Public healthUniversity lab tech's suicide by cyanide prompts safety fears

A Northeastern University lab tech’s suspected suicide by cyanide — thirty miles away from campus — is raising public safety fears over easy access to deadly chemicals days after the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

The 30-year-old NU lab tech — identified by the school as Emily Staupe — was found dead early yesterday morning in her Milford bedroom along with what initial tests show was a plastic bag filled with crystallized cyanide, according to Milford and state police.

Neil Livingstone, a Washington, D.C., terrorism expert, said Staupe’s apparent method of suicide shines a light on the problem of lax security at universities across the country. “This should be a wake-up call,” said Livingstone, president of ExecutiveAction. “What if her name were Mohammed Atta (a leader of the 9/11 plot) instead? If she’d been a bad guy and gotten hold of a significant amount of cyanide … who knows?” Livingstone said. “Cyanide is a good weapon of assassination or for killing a small number of people.”

David Procopio, a spokesman for the state police, which is probing Staupe’s death, said it is unclear how Staupe got the cyanide to Milford.

Boston Herald’s Edward Mason writes that she is believed to have taken a train from Boston to Westwood on Saturday before her family picked her up for home, but Procopio said said it is unclear to police when Staupe got the chemical and whether she removed all of the cyanide at once or in steps. Police also are probing whether she smuggled it from Northeastern. Procopio said investigators will look at the school’s reserves to see whether any cyanide is unaccounted for.

Family told police she had recently lost her job, leading Jim Walsh, director of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to say a red-faced Northeastern must review how it deals with disgruntled former workers. “This will cause Northeastern to review its policies for dismissing employees,” Walsh said. “I’d be surprised if there’s not an investigation.”

Colleges and universities are targets of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups looking to gain chemical weapons to use against American targets, Livingstone said. This is because they do not screen their students and they are often careless about who has access to dangerous chemicals, Livingstone said.

“There isn’t adequate screening of who has access to chemicals or biological weapons,” Livingstone said. “They’re reluctant because of ‘academic freedom.’”

The risk of cyanide falling into evil hands is an old worry of terrorism watchers, said Paul M. Maniscalco, an expert on cyanide terrorism at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.“Cyanide is still being used by people with bad intentions,” Maniscalco said.

He pointed to a domestic terrorist, Joseph Konopka, aka “Dr. Chaos,” a left-wing extremist who was caught in 2002 with a cache of cyanide hidden in an abandoned Chicago subway tunnel.

Walsh, the MIT terrorism expert, cautioned, however, that many incidents of dangerous chemicals stolen from college labs are used by the thief against themselves and not others.

“It’s the jilted lover, the disgruntled employee, it’s the suicide not the suicide attack,” Walsh said.