Hello Everyone!

The post for this week does not have a gruesome details warning, there are still some murders so if that bothers you, feel free to go to a different blog!

Chicago, September 29th, 1982.

Mary Kellerman – 12 years old

Mary Reiner – 27 years old

Mary McFarland – 31 years old

Paula Prince – 35 years old

Adam Janus – 27 years old

Stanley Janus – 25 years old

Theresa Janus – 19 years old

All of the people listed above have one specific thing in common; they died after taking Tylenol.

The catalyst for the investigation was the deaths of three members of the Janus family; with their deaths, the investigators eventually connected the dots.

On the night of September 29th, Nick Pishos, an investigator for Cook County, compared the Tylenol bottle from the Janus household to the Tylenol bottle from Mary Kellerman’s house. They had the came control number, MC2880.

The deputy medical examiner told Pishos to smell the bottles, they smelled like almonds.

Cyanide is said to smell like bitter almonds.

       Blood tests of the victims would show that the victims had a dose of cyanide that was 100 to 1,000 times the lethal amount. Exposure to large doses can result in seizures, respiratory failure, and cardiac arrest.

By the evening of October 1st, 1982, all seven of the victims listed above had died. Later that night, Tylenol was pulled off of the shelves. McNeil Consumer Products (the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that manufactured Tylenol) immediately recalled over 31 million bottles of Tylenol. They offered to replace recalled bottles with new ones and put out a reward of $100,000 for anyone with information. It is estimated that these efforts cost the company $100 million.

Left: pure Tylenol capsules Right: cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules

There were warnings issued through media and over police patrols using loudspeakers to prevent Chicago residents from using Tylenol products.

A nationwide panic ensued. It is estimated that there were over 100,000 separate articles about the incident run through US newspapers. People overwhelmed hospitals and poison control, thinking they had been poisoned. A nationwide recall was issued on October 5th.

Over 10 million recalled pills were tested; 50 were found to contain cyanide across 8 bottles. 5 of the bottles belonged to the victims, 2 were sent back in the recall, 1 was still on a shelf, waiting for some poor unsuspecting victim with a headache.

There were about 1,200 leads in the initial stages of the investigation. No fingerprints or physical evidence was found, no evidence of the killer’s trail, surveillance cameras weren’t as common in the 80s. All of the victims bought their bottles from different stores, and those stores got their Tylenol from different production plants.

Shoplifters that were caught at any of the stores with the contaminated bottles were further questioned and people who were recently released from prison or psychiatric hospitals were interrogated. This created a massive suspect pool.

Suspects

The manufacturers were ruled out because the bottles came from different pharmaceutical companies and all of the deaths had occurred in Chicago or the surrounding area.

Suspect #1 – Roger Arnold

Roger Arnold was a 48-year-old dock worker. He was overheard saying some “suspicious things” about the Tylenol murders in a bar. While the police were questioning him, they found several connections. He worked at a jewel warehouse with Mary Reiner’s father, Adam Janus bought his Tylenol from a Jewel convenience store, Mary Reiner bought her bottle from a store that is right across from the psychiatric ward where Arnold’s wife was.

The officers found “How-to” crime books in Arnold’s home and there was evidence of “chemistry” as well. The evidence of “chemistry” included beakers and other equipment, along with a bag of powder that turned out to be potassium carbonate.

Arnold refused to take a polygraph and there was never enough evidence to prosecute him.

Arnold went on to have a nervous breakdown from the attention in the media. He blamed everything on a bar owner, Marty Sinclair. In 1983, during the summer, Arnold shot and killed a man named John Stanisha, he thought Stanisha was Sinclair. Roger Arnold received a 30-year sentence for second-degree murder but only served 15 years of it. He died in June of 2008.

A Tylenol bottle.

Suspect #2 – James Lewis

James Lewis was a tax accountant. He sent in a photocopy of a handwritten letter to Johnson & Johnson. The letter reads,

Johnson & Johnson, parent of McNeil Laboratories. Gentlemen: as you can see it is easy to play cyanide both potassium and sodium into capsules sitting on store shelves. And since the cyanide is inside the gelatin, it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill. Another beauty is that cyanide operates quickly. It takes so very little, and there will be no time to take countermeasures. If you don’t mind the publicity of these little capsules, then do nothing. So far, I’ve spent less than 50 dollars and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle. If you want to stop the killing then wire $1,000,000 to bank account number #84-49-597 at Continental Illinois Bank, Chicago, Illinois. Don’t attempt to involve the FBI or local Chicago authorities with this letter. A couple of phone calls by me will undo anything you can possibly do.

