A fellow employee — photo editor Bob Stevens, 63, of Lantana, Florida – didn’t survive the anthrax that was delivered to the American Media Inc. offices in Boca Raton, heightening national tensions in the weeks after the 9-11 terrorism attacks. Stevens was the first victim in the string of attacks when he died Oct. 5, 2001.

Blanco, now 80, had his confidence boosted last fall during an FBI briefing for the anthrax survivors and family members of the dead.

"I left convinced that sooner or later they would get him," the West Palm Beach man said.

"I think that’ll be the last of it," said Blanco, who still works for American Media, a tabloid publisher.

He was surprised to learn the suspect was a government scientist, and he’s still anxious to learn more details of the FBI’s investigation. The Los Angeles Times reported the break in the case Friday.

Federal authorities were tight-lipped Friday, with a Justice Department statement saying only that "significant developments" in the investigation had been made. If Ivins was the lone suspect, more details could emerge when the FBI closes its investigation.

Stevens’ widow, Maureen, has waged a legal battle against the government since 2003 in an effort to get answers in her husband’s death.

"I want to know more. They must have more information, and I’m not sure they are going to share it with us, quite frankly," Stevens said Friday in a telephone interview. "I can feel as though I can breathe again. I think it will be a while before I can get some relief from it. I think we have a ways to go, but I can breathe a little easier."

Boca Raton Mayor Susan Whelchel said Ivins’ suicide is disappointing because his motives may never be known.

"You just want more closure," she said. "But hopefully the end result is that one individual was responsible and he has been found."

Steven Abrams, Boca Raton’s mayor at the time of the mailings, said he was impressed by the FBI’s persistence in the complex case, which initially focused on another Army scientist.

"This whole thing has been a long nightmare for Boca, from the attack to the cleanup," he said. "Now finally, it’s a relief that the FBI has apparently found this person."

Dr. Jean Malecki, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department, travels around the country talking about her experiences in the initial anthrax investigation.

"I’ve always said the ultimate prevention is finding the person or persons who did this," Malecki said from a conference in Orlando. "We’ve never had the ability to say this case is closed."

In June, the government exonerated former Army scientist Steven Hatfill — the only suspect publicly identified as a "person of interest" — and paid him $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit.

The Times reported federal investigators moved away from Hatfill and concluded Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed the lead investigators in 2006. Ivins’ attorney said in a statement that Ivins was not responsible for the attacks.

The Army’s lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland has long been at the center of the FBI investigation. Ivins, an accomplished anthrax vaccine researcher, had assisted in analyzing samples from the letters, which also were mailed to newsrooms in New York City and to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Authorities were investigating whether Ivins, who had complained about the limits of testing anthrax drugs on animals, had released the toxin to test treatments on humans.

Ivins’ friends, colleagues and court documents paint a picture of a flourishing scientist with an increasingly emotionally unstable side in recent months. His supervisors had police remove him from work as a possible danger to himself and others. Maryland court documents show he recently received psychiatric treatment and was ordered to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening.

Social worker Jean C. Duley filed handwritten court documents last week saying she was preparing to testify before a grand jury. She wrote that Ivins would be charged with five capital murders.

"Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapists," Duley wrote, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic.