And That's Why We Drink - E117 The Buddy System Til Death and Sprinkles of Light in the Chicago Suburbs

Episode Date: April 28, 2019

What are you doin' tonight, cowboy? Lasso us up! And join us for our Chicago live show! Em brings us a trifecta of food themed spooky stories including "That Steak Joint",  The Red Lion Pub, and the Biograph Theater. While Christine dives into the wild and mind-bending tale of the Chicago Tylenol Murders. And that's why we drink! Please consider supporting the companies that support us! Get 500 high quality custom business cards starting $9.99 when you use code DRINK at vistaprint.com Visit avawomen.com to receive $20 off your order when you use code DRINK Get $10 off your first FabFitFun box when you go to fabfitfun.com and use code DRINK Get free shipping and free returns when you go to felixgrayglasses.com/drink

I English is my first language. It's camera home. Whoops. Sassy with me. Sassy the clown. The clown is shy. Oh, quite cool. Sweet, that's a good drink. And that's why we dream. Thank you. and that's that have a good night everybody ready

Hi Chicago I don't know if I'm supposed to take this out, but I'm doing it anyway. Me too. Cool. Hi, everyone. Oh, my God. I've been looking forward to this show for so long. Yay, yay, yay, yay.

Also, thanks for selling out. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm having trouble over here. Hi. How are you?

Good? Holy shit. That was me. Say something interesting. I'm really overwhelmed. All right. Don't mind me. Well, first of all, thank you for having me here.

I've never been here. Oh, wait. I lied. I have been here. To Chicago? Yeah. Well, for a second I thought I've only been here for a layover, but I actually came here a couple years ago with my ex.

We won't talk about that. Tell us more. The thing I loved the most of that whole trip was that I was in Chicago. Yay! What a compliment. You're better than Em's X. I bet that feels really good. You guys have wonderful pizza. You do. And you guys, I, during that layover, the reason I remember the layover is if I'm, this is a dangerous thing to say, but, but if I'm picking between the pizzas and the hot dogs, I really appreciate your hot dogs the most.

I heard a couple of people go, okay. Some people are like, that's fine. I can leave. It's fine. No, but I remember the layover before anything else because that was the first time I had a Chicago dog. And I ate one and I was like, holy shit, this is really good. And then I was like, if this is how good it is at an airport, I imagine they're like really good. So that's why I remember my two instances here. But anyway,

hi Chicago. Thank you for having me. Thank you for letting me eat your hot dogs. Um, uh, as a fellow Midwesterner, I have been to Chicago a lot. And I'm sorry,

I don't eat hot dogs anymore, but I do, I do, i do like pizza and other things so did you do anything when you were here earlier well did did any i hung out in my hotel room for a little bit well that was about it christine's family is here tonight also. Yeah, they're here. Blaze is here. They had a great time exploring. They did a lot of stuff. Yeah, they did a lot of stuff. I had to maybe finish my notes, but we won't worry about that.

I know very little, but all I heard was that Blaze was at a restaurant today that had puppies for adoption. Yeah. It was actually very cruel because I was like, oh, I have to finish my notes. And he's like, no, come to the bar. And I was was like they don't need you to have a story tonight it's fine like oh i have to finish these maybe later and he's like well here are the dogs up for adoption i was like what the fuck that was so cruel it worked out though because in our hotel i found a puppy yes his name is hunter we're best friends. Yes. I can confirm that. I've been

replaced. Nobody tell Gio. Gio and I have been replaced. Gio is going to text me in the middle of the night being like, what's, what are you hiding? Anyway, we love Chicago. We, I, it's very close to where I'm from. I love it. I don't know. You guys are great. You know that already.

The only thing I don't like is the cold. That's all I don't like. It's a little cold. It's very close to where I'm from. I love it. I don't know. You guys are great. You know that already, though. The only thing I don't like is the cold. That's all I don't like. It's a little cold. It's not a bad thing to hate. Yeah. Would you like to crack into it? Yes. Yes, please.

All right. Let's see what I've got for you today, students. I'm very excited. You guys win, actually, a little prize because you get two stories. Yay! You win a little prize. A little prize called a double whammy. So look it's I'm not I'm not fooling anybody by letting you know for the thousandth time how much I'm in love with steak, right? With steak?

I know you guys don't know where this is going, but yeah, you know how much I love steak. So I was looking up things. Steak. You were looking up steak. I have before. I know. I once had a folder on Em's desktop that just said, pictures of steak. And I was like, I'm not kidding.

I had a reason. And I don't need to get into it because it doesn't sound like a good enough reason um but anyway so I was looking up I mean you can probably assume how my searches for haunted places go I google haunted places in and then the city name and then the first place happened to have the name steak in the title and i was like oh done and then the story wasn't long enough for me to feel like i had satisfied your thirst for knowledge and so i was like well let's make a theme out of this and i couldn't find another steak thing but i found more food things so i guess we'll take it a food themed haunted walk through the park if you will so so there's uh the first one I'm gonna do I'm gonna I'm gonna not tell you the second one so you guys get to wonder and have a little intrigue with me so you're such a good teacher I know it's

like you don't need to know that yet so I want you to have intrigue with me. Don't worry about it. It'll keep you wanting more. So the first story I'm going to cover, and if you know it, awesome. If you don't, you're going to learn something tonight. This is the, it's not around anymore, but it used to be called That Steak Joint. And it used to be. Yay! Oh, sure. Yay!

Sorry, we usually tell you guys to clap anyway because we have severe anxiety and we forgot to do that. So, yay! Oh, thank you. Well, I was going to say that it's now the Adobo Grill. Do you guys know what that is?

Okay. Okay, all right. I spoke too soon. No, no, no. I appreciate you having them calm my nerves. There was that lingering silence for two milliseconds too long. Oh, that's funny how anxiety works. Isn't it, though?

Two milliseconds equals two centuries. So it was, before it was the Adobo Grill, it was called That Steak Joint. But the joint is spelled J-O-Y-N-T. Oh, of course it is so clever fun fact number one so god damn it however that one was that one was actually pretty fun yeah yeah they're gonna get worse from here aren't they yeah yeah so um that steak joint was a Victorian-style three-story building, and it shares a wall with Second City. Oh!

I had a hunch I'd get you there. Hell yeah. So the building goes all the way back to the 1860s. It was a bread factory called Piper's Bakery. Aw. It was one of the biggest bread distributors of the time, and it employed over 500 workers and even housed a school for the employees' children to attend. Okay.

So it was also helping out the world. That's nice. On one side of it was an alley, so next to Piper's Bakery was an alley, and that alley apparently to this day, I don't know if it's well-known, but it's still called Piper's Alley. alley apparently to this day i don't know if it's like well known but it's still called piper's alley and uh in the early 1900s there were two different murders that were committed there so something to like take someone on a date to um so it was a man and a woman and i think they were both it was the same instance i don't know

the story behind how they died i just know that they ended up being found a couple days later so no yikes um in the 1920s uh piper henry piper um he retired from the bakery and ended up uh deciding that he was going to sell it and then the building became a whole lot of other things i think it became a laundromat and a hardware store and in 1962 the year of my mother's birth don't do the math she's 35 um she uh she bought oh no my mom didn't do anything like she did what she was born and that was enough for that year. She was already purchasing real estate. It's a whole thing.

You know the dynamo Linda Sherman is. She would, though. It wouldn't surprise me. Right. So she was off, like, at a hospital being born. And so while that was happening, a guy named Billy and a guy named rodell uh bought the building and that's when it became the steak joint so since the 60s um the inside of the restaurant was filled with a whole bunch of like art and antiques from various places and they just if they if it looked interesting

they just bought it they didn't really care where it came from which is just a perfect recipe of just a bunch of combined old energy aka a.k.a. several ghosts. Ghosts. So, good job. Thank you. Thank you. So, this is basically our podcast room. It's just people send us weird shit, and we just put it all on a wall.

It's true. It's amazing what kind of energy we probably collected in our studio. Robert the Doll's in there. It's really bad. I know. I know. But what am I going to do? Throw it away?

