The Tylenol Killer: Chicago's 1980s Cyanide Spree

just before we get started with today's video i do want to give a quick plug to my podcast the casual criminalist we cover a lot of crimes criminals bad things on this channel and you guys love it those are often the most viewed videos so i thought i would do a podcast with a lot more dark stuff it runs for about an hour it comes out every week and it covers some of the darkest stuff that we could find from the uk doctor is the worst serial killer in history to the american socialite who murdered her best friend with her car allegedly and got away with it and much more it's also pretty laid back it's more free form it's a podcast and it's even got the occasional laugh because isn't death hilarious weekly shows wherever you get your podcasts the casual criminalist is the name and let's get into today's video it was a nightmare come to life people were dying throughout the chicago area poisoned by thailand or capsules that had been laced with cyanide no one knew where the poison was coming from or who it would strike next no one felt safe the chicago tylenol murders of 1982 scared the hell out of america it forced johnson and johnson one of the country's most trusted companies to institute a massive expensive recall while managing one of the most extensively studied public relations crises in corporate history it caused massive changes to the way over-the-counter drugs were packaged and sold changes that can still be seen today the federal government was given new power to protect citizens from a new kind of crime product tampering but despite one of the most extensive investigations in the country's history the killings remain unsolved almost 40 years later in 1982 tylenol was one of the country's most trusted brand names first brought to market 25 years before it now represented 35 of the over-the-counter pain relief medications sold in america like most medications sold at the time it was manufactured by putting a powdered form of the medication into a two-part gelatin capsule that made it easy to swallow the capsules were sealed by a machine but you could still pull them apart by hand if you were inclined to mix the powder in a glass of water tylenol was manufactured by johnson and johnson one of america's oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies over 30 million bottles of tylenol were on the shelves of grocery stores and pharmacies throughout the nation on september 29 1982 in elk grove village a suburb of chicago twelve-year-old mary kellerman woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose her parents gave her a capsule of extra strength tylenol from a newly purchased bottle in the hope that she would feel better enough to attend school that day by 7am though mary was dead that same day in arlington heights another chicago suburb the 27 year old post office worker named adam janus dropped dead to the horror of his family his younger brother stanley and stan's wife teresa rushed to adam's house to console distraught family members soon both stan and teresa had painful headaches a common symptom of grief they found a bottle of tylenol in adam's medicine cabinet and took some stan died that day theresa two days later over the next few days three more died in the chicago area mary mcfarland of elmhurst paula prince of chicago and mary reiner of winfield as is common for deaths in young people under the age of 40 autopsies were performed to determine the cause of death and the results were shocking all seven victims had died of cyanide poisoning but where had the poison come from after investigation revealed that at least some of the victims were known to have died taking tylenol capsules police ran tests and discovered that all five bottles taken from the homes of those who had died had capsules in them that had been opened and the acetaminophen inside was replaced with potassium cyanide powder the bottles came from different stores in the chicago area and had been manufactured in different batches and different factories so some kind of mishap at the manufacturing level was quickly ruled out that left only one implication horrifying as it may have been that someone was buying bottles of tylenol opening them tainting them with poison and then putting them back on store shelves for unsuspecting victims to take home chicago had a serial killer on their hands one who wasn't even in the same room with his victims when he claimed their lives [Music] police knew they had to act fast to prevent more deaths the media was alerted and they ran warnings on radio and tv stations throughout the chicago area within days it was national news police went further they sent cars on patrols throughout the city using loudspeakers to warn residents not to consume any tylenol products police had found more tainted bottles of tylenol still on store shelves in several places in chicago and the drug was soon impossible to find in the city not that anyone was buying it the news that a madman was poisoning strangers with tainted tylenol pearls shocked the nation and quickly started to panic as citizens far away from chicago were convinced that the bottle in their medicine cabinet had been poisoned sales of the drug nationwide plummeted johnson and johnson had never faced a crisis like this before in fact no company had ever dealt with something like this they quickly put together a crisis response team made up of top executives it was obvious that the company wasn't to blame for the deaths as they weren't the ones responsible for putting the poison in the bottles but that didn't matter to the panicked populace johnson and johnson knew that they would have to take drastic action in order to restore public confidence they immediately shut down production of the drug and pulled all advertising related to it then they went further they issued a nationwide recall on tylenol capsules at a cost of over a hundred million dollars they offered to swap the capsules for tylenol tablets instead as those were solid and harder to tamper