Initial tests showed no trace of anthrax in the mail or home of an elderly Connecticut woman who died earlier this week of inhalation anthrax, leaving investigators with no clear answer to how she contracted the deadly bacteria.
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Mrs Ottie Lundgren
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Additional tests on two postal facilities, 400 postal workers and the woman's garbage were also negative, Governor John Rowland said.
The test results came as FBI agents and health investigators scrutinized the life of 94-year-old Mrs Ottilie Lundgren, who lived alone and rarely left her house in rural Oxford, Connecticut. She died on Wednesday from inhalation anthrax. She was the fifth person in the United States to die from the potential germ warfare agent.
Investigators took samples from her home, her garbage and two nearby postal facilities.
More than 90 samples were taken from the mail sorting center in Wallingford and the post office in Seymour - the facilities that would have handled Lundgren's mail - and they all proved negative, Mr Rowland said.
About 400 people have been tested, but all have proved negative.
Investigators have not determined who is behind the anthrax attacks. But US Attorney General Mr John Ashcroft has indicated that authorities are leading toward a domestic source.