I feel like that's worse. Yeah, because then he'll know. You guys are the ones to stick me with all that shit and i don't know what to do someone literally in a like out of a scary movie in a wooden crate yes this sent us a haunted doll and her horse on a on a horse and like apparently the two dolls didn't come together they like were both haunted and now enjoy each other's company when we got it uh a few days later our house burned down so we thought we'd send it to you and i was like so now it's like do we get rid of it or do we just hope the house doesn't oh by the way sorry blaze he has not heard about this yet so my bad yeah by the way listen nothing's burned

down yet i feel like when we're not around blaze walks around in the studio and looks at every item and is like i don't know what you could do to me but please leave me alone he probably throws away shit and just we don't even know everything except lemon blaze we've talked i don't know why you haven't done it yet blaze knows better than to throw away lemon we love lemon we do so uh so of the items that they collected over the years, there was a specific set that they purchased that was the most notorious for being haunted, which were two portraits. One was of a man named William Devine,

and the other portrait was of his wife, Catherine Devine. Apparently, William Devine was a milk merchant from the late 1800s. Cool. That's all we know know great um but they each had a portrait of them done and whoever ended up the art dealer that sold it to the restaurant said that he kept it for a long time but he wanted to sell it and potentially even destroy them because they creeped him out so much they made him feel very uneasy he felt stared at and apparently ever since he owned them he always had a run of really really bad luck well so uh including the time where uh there was like a stint where apparently catherine's portrait was now

lifting itself off the wall and throwing itself onto the floor oh dear like they were nailed in and had like a, a wire. So, like, it couldn't just fall. It had to be lifted off the nail. Oh, no, no. Apparently, at one point, he then tried to put it back on the wall, and then it threw itself off the wall again in his hands and then came crashing down and broke his toes.

I'm sorry. That's not funny. That's terrible. That's really sad. Well, for his toes, yeah. Yeah. And so at that point, he was like, okay okay i don't want to be near this thing it's clearly like starting to hurt me i just want to sell it and that's when the interior designer for the state that steak joint was like oh that looks

kind of cool can i have it and he was like please take them so then the designer of the restaurant ended up also saying that uh he too was freaked out by the pictures and patrons of the restaurant ended up also saying that he too was freaked out by the pictures and patrons of the restaurant started saying that they didn't like the portraits either. Apparently people were reporting getting a cold chill run by them whenever they were standing next to the picture. They also reported that the woman, Catherine, the more dangerous portrait, was smiling at them when you looked at the portrait in a reflection. Ew!

So apparently it used to be, the portraits used to be across the way from a mirror, and if you were looking in the mirror, the portrait would smile at you. Ew! Also, they swear that the eyes would follow you. Of course, of course. And so those didn't last very long. So the restaurant also did regular seances in the 80s.

Why not? Because the owner, Billy, was like, it's probably haunted. Let's make some money off that. So they did regular seances, and apparently they frequently contact, they were in contact with three main spirits in the building. One was an architect who designed the building back in the 1800s. One was a woman that worked at Piper's Bakery and one would not reveal his identity. Zach Baggins. No? His name is Lemon. And so...

He has quite a storied past, so you never know. So while they were... Oh, yeah, so during the seances, they actually ended up scheduling two different nights where they were also going to do overnight investigations. And so they had one investigation in 1991 and one in 1994 and they had reporters there both times so what i think the 1999 one was for the i don't know the name so i might mess up the chicago sun should be times times okay i

knew it was cst uh and then the other was a good guess, though. I don't know. Sounds fancy. And then the other one had reporters from a news show. So I'm not going to guess those letters. What was it called? KSWFMT. I don't know. What the fuck? I don't know.

You know how radios have those letters? All right. Okay. Did I sound smart there? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Good, good. Yep, yep yep good good i've fooled you so anyway so they had overnight investigate uh investigations and they made sure that there were reporters at each one and uh in those investigations they found several instances of glowing lights in different rooms of different colors um magnetic disturbances that they had

that were not accounted for or could not be accounted for, and they had done a whole run-through of the buildings to make sure that they checked, like, faulty wiring, and they looked at the blueprints. So they had an idea of where there should be disturbances, and when they tested the house earlier, it wasn't showing up, and now all of a sudden machines are going kind of weird. They're acting kind of weird for no reason. They got a kind of weird for no reason. They got a lot of photos which validated what the medium was saying in each room, including apparitions and shadow figures that she said she felt coming from different corners of the room.

So then they looked at pictures and it was able to confirm that there was like a shadow figure sitting in the corner where she said. Super duper. I don't know. Like if I were her and that was my my job i don't know if i'd be like awesome or like like god damn it i'd be like i hope i'm wrong yeah i hope i'm bad at this job um so some shadows were also caught on multiple cameras so further confirming that what she saw was valid and it wasn't the one picture wasn't an anomaly compared to another picture. Right. There was one picture specifically of a shadow figure in a robe. Sorry.

Standing in a table. So, okay, you could see the top half, but then like the bottom, like you can, it was like as if he was standing in the middle of the table. So you could see the top half, but then like the bottom, it was like as if he was standing in the middle of the table. Like he walked through it or something. Yeah, okay. Glad I had a table to show you exactly what I meant. To show you what it looks like when someone's walking through a table. Yeah.

By doing this a lot. You got it. You figured it out. Very clear. We didn't bring a robe, otherwise we would have demonstrated. Damn it. Yeah. you figured it out. Very clear. We didn't bring a robe otherwise we would have demonstrated. Damn it. They also got on video a door to the kitchen

opening on its own and opening pretty strongly and so they went to go test the draft and the draft was actually going in the opposite direction. So something forced against the draft

and shoved the door open. There were flickering lights, cold spots, footsteps, the sounds of something dragging across the floor in an empty room. Cool, cool, cool. Love it. Awesome. Yeah.

And they saw apparitions of someone sitting at a dining room table, but then when they tried to approach him, it vanished. They saw apparitions... Oh, I just said that. Even if it's very set up, yeah. At one of the investigations, one of the reporters also uh she was the most skeptical and ended up becoming violently ill during an abp interview no managers obviously have a hard time keeping night staff because the spirits like to mess with the employees especially when they are alone great um So there are reports of staff hearing singing,

and almost everyone has seen shadow figures multiple times. Employees have run out of the building during their shift and never come back. Oh, no. Apparently there was one story of a guy who even had, like, two paychecks there, and they were like, hey, you need to come get your paychecks. He was like, I'm good.

I don't need money it's hard to argue with that though right oh my god uh so in the woman's restroom you can hear someone entering the room so apparently you can hear the like the click clack of shoes you can also hear uh like a skirt or a dress kind of ruffling around and you can see the doors opening as if someone's coming in and no one's there in case you didn't gather that so and it's the receptionist she just needed a tea break and it's Christine probably

also the bathroom doors to the stalls will jam shut oh fantastic so you get stuck in there yeah and like refuse to open no matter how hard you push so Bathroom doors to the stalls will jam shut. Oh, fantastic. So you get stuck in there. Yeah. And, like, refuse to open no matter how hard you push. Super.

Super duper. So there are strange lights that are also seen near the women's bathroom, especially at night. And apparently people have seen lights going through the bathroom doors into the stalls. Okay. And then you can hear the door moving as if someone is like turning the doorknob on the other side yikes there are reports of something touching people something brushing by people or just plain old running into people okay uh staff have reported seeing bright yellow eyes staring at them in dark rooms oh Oh, that's actually pretty bad. Imagine if your boss is like, now go sweep in there.

And it's like... No! No! They've gotten an EVP of a woman moaning and a woman screaming. Great. Quote followed by a high-pitched squeal. So I don't know if any of that's good. I don't really want to know.

I'm going to leave that to the intrigue I was telling you about earlier. Staff have also heard, quote, guttural growling. Oh, good. Well, what's interesting about that is they heard it both on a digital recorder later, and they heard it in real time. So they were in a room. It wasn't just an EVP. It was like. Yeah, it wasn't like something they just like found out later.

