Casefile True Crime - Case 118: The Chicago Tylenol Murders

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

After seven residents of Chicago passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in 1982, authorities discovered they shared a common link. In the hours before their deaths, each of the individuals had taken Tylenol branded paracetamol.  --- Episode narrated by the Anonymous Host Episode researched by Milly Raso and Anonymous Host Episode written by Milly Raso For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-118-the-chicago-tylenol-murders

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Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. Rakuten.ca Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. On Wednesday, September 29, 1982, in the Illinois suburb of Arlington Heights,

27-year-old US postal worker Adam Janus felt the symptoms of a cold coming on and decided to take the day off from work. After picking up his two children from preschool, he visited a local jewel supermarket to purchase some pain relief medication. He chose a 50-capsule bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, an over-the-counter brand of paracetamol used to treat pain and fever. Adam returned home, ate lunch, then informed his wife he was going to take two Tylenol and lie down. When she went to check on him a short while later, she found Adam in bed convulsing.

Paramedics were called, and by the time they arrived to the Janus House, Adam's state had worsened significantly. He was completely unresponsive, his pupils were fixed and dilated, his breathing laboured, and his blood pressure was alarmingly low. They rushed Adam to Northwest Community Hospital. He arrived in a comatose state and died in the emergency ward shortly thereafter at 3.15pm. The hospital's medical director, Dr Thomas Kim, declared Adam's cause of death as cardiac arrest, but was unsure what prompted the fatal condition in the otherwise young and healthy father. Dr Kim struggled to explain his uncertain diagnosis to grieving members of Adam's family,

and they left confused and devastated over their sudden loss. The group reconvened at Adam's Arlington Heights home to support his wife and children, and begin making funeral plans. Later that afternoon, Adam's 25-year-old younger brother, Stanley, was overcome with a grief-induced headache. He informed his wife, 19-year-old Theresa, and the couple went in search of a remedy, finding a full bottle of extra strength Tylenol on the kitchen counter. Stanley took two capsules, as did Theresa, as she also felt unwell. Minutes later, Stanley grasped his chest and collapsed to the floor. His eyes rolled back into his head as foam started pouring out of his mouth.

By the time the emergency services arrived near seven minutes later, Theresa had also fallen violently ill and started having a seizure. Stanley's pulse weakened and his breathing became heavy and laboured. Once Theresa's seizure subsided, her body stiffened and her breathing decreased to just four to five intakes per minute, before she stopped breathing on her own altogether. Back at Northwest Community Hospital, Dr. Thomas Kim was getting ready to leave work for the day when a nurse informed him that the Janus family were being brought back in. Dr. Kim presumed something must have happened to Adam's parents,

as they had been weak with the stress over the unexpected death of their son that afternoon. The nurse explained, no, it's his brother. Dr. Kim had met Stanley Janus earlier that day and was surprised to hear that the healthy six-foot-tall young man had suddenly fallen ill, presuming he must have fainted from grief. The nurse informed him, they are doing CPR and they are working on his wife too. The remaining members of the Janus family were placed under observation in hospital and even given their last rites in fear that they too would succumb to the unidentified illness that had struck Adam, Stanley and Theresa. Multiple explanations for the sickness were

considered, including carbon monoxide poisoning and botulism, a rare and potentially fatal type of food poisoning, but both were investigated and ruled out. A search party consisting of an investigator for the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, several local police officers and Arlington Heights nurse Helen Jensen were sent to Adam's quarantined house to look for possible contaminants. Nurse Jensen came across a bottle of Tylenol and recalled a conversation she had with Adam's grieving widow, who had explained that the last thing her husband did before falling unconscious was take some of the painkillers. Stanley and Theresa had reportedly taken some too. Suspecting that there was something wrong with the medication, Jensen confiscated the bottle and

