a result of ricin exposure. They discharged him with a diagnosis of suspected bronchitis. Staffers Senta Scarborough and Kerry Fehr-Snyder contributed to this article. Reach the reporter at dennis.wagner@arizonarepublic.com. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0607ricinside07.html Ricin is deadly but a poor weapon Kerry Fehr-Snyder The Arizona Republic Jun. 7, 2005 12:00 AM Lethal even in minute quantities, ricin is a dangerous toxin that kills victims one cell at a time and leads to multiorgan-system failure. But poisoning a large number of people at once with ricin is tricky because the toxin is difficult to weaponize and not infectious from one person to another, health officials said Monday after the arrest of a Mesa man with the illegal substance. It would take as little at 500 micrograms, about the size of the head of a pin, of ricin to kill an adult who inhaled or was injected with the toxin, according to the CDC. The amount needed to be deadly if swallowed likely would be more, but a child who chewed a single bean from a castor plant likely would die. No one knows for sure the exact lethal quantities because it depends on how ricin is ingested and because there's no safe way to test the substance on humans. "It's like they always say, 'The dose makes the poison,' " state epidemiologist David Engelthaler said. There has never been a case of intentional ricin exposure in Arizona, he said. In fact, this is the first time the lab at the Arizona Department of Health Services has been asked to test ricin. Regardless of the quantity needed to be deadly, ricin is "many, many, many times more toxic than, say, cyanide," said Jude McNally, a toxicologist and pharmacist at the University of Arizona's College of Pharmacy. But ricin is difficult to aerosolize and weaponize. "We don't have this as a common mode of malicious or accidental poisoning, despite the fact that it (the castor plants) is widely available," McNally said. Ricin is contained in the seeds of castor plants, a common bush that grows in the wild and is a source of castor oil used as an industrial lubricant. The toxin is part of the waste "mash" produced when castor oil is made. Ricin also has potential medical uses as a chemotherapy agent and in bone marrow transplants. But ricin also interferes with the body's ability to synthesize proteins needed to sustain organs and life itself. Symptoms of ricin poisoning include abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and a drop in blood pressure. If a victim hasn't died within three to five days, they have a chance of surviving long term, Engelthaler said. Paul Keim, a bioterrorism researcher at Northern Arizona University, said he worries about copycat cases. "People try it a lot, but frequently they end up with very crude products that in many cases aren't very potent," he said.