They knew that they caught something because they heard it in the middle of the interview. People smell something burning, but there's also always the recurring scent of flowers in certain rooms. Okay, that's not terrible. Maybe it's flowers burning, and you can combine them. Oh, no. in certain rooms. Okay, that's not terrible. Maybe it's flowers burning and you can combine them. Oh. Oh, no. Apparently there was,

the reason it smells like it's burning is because back in the late 1800s, Piper's Bakery actually caught on fire and burnt down, and then they ended up rebuilding at the time that it was still a bakery. But it did burn down, so they say that that might be the smelling, might be a residual ghost smell

there uh the manager one time saw people walking up the the staircase after the entire restaurant had been closed and he was the only one there um so he went looking for them he saw them turn the corner he kept following them and then nobody was there spirits have gotten violent one employee was closing up and felt a hand grab his shoulder and yank him backwards and when he turned around no one was there and the same thing happened to a bartender who was going upstairs and felt a hand grab the back of his shirt shut up he was going upstairs and he felt a hand grab the middle of his shirt and then yank him backwards on the stairs. Did he fall?

I think he caught himself, but he also turned around because he was like, what the fuck was that? And no one was there. That's terrifying. And then it got really bad when a server was clearing tables after everything had closed up. She was putting dishes in the sink and she felt a hand grab her wrist. She turned to see who it was. No one was there, but something was still holding onto her and she could still feel something grabbing

onto her wrist. She could see that her wrist, there was like imprints on her wrist of something squeezing her. And her skin was starting to get red. And then she tried to shake it off and and it still didn't work, and she could feel it squeezing harder and harder,

and then something started dragging her. By the arm? By the wrist. Uh-uh. Because she tried to shake it off, and I guess that pissed it off, and then all of a sudden she started getting dragged across the room. Towards the stairs. No! Oh, no.

She couldn't break away from it. She tried fighting. She actually even broke a heel because she was digging her heels into the floor so much. Are you serious? Mm-hmm. And then she was able to scream really loud, and the manager found her on the floor.

They checked her wrist, and it had bruising in the shape of fingers. She quit. Wait. Why? Something about, like, a poor work experience there. God. So that's probably the scariest thing that they are willing to report on Google.

And when that steak joint closed, it was empty for a few years, but then in 2000, it became the Adobo Grill. And the Adobo Grill says that they have no reports of activity, but that doesn't mean that they don't believe there aren't spirits there. They just think that the active ones probably left

when they decided to do renovating for the new place and all of those old antiques and everything they might have been attached to left the building. Where'd they go? To maybe your home. To our house. To our freaking podcast studio.

Maybe they all got absorbed into a little girl that got sent to us in a wooden crate. It would explain a lot. Anyway, that's story one. That is that steak joint. Thanks. Thank you. The next one is supposedly the most haunted pub in Chicago.

Okay. So I had my steak moment. You get your pub beer moment. So I'm keeping it balanced here. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, because I didn't say last time applaud if you know what this is the or if you don't or if you don't or if you're if you're that one over

there just scream um the this is the red lion pub i think they actually do know it they sounded genuine i feel like i knew it because i looked up pictures of it and it looked familiar. There's one in L.A., though. Oh, is there? I mean, there's a Red Lion Pub. Oh. Maybe that's why it's jogging a memory. So anyway, the Red Lion Pub.

It was built in – the building itself was built in 1882. It is today an upscale – or it was an upscale English pub. This also apparently is now a Mexican restaurant. Yes? That was unsure to me can you tell did you look up it up on yelp no well that would have clarified a couple things a lot of things i should do would clarify many things like what the fuck is a trapezoid i should know but oh i like calling them out on stage so you know i know i know i'm pretty sure from what i read in one of the articles is that it's now an it's an upscale mexican restaurant which would make sense because i don't know it's a pub everyone's saying it's a pub okay well then i fucked up oh wait no i'm confusing The Adobo Grill is the Mexican.

Yeah, that makes a little more sense. I was like, I know, I know, I know what I'm talking about, but I know I don't. You're like, there are fish tacos, I swear to God. Okay. Okay. That does explain a lot. Maybe I was tricking you just to see if you knew the pub at all, and you passed. Good for you.

We're testing you on your local knowledge. You get an A on the test I intentionally gave you. Congratulations. So, it is an upscale English pub. Maybe I should just read my own fucking notes. Can I actually say one thing? I love when you said, oh, and now it's a Mexican restaurant, right? And a couple people were like, yeah, yeah.

No, but that was so nice. You guys were so nice to me. Thank you. Oh my god, that's so funny. It was a test of love is what it was so you passed built in 1882 upscale english pub most haunted pub in chicago let's try to get to the second bullet sure sure sure sure sure sure sure sure before it was the i'm not helping i'm sorry before it was the red lion pub it was was a Western-themed bar called Dirty Dan's Western Saloon. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Okay. And in the 1940s, so before it was either of those things, it was heavily involved in gang activity. Yeah. That's right. I was like, I didn't say a goddamn word. That's on you guys. So in the 1940s, this was,

it's in a neighborhood that was heavily known for gang activity. Al Capone and his buddies hung out there during the Prohibition. Yeah. I forgot this was like a rough and tough kind of crowd. A bunch of rebels. A bunch of rabble-rousers. Rabble-rousers. So the bar itself was used for illegal gambling.

Okay. So now I know your interests outside of listening to our podcast. And it's across the street from the Biograph Theater. Which is also haunted, and if you're good, you'll get a whole story about that at the end as a bonus. So their interests are illegal gambling and musical theater.

Yes. This sounds about right. I feel like I would have guessed that. It's just a mess is what it is. A mess, yes. A mess of interest. A mess for sure. So across the street from, am I saying that right? Biograph Theater?

Okay. Cool. So it was turned into the Red Lion Pub by Chicago architect John Cordwell. Okay. Someone's an architect. John? Is that you? Well, apparently he's a...

I'm not into architecture, but apparently he's a famous Chicago architect. Well, one person knew about him, so... Someone was very excited about John Corvo. So he, as a side hustle, even though he was successful and a famous architect, he was like, I need a hobby. So he bought this pub and ran it with his wife and sons so

that's fun yeah a fun little venture so now his son colin uh runs it so cool tell him hi if you go there uh there are allegedly at least seven different ghosts here okay Okay. Let's talk about how they became ghosts. Oh no. Everyone's like oh. So one customer actually died in the restaurant. So she was a patron at the restaurant and died from a seizure. Oh no. There was a little girl

who died here from measles because at one point, there are three floors. At one point the third floor was also apartments. Oh, okay. So she lived here and she died of measles. There was, we're calling him a cowboy.

Yes, we are. Full stop. Don't explain it. Well, he's, so it's a man that looks, is dressed like a cowboy, but it's potentially just an employee from when it was a cowboy-themed restaurant.

This poor guy's stuck in his work uniform for the rest of his life. That's terrible. Okay. So we're just going to call him a cowboy because, like, for his sake, he needs a cooler title. Okay. Also, there's a man who died here because he couldn't pay his gambling debt, and so he was killed. Oh, shit. But apparently he didn't go down without a fight because he couldn't pay his gambling debt, and so he was killed. Oh, shit.

But apparently he didn't go down without a fight because he killed his killer. So two birds, one stone on that. I don't know. That's two of the deaths. Okay. And then there's another woman who was allegedly fatally shot in one of the apartments upstairs. Super.

And the final ghost is John's father, John the architect's father robert cordwell um apparently watching over his son that now runs the restaurant so let's just talk about all of this is just ways that it's haunted so okay let's go good i'm ready you came on a good night chick i'm ready so let's let's settle in. Okay. Okay. So people hear their names being called when they're alone. Awesome. Good start. Apparently, sometimes you'll hear them screamed at you. Sometimes you'll hear them whispered to you. Sometimes you'll hear both if you're lucky. Where are we? Oh, okay. So you can also feel icy cold spots. Apparently a lot of people can smell lavender. One of the women who died upstairs was known to not know how much lavender perfume to wear.