the search party returned to the Northwest Community Hospital, where they learned Stanley Janus had since passed away. His wife, Theresa, was in an extremely critical and unstable condition. MUSIC That same night, Arlington Heights Fire Lieutenant Philip Capatelli received a phone call from his mother-in-law, Marge. The daughter of her friend, Gina Kellerman, had died suddenly that morning, and she sought an explanation for the tragedy. The Kellermans lived in the neighbouring suburb of Elk Grove Village, so Philip rang a fellow

firefighter who worked in the region, Richard Keyworth. Richard was aware of the incident, as earlier that day he made an impromptu visit to his fire station to collect some mail, and while there, overheard radio chatter about the peculiar death of 12-year-old Mary Kellerman. Hours earlier, as dawn broke at 6.30, a feverish Mary complained to her parents that she had a sore throat, runny nose, and headache. Dennis and Gina Kellerman decided to keep her home from school, and gave her one extra strength Tylenol to ease her discomfort.

A short while later, Dennis heard a heavy thud emanate from the bathroom and went to investigate, finding his pajama-clad daughter unconscious on the floor. By the time paramedics arrived, Mary was in full cardiac arrest. She was rushed to Alexian Brothers Medical Centre, where she died at 9.56am. Heart attack, stroke, and an undiagnosed terminal condition were opted as possible causes of death, with more sinister speculation centred on the Kellerman family. An investigator interviewed Mary's father, and the police visited their home, but they uncovered nothing out of order.

The paramedics who treated Mary compiled a report which noted that the 12-year-old had taken Tylenol shortly before her collapse. Given the popularity of the painkiller, this detail didn't stand out as particularly meaningful. As firefighter Richard Keyworth relayed the circumstances of Mary's death to Philip Capatelli over the phone that night, Philip grew increasingly concerned. He had been monitoring a police radio throughout the day, and overheard reports of a string of bizarre tragedies in his Arlington Heights district, in which two brothers had died, and one of their wives was left in a critical condition.

Philip noticed the Janus family's incident shared remarkable similarities to the sudden death of Mary Kellerman. As the two firefighters compared notes, Richard noticed the common feature in all four incidents, and remarked, this is a wild stab, but maybe it's Tylenol. Richard and Philip's theory reached the team at Northwest Community, who were already attributing the Janus' illness to the Tylenol, but had yet to connect Mary Kellerman to the case. The Tylenol seized from the two homes were compared. Both 50-pill bottles were the brand's extra strength variety, purchased from dual supermarkets

within Chicago's western suburbs, and marked with batch number MC-2880. The remaining red and white capsules inside the bottles were poured out, releasing a strong odor of bitter almonds. The group immediately knew what this peculiar sign indicated, cyanide. When ingested, cyanide blocks the body's ability to absorb oxygen. Nausea, headache, and dizziness occur within minutes, and can be followed by the poison's telltale signs, shortness of breath, cherry red skin discoloration, and dramatic shifts in heart rate or blood pressure, progressing to cause seizures, coma, and death.

Book County's chief toxicologist, Michael Schaefer, conducted an immediate analysis of the Tylenol. He noticed several of the capsules were slightly discoloured and swollen in the red-coloured half. Furthermore, Tylenol powder was typically white, powdery, and did not dissolve in water. But the contents of these abnormal capsules were moist, grey, lumpy, crystalline, and completely soluble. Testing of this unknown substance confirmed it was potassium cyanide.

Six of the remaining capsules in the Kellerman bottle and four from Adam Janus' were laced with cyanide. Five to seven micrograms of the poison was fatal. The tainted capsules were filled with approximately 65mg, 10,000 times more than the amount required to kill the average person. Blood samples obtained from Mary Kellerman as well as Adam and Stanley Janus came back positive for a lethal amount of cyanide. Critically ill, Theresa Janus was also found to have the toxic salt in her system.

