The Mysterious Poisoned Pill Murders

this week on BuzzFeed installed we covered the Chicago tylenol murders a case unlike anything we've seen on the show before at the time the case was the center of a national media circus some may even say frenzy okay they're welcome to it's an interesting case that's what I'm trying to get at here Illinois is known for soybeans and poison medicine and Shane Maday and me the nation's greatest tragedy oh let's get into it okay on September 29th 1982 seven people in the Chicago area ingested poison Tylenol pills consequently collapsing and dying shortly after the victims included 12 year old Mary Kellerman 27 year old Mary Reiner 31 year-old Mary mcFarland 35 year old Paula Prince 27 year old Adam Janus 25 year old Stanley genus and 19 year old Teresa Janus the last three were unfortunately all from the same family Adam Janus collapsed after ingesting extra strength tylenol he was rushed to the hospital where he died when the family returned home to mourn both Adams brother Stanley and Stanley's wife Teresa took a Tylenol resulting in both of their deaths making it three deaths in the same family on the same day that's a again it's so much worse than you would think the fact that all three of the Janus has died in the same house would eventually lead to investigators connecting the dots on the night of the twenty-ninth Cook County investigator Nick pishers compared the Janice's Tylenol bottle to the bottle from another victim named Mary Kellerman once piss shows had both bottles he noticed that they shared one similarity a Control Number MC - 8 8 0 deputy medical examiner Donahue says he told pitchers to smell the bottles and piss shows remembers that they both smelled like almonds and cyanide is said to smell like bitter almonds exposure to a large dose of cyanide by any method can lead to seizures cardiac arrest and respiratory failure blood test results would show that the victims had taken a dose that was 100 or even 1,000 times the legal amount this this boogeyman is very thorough perhaps too thorough maybe even careless you think he got lazy it was like I'm gonna make like thousands in these pills and he got there like five of them he's like this is hard yeah like I'm just you know it's been long one could have been 7000 I guess it could have been 7000 I guess we're lucky he got lazy deputy medical examiner Donahue says he spoke with an attorney for Johnson & Johnson tylenols manufacturer parent company by the evening of October 1st after all seven victims had died authorities were fairly certain the tylenol had intentionally been poisoned with potassium cyanide by someone late that night it was announced that all tylenol will be pulled from the shelves immediately McNiel consumer products the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that manufactured Tylenol recalled over 31 million bottles of Tylenol and issued warnings they also offered to replace recall the bottles with new bottles and put up a $100,000 reward for anybody with information about the person who had done this these precautions were estimated to have cost the company roughly 100 million dollars I mean because before this point they did not have nobody was on the bottom alright this case was the reason why tamper proof seals were created the greatest safety precautions of our time are written in blood that's actually that's pretty true it's accurate I can't think of one instance where that where we were smart enough to take the president know it's usually just well scrub off all the guts over there and I guess let's put a cross guard there by Tuesday October 5th the US Attorney General as well as the FBI were on the case in addition to local authorities Tyrone Phan er Illinois State Attorney General says he believes in the initial stages there were about 1200 actual leads it's estimated that US newspapers ran over 100,000 separate articles about the incident a nationwide panic ensued people who believed they might have been poisoned overwhelmed hospitals and poison control call centers CPD actually went throughout the city giving warnings about Tylenol through loudspeakers whoa so this is like straight up like end of days yeah on a Chicago that's pretty good okay now Chicago the whole world or at least America yeah i quarantine myself I think I don't think you would have to do oh you mean to this so that you weren't affected by it you don't know if it's airborne you don't know this is like this could be the beginning of the zombie apocalypse in my mind though I have day dreamed about having an amazing bunker that has like satellite TV news that'd be pretty baller I guess satellite TV would really wouldn't matter get some there were a slew of copycat product tampering incidents according to the FDA about 270 of them just in the month after the tylenol murders some copycats of them also poison pills with things like rat poison and hydrochloric acid one fact that baffled police initially was that all of the victims bought their tylenol from different stores and those stores got their tylenol from different production plants okay how could that even be possible I could see what they were baffled by that labs were set up in capsules began to come through for testing over 10 million recalled pills were tested in total 50 capsules were found to contain