A federal grand jury Wednesday indicted two men in connection with a series of hoax anthrax letters that were mailed in Alabama this month and in March, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, U.S. Postal Inspector Frank Dyer and Federal Protective Service Threat Management Branch Chief Curtis Huston announced.

The first 15 counts of the 24-count indictment charge CLIFTON LAMAR “CLIFF” DODD, 38, of Lincoln, with mailing 15 hoax letters between March 6 and April 5 that contained a threat in the form of white powder that reasonably could have been perceived as the biological toxin, anthrax.

One of those letters was delivered to U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby’s office in the Robert S. Vance Federal Building in Birmingham on March 8. Other recipients of the white-powder letters DODD is charged with sending include Alabama Sen. Jim Preuitt of Talladega, two Talladega County state court judges, Talladega County Sheriff Jerry Studdard, several Talladega County Jail inmates who were in the jail at the same time as DODD, and police investigators from both the Lincoln and Oxford police departments who previously had interviewed DODD, according to the indictment and an arrest affidavit filed Monday in U.S. District Court.

Counts 16-23 of the indictment charge DODD and MILSTEAD EARL “MICKEY” DARDEN, 38, of Lincoln, with mailing eight other anthrax hoax letters on Saturday, April 24. Count 24 of the indictment charges the two men with conspiring to send the threatening hoax letters mailed April 24.

As part of the conspiracy, the indictment charges that DARDEN allowed DODD to put together those eight letters while sitting in DARDEN’s car, and that DARDEN drove DODD to the Pell City Post Office to mail them.

Postal inspectors arrested DODD and DARDEN on April 24 after they deposited eight letters in an outdoor drop box at the Pell City Post Office and the letters were found to contain white powder, according to the arrest affidavit.

(Eli Gefen – YWN)