At the time, Tylenol was the best-selling non-prescription pain reliever in the United States. The capsule variety was especially popular, as it was considered easier to swallow than the brand's tablet form. In 1982 alone, Tylenol learned its proprietor, Johnson & Johnson, approximately $400 million in sales, and claimed 37% of the over-the-counter pain relief market share. Tylenol made up one-fifth of the company's total product revenue, which included a range of medications, first aid supplies, baby products, and skincare.

Johnson & Johnson were unaware of the emergency unfolding in Chicago's West until a local reporter contacted the company seeking comment on the deaths. A seven-member strategy team was established to deal with the crisis, maintaining that protecting the public was their primary concern, followed by salvaging their brand. Many officials met with detectives in the affected areas before launching an internal investigation to track down the cause of the contamination. In the meantime, they recalled the estimated 94,000 bottles of Tylenol in circulation from Batch MC 2880.

Widespread public panic, dubbed Tylenol hysteria, ensued. The medical examiner's office was bombarded with phone calls from worried locals who had recently taken the painkiller. While paramedics were equipped with cyanide antidote kits, as an influx of patients flooded regional hospitals reporting symptoms of poisoning. Local church groups and the Boy Scouts door-knocked through neighborhoods to help spread the word about the contamination, as police patrols cruised the streets announcing the threat over loudspeakers. The health department plastered the front doors of local homes with notices that read,

This message is to alert you about a contaminant that has been found in Tylenol products. We strongly urge you to stop using these products immediately. At Johnson & Johnson's Washington-based manufacturing plant, where Batch MC 2880 had originated, a quality control sample of the shipment's Tylenol powder was analyzed and came back clean. Company representatives assured the public they did not store cyanide at any of their factories and were certain that contamination occurred elsewhere. Some speculated the poisoning was an intentional act of sabotage by a vindictive employee, but this was quickly curtailed by the company, who explained the majority of Tylenol's production

was carried out by machinery. As news of the Tylenol poisoning spread, police departments and hospital staff throughout Illinois initiated inquiries into recent sudden or suspicious deaths in their regions that might be linked. Two cases emerged, one in Elmhurst and the other in Winfield. At 4pm on Wednesday, September 29, office worker Mary McFarland complained to her colleagues at the Illinois Bell Phone Center of a tremendous headache. It wasn't unusual, the 31-year-old was a periodic migraine sufferer and as such carried

a tin in her purse filled with a range of pain relief medication. Mary had stocked up her supply the day earlier, purchasing a 50-capsule bottle of extra-strength Tylenol from the Woolworth-Biven Dime Store in the Yorktown Shopping Center. When she felt a headache coming on at work, Mary disappeared into the break room to take some of her medicine. She re-emerged a short time later and informed her colleagues that she felt nauseous and dizzy before she collapsed against the table. Mary was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital in nearby Downers Grove, where she died at

318 the following morning. Detectives later searched the tin in Mary McFarland's purse and found 10 Tylenol capsules amongst the assorted pills inside. Five of them contained cyanide. The bottle these pills had originated from was found in a medicine cabinet at her Elmhurst home, with only one of the remaining capsules inside testing positive for the poison. The contaminated bottle featured batch number 1910MD, which was manufactured in Johnson and Johnson's Texas-based plant.

Around six hours after the death of Mary McFarland, 27-year-old Mary Reiner passed away at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield. The mother had only just given birth to her fourth child, a baby boy, at the same hospital six days earlier. When Mary was discharged following the delivery, the hospital staff handed her a bag of items to help with her postpartum recovery, which contained a blister pack of eight extra-strength Tylenol capsules. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 29, Mary consumed two of the capsules and was

struck with nausea and dizziness. Her symptoms quickly worsened, and she died the next day. Four of the remaining six Tylenol capsules in her blister pack were found to contain cyanide. Initial media reports linked Mary Reiner's death to a bottle of regular-strength Tylenol she had purchased earlier that day. However, Scott Bartz, author of the Tylenol Mafia, concluded the capsules responsible were the extra-strength variety from the hospital blister pack.