with a week after the deaths a handwritten letter was sent to johnson johnson corporate headquarters it read gentlemen as you can see it is easy to place 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 fifty dollars and it takes me less than ten minutes per bottle if you want to stop the killing then wire one million dollars to the bank account number 844-9597 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 johnson and johnson were obviously worried that this was the poisoner and that he was serious about continuing his reign of terror they were prepared to pay the ransom but the fbi cautioned them against it instead the bureau sought to find the letter writer the bank account was traced to a company called lakeside travel in chicago that had gone under and ceased operations in april of 1982. the envelope was traced to lakeside as well the fbi investigated everyone connected with lakeside they matched fingerprints on the envelope to a man named robert richardson whose wife had worked as bookie before lakeside a warrant was issued for richardson's arrest and a nationwide manhunt began [Music] despite the letter writer's threat no more poisonings were reported over the next couple of months the suspect was arrested at a public library in new york city on december 13th living under a different name it turned out that using assumed names was a common thread in the man's life robert richardson wasn't really his real name either police identified him as james w lewis of kansas city jim lewis was well known to law enforcement previously diagnosed with schizophrenia lewis had been fired from several jobs because of his fits of temper he'd been indicted for the murder of an acquaintance raymond west in 1978 but the case had been dropped because of procedural mistakes made by police lewis and his wife skipped town in december 1981 to escape another arrest warrant in kansas city for tax fraud had gone to chicago and assumed the alias robert richardson on the surface lewis seemed a viable suspect in the tylenol murders but further investigation revealed that lewis and his wife had left chicago for new york almost a month before the murders and there was no evidence that he had returned what they did uncover was one hell of a grudge that lewis held against the owner of lakeside travel frederick mccarthy lewis had been enraged when his wife's last paycheck from lakeside travel had bounced for insufficient funds and during a hearing in august where former employees of lakeside tried without success to recover owed wages from makahi louis and makahi got into a heated argument in which threats were exchanged on both sides lewis became obsessed with getting revenge on makahi he had the stationary from the company and he knew what the bank account number for the company was because of bank statements shared during the wage claim hearing police figured that lewis planned to wait until an appropriate crisis came along such as an airline crash or a terrorist bombing and he would then write an extortion letter that would implicate makahi while they were investigating him for the more serious crime that he hadn't done the police would undoubtedly find out all the criminal activity that he had done and they'd arrest him for that as it happened the tylenol murders happened a month after he devised this scheme and left chicago lewis was convicted of attempted extortion and sentenced to a 20-year jail term he was released on parole in 1995. he was never charged with the tylenol killings themselves but his part in the case was not yet over while the police were investigating jim lewis they also had another suspect roger arnold arnold was an eccentric character who worked at the same warehouse as the father of one of the victims mary reiner one night while drinking at a local bar he reportedly talked loudly about his theories on the case mentioning that cyanide was not hard to get your hands on that he had a stash of it at his place right now the owner of the bar marty sinclair overheard him and thought the whole thing was suspicious he informed police and the police brought him in for questioning a search of his home revealed several illegal weapons and a stash of chemicals and chemistry equipment there was no trace of cyanide however and no connection could be made between arnold and the poisonings the police charged him with the weapons violations and an outstanding assault and let him go for months arnold stewed angry with marty sinclair for ratting him out after drinking too much on the night of june 17 1983 he decided to confront the bar owner shortly after last call and men resembling sinclair emerged from the bar it was 46 year old john stenisha a patron of the bar that night who didn't even know arnold in the dark the intoxicated arnold mistooks denisha for sinclair walking up to him and shooting him to death the poor man had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time as for roger arnold he would spend 15 years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder before being paroled in 1999. arnold's name would never be brought up again in connection with the tylenol murders in may of 1983 congress passed a law making product tempering a federal crime product tampering had occurred before in the united states but never on such a large and random scale as the tylenol poisonings the highly publicized murders set off a wave of copycat crimes across the country over the next few years the most famous of these occurred in 1986 when a seattle woman stellar nickel was convicted of killing her husband and next door neighbor with exodus capsules that had been tainted with cyanide the motive in that case was financial nico was trying to cash in on her husband's life insurance policy drug companies now knew that they needed to enact preventative measures to keep crimes like this from happening again leading the way in the effort was johnson and johnson the company had suffered a huge hit in market share in the aftermath of the murders and some pundits said they might have