So she wore a lot. And so much so that she's dead and still smells like lavender. Oh, dear. You can see an apparition of a woman wearing clothes from the 1920s. You can see a male apparition walking in the bar and going up the stairs after the restaurant's closed. The most activity happens when the pub is not very crowded. So when I was looking up information about this, on a few different websites, they were all like, so if you're trying to find a ghost, maybe go in the late evening or on a sunday i was like it's like how like google

tells you the hours if it's like very busy or not lots of ghosts get there now uh so during renovations just construction workers had like their tools laid out and a lot of them would go missing, or they would move themselves, or they would find them in random-ass places. They'd find them in the bathroom or in a shelf that they had not been near. Also, construction work that had been done, they would come back the next day, and it had been ruined. Oh, no. And they would need to redo it. That's a nightmare for sure. Things would just get ripped off the walls. Oh, no. And they would need to redo it. That's a nightmare for sure. Things would just get ripped off the walls.

Oh, no. Okay. There's heavy footsteps. There's sounds of furniture being moved or just completely flipped over. Cool. Apparently, sometimes when you're cleaning up at the end of the night, it sounds like a couch is just turning upside down. It's just turning upside down. like loud, heavy banging everywhere.

That's a very specific sound. Oh, yeah, that couch sounds like it's turning upside down. I mean, if I haven't flipped a thousand couches and know exactly what that sound is. Colin, the guy that now runs it, John's son, he one time heard a crashing sound, and he went upstairs, and I guess in one of the storage rooms they have a couple things hanging on the wall and all of them were now on the floor

across the room. People have been pushed down the stairs when they're alone. They had a psychic come in a couple times and one of the psychics saw an apparition of a scruffy man in his twenties. Okay. Okay.

How you doing? Wearing cowboy clothes. Well. Ayo. What are we up to tonight, cowboy? I don't know. What are you doing? I don't know.

Okay. Imagining what it would be like to talk to a boy. You're a natural. That's what they say, right? What are you doing, cowboy? Lasso me up. I don't know. All right.

Is it getting weird yet? I want it to get weird before I stop this. Apparently he's known to just be stomping up the stairs and he looks pissed. And it's like, well, yeah, I would be too if you were wearing your work uniform for eternity stupid cowboy boots and the first person to see you in like 100 years just calls you a scruffy man um and awkwardly flirts at you i don't know that was me that was me oh i know guilty uh

so the psychic also saw a young man with black hair and a beard. Okay, how you doing? All right. I don't know. Are you trying out some weird new character? I don't really get it. I don't know. I'm testing the waters. It's working really well for you, just FYI.

Oh, well, I don't know. Who knows? So young man, black hair with a beard and a black hat, and apparently he's also seen with a an apparition of a blonde male with a broad face i'm not really sure what that oh my that sounds rude a little bit i don't think that's nice scruffy man broad face black hat i don't know but uh apparently they're always together whenever she was able to see them or they were at least in the same room together. So they're kind of... Buddies.

Yes. Sure. Like you and I. Buddy system. Like you and I when we die. Till death and then more. Aww. Oh, no.

We both know whoever goes first is going to haunt the shit out of the other one. We've literally had this conversation so many times. We have this conversation on a five minute to five minute basis. We're having it right now. Welcome to our personal lives. She said that the blonde male apparition,

the one with the broad face, apparently he has temper issues and he is the one that killed the guy with the black hair and the black hat. Oh, shit. I guess the brunette with the black hat and the beard is the black hair and the black hat. Oh, shit. So I guess the brunette with the black hat and the beard

is the one that had the gambling debt and then the blonde one tried to kill him but then killed him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Wait, are they the ones

that are always in the room? Yeah, so they're always stuck together. Let's hope that's not our fucking future. Can you imagine if like we killed each other? Your afterlife is you're just

always in the same room with your killer. Yeah, I mean, that's terrible. That's just, like... And vice versa? Exact opposite of what you want. Yeah, you'd be screwed. So, there's apparently always something off in the energy of the building.

A lot of people just go in and just feel like there's something not right. A lot of people, a lot of guests at the restaurant feel like they're... I'm not going to say this super casually. Let me restart and, like, get my serious face on so stop laughing guests in the restaurant often feel like they're being choked oh dear or and or that their breathing is being restricted oh dear um because apparently one of the people who died that way. I'm not sure how. I should have done my research.

Realizing that now. Someone died by being strangled. Well, it wasn't the measles girl. It wasn't the measles girl. Let's go through this. It wasn't the measles girl. Maybe the cowboy. Who's to say?

Oh, wait. The cowboy guy. Because we don't know how he died. Yeah. Interesting. We figured it out. It was the measles girl. Maybe the cowboy. No, because when they kill you. Who's to say? Oh, wait. The cowboy guy. Because we don't know how he died. Yeah. Interesting. We figured it out. It was the cowboy. Okay.

Don't worry, guys. We figured it out. Don't worry. We did our research on stage. It was called team effort. It was called me not knowing what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So, anyway, a lot of people go in there and feel like they are being choked, especially if they start walking up the stairs, which is also a spot where people have been pushed down the stairs. So it seems to be just like a violent space. Good. Just like somewhere I don't want to be. Yes. So when John was still working there,

he put in a stained glass window in honor of his father. Oh, that's nice. Which was nice. But apparently when his father died, it might have attached to that part of the building. What? He might have attached to the part. To a window? Well, because, so I'm being really, I'm glossing over it.

So it's a stained glass window, but it's a whole wall that's basically decorated and in honor of his father. I see. And so they have a bunch of clippings of being a war hero and things like that. It's like his whole... Yeah, so a lot of stuff that he would be connected to. Got it, okay, okay.

So then when he died, apparently now a lot of people feel someone staring at them there, but it feels like a fatherly figure looking at you. Of all of the things to happen in this place, I guess that's fine. The least bad, I guess. People also feel a friendly tap on the shoulder. People have felt someone put their arm around them like a buddy.

Aw. Oh, yeah, I knew that was coming. It's not too bad. Of all things to happen, it's not that bad. Apparently, right before he died, he had really bad vertigo, and a lot of people get dizzy spells in that area. Oh, okay. But when people started reporting that,

that's when John was convinced that the spirit in that area was his dad. Because he was like, oh, my dad had dizzy spells all the time. Aw. So, kind of cute. Who's to say? We'll work on a better vocabulary word for that. So when closing upstairs, one of the tasks is to put the bar stools on upside down on the table and the chairs on the table. That way the next morning people can come in and mop without things all over the floor. And one of the employees, that was his task, but he went outside for a second and he came back and heard like the sound of furniture and chairs being moved.

And so he felt like, oh, someone's already like starting. That's nice. He went up there and he realized that everyone else had already clocked out. So he was by himself. And then not only were the chairs not upside down like they should be, but all of them had congregated into the middle of the room. Ew! No, that's like some poltergeist shit. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, he also said, like, in a helter-skelter way. That was his wording, and I was like, that's pretty creepy. What a terrible phrase to use, but okay, sure. I know. That's why I didn't put it in my notes, but I still said it, so it doesn't count. Terrible, terrible. Okay.

Okay. didn't put it in my notes but i still said it so it doesn't count terrible terrible okay so uh someone also one of the spirits is also known to force plates out of servers hands as they're handing them to customers here's your soup is how i imagine that goes it's the it's definitely the cowboy though because i bet you they've changed uniforms since then, and he's just pissed that he's stuck in that one. He's like, oh, your t-shirt looks nice. Yeah. You don't know what it's like. In my little clumpy boots.

Yeah. What are those little shiny things? Spurs. What are those little shiny things? I feel like I'm in Texas. Everyone just screamed Spurs at me. My first thought was toe rings and then i was like that's that's not where we're going i guess okay oh my okay uh also i because i have no experience at

all with cowboys my first thought if you didn't just jump out and scream spurs i was gonna be like you know the things that like woody on entire story doesn't have i would have gotten it with that though the only the only cowboy i can think of so uh so yeah something will force plate and it's not like it kind of knocks it out of your hand it's like something fucking forces this out of your hand and one of the former servers actually has been quoted saying i can attest to the force of the plates being ripped from my hands and propelling fish and chips halfway across the room. Oh, no. It happened, and it happened a lot.

