Tylenol Murders
What would you think If i said taking a painkiller, would actually kill you, I don't mean like
an overdose, but just 1 capsule = death, it would make you think twice about taking one
right, well imagine not knowing, that taking over the counter medicine would be a roulette
wheel of death.
This would be the case if you so happened to get a headache in september 1982 and you
decided to take a tylenol.
It is January 2023, and new outlets throughout the USA are reigniting interest in a 40 year
old unsolved case.
This new spark of interest has been caused by a request for new DNA testing of evidence
from a crisis that gripped Chicago and the wider United States in 1982.
Although hopeful, the new round of news reports and articles represent just another chapter
in a senseless and chilling crime spree.
This event changed the way medication is packaged across the world, it created fear, and worked
its way into urban legends that even here in the UK cause a moment of pause for thought.
Unknowingly the terror caused 40 years ago, is the reason why I was told as a child to
always check anything I buy is sealed, showing how much this event illuminated how vulnerable
the things we consume are from tampering.
Today I will be looking at the Tylenol Tampering crisis, a chilling, bizarre, and cruel case
of 7 acts of cold blooded murder.
Welcome to John's True Crime.
An Innocent looking Bottle
You must excuse my ignorance as I’ve never had tylenol, its not sold here in the UK,
and the thought of unsealed medication, is a real head scratcher, but at least the latter
can be chalked down to me being a product of my time, a time post the tylenol murders.
I remember last year or the year before feeling disgusted by the trend of ice cream licking
in shops, remember when people would open ice cream tubs and lick the top, pure nightmare
fuel for a germaphobe like me.
Although disgusting, as long as the licker didn't have any oral borne diseases, it was
relatively harmless, it shows that tampering with consumable products is alive and well.
But back in 1982, today's case of tampering wasn't for likes on tiktok, but an act of
cold blooded murder, and extortion.
Tylenol is probably very familiar for those in North America, but outside of that it is
relatively unknown, but its main ingredient, paracetamol, is always readily available over
the counter across the globe.
Tylenol was introduced in 1955 by McNeil Laboratories, over the years the brand has released various
medications with different ingredients effective in pain relief, one such is Tylenol extra
strength.
This product has 500mg capsules with the active ingredient of Acetaminophen, also known as
paracetamol.
In 1959 Johnson & Johnson bought McNeil making it a subsidiary.
Roughly one year later the drug was made available over the counter, and from there it took over
as one of the most popular pain relief medications available without a prescription.
By 1982 tylenol had a 35 percent market share, many have it as their first choice for colds,
flu’s headaches, toothaches and migraines, and the tylenol extra bottled capsules are
a popular choice.
Capsules are especially popular, they are made from gelatine and because of this they
are slippery and easy to swallow.
But capsules are also easy to open and close and anti tampering protection on their packaging
was minimal.
The bottles that held the capsules came in a paper box with an unglued lid.
The red cap of the bottle was easily flipped open, with only a little piece of cotton left
to cover the contents . Remember that for later.
Confidence in the brand is high, the product works, but the public perception during a
deadly period of a few days would be shaken to its core.
A Deadly Few Days
It is early in the morning of 29th september 1982 and in Elk Grove Village, a suburb of
Chicago Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl, is suffering from a runny nose and a sore
throat.
Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, people get cold symptoms all the time, usually
if the symptoms are a bit too much one takes a pain killer.
Mary goes to her parents and explains her symptoms to them.
They offer her 1 capsule of tylenol extra strength, by 7am she is dead..
In a Chicago-area hospital, Adam Janus, a 27 year old postal worker also died, of a
suspected heart attack.
Upon hearing the news of Janus’s death his sister in law and brother rushed to the family
home, greith often brings a headache, both took capsules of Tylenol, from the same bottle
that adam had earlier in the day.
Within hours Adam’s Brother Stanley Janus, age 25 was also dead, his wife Theresa would
pass away two days later.
