Prison Mail Worker Opened Letter, Was Dead Within Hours

A federal prison inmate and two other people were charged Tuesday with conspiring to mail drugs to a penitentiary in California where a mailroom supervisor died this month after opening a letter that prosecutors said was laced with fentanyl and other substances, the AP reports. According to prosecutors, Jamar Jones, a prisoner at the US Penitentiary in Atwater, California, plotted with Stephanie Ferreira of Evansville, Indiana, and Jermen Rudd III of Wentzville, Missouri, to send him drugs that he could sell at the prison. They disguised the shipment as "legal mail" from a law office, investigators said.

The penitentiary's mailroom supervisor, Marc Fischer, fell ill on Aug. 9 after opening a letter addressed to Jones that contained multiple pages that appeared to be "soaked," or coated with drugs, according to an FBI affidavit filed in connection with the charges. Within five minutes, according to the affidavit, Fischer started to stumble around and asked for medical help, telling a colleague: "I don't feel good, it's going up my arm." He was taken to a hospital and died two hours later. Fischer's cause of death remains undetermined pending toxicology reports, the affidavit said. Briefly touching fentanyl cannot cause an overdose, and researchers have found that the risk of fatal overdose from accidental exposure is low.

(More fentanyl stories.)