So apparently it just feels like something's just smacking it out of your hands or just frisbeeing the plate away. Oh, my God. There's also one of the spirits of the woman, so we think the one that's dressed in 1920s clothing. Right. Apparently she also holds the lady's bathroom door shut, just like that steak joint,

but for minimum 20 to 25 minutes. Oh, great. And it's customary at this point to just know you're going to get locked in there, and the employees are prepared to just always go in and do bathroom checks because they are used to women just screaming

at the top of their lungs trying to get out but no one can hear them at over with like the music and everything so they're just they just go in and check them make sure that nobody's stuck all the time and like the doors aren't warped or anything they swing totally fine like like and I've had this

experience before where like i've had a for the people who don't believe i sound like a crazy person but i have had the experience where a door that very easily opens and closes all of a sudden just got stuck for a whole 45 minutes yeah and it took like six people to try to open it and it wouldn't and then eventually we just gave up And I decided to like sit in the bathroom. And just. I had decided that's where I was sleeping that night. And then the door popped itself open. And I was like.

Oh no. So. Anyway. Stories like that. Because I've had that happen to me. Those are like the first ones I believe. So. Apparently there's a lot of screaming women in the bathrooms.

And one time an employee heard a quote, loud, hysterical shrieking coming from the bathroom and he rolled his eyes and was like, Oh, another one. So he went to go check. And apparently as he got closer, the screaming got louder and louder. Um, he got wind to the bathroom and he tried to talk her down. He was trying to kick the door open. He was trying to kick the door open. He was trying to like throw his whole body into it. And she was becoming more and more hysterical. She was just freaking out. And then eventually he like didn't know what to do.

So he just stood there and the door just popped itself open. Oh no. And no one was in there. What? What the fuck? So. Oh no. someone likes attention oh my god

okay so anyway those are the stories of the Red Lion Pub but I did tell you that I did have some stuff about the Biograph Theater real quick yes yes yes so that's the theater that's across the street and uh it is

the theater that john dillinger died in or the alley that yeah yeah hang on i'm gonna tell you about him i'm gonna pull a little mini christine yeah and tell you a little true crime are you covering john dillinger or no and And I was like, should I be? Well, I wanted to tell some stuff about him, but I didn't want to, like, walk all over your story. But that's not happening, so I'm just going to do it. So John Dillinger, he was the first criminal to be public enemy number one. Awesome. Good for him. He robbed 10 to 20 banks in less than a year yeah he was a part of

three jail breaks yeah he killed and or severely injured almost 20 people no i don't like that part he was either a member or associated with a gang called the. Yeah. And he was charged for the first time at 11 years old for theft. Oh, good. So, lifelong. So, in 1934, I'm not going to get into, like, every... I mean, that was just, like, a quick little spark note for you. But in 1934, the cops were like, we got to get this guy.

So, Dillinger, he's apparently, like, a fuckboy because he took two women to the theater at one time. How you doing, cowboy? How you doing, cowboy? And he was like, just fine, apparently. Me and my shiny toe ring. Look at my spurs. So they went to go see Manhattan Melodrama.

Oh, yeah, love that flick flick is it a movie or a theater i think it's a movie okay it is because it's starring clark gable is what wikipedia told me yes so uh one of the women was dressed in a bright orange dress sure um but it was mistaken for red so now the story goes that she is the lady in red. But it was orange. Wow. If you're colorblind, it doesn't matter. Nope. Probably does not. So when Dillinger walked out of the theater, the police cornered

him because they knew he was going to be at the theater. So they cornered him. Dillinger ran towards the alley and they shot him twice and he died. Oh no. So he died in the alley right next to the theater, which is across from the Red Lion Pub. Got it, got it, got it. Fun fact.

Oh, dear. Witnesses knew when they saw this happen and they looked at the body, they were like, holy shit, that's John Dillinger. So they all took out their handkerchiefs and started mopping up his blood as souvenirs. So they could say they had something from that moment i bet you someone out there is like yeah my great granddad has a disgusting crusty old handkerchief oh that's

foul like we're saying gross but there is someone whose grandpa has that yeah you're right so uh Great. So the lady in red slash orange, she apparently might have double-crossed John because she told the FBI that they would be there. And this was an exchange. Apparently she wasn't from here, and it was an exchange to get help to stay in the country. She was like, I'll help you find him. So I'm going to make sure he's at the theater and that's when you can get him. So she may have double crossed him, but apparently there's a conspiracy theory where she actually double

crossed the FBI and warned John Dillinger in advance. And they had a small town, small time criminal that no one really knew yet take his place because he looked so much like John Dillinger that they made sure like hey john dillinger don't be here we'll use your look-alike and they'll kill him i gotta cover this story this is cool it's a doozy oh spoiler maybe who knows well uh you won't tell right no so she double crossed the may have if this conspiracy theory is true double crossed the fbi because instead of john being there a small-time criminal no one knew and he was new to the area too so no one was going to wonder where he was.

That's terrible. His name was Jimmy Lawrence and he went to the theater in John's place. Jimmy looked just like him and it gave John the time to escape. And the conspiracy has some weight to it because an autopsy report says that the man had brown eyes, not blue like John. Oh dear. The corpse had a heart condition since childhood and John did not. Uh oh.

Also, this person was shorter and heavier than they thought John was and two known scars that Dillinger supposedly had were not there. Oh man. Interestingly enough too, nobody ever heard from Jimmy Lawrence again. Oh, shit. And may or may not have happened.

But it totally did. It sounds like it totally did. Like, we all agree, right? Okay. And then, where was I? Oh, yeah. So, this is just a fun fact,

but I... God damn it, Em. So, apparently... I'm going to have to pee in like five seconds. Apparently... My mom's so ashamed I'm getting like applause for pouring myself a drink. It's a dream come true, Renata.

Yeah. So one of the things that he, that John Dillinger did because he was getting so notorious, he was like, okay, everyone knows all my like main physical characteristics. I need to get plastic surgery so I can have a different face and nobody can, will know what I look like anymore.

And I'll get to start all over and keep, keep it up. Okay. And so he spent $5,000 and paid a doctor whose license had been revoked because he needed something quick. And this guy was like in jail with him at one time. So he at least knew that he could approach this person oh my god okay and was like change my face oh my god okay then he did and he got out of surgery and he was like all right i look like

a totally different person now i get to have this whole other life and the cops are a couple steps behind now and can't find me again and then when they shot him it was not even a month later so he got all this surgery like just to like die anyway and be caught anyway if if he was the one that really died and not the look-alike but but it was totally the look-alike right right i thought that was a fun fact though of like oh you you went through all this stuff and then like not even 30 days later you died. Right, right, right. So anyway, that theater, since he did die right in the alley and it's very notorious, the theater itself does happen to have some ghosts including cold spots,

breezes that brush up against you, your arm gets wiped, like pet, like stroked. I don't know what word you want to use, but that happens to your arm. People have pictures of lurking shadow figures. Cool. People also see something walk by them in the bathroom when they're alone. There are apparitions of people in old-fashioned clothing in the audience, and when you look back to see who it was, all of a sudden nobody's sitting there. And finally, there is a bluish-gray figure of a man that runs from the theater to the alley, falls, and then disappears as if it were John Dillinger slash The Lookalike replaying their last couple seconds of life. So apparently a lot of people see this silhouette run out of the theater and into the alley and then fall and vanish.

That's all i have okay good job that was a lot guys i'm sorry but damn that was a doozy well i'm gonna be honest Chicago, because you gave me a lot of options for crime stories. I'm sure you know that, but yeah, there were a lot of things to pick from. A lot of fun

stories to pick from. So I picked one that I am going to I'm very excited about this one. I've been wanting to cover this for a long time. And you'll see why, but today seemed like the perfect time to do it. So this is the story of the Chicago Tylenol murders.

Ooh! You don't know about it? No. Oh, that makes me so excited. Tylenol like the medicine? Yeah, dude. It's more fun when Em doesn't know, because it's like, I'm telling him really fun facts. This is like when I did Gypsy Rose and you had no clue.

Yeah, that was a game changer. Still one of my favorites. Okay. Let's just get into it because this is a big one, too. I'm going to... Well, I'll just do it. All right. There's a bar.

