Jackson Free Press

Mississippians are watching closely as a roller-coaster week of tragic events continues to unfold this morning. A Mississippi man charged with sending poison-laced mail to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker and Lee County Justice Court Judge Sadie Holland is expected back in court this afternoon.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, did not enter pleas to the two federal charges against him yesterday. Today, new details emerged about Curtis' mental state.

People close to Curtis describe him as a caring father and enthusiastic musician who struggled with mental illness and pursued a conspiracy theory to its farthest reaches.

Curtis posted numerous web posts over the past several years describing the event he said "changed my life forever": the chance discovery of body parts and organs wrapped in plastic in small refrigerator at a hospital where he worked as a janitor more than a decade ago.

He tried to talk to officials about and publicize what he claimed was an elaborate conspiracy theory to sell body parts on the black market, but he thought he was being railroaded by the government. Authorities say the efforts culminated in the letters he sent to Obama, Wicker and Holland.

"Maybe I have your attention now even if that means someone must die," the letters read, according to an FBI affidavit.

"He is bipolar, and the only thing I can say is he wasn't on his medicine," his ex-wife, Laura Curtis, told The Associated Press.

The news of Curtis' letters emerged in the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds. Fifty-nine Mississippians participated in the race, but none were killed. This morning, Boston was locked down while a manhunt was under way for one of the bombing suspects.

Overnight, one of the suspects killed an MIT police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during a getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of the suspects dead and another still at large Friday morning, authorities said as the manhunt intensified.

A law enforcement intelligence bulletin the Associated Press obtained identified the surviving bomb suspect as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old who had been living in Cambridge, just outside Boston, and said he "may be armed and dangerous." The Associated Press reported the men are from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars.

Meanwhile, the death toll continued to escalate in the fertilizer-plant explosion in the town of West, Texas.

The bodies of 12 people were recovered after an enormous Texas fertilizer plant explosion that demolished surrounding neighborhoods for blocks and left about 200 other people injured, authorities said Friday.

Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Jason Reyes said it was "with a heavy heart" that he confirmed 12 bodies had been pulled from the area of the plant explosion in West, about 20 miles north of Waco.

Even before investigators released a confirmed number of fatalities, the names of the dead were becoming known in the town of 2,800. A small group of firefighters and other first responders who may have rushed toward the plant to battle a pre-explosion blaze was believed to be among them.

Reyes said he could not confirm Friday how many of those killed were first responders.

Rescue crews spent much of the day after Wednesday night's blast searching the town for survivors, and Reyes said those efforts were continuing. He said authorities had searched and cleared 150 buildings by Friday morning and still had another 25 to examine.