Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Live At Daybreak
Interview With Bo Dietl and Dr. Michael Baden
Aired November 07, 2001 - 08:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators trying to solve the anthrax mystery have been especially frustrated by one case in particular. Kathy Nguyen was buried Monday in New York. She was the first anthrax fatality with no connection to either the media or the postal service. And authorities are trying to figure out how she contracted the inhalation anthrax that killed here.
Here is how the anthrax mystery of Kathy Nguyen evolved. On October 25, the hospital worker complained of chills and a headache. She checked into another hospital October 28. She died on October 31. An autopsy was completed the same day, and her death was ruled a homicide.
Today, there are still no conclusions about how she contracted the deadly bacteria. To talk about the case this morning is former New York police detective, Bo Dietl. Also joining us, forensic pathologist and former chief medical examiner of New York, Dr. Michael Baden. Welcome gentlemen, good to have the two of you with us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning.
ZAHN: So, Mr. Dietl, can you walk us through the paces that some of these investigators will be going through now to try to track the last steps of Kathy Nguyen?
BO DIETL, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: Well, you know, you develop a timeline from her time of death, and you go back. And we're talking about approximately only one week from actually contracting the anthrax to when she died. You go back, and you check phone records, you check garbage, you check every route that she has taken to and from work.
Then, you have to go out there, and you have to interview these people. Then, you check their alibis to make sure that their alibis line up with what they're telling you. And the only way to really get to know the truth is when you personally talk to someone. That's when the detectives really kick in, and that's when good detectives know when people are telling the truth or not.
The problem with this one is that if we were able to find a contact, where she made along the way, then we know it wouldn't have been from the mail, because as I said, the mail with these sorters are spaying the stuff all over the mail. And hence, that's what's going on with the mail contamination. And that would be the only direct thing back.
We're just hoping that we can make a connection. Maybe she went into some restaurant that someone had -- was really infected with it. And that's where you have to backtrack, and it's a very sensitive investigation, because you're going to keep asking relatives and family members, people at work over and over the same questions, because you're looking for that connection.
ZAHN: Dr. Baden, you heard what Bo Dietl just had to say, and I guess epidemiology is a field that thrives on patterns. And so far, there doesn't seem to be any pattern exhibited here. Tell us where you'd start with this thing?
DR. MICHAEL BADEN, FORMER NEW YORK CITY CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER: The pathologist or medical examiner's role is more to find out what happened, rather than who done it. The pathologist is going to do the autopsy, look at the tissue, determine -- confirm the diagnosis, determine how long the illness had been there before she had symptoms seven days or eight days before she died.
We are able to, then, culture the bugs and determine whether it's the same kind of bug -- the same kind of spore bacterium that's been involved in all of the other cases, or whether this has been, in any way, manipulated to be resistant to penicillin, or to have a different genotype, to have been aerosolized with various chemicals. And that can help determine whether this is part of the same group of bugs that are being distributed, or whether this is a new kind of introduction of anthrax.
We can tell you that the odds of somebody in Boca Raton getting anthrax epidemiologically just, by natural causes, is very remote. That the fact that the first cases were near where the Atta group was means there's a relationship there. This is such a rare condition in the United States that it doesn't happen spontaneously by coincidence. So a lot of things...
(CROSSTALK)
ZAHN: Yes, yes. But, Dr., what is so mysterious about this one, is that investigators, so far, haven't found any traces of anthrax yet in her apartment or in the cubicle that she worked in at the hospital. And yet, they found some of her clothing. They also seem to be sort of waltzing around this right now, but throwing out the idea maybe it's cross-contamination, because it does...
BADEN: Well...
ZAHN: ... appear as though she might have touched, you know, any letters that might have been cross-contaminated.
DIETL: Paula...
ZAHN: Bo, do you want to jump in here?
DIETL: ... you know something, you know, this mail screening that we've been doing, the phone is running off the hook about it. What's happened is at the main post office, they found contamination on a lot of these mail sorters. Hence, the mail screening that we're doing with the ultraviolet lights, trying to kill anything on the outside. It is very, very possible that it could have been from contamination from the original one. They'll line that up, and see if they're the same spores that have been floating around.
Now, we have it floating in our postal. It's come back as through the investigation, through the biological thing that these things are around. So hence, that's why we're doing these mail screenings, and ultraviolet medical lights on top of the mail to kill anything on the outside. I don't really think that there's any more direct mail to people at this point, but the contamination factor still can be out there.
And people have to be very careful in opening their mail, and that's why we have off site mail screening because of that reason. Corporations don't want that mail coming into their mail rooms. We do it off site. We do the ultraviolet on the mail. This way if there is any contamination, you kill it off.
ZAHN: Well, let me ask you this, Bo. It wasn't revealed until this weekend by the hospital that occasionally Kathy Nguyen did come in contact with mail. At one point, before the renovation was done, the area where she worked, basically was very close to the mail room.
DIETL: You know, what scares me, Paula? It scares me that regular mail is coming in there, right into your office. Now, how much of that anthrax, when they put the mail through the sorter, the original anthrax envelopes, whether it be 5 or 6 or 10 of them, and that stuff spewed all over the place, where it could be possibly living and breathing. Because we know sunlight kills it, ultraviolet light kills it, bleach kills it, heat kills it, but possibly, it could be festering in mail underneath flaps of envelopes and all of that.
People have to be very careful until we find out that we've checked very post office that we know it's gone. And we know every day we hear something in the paper about a sorter finding spores on this sorter, that sorter. That's why our mail people are very, very anxious about going to work. And until this thing is over, if it's ever over, you have to make sure that your mail is clean. And that's a very important thing.
ZAHN: And, Dr. Baden, you said it's obviously not the job of epidemiologists to figure out exactly how she got it. You want to study the science of this. And yet, is there any reasonable explanation, in your mind, as to how she contracted this?
BADEN: Yes. It's the epidemiologist's job, the physician's job, to find out what happened and how she got it, not necessarily who started it...
ZAHN: Got you.
BADEN: ... and who is guilty. And I think that the fact that she has anthrax in her person, on her clothes, means she came in contact with something or somebody. We may or may not be able to figure out what that contact was. That's why the detectives have to go back and trace every moment, and find out the things that we may not know about where she had been. But I think one of the things...
ZAHN: Scientifically, Dr. Baden, yes, what are the chances that she came in contact with a bioterrorist directly?
BADEN: It's within the realm of possibility, but that's one of 100 different explanations. But I think with all of the contacts going on, and with all of the anthrax that's around, it also shows it isn't as infectious so far as we think it is, as was thought at the beginning. This is not as infectious a disease, as it's been played out so far, as chicken pox, measles, lightning strikes, and all of that are more common than...
ZAHN: Sure.
BADEN: ... getting sick from anthrax at this point, from this first episode of contact with anthrax.
ZAHN: Bo, you get the final word this morning...
DIETL: You know, it's...
ZAHN: ... about 15 second's worth. What do you think we're looking at here? Could she have come into contact with a bioterrorist?
DIETL: It's so frustrating for the detectives, because they thought they were going to find that silver bullet possibly. But when they checked the office and the home, they have no other spores there. And that's what's unbelievable. What, one spore jumped off a letter and infected her? That's the problem here, and the reality we were hoping that there's a connection that makes where these spores came from, possibly contact with someone who was infected with it.
ZAHN: Well, we'd like to stay in touch with both of you as this investigation progresses. Dr. Michael Baden, thank you so much for your time; Bo Dietl -- yours as well.
DIETL: Thank you, Paula.
ZAHN: Appreciate it.
BADEN: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