You'll be fine. Okay. Okay. So, let's just dive right in. September 29th, 1982. Oh, it starts really sad. So sorry. Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

Starts off a little happy, but it goes really sad. Sorry. So she wakes up feeling sick. She stays home from school. Her parents give her some Tylenol. She goes into the bathroom to take it and moments later she collapses to the floor. She is rushed to the hospital,

is pronounced dead at 9.56 a.m. At 3.45 p.m. that same day, 27-year-old Mary Lynn Reiner is at home recuperating from giving birth to her fourth child. The hospital had given her Tylenol to take home if she has any pain, and so she takes two Tylenol, and moments later she collapses to the floor and dies.

Next is Adam Janis. He's 27 years old. He's a postal worker in Arlington Heights. Ooh, I love that vibe of like, yay! So exciting. I of like, yay. So exciting. I try to, yeah. Get excited when you can, I guess. Okay.

Find the sprinkles of light in this, if you will. The suburbs of Chicago are the sprinkle of light in this story. And in all our lives. Okay. So Adam Janis, he's a 27 year old postal worker he takes a sick day because he's not feeling well uh he picks his kids up from school stops at a jewel convenience store see i didn't know that still existed and he gets some tylenol oh he says to his wife, he's going to take some Tylenol, he's going to lay down.

A few minutes later, he comes staggering into the kitchen, and by 3.15 p.m., he is also dead. Oh, my God. Wow. Yikes. What year is this again? 82. Okay. So after Adam is pronounced dead at the hospital, his family goes back to the house,

like, basically in shock, to kind of collect collect themselves to figure out you know planning the he's 27 so they're like we have to plan a funeral you know it's a whole thing so they are back at his house um unfortunately his younger brother stanley has chronic back pain so his wife goes to the medicine cabinet to grab him some tylenol so two family members now well so she gives him two pills of Tylenol. And then she has a headache, so she takes two also. Three?

Yeah. Within minutes, they both collapse. They rush to the hospital and are both pronounced dead that night. Oh, my God. Yeah. Bad, bad news bears. So later that day, 31-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois. Yay!

Sprinkle of light! Mary McFarland tells her coworkers she has a headache. She takes a couple Tylenol. Within minutes, she hits the floor, and that night, she is also pronounced dead. Listen, we're almost through this part, I promise. The next day, around 5 o'clock, police are sent to the apartment of 35-year-old flight attendant Paula Prince because she had not been heard from in a few days. On her way home one night, she had stopped at Walgreens to buy some Tylenol.

They actually have, it's really wild, they have surveillance photos of her at the counter buying the Tylenol. And they actually released, Chicago police released the photo to the public because they believe that a man who is several feet behind her watching her is the perpetrator. Yeah, we're going to get to that. Don't worry. But just so you remember, Paula Prince is the one in the surveillance photo.

Paula Prince. Paula Prince. So she bought the Tylenol. Nobody had heard from her for a few days. So they show up to her apartment and they find the bottle of Tylenol sitting open on her vanity. She had stepped one step away from the vanity and had collapsed and died.

It's happening so fast. It's so fast. I know you guys already know the story but I don't. In my head I'm like whoa. It's very sudden. They're just moments. Oh my god. Wow. Yeah. It's really crazy. This is bad news. Yeah, like moments. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. It's really crazy. This is bad news.

Okay. Very bad. Yes. Very bad. So we've now reached seven victims all in the Chicago area. It was ultimately the fact that three people died in the same household, which was obviously the Janus household, that led investigators to some answers. So Cook County investigator Nick Pichos compared the Janus Tylenol bottle to Mary Kellerman's bottle and noticed that they shared one similarity, which was the control number on the bottle. So he calls

the deputy exam, so he tells him, my deputy medical examiner, let me start over. Eva, okay. Eva, you know what to do. Oh, God. I got too excited. Okay. So when the deputy medical examiner, Edmond Donahue, hears this, he tells Pichos, hey, you should smell the bottles. And at first I was like, why don't you smell the fucking bottles? Right. That was my thought. I was like, don't make me do that. Don't fucking put my face in that. I feel like we've read too many of these stories and now we're just suspicious of everything.

If someone tells you to smell, taste, lick something. Tell them to do it first. Yeah. Be like, I'll do it after you. Right. So, right. So he's like, you should smell it. And he's like, okay.

I also did find out they were on the phone. So I was like, okay. That makes a little more sense. I thought it was kind of just like, oh, yeah, you smell it. Yeah, I'm on board. They were on the phone. So Pichot smells the bottle and he says huh it smells like almonds and now do we know what smells like almonds cyanide thank you i didn't know that you didn't i'm learning so much

cyanide smells like bitter almonds. So it's actually really lucky that he noticed that because apparently only 50% of the population can actually smell that almond smell that cyanide has. Got it. I don't know if I'm one of those people. It's like being a super smeller, like how super tasters. Yeah, but it's still 50% of the population. Okay. Not that super, but.

Look, I just learned this like five minutes ago. Okay, I know. I'm not going to... I just... Just keep going. Okay. Listen, he smelled some almonds. Don't worry about it.

So, anyway, they tested Tylenol pills. Turns out they were laced with cyanide. Potassium cyanide at up to 1,000 times the lethal dose. Literally, one pill had the capacity to kill 1,000 people. That's why they literally hit the floor in seconds.

Just very extreme, very quick, very strong. Right now, my assumption is someone is planting cyanide in Tylenol bottles. That's what's what they're realizing at this point. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

I'm on board. So police, you're just like this guy, this county guy. Yeah, I'm a county guy. You're a medical examiner or something. Yeah. That sounds right. So police rule out manufacturers because the tampered with bottles came from different pharmaceutical companies. So they were like, okay okay it's not the manufacturer however because obviously all the

seven deaths deaths had happened in chicago they were like well it couldn't have been sabotage at the production level because if it had happened in like a production facility they would have been spread out all over the country so now police are thinking like you said that the culprit had purchased the various bottles at retail outlets throughout Chicago, adding cyanide to the capsules. And they were like these, they're like the capsules that had like, you could open them up and they had like powder inside them. It wasn't like a gel cap or anything. Yeah. So you could open them up.

So they believe that someone was buying the bottles, adding cyanide to the capsules and then methodically returning to the stores to place them back on the shelves. So the killer would have had to do this shortly before the murders, they realized, because the cyanide otherwise would have eaten through the bottle. So they were like, it must have happened the day before, otherwise the cyanide would have corroded the plastic of the bottle. Gotcha. So whoever did this would have been in Chicago basically during when these murders were happening. So on October 5th, 1982, Johnson & Johnson completely halted Tylenol production and issued a nationwide recall of all Tylenol products.

Approximately 31 million bottles were in circulation at the time, and all of them were pulled off the shelves. Oh. Yeah. It was insane. It cost the company an estimated 100 million dollars yeah it was not good for them uh all 31 bottles million bottles were removed from shelves nationwide and johnson and johnson ate the cost um by the way that today is worth equivalent to about 267 million dollars so it's quite oh my goodness quite a chunk of change that's a lot

of money. Johnson & Johnson also offered a $100,000 reward for any information that might identify the perpetrator. This is weird, guys, but Chicago police drove through the streets with megaphones. Are you the bad guy? Let us know. Come out wherever you are. We? Let us know. Come out, come out, wherever you are. We're on to you.

Well, sort of. They drove through the streets saying, don't take Tylenol. That's probably more useful. Probably more useful. A better use of their time, I think. Only oxen free. Yeah.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send bad guys on over oh boy so they literally drove through the streets with like megaphones shouting don't take tylenol and obviously surprise surprises caused like a fucking mega panic in Chicago and basically the entire country. Fortunately, though, Johnson & Johnson was like really behind that. They were like, yeah, like make sure nobody else gets hurt and yada, yada. Even though their share in the painkiller market dropped from 35% to 8% within days. But good for them as a company. It is one of those things that they actually look back. But good for them as a company.

It is one of those things that they actually look back, like they use that as an example of like, this is how corporate PR should work rather than some of the fun ways that they do it now. Anyway, so terribly enough, hundreds of copycat attacks involving Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications took place around the US immediately following the Chicago deaths.

