Bruce E. Ivins, the US scientist who supposedly killed himself this week, “was going to go out in a blaze of glory” and “take everybody with him,” his psychotherapist said.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after taking a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, one of his colleagues told the Los Angeles Times. The reason behind his decision appears to be the FBI investigation which was very close to discover and charge him in connection with a series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001 in the aftermath of the terrorist attack which led to the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. The incident killed five people, sickened more than 20 other people, shut down government buildings, and crippled the US mail service.

Therapist Jean C. Duley requested a protective order from Ivins because she was scared to death according to her testimony at a Frederick County District Court hearing. She obtained the order on July 24. According to it, Ivins was required not to contact Duley and to stay away from her workplace.

Duley had been meeting with Ivins, 62, for 6 months either for group sessions or for individual counseling.

After Duley informed the FBI on his threats, Ivins left her a telephone message telling her that her actions had made it possible “for the FBI to now be able to prosecute him for the murders.”

Duley further said Ivins had “actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning ... He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he's been slighted or has had — especially toward women — he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings.”

Not only Duley made her patient a “revenge killer” profile. She said that other top psychiatrists considered him a “sociopathic” and a “homicidal killer” and that was also her believe after having worked with him.

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.

In fact the authorities were looking at whether Ivins may have released anthrax as a way to test a vaccine he was working on, an official close to the investigation said.

Ivins’ lawayer, Paul Kemp defended his client saying he “fully cooperated with the investigation” in the last six years “assisting the government in every way that was asked of him.” He further added his client’s death is the result of the FBI investigation.

“The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death,” Kemp said.