Anthrax used to get rid of photgraphic evidence?

BOCA RATON - Elvis has left the building.

At the end of last year, MARCOR Remediation decontaminated anthrax from 8,500 wax-covered boxes and another 180 oversized boxes, all containing images, papers, employee mementos and office trash. Then, a “majority” of those boxes were incinerated, Palm Beach County Health Department spokesman Tim O’Connor said Thursday.

But where has he gone? That’s the question tabloid photographers posed about the famous image of Elvis lying in his coffin as well as thousands of other images contaminated with anthrax at the former American Media Inc. building.

The remaining 600 to 800 “clean” boxes recently were removed from the former AMI building with the approval of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been overseeing the cleanup, O’Connor said.

Health officials don’t know where those boxes were taken. “We don’t have anything to do with the personal property issue,” he said.

David Rustine, who bought the former AMI building in 2003, is staying mum. Reached by telephone Thursday, Rustine refused to comment on how many “clean” boxes there are, why they were removed from the building and whether he would return any of the boxes’ contents to freelance photographers and AMI employees. Several phone calls to EPA officials were not returned.

Freelance photographers say Rustine does not own the pictures they shot years ago and that graced the pages of The National Enquirer,the Weekly World News,the Globe and other publications. Their assertions prevented BioONE, the company Rustine originally hired to decontaminate the building in 2004, from destroying the boxes. BioONE later decided to fumigate thousands of photos and papers with chlorine dioxide gas in a custom-made chamber in the basement of the building. But it did not finish the job because its work contract with Rustine expired last May.

Robert Stevens, a photo editor for the Sun, died Oct. 5, 2001, after he inhaled anthrax from a mysterious letter that was sent to him a month before. The county health department shut down the building a few days later, and it has remained closed since.

The ongoing dispute over who owns the AMI collection of 4.5 million images resulted in a lawsuit filed last September by Greg Mathieson of MAI Photo News Agency. He alleges AMI did not return his work in its original condition, protect and insure his photos, compensate him for his losses and keep accurate records. Mathieson also accused AMI of not telling him where his photos were.

“We don’t know what has been done about the boxes,” Mathieson said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the former AMI building still is under quarantine and the final stages of the cleanup are stalled. Health officials are waiting for MARCOR Remediation to designate a lab to test and verify that the latest decontamination effort has killed anthrax, O’Connor said.

Palm Beach Post