Officers enter Miss. home of ricin mailings suspect

OXFORD, Miss. -- At least a dozen armed officers wearing gas masks and hazardous-material suits Thursday evening went into the Corinth home of a Mississippi man accused of sending letters with poisonous ricin to the president and others.

Police had blocked off the home with crime-scene tape since Paul Kevin Curtis' arrest on Wednesday. No neighbors have been evacuated.

The 45-year-old Curtis appeared briefly in court Thursday and his attorney said he was innocent. He was described Thursday as a good father, a quiet neighbor and an entertainer who impersonated Elvis at parties. But accounts also show a man who spiraled into emotional turmoil trying to get attention for his claims of uncovering a conspiracy to sell body parts on the black market.

His brother said the family hopes federal officials will make sure he gets treatment for his mental illness while he is in custody.

Curtis detailed in numerous Web posts during the past several years the event that he said "changed my life forever": the chance discovery of body parts and organs wrapped in plastic in small refrigerator at a hospital where he worked as a janitor more than a decade ago.

He tried to talk to officials and get the word out online, but he thought he was being railroaded by the government. Authorities say the efforts culminated in letters sent to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a judge in Mississippi. "Maybe I have your attention now even if that means someone must die," the letters read, according to an FBI affidavit.

"He is bipolar, and the only thing I can say is he wasn't on his medicine," said Laura Curtis, his ex-wife.

Jim Waide, an attorney for the Curtis family, said Curtis was prescribed medication three years ago. "When he is on his medication, he is terrific, he's nice, he's functional," Waide said. "When he's off his medication, that's when there's a problem."

Waide represented Curtis in a lawsuit he filed in August 2000 against North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, where he had worked from 1998 until he was fired in 2000. Waide said he withdrew from the case because Curtis didn't trust him. The suit, claiming employment discrimination, was dismissed.

"He thought I was conspiring against him," Waide said. "He thinks everybody is out to get him."

Curtis made a brief court appearance Thursday, wearing shackles and a Johnny Cash T-shirt. Attorney Christi R. McCoy said he "maintains 100 percent" that he is innocent. He did not enter pleas to the two federal charges against him. He is due back in court Friday afternoon.

In several letters to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and other officials, Curtis said he was writing a novel about black market body parts called "Missing Pieces."

Curtis also had posted language similar to the letters on his Facebook page. The documents indicate Curtis had been distrustful of the government for years. In 2007, Curtis' ex-wife called police in Booneville, Miss., to report that her husband was extremely delusional, anti-government and felt the government was spying on him with drones.

But Laura Curtis said Thursday that she doesn't believe the allegations about her ex-husband. "He just likes to speak out," she said.

"What they say he did is so unlike him, it's unreal," she added. "Until I hear him say he did it, I would not, I would not, I could not believe it."

During their 10-year marriage, the couple lived in Booneville in north Mississippi. Curtis said she moved to a house next door after the split. Her ex-husband moved to Birmingham but eventually back to Mississippi, most recently the small town of Corinth, where he was arrested Wednesday. Laura Curtis said he would visit their four children -- ages, 8, 16, 18 and 20 -- almost every day. He recently bought his youngest child a bicycle, she said.

But others say Curtis' behavior was often erratic.

Curtis and his brother worked as Elvis impersonators, and David Daniels, an attorney in Tupelo, said Curtis was in a show he helped organize about 10 years ago. He said that while he had no problems with Curtis' brother, he had an altercation with the man now suspected of mailing threats to three officials.

Daniels said was sitting in his vehicle one night after rehearsal when Curtis walked up. "He started beating on the windows and screaming and hollering," Daniels said. "I thought he was kidding, but he was serious. He was throwing a fit like I've never seen a grown man throw before."

Daniels said Curtis was holding a beer bottle and threatening him with it. Daniels said he pointed the pistol he kept in his car at Curtis. "I told him, `If you try to hit me with that bottle, Kevin, I'm going to shoot you,"' Daniels said.

But he said Curtis stayed by the vehicle for as long as 15 minutes. "He was screaming and ranting and raving about body parts being sold," Daniels said.

Daniels eventually filed simple assault charges, and he said the judge who handled the case was Sadie Holland -- one of the three people who received a letter suspected of containing ricin, according to authorities. Records show she sentenced Daniels to six months in the county jail.

Daniels was an assistant district attorney at the time of the encounter with Curtis. "He launched a smear campaign against me, saying I attacked him and tried to shoot him," Daniels said Thursday.

"It made my life miserable for almost two years, having to deal with this guy," he said.

On Thursday, North Mississippi Medical Center confirmed Curtis' employment and said in a statement he was not terminated in response to allegations about the facility.

Under the name Kevin Curtis, multiple online posts describe the conspiracy Curtis claimed to uncover when working there. The posts say the conspiracy began when he "discovered a refrigerator full of dismembered body parts & organs wrapped in plastic in the morgue of the largest nonmetropolitan health care organization in the United States of America."

The hospital's statement says it works with an agency that specializes in harvesting organs and tissue from donors, and then immediately transports those organs for donation. The hospital says it does not receive payment for the donated organs.

Curtis wrote in his postings that he was trying to "expose various parties within the government, FBI, police departments" for what he believed was "a conspiracy to ruin my reputation in the community as well as an ongoing effort to break down the foundation I worked more than 20 years to build in the country music scene."

In one post, Curtis said he sent letters to Wicker and other politicians.

"I never heard a word from anyone. I even ran into Roger Wicker several different times while performing at special banquets and fundraisers in northeast, Mississippi but he seemed very nervous while speaking with me and would make a fast exit to the door when I engaged in conversation ..."

Wicker said Thursday in Washington that he had met Curtis when he was working as Elvis at a party Wicker and his wife helped throw for an engaged couple about 10 years ago.

Wicker called him "quite entertaining" but said: "My impression is that since that time he's had mental issues and perhaps is not as stable as he was back then."

Early Thursday evening, the FBI said lab tests have confirmed the presence of ricin in the letters mailed to Obama and Wicker. Holland's son, Mississippi state Rep. Steve Holland of Plantersville, said the letter sent to the judge was being tested.

Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, called the process to make ricin elaborate. She said it would not be difficult to create a low-concentration version using instructions from the Internet, but a finer and more concentrated version would require laboratory equipment and expertise, she said.

Laura Curtis said she doesn't think her ex-husband has the knowledge required to make ricin. She said he collects a monthly disability check, and she did not know where he would get ricin.

She said she cried when she heard about the arrest.

"It's more sinking in today, because you see the longer picture," Curtis said. "It's just me and the kids."