So it wasn't just Tylenol. It was like Excedrin and Advil. people just started fucking with what what is wrong like what the fuck why are there multiple people out there who think this is funny or good who were like cool i'll do that too i don't know so anyway it didn't at the time it was a full-on panic nobody you know nobody felt safe um everyone was throwing out their medications, obviously. There were approximately 270 copycat attacks within the month after the Chicago. How many? 270. Oh, no. Terrible.

Which obviously also didn't help them narrow down the possible original perpetrator. Right, right, right. Okay, so they tested 1.5 million bottles, which was approximately 10 million pills, and they found 50 capsules containing cyanide across eight different bottles. So five of the bottles belonged to the victims. Two of them were sent back in a recall, and one was still found sitting on a store shelf in Chicago unsold. So that one was still out there, like possibly going to be purchased.

Thank God it was not, but that's a little chilling. Investigators looked into every disgruntled employee who worked or had worked where the tainted Tylenol was made, stored, or sold. So just thousands and thousands of people. Any shoplifters who had been caught

at the stores where the Tylenol was found were reevaluated. Anyone who had been recently released from prison or psychiatric hospitals in the Chicago area were interrogated. They even publicized the victims' funerals in the hopes that the killer would show up. But this did not bring about any significant

leads. They still could not figure out who the hell did this. But they did have a couple suspects. So I'm going to tell you about them. Good. Yay! Oh, okay. oh okay there's i think a couple more like um suburbs in here so don't worry we'll get to them you'll have your moment yeah you'll have your cheering moment um okay so number one suspect number one 48 year old dock worker roger arnold uh he said some suspicious things at a bar one night about basically alluding to the fact

that he had done the Tylenol poisoning. So police were tipped off about that and they searched his home. They found out that he worked at the Jewel Warehouse with the father of Mary Reiner, one of the victims. And Mary Reiner had actually purchased her Tylenol at a store that happened

to be directly across the street from the psychiatric ward where Roger Arnold's wife was a patient. So they thought like maybe somehow there was a connection like he was visiting his wife at the hospital and had gone across the street to plant the Tylenol or you know especially because he knew Mary Reiner. So they also found a so they searched his house they found a number of crime manuals. Okay, well, we can find that in our studio, though, to be fair. Well, we both know that if anyone searches my home ever, I'm fucked. Or your internet history.

Or my browser history. Yeah, I'm screwed. It's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. I literally earlier Googled lethal cyanide dose. It's not good. I would be in big, big trouble. Well, I look, and my Google history today was, ways people often die in Chicago.

And then, like, number, top five ways people die in Chicago. And, like. And your IP address is, like, location, Chicago. Right. Uh-oh. I was, like, how to open pills to put in cyanide. Yeah, it's not good. It's really bad.

We're screwed. But this guy had the early version of that, which was literal books that said, like, how to open pills to put in cyanide. Yeah, it's not good. It's really bad. We're screwed. But this guy had the early version of that, which was literal books that said, like, how to do crimes. Ew, books. Yeah. Ooh, what? What's that? I don't know.

So they were like, that's odd. They also found chemistry supplies in his house, including beakers, vials, and different powders. None of them were cyanide, but mysterious powders. So police never had enough to arrest him uh so the next suspect that we're going to go to uh the month after the murders october 1982 johnson and johnson receives a letter demanding one million dollars and they'll stop the killings so the letters did not have a return address but they did have a bank they had

like a bank account number to wire the money in basically. However, because they're the FBI, they fingerprinted it and found the fingerprints of whoever sent it and traced the paper back to a tax consultant named James William Lewis. Strangely, however, the bank account that he had listed in the letter where the $1 million was supposed to be wired to did not belong to him. Instead, it belonged to a man named Frederick Miller McKay, who was a former employer of James, who James believed had cheated his wife out of $511.

So he put his old boss's bank account information on the paper, hoping that the FBI would then expose this man's theft of 511 that's so petty oh he actually said i was hoping to embarrass him and it's like that's the most actual god i know it is yeah so police still were like we should still look into this guy just in case uh He did have a questionable past. He had been charged with murder in 1978 in Kansas City after police found the remains of one of his clients in his attic. That'll do it. That'll do it.

However, crazy enough, a judge ruled that the search of his home was illegal because they did not have a search warrant. So the charges were dropped. Incredible. Incredible! Incredible. Oh, love it, love it, love it. Also odd, Lewis and his wife had recently launched a short-lived business venture

in which they attempted to import pill-making machines from India. And when police had caught onto that crime, so they had been living in New York City, when police had caught onto that crime, Lewis and his wife fled from New York City to Chicago and they lived there in hiding for almost a year. And this happened to be right around the time that the Chicago Tylenol murders took place.

Yeah, so bad timing. And also, remember that, so I was talking about Paula Prince in the surveillance photo. Yeah, you remember. Oh, I know Miss Paula paula miss paula so the bearded man it's very creepy if you can look up the photo and there's a guy like several feet behind her while she's in line buying the pills and he's just staring directly at her it's very spooky yeah so they believe that was uh the suspect well this guy looks just like this Lewis dude. Oh, okay. Yeah. So

a lot of people were like, yeah, that's for sure him. But it was black and white, a little bit grainy, so it's hard to tell for sure. Cool. Let's find out where he was. I don't know. Okay. Can I tell a story real quick? Yes, always. You said that the pills,

they were taking them apart. Yeah, yeah. What did you do? Back when I worked at my old job, the same place where I had to carve carrots to look like Cheetos. Ah, yes, the good old days. I'm not going to say the show or the actor I had to do this for,

but I'm not saying. I already outed enough people. But one of the things that I had to do, I was the pill filler for all of the TV and movie shows that you've watched. If someone took a pill, I'm the one that put fucking powdered sugar in that pill. What?

But there was... Yeah, what a cool job! But there was... Why did you ever cool job. But there was one act. Why did you ever quit that? I don't know. I guess to be here tonight. I guess. It's fine.

So there was one actor that had to, it was like the most simple scene. They had to take one pill one time in like the entire series of the show, but demanded that there were a hundred pills so that, and God forbid they needed to do it a hundred times. Oh God. And all of them had to be stevia, not powdered sugar. Right. Which by the way is so way, is so gross.

Just imagine doing this with stevia for five hours, and apparently it turns into concrete on your fingers. Ew! Anyway, that was my story. But then I watched that episode, and of course, this scene didn't even make it into the show. That was always the bane of my existence. That's rough, my dude.

Like, for nothing! Okay. For now, though. For now, though. For this exact moment. You got it. But since you did this, I've been thinking about that. So I needed to say it and get it off my chest.

I really sent you right back to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. I was just thinking the whole time you were talking about this. Oh, yeah? i used to work as an assistant on a show also i will not name and uh my job was to scrape kale off the floor with a butter knife so yep yeah super good and the kale was on the floor because i always bought salads for the producer and they had too much lettuce on them so he would throw them on the ground and and then I would have to. It's a whole thing. LA's exactly like you think it is, by the way. We have fun.

Yeah. It's like, this salad sucks, and then you have to clean it up. There's so much extra lettuce in this salad. I cannot. This is why Eva loves us so much. We just throw shit all over the floor. I'm just kidding. Every time we look at Eva, we're like, get us a salad with less lettuce, please.

Thank you. Make me a pill of stevia now. I need 100 stevia-packed pills now. Do it with your fingers. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, I don't even know what the hell I'm talking about. This is fun, though. Okay.

Yeah, we'll do a whole episode on our horrible Hollywood experiences sometime. They're like, yeah, we just fucking heard it thanks god okay sorry i'm gonna go back to this terrible murder thing that happened that was me trying to do the the sparkle of light thing yeah yeah yeah you know suburbs okay uh yada yada yada right so you the pill machines they moved to chicago to hide out they were there during the murders okay so then he looked right he looked like the surveillance photo and people were like holy shit i think that's him um however it turns out that uh he and his wife had actually bought amtrak tickets and gone from chicago back to new york city on september 4th 1982 which was 25 days before the murders

and because they said the cyanide would have had to been placed there like the day before at the latest because the cyanide would eat through the bottles. I see. They said there's no way he could have done it if he was gone 25 days before. Got it. Okay. So they said, like, it's possible that he flew in for, like, two hours and then placed them and flew out, but they're like, it's very unlikely.

