After Anthrax Scientist's Threats, Counselor Faced a Hard Choice

Duley said she was trembling as she sat on a bench outside the clerk's office completing the form. In hastily scribbled handwriting, Duley wrote, "Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions towards therapist." Duley cited another psychiatrist who called Ivins "homicidal, sociopathic, with clear intentions."

She said she asked her attorney if the hearing could be held in closed chambers. "Believe it or not, even with all this, I was still trying to protect Bruce's anonymity," Duley said.

Instead, it was held in open court amid mundane hearings involving landlord-tenant disputes and other civil matters. Duley recounted Ivins's threatening behavior for the Maryland District Court judge.

"He was going to go out in a blaze of glory that he was going to take everybody out with him," Duley testified. "He is a revenge killer. When he feels he has been slighted, and especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings."

Duley then described the two messages that Ivins left from the hospital on her work telephone, the first "ranting, blaming me for having done this to him." The second message was more frightening: "He very calmly thanked me for ruining his life and letting the FBI now be able to prosecute him for the murders, and it was all my fault," she said.

The judge asked Duley if she had anything else to say. "I'm scared to death," she responded. The order was signed. Duley said she stayed burrowed in her house in rural Maryland and slept on the couch, where she could hear any noises. "Every time the dogs barked, I jumped," she said.

Ivins was released from Sheppard Pratt later on July 24, but for reasons that are unclear, the peace order was not served. The FBI documents based on surveillance of Ivins said he visited a public library in Frederick that evening, where he searched a Web site dedicated to the anthrax investigation and checked various e-mail accounts.

Two nights later, he was found unconscious in his home and was declared dead July 29 from an overdose of acetaminophen.

The backlash of grief and anger over Ivins's death was swift among co-workers and former colleagues at the high-security biodefense lab where he worked at Fort Detrick, the Army base in Frederick. In interviews, they said the 62-year-old scientist had been persecuted to the point of disintegration by an overzealous FBI that still had no solid evidence linking him to the anthrax mailings, which killed five people. They described a much-loved, bright, playfully mischievous man who devoted his life to science.

When Duley's restraining order against Ivins surfaced a few days after his death, the counselor left her home and went into hiding. In the breathless rush of media coverage, her life was scoured for details. News reports described her multiple DUI arrests and problems with addiction, including her current probation for her most recent DUI arrest in 2007.

"They made me out to sound like a white-trash biker druggie," Duley said.

Duley spent her early childhood in Southeast Asia, where her father was a diplomat in several countries during the Vietnam War. The family returned to Chevy Chase, and Duley attended Walt Whitman High School before dropping out when she began using drugs. She earned her GED in 1984 and worked as a warranty manager at a car dealership, but a decade of her life was lost to alcohol and drugs, mostly cocaine.