A Letter From The Publisher, Aug. 16, 1976

“The story is very frightening,” said TIME Correspondent James Willwerth. What was worrying Willwerth last week was a question for which millions of Americans, from epidemiologists to the victims’ families sought an answer: What microbe, fungus, toxin or other killer took the lives of more than a score of people who had been present at the 1976 annual convention of the Pennsylvania American Legion in Philadelphia? “Death here,” reported Willwerth by telephone from Harrisburg, where he talked with investigating doctors, “is just as sudden and unexplained as in a crime or science-fiction story. Even for the literal minded, it seems as though an evil spirit is loose.” Willwerth followed the trail of misery and sudden death westward from Philadelphia to hospitals, laboratories and finally a funeral at Williamstown.

Meanwhile, Correspondent Jack White stood watch at the superbly equipped Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, where scientists and technicians worked feverishly all week to solve the puzzle.

As the files from Willwerth and White came by telex, Associate Editors Peter Stoler and Gilbert Cant got down to the job of medical mystery writing. Cant concentrated on the history of epidemics in the U.S. and on how scientists identify disease-causing agents. He recalled an earlier medical mystery in TIME: the 1957 case of a woman beauty parlor operator who lived in one of the hottest parts of Florida and whose varied and puzzling symptoms were finally diagnosed as Iceland disease.

Stoler, who wrote the main part of the cover story, is also an old hand at mysteries. While working as a radio editorial writer and freelancer in Boston during the ’60s, he covered the case of the Boston Strangler.

“Albert DeSalvo finally confessed to those killings,” said Stoler. “This killer won’t do any talking.”

Overseeing the story was Senior Editor Otto Friedrich, assisted by Reporter-Researchers F. Sydnor Vanderschmidt, Peggy Berman and Adrianne Jucius.