cyanide across eight bottles five of these bottles belong to the victims two of these bottles were sent back in the recall and chillingly one bottle was found sitting on a shelf still unsold no fingerprints or other physical evidence was found there was also no evidence clearly showing the killer's trail in the stores as surveillance cameras were not as common then investigators explored the possibility of this being a white-collar crime syndicate intent on tanking Johnson & Johnson stock in fact tylenol share of the non prescription pain reliever market plummeted from 35 percent to 8 percent after the murders investigators also looked into every disgruntled employee who worked or had worked where the tainted tylenol was made stored or sold Dudek advil was behind this no I'm not I'm not slandering the company of an advil bigad I use you're like a shitty indie band you see the new control any shoplifters who had been caught at the stores where the poison tylenol was found were reevaluated those who had just been released from prison or psychiatric hospitals around Chicago were interrogated the police publicized the victims funerals hoping the killer would show up at one of them eventually the police reached the theory that whoever did this visited the various stores purchased the tylenol planted the potassium cyanide in the capsules placed those pills back in the bottle and then returned the bottles around September 28th this would be one day before the first deaths occurred their reasoning was that the cyanide would eventually eat through the capsules so whoever committed the crime would have to do it close to when the capsules were purchased and consumed and would therefore have to have done it in Chicago we always refer to the Wild West is you know just being this crazy time a crime you could actually get away the lot of in there it's a couple decades ago you could get away with a bunch of walk into a store pocket a cola you could pocket a cola punch the guy in the face ya didn't be like see you later my name is shamed a cops would get to your door for weeks if fingerprinting wasn't really around that much there was no surveillance cameras they'd have to go off a description and for you would be tall white guy with a large head and a lot of people a lot of people in Chicago let's get into the suspects the first suspect is 48 year old dock worker Roger Arnold who said some suspicious things about the tylenol murders at a bar one night the police questioned him and searched his home they turned up several interesting connections Roger Arnold worked at a jewel warehouse with the father of one of the victims named Mary Reiner Adam Janus another victim had purchased his tylenol from a duel convenience store according to the New York Times the store where Mary Reiner bought her fatal pills was actually across the street from where Roger Arnold's wife's psychiatric ward was located how to crime manuals were found in Arnold's home police also found evidence of chemistry in Arnold's home such as beakers and other equipment as well as a bag of powder though the powder was tested and it turned out to be potassium carbonate not cyanide Roger Arnold also refused to take a lie-detector test and the police never found enough to prosecute him in June of 1983 the following year Arnold shot an innocent man named Johnston Esha outside of a bar late one night Arnold did so under the impression that Denisha had turned Arnold into the police for his suspicious comments at the bar which he hadn't Denisha died and Arnold was sentenced to 30 years but got out early on parole yeah I mean I think a lot of his connections to the case seemed Sirk circumstantial I mean there's how to crime manuals at his house there's chemistry there I mean it just said how to crime know like I'm thinking was titled how to crime oh there a man who was a habit if he had a book called how to crime how'd you crying there's your guy yeah I was written in crayon the second suspect is Theodore J Kaczynski aka the Unabomber a once brilliant mathematician Kaczynski is currently serving life in prison for killing three people and wounding 23 others with bombs sent through the mail oh yeah this guy's he's crazy yeah he's out there in the character universe everybody knows who he is here's the thing this goes back to what we've talked about in the past that people seem to think that serial killers are all like in this character universe yeah he's for sure and the serial killers Avengers no he's not serial Gary's no just sort of a terrier there's no serial killer character universe well alright anyways here are some things that match up with the tylenol killings Kaczynski is an Illinois native and his first bomb was found in Chicago where he lived at the time as you already know all seven killings occurred within Illinois however one tylenol death that is not official is the cyanide poisoning via extra strength tylenol of Jay Adam Mitchell in Sheridan Wyoming that occurred a little over two months before the Illinois tylenol killings this is noteworthy because Sheridan Wyoming is a town on the way to Kaczynski's cabin in Montana where he lived at the time of the killings Kaczynski's victims also had connections to wood for instance one of the surviving victims was named Percy woods who resided in Lake forest illinois another