Just days before the Justice Department was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a senior US government scientists, he apparently committed suicide, the Los Angeles Times reported.

62-year-old Bruce Ivins had been informed of his impending prosecution in connection to the anthrax mailings, which occurred shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The mailings containing anthrax were addressed to politicians in Washington and media outlets in New York and Florida. The incident killed five people, sickened more than 20 othe people, shut down government buildings, crippled the US mail service, and spread fear of terrorism in the aftermath of the Sep. 11 attacks.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after taking a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, a colleague of him told the newspaper. The colleague asked not to be identified for fear he would be harassed by the FBI.

Ivins had helped the FBI investigate an anthrax-tainted envelope sent to a US senator’s Washington office, as a microbiologist for a government laboratory. For the past 18 years, Irvin worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md. He had played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccine by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

The death came as a shock for the US Army Medical research Institute of Infectious Disease where Irvin was working, Caree Vander Linden, a spokesperson for the agency said adding no further comments on the details surrounding the death.

Irvin’s death comes a month after, the government paid $5.82 million to a former government scientist, Steven Hatfill, who had been long believed to play a key role in the anthrax incident. The FBI suspected him in the case despite a lack of any evidence that he had ever possessed anthrax. In return, Hatfill sued the US justice department saying it had violated his privacy rights by speaking to reporters about the case and denied any involvement in the attacks.

After the settlement reached between the government and Hatfill, Irvin began showing signs of agitation. He was being treated for depression, indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide, one of his longtime colleagues told the newspaper. He was committed to a facility in Frederick to treat his depression but on July 24, he was released from the facility. He was facing forced retirement planned for September, the same colleague said.

“He didn't have any more money to spend on legal fees. He was much more emotionally labile, in terms of sensitivity to things, than most scientists. . . . He was very thin-skinned.”

His brother, Thomas Irvin was not surprised about how the things evolved adding that FBI agents interrogated him last year about his brother.

“He buckled under the pressure from the federal government. I was questioned by feds, and I sung like a canary,” when trying to describe his brother’s personality and tendencies. “He had in his mind that he was omnipotent.”