Authorities know it is from Lewis because it had his fingerprints on it.

An arrest warrant was issued on December 13th and he was spotted at a public library annex in New York, ending the manhunt.

The bank account Lewis listed did not belong to him, it belonged to Frederick Miller McCahey. Lewis believed McCahey stiffed his wife out of $511 in change. Lewis only included his McCahey’s bank account in hopes the blame would go to him and expose the theft. It had nothing to do with the murders.

The letter wasn’t the only piece of evidence that led the police to think he would be capable of commit the crime. When he was 19 Lewis chased his mother with an ax. in 1966, he was committed to the Missouri state mental hospital after he took 36 Anacin pills (Anacin was basically Advil or Tylenol). While he was in the mental hospital, he was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. Lewis later claimed those acts were his attempts to escape the Vietnam draft.

Lewis was charged and acquitted for the murder of Raymond West. West had been found dismembered in his own home in the summer of 1978.

After the murder experience, Lewis and his wife launched a business venture that attempted to import pill-making machines to India. It was a short-lived venture.

in 1981, Lewis was suspected of using fake addresses and mailboxes to falsify credit card applications. The police found plenty of incriminating evidence in his home so Lewis and his wife fled to Chicago and lived under fake names for almost a year until we get back to the Tylenol murders.

Lewis bought Amtrak tickets for Chicago to New York on September 4th, 1982. The Tylenol killer would have had to plant the cyanide-laced pills close to the consumption date or else the cyanide would have eaten through the pills.

Some investigators said that it was possible that the perpetrator flew into O’Hare, rented a car, planted the poison, then left Chicago. Surveillance from one of the drug stores showed a man who could have been Lewis but they didn’t have a positive ID and no one could place Lewis in Chicago closer to when the deaths occurred.

Law enforcement did not have enough to prosecute Lewis. His letter did lead to him being convicted of extortion and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He only served 13.

While he was in prison, Lewis offered his help. This help included going into bizarre detail about how someone could go about injecting the capsules with a lethal dose of cyanide.

Lewis was released in 1995. He and his wife now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He released a fictional book in 2010 about death by water poisoned with lead in southern Missouri. When he did interviews about his book, any questions about the Tylenol murders were directed to his lawyer. He did not comment further.

The Aftermath

Copycats

Immediately following the Tylenol murders, there were hundreds of copycats. Some of those copycats also poisoned pills with rat poison and hydrochloric acid.

Three more deaths resulted in 1986 from capsules that had been tampered with.

1) A woman died in Yonkers, New York after taking an “Extra-Strength Tylenol” that was laced with cyanide.

2) Susan Snow and Bruce Nickell in Washington state ingested Excedrin capsules that had cyanide in them.

Nickell’s wife, Stella, was arrested and convicted for both murders.

3) Kenneth Faries, a University of Texas student, died in his apartment after taking cyanide-laced Anacin capsules.

His death, at first was labeled a homicide. The Medical examiner eventually changed the ruling to suicide, saying that he obtained the cyanide from the lab he worked at.

Also in 1986, Encaprin was recalled after a hoax in Chicago and Detroit. The recall resulted in a sales drop and the withdrawal of the pain reliever from the market.

Response to Johnson & Johnson

The company was praised for how it handled the crisis. The market share for the company rebounded in less than a year after it dropped from 35% to 8%.

in November, it reintroduced capsules but they were now in a triple-sealed package. They were also heavily price promoted.

There are some people who think that the contamination happened somewhere along the distribution chain that was not checked out by police. They also think that Johnson and Johnson covered it up.

Pharmaceutical Changes

The Tylenol murders prompted the food, consumer product, and pharmaceutical industries to introduce tamper-resistant packaging. There were also increased quality-control checks.

Product tampering was also made a federal crime.

Capsules became less and less prominent in the pharmaceutical world because it was too easy to contaminate without showing any signs.

They eventually replaced capsules with “caplets” (basically just a tablet in the shape of a capsule).

It also led to bottles of many varieties having safety-seals that showed if the product was tampered with.

What is your opinion on the case? Do you think Roger Arnold committed the murders? Or was it James Lewis? Maybe it was a different unknown suspect entirely?

Sources –

https://www.distractify.com/p/chicago-tylenol-murders

http://bowienewsonline.com/2019/09/cyanide-laced-tylenol-kills-six-in-1982/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

https://buzzfeed-unsolved.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mysterious_Poisoned_Pill_Murders

https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/tylenol-murders-poisonings-cyanide-chicago-1982

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3dd44y/murder-by-tylenol

https://www.unsolvedcasebook.com/the-tylenol-murders/