HILLSBORO (AP) — An Oregon scientist said she contacted the FBI about Bruce Ivins shortly after the American Society for Microbiology asked its members in 2002 to think of possible suspects in the deadly anthrax mailings that had occurred the year before.

Nancy Haigwood, 56, said Ivins had sent her and others a photo of himself working with anthrax at the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick research center in September 2001. But Haigwood, the current director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, said her suspicions about the Army scientist were also personal.

Ivins, 62, killed himself last month as the FBI was closing in.

“I’m sorry that he died. I’m sorry that this happened,” Haigwood said. “On the other hand, there are no winners here. He was not a nice guy.”

Haigwood, who moved to Oregon last year, said she met Ivins in the 1970s when the two worked in different labs at the University of North Carolina. Ivins, according to Haigwood, soon became obsessed with her and fixated on her membership in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

“This was just a slight social interaction that I think he would have liked to see as a long-term friendship, and I didn’t,” Haigwood said.

In 1982, when Ivins was at Fort Detrick and Haigwood worked at a nearby company in Maryland, Haigwood found her sorority’s Greek initials spray-painted on the back window of her fiancé’s car. Her fence and sidewalk also had been spray-painted, Haigwood said.

“He denied it, but there was no question it was he,” she said. “He was really good at snooping, even in the 1980s.”

Through the years, Ivins sent Haigwood e-mails that made her uncomfortable. “He knew quite a lot about me without me telling him,” she said. “He knew my sons’ names and their years in school.”

The FBI contacted Haigwood after she offered Ivins’ name in 2002, and agents remained in touch with her until the end.

“I have a tremendous sense of relief, I must say,” she said. “But also tremendous sadness. Because I always hoped I was wrong.”