victim was Gilbert Murray president of the California Forestry Association furthermore Kaczynski's bombs were partially made of wood and he often used return addresses and pseudonyms involving types of wood in the past one example was frederick benjamin isaac wood with an address of 549 wood street in wood lake california not super-creative yeah i'll tell you why this is all relative out when so much I'm about to spill that oh let's have to drop a bomb right now drop that bomb oh I see get your own brand here with the bombing what bomb Unabomber no I didn't know it was very good yeah okay sure I'll take it this is relevant because two of the three founders of Johnson & Johnson have the middle name wood yeah I'm good that's pretty good that's pretty good bit of a reach not really it's his calling card he's the wood guy admittedly those seem like thin connections but in February 2009 the FBI office in Chicago announced that it would use advancements in forensic technology in a review of all evidence relevant to the tylenol killings the FBI requested a DNA sample from Kaczynski here's Kaczynski in his own words quote the officer said the FBI was prepared to get a court order to compel me to provide the DNA sample but wanted to know whether I would provide the sample voluntarily end quote Kaczynski wrote that he was willing to provide the sample on one condition that the courts not allowed the United States Marshal Service to conduct an auction of Kozinski's belongings here is his reason why quote even on the assumption that the FBI is entirely honest an assumption I'm unwilling to make partial DNA profiles can throw suspicion on persons who are entirely innocent for example such profiles can show that five percent or three percent or 1 percent of Americans have the same partial profile as the person who committed a certain crime end quote he then goes on to say that if a match were to occur quote some of the evidence seized from my cabin in 1996 may turn out to be important and quote in summation Kaczynski believes that the items up for auction may be crucial in proving he never owned potassium cyanide regardless the auction went forward his planned and Kaczynski declined to give his DNA boleyn Terrell II think I'm gonna phrase this right on something a psychopath good luck if they're gonna conduct an investigation of him as an official suspect for the tylenol killings it makes sense that they wouldn't auction off all of his so they could actually conduct a thorough investigation otherwise they're gonna be like oh you know what we'll just the cross-reference this with the typewriter he used oh wait we sold it to some old lady in Florida some old lady in Florida bought the Unabomber Stipe I don't know it could be anybody okay but my point is if they wanted to cross cross reference evidence and go back and look at things they wouldn't be able to do that if they sold all of his the third and prime suspect was tax accountant James Lewis on Wednesday October 6th one week after the first deaths Johnson and Johnson received a photocopy of a handwritten unsigned letter on this letter the FBI found fingerprints of James Lewis the letter reads quote Johnson & Johnson parent of MacNeil 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 why are $1,000,000 - bank account number eight four four nine five nine seven at continental Illinois bank Chicago Illinois don't attempt to involve the FBI our local Chicago authorities with this letter a couple of phone calls by me will undo anything you can possibly do end quote as mentioned before James Lewis's fingerprints were found on this letter a warrant for his arrest was issued and the ensuing manhunt would end on December 13th after Lewis was spotted at a new york public library annex James Louis by the way he's the guy whose fingerprints are found on this letter who wrote this letter and they spotted him at the library reading how to crime strangely the bank account number listed in Louis's letter did not belong to Lewis but instead belonged to a man named Frederick Miller McKay he a man who Lewis believed had stiffed his wife LeAnn out of five hundred and eleven dollars and change basically Lewis only included McKay his bank account number in hopes that it would expose this five hundred and eleven dollars theft and ultimately had nothing to do with the murders and was as petty as it was idiotic seems like a long way to go for it alone that's a lot to do you can't he doesn't even think like oh maybe the feds will be angry at me on this one you think this was like an anniversary gift first wife was like I did I did a real sweet thing for you maybe he was really in the doghouse and he was just desperate for any kind of turn of affection from her so I know what I'll do know what I'll do alright the FBI that being said Lewis has passed did lead investigators to suspect that he could be the tylenol killer he allegedly chased his mother with an axe when he was 19 not great no bad start I've never done that you didn't do that did you no I didn't what is there anything to suggest that I would chase my mom with an axe not outright I feel like if you not peel the layers back you think you peel the layers back from this onion you'll see something you don't want to see yeah I think you wear a mask sometimes mm-hmm I think you should keep