DERBY, Conn. (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A 94-year-old woman who lived alone and seldom left her rural home died of the inhaled form of anthrax Wednesday in a baffling new twist in the bioterrorism investigation.Ottilie Lundgren died five days after she was hospitalized with respiratory problems. She is the fifth person to die of anthrax since early October, and the first case of the disease outside New York, New Jersey, Florida or Washington.
Her death and that of a New York City hospital worker are the only ones that have not been linked to tainted mail.
Authorities said there was no immediate evidence of a crime in Lundgren's death, but the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began retracing her steps over the past month and are looking at the mail as a potential source.
``We're not focused on any one thing, although the mail is certainly an obvious issue,'' FBI spokeswoman Lisa Bull said. ``But we're really trying to keep an open mind about any possibility.''
The anthrax that killed Lundgren is indistinguishable from the strains investigated in the earlier cases, CDC spokeswoman Nicole Coffin said.
She said it was too early to speculate on what the conclusion might mean and whether it suggested a link to the mail. No anthrax-tainted letters have been reported in southwestern Connecticut, and tests at a regional mail-sorting center just last week came up clean.
The nation's last anthrax death was Oct. 31, when the hospital worker died in New York, 70 miles away from Lundgren's modest ranch home in rural Oxford. Lundgren had no known links to any of the previous victims.
With this second unexplained anthrax case, CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan acknowledged he could not discount the possibility that naturally occurring anthrax is more common than doctors thought and is only now being discovered.
But he called that unlikely, particularly in an Eastern state where animal anthrax has not been detected.
Evidence from Lundgren's home, including mail, will be tested for anthrax. Results are not expected until later this week.
The anthrax scare began Oct. 5 with the death of a photo editor who worked at a supermarket tabloid in Florida. Two Washington postal workers and the New York hospital employee died over the next few weeks, while others became infected with inhaled anthrax or the milder skin form of the disease.
None of the cases has been solved. Investigators linked all the cases to tainted mail - except for the death of the hospital worker, Kathy Nguyen.
Traces of anthrax have been found in the Washington offices or mail rooms of Connecticut's senators, Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman. Spokesmen for both lawmakers said they have no record of corresponding with Lundgren.
Investigators are awaiting the results of anthrax tests at a mail sorting center in Wallingford and the post office in Seymour. The governor urged about 1,000 workers from those offices to take antibiotics as a precaution.
In Washington, the Education Department said traces of anthrax had been found in the agency's mailroom. Officials said the amount suggested the room was contaminated by mail from the Brentwood postal facility, which handled anthrax-tainted letters sent to Capitol Hill last month.