to retire the tylenol brand altogether but johnson johnson took a different view that they had to regain the public's trust by proving beyond doubt that their products were safe in november 1982 the company had begun stocking shelves with tylenol again this time in a triple sealed temper resistant bottle they put coupons in newspapers across the country and flooded the airwaves with advertising emphasizing the safety of their product within a year tylenol had recovered most of its market share in the pain reliever market and remains today one of the top selling brands of over-the-counter pain relief drugs other companies soon followed suit and new tamper-proof packaging was introduced across the food and drug industry in 1989 the fda released new guidelines that codified the tamper-proof packaging into a governmental expectation pill bottles sold today all have tamper-proof seals on them consumers know that if the seal is broken they shouldn't consume any of the pills inside just in case other medicine is sold in individual blister packs that need to be popped out by hand the tylenol poisonings also led to the demise of the capsule in drug manufacturing instead companies invented the caplet a gelatin capsule that completely encases the medicine as a single piece instead of two pieces the caplet along with tablets that have been made easier to swallow thanks to redesigns are now industry standard for pills today almost 40 years after the crimes occurred no one has ever been charged with the tylenol murders it is one of america's most famous unsolved murder cases but that hasn't stopped police from continuing to investigate on may 20th 1988 a thirty-year-old woman named lori dan suffered a psychotic break and went on a shooting spree throughout the chicago suburbs wounding six people and killing an eight-year-old boy before committing suicide before embarking on her rampage dan prepared baked goods and drinks that were laced with arsenic and mailed them to several people and hand delivered several to others no one became ill because the poison was diluted and the food was bad tasting but the similarities to the tylenol case were such that dan was briefly investigated as a suspect though no connection was found in 2011 police sought dna samples from the notorious unibob at head kaczynski since the first four unabomber crimes occurred in chicago a couple of years before the poisonings and kozinski's parents owned a house in the chicago suburbs that he occasionally visited but once again this didn't go anywhere for many people the prime suspect continues to be jim lewis after his imprisonment for attempted extortion lewis couldn't seem to keep himself from talking about the tylenol case he offered his help in solving the crime and dropped several diagrams and theories about how someone might have carried out the poisonings most intriguing was the so-called breadboard method lewis said that someone could drill little holes into a wooden breadboard to put the empty tylenol capsules into in order to fill them with cyanide and put the capsules back together without making a mess lewis claimed that you could do this in the backseat of a car and thus replace the tainted bottles back on store shelves in minutes after first purchasing them making a getaway before anyone noticed for those that believe lewis committed the murders the theory goes that at some point in september of 1982 lewis suffered a schizophrenic episode he refused to acknowledge his psychiatric diagnosis and thus avoided being treated for it in his break with reality his rage against frederick mccarthy was so overpowering that he became determined not to wait around for some sensational crime to be committed so he could write his letter and send the police after makahi instead lewis would create one himself in early 2009 following the publicity of the 25th anniversary of the poisonings police formally reopened the investigation they searched lewis's home in cambridge massachusetts and seized several items reportedly for dna testing the sticking point of course is that there is no way to prove that jim lewis was in chicago and not new york at the time of the murders that there are possible ways he could have gotten back and forth without leaving a trail the time period the crimes took place in works against investigators too in 1982 surveillance cameras were not very widespread most purchasers were made with cash a lot of forensic evidence that would have been collected and the crime occurred today was just not collected back then cyanide was relatively easy to get a hold of and it was inexpensive there's no smoking gun evidence to be found at least not so far and the more time that goes by the less likely it is that anyone including jim lewis will ever be tried or convicted for committing the tylenol murders and the one hundred thousand dollar reward that johnson johnson continues to offer for information on the killer will go unclaimed the tylenol case changed america in a way that few murder cases have seven people died an eighth person died as a result of the publicity of the case and the rest of the country were scared out of their minds it cost johnson johnson over 100 million dollars in product recall costs and forced the federal government to enact new laws to protect the public from the newfound danger of product tampering it changed the way that medicine is marketed packaged and consumed in america and hanging over it all is the mystery of it who committed this heinous act why did they do it and why did they stop apparently vanishing into thin air the sad truth of it is that we may never know the answer and the tylenol killer will pass into legend as america's version of jack the ripper so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe please do check out my new podcast the casual criminals there are some links below thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 701,195

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: X5GJlN1F6xQ

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021