digging you maybe see what happens no I'm good in 1966 he was committed to the Missouri state mental hospital after taking 36 Anacin pills there he was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia later he tried to explain that both of these events were attempts to avoid the Vietnam draft later in his life Lewis was charged and acquitted for the murder of a man named Raymond West who had been found dismembered in his own home in the summer of 1978 after that Lewis and his wife launched a short-lived business venture attempting to import pill making machines made in India in 1981 Lewis was suspected for falsifying credit card applications using fake addresses and mail boxes in a search of Lewis's home on December 4th 1981 the police did find plenty of evidence to arrest Lewis for these particular crimes as a result Lewis and his wife fled to Chicago where they lived under assumed names for almost a year bringing us to the timeline of the tylenol murders however the Lewis's bought Amtrak tickets from Chicago to New York City on September 4th 1982 which was 25 days before the tylenol death began and if you recall the tylenol killer would have to plant the cyanide within close proximity of the consumption date and 25 days was too long but some investigators on the original case believed it would have been possible for the perpetrator to fly into O'Hare Airport rent-a-car plant the poison and leave Chicago can you imagine just just going home to your wife and being like hey I've got an idea it's a little weird she just goes come on sounds good yeah I know like these are two messed-up weirdos and they found each other and it's almost a shockingly beautiful love story surveillance video from one of the drugstores did show a bearded man who some thought looked a lot like Lewis but there was no positive ID and nobody could place Lewis in chicago shortly before the deaths he got just a bag full of mailboxes and beard exactly he's a regular criminal carrot top yeah he's got a whole little case full of things in denying all intricacies or göran Elmer's glue we're good to go I just cut up an old man ultimately authorities never even had enough to prosecute Lewis let alone convicted of the murders however Lewis's letter-writing Fiasco did lead to him being convicted of extortion Lewis was sentenced to 20 years in prison but served a little less than 13 while in prison Lewis bizarrely offered his help and explained and drew in detail how someone might go about injecting the capsules with lethal amounts of cyanide Lewis was released in 1995 and he and his wife now live in Cambridge Massachusetts in 2010 James Lewis published a book titled poison the doctors dilemma Lewis would insist that the book had nothing to do with the tylenol murders and also stated that he regretted sending the police the ransom note the fictional plot of the book is about death by water poisoned with lead in southern Missouri when he went on public access television in January 2010 to promote his book he ended up giving a 48 minute interview in which many of the questions were directed at his role in the 1982 tylenol murders Lewis referred everyone to his lawyer and refused to comment further I just want to talk about my book about poison not about to talk about my work and everyone just keeps seeming to bring up all my past of all the shitty stuff I've done no we're good yeah gross one positive thing to come of the case came from the FDA and Johnson & Johnson who together created the tamper proof foil seals that we now use to determine if containers have been tampered with I do think it's possible that someone could have flown in did a little day trip plant some pills and go back home I mean it's not that crazy to me obviously this person has a way with fooling the police must have been fun to be a criminal in the 80s everything before that eighties just lawless it's true my takeaways people from Chicago are weird this does not represent Chicago this is people and go a Chicago tylenol murderers home with the beam the Cubs and the Chicago tylenol murders and of course our nation's greatest tragedy shame a day well that's not me I read it somewhere you didn't really you probably wrote it yeah in the end nobody really knows who the tylenol killer was or why he or she did it what truly transpired on that one fateful day in Chicago continues to baffle and the case remains unsolved

Channel: BuzzFeed Multiplayer

Views: 8,090,732

Rating: 4.9421129 out of 5

Keywords: BuzzFeed, Unsolved, Poison, Unabomber, Chicago, Mystery, pill, drugs, poison, murder, cold case, danger, dangerous, murders, murderers, serial, killer, serial killer, creepy, detective, investigator, investigate, dea, boston, illinois, pills, victim, hospital, family, cook county, janus, kellerman, investigation, Ryan bergara, Shane madej, Mini doc, Creepy, theories, unsolved mysteries

Id: A6bYdBJvRqg

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

The actual information about the murders was interesting as hell but the banter between the two hosts was really off-putting. The whole "maybe this is the start of a zombie apocalypse" bit is when I tuned out, had zero connection to the actual story itself and just seemed like a "Big Lipped Alligator" moment.

[u/david_chi]

I wonder if they did dna testing on the bottles in recent years