Over the following days 3 more unexplained deaths occurred: 35-year-old Mary McFarland
of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner of
Winfield, Illinois.
Now unexplained deaths of apparently healthy individuals sparks concern amongst authorities
especially in the case of the Janus Family, where 3 died within days of one another, they
had all done one thing in common, taken a tylenol.
In early October of 1982 investigators made the link between the victims and tylenol.
Was there an issue with the factory?
Once the link was discovered tests were undertaken on the remaining capsules in the victims bottles,
and a worrying ingredient was found.
Cyanide, stranger still the capsules had come from different batches from 2 different factories,
in Pennsylvania and Texas, this suggested the unthinkable, that the cyanide had made
its way into the capsules after the factory.
The Victims had another similarity: the tylenol they had consumed were in capsules and not
tablets, it was quickly becoming apparent that the contamination was deliberate and
done after delivery to shops.
Interestingly the bottles involved in the deaths of the Janus Family members and Mary
Kellerman had come from the same batch MC2880.
Johnson and johnson initially recalled lot MC2880 nationwide, but as more of the victims
pills were tested, it was apparent that lots 910 MD and MB 2738 were also involved, the
recall expanded.
This would become one of the largest pharmaceutical recalls ever.
Tests from pharmacies across the USA localized the cyanide to the chicago area.
The recall was wider in the Chicago area with all extra strength capsules pulled from shelves.
Initially the victims bottles had cyanide, this totaled 5 but tests from pulled bottles
found several more also contaminated, many of the tested bottles were dropped off by
the public at police stations, intotal eight bottles were found to have been tampered with.
Bizarrely around the same time on the 5th of october a man was poisoned with strychnine
which had been added to a Tylenol bottle, the man survived, but confidence in tylenol
capsules had collapsed.
Trying to reassure the public, Johnson & Johnson, distributed warnings to hospitals and wholesalers
as well as halting Tylenol capsule production, advertising and broadening the recall nationwide
costing the company US$100 million.
Johnson and Johnson issued a nationwide offer to replace customers' capsules with their
pill variant and on top of that the company offered a $100,000 reward for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of the ''person or persons responsible for the murders.''
The police were starting to form a theory, that after arriving on the shelves of local
grocers and drug stores in the Chicago area, random bottles of tylenol were removed from
the shelves then the capsules were adulterated with 65 milligrams of potassium cyanide, and
then returned to the shelves to be purchased by the unknowing victims.
For reference the amount of cyanide was 10,000 times over the average amount to kill a person
so that's not good!
But although the police had an idea of the method of the poisoning they had no real leads,
until Johnson and Johnson Received a letter.
The Letter
On the 1st of October 1982 a letter was posted to Johnson and Johnson, demanding $1,000,000
be sent to an account at the continental Illinois bank.
The letter was traced to a James W Lewis, via a positive match of fingerprints found
on it and a postage mark from Lakeside Travel his wife's employer, the police now had a
subject, but it would take untill the 13th december 1982 to apprehend lewis in New york.
And thus Lewis would be forever intertwined with the tylenol case.
This wasn’t lewis’s first run in with the law, just a few years earlier he had been
charged with murder in 1978 in Kansas City , but the case was thrown out of court due
to a technicality, strangely in that case he had also written a letter.
Lewis claimed innocence stating the reason for the letter was to shame his wife's former
employer.
Lewis was the only suspect to have described how the culprit could have added cyanide to
the bottles, in a method he called "the drill board method,"
Lewis even siad "Someone could drill holes into a plywood contraption, put the bottom
capsule into the hole, put cyanide on top of the board, scrape it across with the bread
knife, clean up the excess, put the tops of the capsules in, load them into the Tylenol
bottles and put them on store shelves."
But there was no concrete evidence showing his part in the poisoning and instead of being
charged with murder he was charged with extortion and held on a $5 million bond at the Metropolitan
Correctional Center, until the 16th of october 1983.
