Search of Leavitt’s property continues

Cathy Scott

Monday, Feb. 23, 1998 | 10:01 a.m.

OVERTON -- FBI agents on Sunday continued searching property owned by William Leavitt Jr., one of two men arrested last week in an anthrax threat.

Agents wearing surgical gloves -- and some in gas masks -- began loading a Budget van late Saturday with items from a microbiology lab and other buildings on Leavitt's property.

Also on the property are Leavitt's ranch-style house, a computer lab, a guest house and a trailer.

Leavitt was released Saturday from the Clark County Detention Center after three days in protective custody on the second floor of the downtown jail. He spent the weekend at his mother's Las Vegas home.

Leavitt and another man, Larry Wayne Harris, an avowed white supremacist with an interest in germ warfare, were taken into custody Wednesday under suspicion that a substance they possessed was the deadly bacteria anthrax.

Tests conducted last week disclosed that the substance was a harmless animal vaccine.

However, federal agents continued to search Leavitt's Nevada property and Harris' house in Lancaster, Ohio.

Harris remains at the Clark County Detention Center.

Since Friday, Leavitt's family has not been allowed to stay at the Overton home, FBI agents said.

Friends and family members returned to the house over the weekend to retrieve personal items. They were accompanied by FBI agents.

"My daughter-in-law was given 10 minutes to pick up the kids from school and get what they needed," said Leavitt's mother, Mary "Betty" Leavitt.

She said Leavitt, her daughter-in-law and grandchildren spent the night Saturday and Sunday at her Las Vegas home.

"My son and his family would like to know when they can go home," she said. "There are six of them with a baby. The kids are sleeping on the floor. It's not been easy. They're staying with me until they can get back into their house. A family of six can't live in a motel. It's terribly expensive."

Leavitt, a self-described medical researcher and a former bishop and missionary in the Mormon church, accompanied his family to church Sunday in Las Vegas, his mother said.

She said her son was "very upset" over his arrest and that he "has lost eight to 10 pounds in solitary confinement."

She said Harris was just an acquaintance of Leavitt's before Leavitt began negotiations to buy medical equipment to test an anthrax vaccine.

"He didn't know very much about Harris," she said. "He likes to believe what people tell him. It's one of his biggest problems."

As for the criminal investigation, she said, "He's in the dark. He doesn't really know what's going to be the result."

Special Agent Kevin Caudle said the investigation would continue at least through Sunday night.

"We're not finished," he said. "It's going to be late. They've run into major records there.

"When it's completed, the property will be turned back over to the family and they'll be allowed to return."

Another agent, Bruce Black, said a warrant was signed Friday by U.S. Magistrate Roger Hunt, but it couldn't be served because the property was incorrectly listed in nearby Logandale.

Leavitt has a U.S. Post Office box in Logandale, but his property is in Overton, a neighboring community.

United Parcel Service driver Sam Goodman told the SUN that Leavitt often talked to UPS drivers about finding a cure for Muscular Dystrophy and AIDS, "something he said would make him rich and famous."

One driver told Goodman she went inside the lab once and saw lab glassware and medical supplies.

"I delivered testing equipment and lots of lab stuff," Goodman said. "Some appeared to be medical supplies."

Penny Moranda lives across the street from Leavitt's computer lab, which is in a storage shed, and rents a house from him.

She said the only thing she saw inside the shed "were a lot of computers."

Moranda also said she saw Leavitt driving a "cream-colored Mercedes-Benz."

FBI agents Wednesday impounded a cream Mercedes-Benz at a Henderson medical clinic where Leavitt and Harris were arrested. The car was being stored at Nellis Air Force Base pending the investigation, the FBI said.

The Mercedes was owned by a Palm Springs, Calif., man who died two years ago, leaving his Mercedes and small business to Leavitt, according to records in the Clark County clerk's office.

"He told me he inherited it from a California man," Moranda said. "It's the only thing he drives. He used to drive a white van."

In Overton, two vans, six pickups and a car were on blocks behind Leavitt's storage shed, as were three tractor-trailer rigs. Large canisters of methane refrigerant and acetylene sat next to an outside wall of the shed.