That's a very specific instance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seemed very unlikely. However, because he fucking is an asshole, he was convicted of extortion and served 13 years of a 20-year sentence for trying to, like, pin this murder, like, multi-person murder on his old boss for not even stealing. For $500.

Yeah, for $500. So he served 13 years of a 20-year sentence, and he was released in 1995 on parole. But that's not the end of his story because well okay while he was in prison uh lewis bizarrely offered his help uh to the fbi and explained in detail how someone might go about injecting the capsules with lethal amounts of cyanide so they were like well we're gonna keep an eye on you anyway because you seem you're asking some interesting questions he seemed to know a a lot about how this might work. As if that's not enough, in 2010,

so he was released in 95, in 2010 James Lewis published a book I'm not making this up. I'm not making this up. Called Poison! Exclamation point. Shut up. It was literally Might as well be a book called I'm Guilty! Exclamation point. It was me! Yeah, I know.

The book's literally like, it's the most like, oh god, it's so ridiculous. It's called Poison! Exclamation point. And then the subtext is The Doctor's Dilemma. But he insisted that the book had nothing to do with the Tylenol murders. Obviously.

So, that's neither here nor there. There's really no, they were like, well, we can't, I mean, he says it has nothing to do with it. We can't really pin it on, like, so that, let's just put him in our pocket for number two, right? Now, the next suspect is my favorite. Oh, already? Very interesting. I put four Ys on very, so you know it's going to be good.

The next suspect is Ted kaczynski the unabomber who is currently serving life in prison for killing three people wounding 23 others with bombs sent through the mail um this is just one theory but i think it's actually a pretty solid one and a lot of people do actually think that it was him so ted kaczynski is an illinois native and his first bomb was found in Chicago. Obviously, that's where the murders took place. However, there is one Tylenol death that was not official, and it occurred two months before the Chicago murders. And that was the cyanide poisoning via extra-strength Tylenol of J. Adam Mitchell in Sheridan, Wyoming, of all places.

It was kind of like an outlier. Adam Mitchell in Sheridan, Wyoming of all places. It was kind of like an outlier. Okay. And Sheridan, Wyoming is a town very far from Chicago, but also very close to and on the route to Kaczynski's cabin in Montana where he lived at the time of the killings.

Okay. So if you look at a map, it's very weird. It's like Chicago's here, Sheridan, Wyoming's here, and his cabin's over here. Oh. So they're very, very close. So it might have been a practice scenario? Yeah, they think maybe... People who abide by the theory think, yeah, maybe he did a trial run. Exactly, exactly.

So there's also a map of where all the Tylenol purchases were made in Chicago. And weirdly enough, the epicenter of the map... You know how they do that thing on Criminal Minds where they're like, well, the line and the line and the line. Right. Love a good line. You know. Oh, my gosh.

Love a good Criminal Minds. Let's talk about it later. Okay. Sorry. I just got really swept up in my own thoughts. Okay. So, right. So they found the, quote, epicenter, which is oftentimes where the person lives because they kind of try to go out of their own neighborhood.

But then it ends up creating kind of like a perimeter. That's so nice. Jinx! Aww. We still got it. Remember that time we said perimeter at the same time? Eva, write that

down. Simpler times. Simpler times. So they found the perimeter. Nope perimeter nope okay they found the epicenter of the map and it happened to be kaczynski's parents house well where he occasionally stayed uh so that was odd uh so according to kaczynski himself his motive was quote a desire to destroy the public's faith in the technological industrial system. And in his manifesto, he expressed a dislike specifically of the manufacturers of drugs and pills. Okay.

So they were like, hmm, that is an odd. That checks out. Yeah, it checks out. Okay, so this is like a weird fun fact that I didn't know, but maybe you all know. Did you know Ted Kaczynski had an obsession with wood? Yeah? Okay, no, two people Yeah? Okay, yeah.

No? Two people do. Okay, well, I'll tell you. How? So, okay, so he had this obsession with, like, the concept of wood. I know, it's weird. Let me explain. So several of his bombing victims that he picked had the last name Wood

or lived on streets that were either called, like, Wood Avenue or they had, like, a type of wood, like Pine Street. Like, I'm not kidding. Interesting. had the last name Wood or lived on streets that were either called like Wood Avenue or they had like a type of wood like Pine Street. Like, I'm not kidding. Interesting. Yeah. He had a weird obsession with like basically like the vocabulary surrounding wood. I listen.

Okay. Right. Okay. So that's like should be the least weird thing that's happened in this whole story. That's the one we're all hung up on. That's the one I'm like, huh. I do have a couple examples. So one of his victims was named percy so he picked these bombing victims kind of like at random seemingly but there are connections for example one of his victims was named percy wood who lived in lake forest illinois All right. We all like wood. Okay.

So one of the other victims was Gilbert Murray, who was president of the California Forestry Association. And the return addresses and pseudonyms that he would put on the packages, like the bombs that he would mail, would include references to wood. For example, one of the pseudonyms he used was Frederick Benjamin Isaac Wood, who lived on 549 wood street in wood like california he's that's literally he's overcompensating with the wood yes too much reel it in he's not even being clever about the euphemism at all but whatever we'll talk about later okay so wood like california yeah so basically he had this clearly

like thing and he would leave clues kind of like i mean mean, a lot of people think he's the Zodiac Killer, but he left a lot of clues and, like, cryptograms, and they all had to do with wood. Like, it's very odd. I didn't know there were so many ways wood could be even thought about. It's just the fucking word wood, too. It's not even like, oh, and then he's going to do clever, like, no, it's just that fucking word. Like, he's not even clever about it. Anyway, okay. We'll talk about that for, like, five hours. Yeah, we're going to do clever, like, no, it's just a fucking word. He's not even clever about it. Anyway, okay.

We'll talk about that for like five hours. We're going to talk about it. But I do have to tell you why I'm talking about it now, because everyone's like, please stop. But I do have a reason why I'm telling you about his weird obsession, which is that two of the three founders of Johnson & Johnson had the middle name Wood. Ah, okay. What's more, guess who else had a brown, guess who else had a brown guess who else had a nope a brown what i didn't i don't listen i didn't speak english for a while it's a whole thing don't worry about it what's more guess who else had a brown beard and receding hairline like the photo in the like the guy in the uh the the paula prince

photo who ted kaczynski i forgot to tell you he had a brown beard and a receding hairline that's part of the thing if you look at the photo it looks kind of like it could either be this lewis guy or ted kaczynski because it's kind of blurry but like it really could be either one of them so okay a little weird um obviously of this is circumstantial evidence. But in February 2009, the FBI did request a DNA sample from Kaczynski. So, they were obviously taking the lead seriously. Like, the FBI believed he could be possibly a suspect. However, Kaczynski himself has denied any involvement, which is a little bit odd because he's already in prison for life.

And he's not the type to kind of, like, deny he's because he has his whole manifesto like it doesn't seem like he would say he didn't do it if he if he did right gotcha um so in the end unfortunately to this day no one knows who the tylenol killer was or what their motive may have been but there is some good news that came of all this and that is that in may of 1983 Congress approved the Tylenol Bill which required that all pill bottles feature tamper-proof foil seals and that is why we're not getting poisoned anymore. Yay! And that's the story of the Chicago Tylenol Murders.

Thank you, guys. Isn't that crazy, though? That's bananas. I did think I would find out who the guy was at the end, but I guess that's for another day. Sucks for you. Let's go with Unabomber. That's the most fun theory of all, I think.

Yeah. Well, we'll be talking about that for a while. Anyway. Thank you guys. Anyway, thank you guys for having us. We had such a blast. Oh! This is so fun. Oh, my.

I'm so scared. I don't know. Here's what I think happened. Here's what I think happened here's what I think happened we put out that episode a couple episodes ago of the live show from Portland and then we like we were so stoked that everyone was so enthusiastic and really like hyped

and then ever since and every show happens to be very loud like everyone's trying to beat Portland I think we really set a bar which is good we like that it's good it's amazing thank you guys so much thank you thank you