Although no watertight evidence, Lewis had a striking resemblance to this person of interest
from a CCTV still, the image showed victim Paula Prince, buying a bottle of tainted Tylenol.
His defense at trial claimed he was innocent of extortion because the money was to be paid
into a bank account of a defunct company his wife had formerly worked for in order to try
and frame Frederick Miller McCahey, his wife's old boss.
Needless to say this bizarre defense and another charge of credit card fruad netted him a 20
year prison sentence of which he would serve 13 years, but Lewis would always stay as suspect
no 1 for the next 40 odd years.
Although someone was now behind bars no one had been charged with the murders, and the
case would continue to go on unsolved.
Two other suspects were well suspected during the tylenol case, these were, Roger Arnold,
48, arrested in mid october 1982, after a Lincoln Park bar owner told officers two customers
said Arnold had purchased a large quantity of cyanide.
After searching his home a number of books on explosives and poisons, Laboratory vials,
beakers, test tubes, and a number of weapons were found, but interestingly no cyanide.
His link was that Arnold's wife was in Central DuPage Hospital at the time of the poisonings
across the road was the grocery shop Franks Foods, where one of the victims had bought
their bottle of tainted tylenol.
Arnold had also worked with The victim's father at a warehouse.
Bizarrely Arnold would go to prison for murder, but not the ones you think, after his questioning,
Arnold hunted down the Bar owner who dobbed him in, and shot him dead, the only issue
was he killed the wrong person.
Another suspect was Kevin Masterson, 35, of Lombard, but nothing concrete linked him to
the crisis.
And thus the case went pretty cold, lewis was in jail and Arnold was in jail, but lewis
released in 1995 would remain the top suspect, although constantly attesting his innocence.
During a 2007-08 undercover sting operation run by the FBI Lewis stated it took him three
days to write the extortion letter, this combined with the postal date being forensically proven
on under the letters ink of the 1st of october meant that the letter was written before the
public knew of the tylenol case.
Lewis, although at the time of his apprehension in New york, was living there, he and his
wife had been living in the chicago area until early september roughly 24 days before the
crisis began.
Strangely in 2009 Lewis was interviewed by the press where he again denied all accusations
against him.
Around the same time in 2009, FBI agents searched Lewis'
who was now living in an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
But again no arrests were made, in 2010 Lewis and his wife had their dna taken, one of the
other suspects Roger Arnold also had dna taken.
But due to Arnold Being dead for 2 years his body was exhumed and a sample was taken from
a femur bone.
Sadly none of the DNA samples created any movement in the case.
They even took dna in 2011 from unabomber Ted Tazazinsky but alas again no luck.
As of the end of January 2023 more DNA tests have been undertaken but no news yet.
Aftermath
Now even though the killer hasn’t been identified, the crisis changed the pharmaceutical industry
permanently.
Johnson and Johnson within 2 months had Tylenol back on the shelves but with an improved triple
seal, their market share had plummeted from 35% to 8% but amazingly this was turned around
in under a year.
The event cost the company over 100$ million in the recall alone and an undisclosed 1991
settlement with the victims' families.
The crisis spawned unsurprisingly copycat murders most notably in 1986 where 3 people
died of cyanide poisoning.
New Federal laws post crisis now made product tampering a federal crime which even attempting
to tamper with a product can carry a 10 year sentence.
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https://www.iflscience.com/police-appear-to-be-reinvestigating-the-tylenol-murders-ordering-new-dna-testing-67333
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/tylenol.html?page=6&sortBy=relevant
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http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/gallery/0206_tylenolman?pg=10
https://www.scribd.com/document/597045540/Roger-Arnold-FOIA-Arlington-Heights#
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/tylenol-murders-40-years-later-who-have-investigators-identified-as-suspects-or-persons-of-interest/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJe5pS_3kkQ