Original Article Tests reveal Mesa suspect failed in bid to make ricin Intent may be enough to draw life in prison Jack Gillum The Arizona Republic Jun. 8, 2005 12:00 AM A substance state health officials identified as ricin after it was confiscated from a Mesa man on Saturday was not the deadly toxin, according to those same health officials, who were forced to retest the substance after recognizing they had made an error. But federal prosecutors say Casey Cutler, 25, still will face federal charges because he intended to create the lethal substance. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Arizona Department of Health Services retested the substance Tuesday and determined it was not ricin. State epidemiologist David Engelthaler said the department does not think the substance is a public health threat. But late Tuesday, epidemiologists, who had been asked merely to test for the possibility of it being ricin or not, could not identify what the substance was. Hazardous-materials teams collected white powder samples from Cutler's apartment after his former roommate said he may have been poisoned by ricin. According to an FBI affidavit, Cutler had attempted to make ricin (processed from castor beans) by boiling castor oil. Realizing that shipping the substance to an FBI lab in Quantico, Va., would take too long, federal agents asked the state health lab to perform the ricin test. Engelthaler said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees state laboratories, asked labs to dispose of the old chemicals used to test for ricin in 2003 and replace them with new, more precise ones. The error was made when lab officials first tested the powder Saturday with an outdated chemical, Engelthaler said Tuesday. Because of a national shortage, the lab had recently received a batch of the testing chemicals, known as reagents, from a lab at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Engelthaler said that using the outdated reagent caused three out of 15 samples to incorrectly test positive for the toxin. The Colorado lab is conducting an internal investigation to discover why the old chemicals had not been discarded, Engelthaler said. Agents swarming The investigation set Arizona's FBI special agents swarming around Cutler's apartment complex 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 the Emerald Apartments, at Dobson Road and Southern Avenue. Engelthaler said Tuesday that Department of Health Services officials thought they could rely on receiving quality chemicals from the Colorado lab because it is part of a national system established by the CDC. That means that laboratories, such as Arizona's, can receive reliable supplies when their own labs are out. FBI spokeswoman Deborah McCarley said the agency will continue to work with the state lab despite this week's problems. "We do trust them. We have used them in several cases in the past whenever our lab was busy and there were cases where we needed quick answers," she said. "You have public concern, but what if this (other) test had come out that it was ricin? Sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry." Cutler had been charged Sunday in U.S. District Court in connection with the production and possession of the toxin. Sandy Raynor, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said those charges will be amended to reflect that he intended to produce and possess a deadly toxin. Cutler was scheduled to appear before District Judge Edward C. Voss III on Tuesday morning for a routine status hearing. Instead, the hearing was rescheduled for Friday after Cutler's court-appointed attorney, Jon Sands, and the U.S. Attorney's Office recognized that there was a problem with the lab's test results. Engelthaler said Tuesday that, to his knowledge, ricin cannot be produced from castor oil. In a news conference following the hearing, Sands said his client had a "litany of mental-health issues," but Sands would not elaborate. Sands, however, said that Cutler had the ricin for self-defense and perhaps to get even with a trio of assailants who beat him up in April. Reach the reporter at jack.gillum@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8546.