2nd ricin arrest made after 1st case tossed

Everett Dutschke was taken into custody without incident early Saturday, FBI officials said.
Everett Dutschke was taken into custody without incident early Saturday, FBI officials said.

The U.S. arrested and charged a man in Tupelo, Miss., in an investigation into letters containing ricin, a deadly poison, that were sent to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a Mississppi judge.

The arrest early Saturday of Everett Dutschke, 41, follows the government’s dismissal of charges Tuesday against Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, an Elvis impersonator fromCorinth, Miss., who was initially accused of using the mail to threaten people, including Obama.

Dutschke was taken into custody at 12:50 a.m. Mississippi time without incident, FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said. No further details were provided.

A lawyer for Dutschke did not immediately return a message seeking comment Saturday.

Dutschke is expected to appear Monday in U.S. District Court in Oxford.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Christi McCoy, an attorney for Curtis, said in a preliminary hearing Monday in federal court in Oxford, Miss., that Curtis may have been framed for the mailings by Dutschke, with whom Curtis had a long-running e-mail feud.

Dutschke and Curtis had argued on a variety of topics, including their music careers, membership of the Mensa society and Dutschke’s unwillingness to publish in a newsletter Curtis’ allegations about a purported organ-harvesting scheme at a Tupelo hospital.

Curtis was arrested after envelopes purportedly sent to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, were intercepted April 16 and found to contain “a suspicious granular substance” that tested positive for ricin. A similar letter with the substance also was sent to Judge Sadie Holland of the Lee County Justice Court.

The letters were signed “I am KC and I approve this message,” according to the criminal complaint. That send-off is a standard part of e-mail messages sent to numerous public officials by Curtis, who had been on a one-man campaign for more than a decade to expose his allegations over the Tupelo hospital.

Law enforcement officials said Saturday that the letters were carefully crafted to mimic Curtis’ characteristic phrasing and concerns. While they regretted having arrested a man they now consider to be innocent, they wanted to move quickly to stop the poisoned letters, one official said.

Curtis’ brother Jack said neither he nor other family members immediately dismissed the charges as false, given Kevin Curtis’ history of mental illness.

“We could understand especially with the things that were tied to his initials,” he said. “I could see why somebody would think it was Kevin, but when they said President Obama, I thought, ‘Somebody messed up, because he likes Obama.’”

The case against Curtis fell apart after an FBI agent testified at a preliminary hearing that searches failed to turn up any trace of ricin at Curtis’ home, as well as in his vehicle and the homes of his ex-wife and parents. An analysis of his personal computer found nothing related to ricin, agent Brandon Grant said.

On Tuesday, Curtis was released from jail and the charges against him were dropped. At a news conference, Curtis said he did not blame federal authorities but added that “this past week has been a nightmare for me and my family.”

Dutschke, a bright but often abrasive man who ran for the state Legislature and lost, was arrested earlier this year on charges that he molested three girls, one as young as 7. He pleaded innocent to the charges this month.

As he became the center of the investigation, Dutschke denied having anything to do with the ricin letters but tried to keep a low profile, to the point where authorities briefly lost track of him.

The strangeness of the whole series of events was not shocking to some who knew both men.

“There’s been bad blood between those two for years,” said James Moore, the prosecuting attorney for Lee County. Of their entanglement in this case, he added, “Hindsight’s 20/20, but knowing these two guys I ain’t surprised.”

Holland is another common link between the two men, and both know Wicker.

Holland was the presiding judge in a 2004 case in which Curtis was accused of assaulting a Tupelo attorney a year earlier. Holland sentenced him to six months in the county jail. He served only part of the sentence, according to his brother.

Holland’s family has had political skirmishes with Dutschke. Her son, Steve Holland, a Democratic state representative, said he thinks his mother’s only other encounter with Dutschke was at a rally in the town of Verona in 2007, when Dutschke ran as a Republican against Steve Holland.

Steve Holland said his mother confronted Dutschke after he made a derogatory speech about the Holland family. She demanded that he apologize, which Holland says Dutschke did.

On Saturday, Steve Holland said he can’t say for certain that Dutschke is the person who sent the letter to his mother but added, “I feel confident the FBI knows what they are doing.”

“We’re ready for this long nightmare to be over,” Holland said.

He said he’s not sure why someone would target his mother. Holland said he believes Dutschke would have more reason to target him than his mother.

“Maybe he thinks the best way to get to me is to get to the love of my life, which is my mother,” Holland said Saturday.

Ricin-poisoning symptoms depend on the purity, route of exposure and the dose. Initial symptoms from inhalation occur as early as four to six hours after exposure, and include difficulty breathing and a cough, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The symptoms can progress rapidly to fluid in the lungs and eventual respiratory failure. Deaths from the poison usually happen within 36 to 72 hours. While no antidote exists, doctors can counteract the effects of the poisoning by helping victims breathe or giving them fluids. Information for this article was contributed by Cheyenne Hopkins and Marty Russell of Bloomberg News; by Campbell Robertson, Thomas Kaplan and Scott Shane of The New York Times; and by Holbrook Mohr and Jack Elliott Jr. of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/28/2013

Upcoming Events