In his book, Bartz explained that when Mary returned home from the store with her Tylenol bottle, she swallowed two pills from the blister pack before emptying the remaining six into the regular-strength bottle. None of the regular-strength capsules contained cyanide, meaning the bottle had not been tampered with. How the blister pack came to be contaminated remained unclear. After learning of Mary Reiner's death, hospitals throughout the region destroyed the Tylenol in their possession, meaning the batch number these pills originated could not be accurately

determined. As anticipated, blood samples taken from Mary McFarland and Mary Reiner came back positive for a lethal amount of cyanide, increasing the Tylenol death toll to five. The crisis claimed its sixth victim the following afternoon of Friday, October 1, when Teresa Janus was taken off life support after doctors had declared her completely brain-dead. At 5 p.m. that same afternoon, just over 20 miles away in Chicago's Old Town District, Carol Prince arrived at the high-rise apartment that belonged to her sister, 35-year-old United Airlines flight attendant, Paula.

Carol held concerns about her sister, as her family had received a phone call from the airline informing them that Paula had failed to show up for work that day. Carol gained access to Paula's seventh floor apartment and found her lifeless body on the floor in the hallway. An open bottle of extra-strength Tylenol was sitting on the vanity in the nearby bathroom. Six of the capsules inside were found to contain cyanide. It was marked with batch number 1801MA, which also originated from Johnson & Johnson's Texas manufacturing plant.

Paula Prince became the seventh victim of what would come to be known as the Chicago Tylenol murders, and the first in the city, meaning the contamination zone had expanded from the western suburbs into the heart of Chicago, putting millions of lives at risk. The search of Paula's apartment uncovered a Walgreens pharmacy receipt for the Tylenol dated the evening of Wednesday, September 29. Investigators determined that after touching down from an interstate flight at O'Hare International Airport at around 8 p.m., Paula drove towards her apartment, stopping at the Walgreens on the corner of West North Avenue and Northwell Street, where she purchased the Tylenol.

Upon arriving home, Paula inadvertently took a poisoned capsule and collapsed beyond the bathroom door, remaining there for two days until her sister found her. The Walgreens store had no security cameras in the aisles to show how the cyanide-laced Tylenol ended up on the shelf, but there was one camera at the front of the store that was part of an automatic teller machine. This camera snapped a picture whenever someone withdrew cash, capturing an overview of the entire register area. At 9 p.m. on Wednesday, September 29, as a customer obtained money from the ATM, a photograph

was taken that happened to capture Paula Prince at the exact moment she purchased the Tylenol. The black and white photo showed her in her flight attendant's uniform, turning away from the register to look at a nearby magazine rack. It is noticed a Caucasian man standing several feet away, facing towards her. As he was positioned in the far right background of the image, the man's facial features were somewhat indistinct, but it was clear that he had a groomed beard, dark hair that was thinning on top, and was wearing a light-colored jacket, and possibly wide-rimmed spectacles. The chilling way in which the man appeared to be watching Paula led police to believe

he could be the killer, intently observing his oblivious victim as she purchased the pills he had poisoned. As pills originating from multiple batches, manufacturing plants, and drugstores were now found to be poisoned, Johnson & Johnson announced a total nationwide recall of all Tylenol products, a decision that would cost the company $100 million. It was a huge task, given there was an estimated 31 million bottles in circulation, but the company vowed to destroy them all. They offered refunds and exchanges while halting all Tylenol production and advertising.

450,000 Telex messages were sent to doctors' offices, hospitals, and trade groups to warn them of the potential dangers. As company executives appeared on news programs promising that Tylenol would not return to store shelves until the company had perfected tamper-proof packaging. Johnson & Johnson also offered a $100,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest or conviction of the person or persons responsible for the tampering. At the time, there was no protective sealing on any over-the-counter drug bottles which made tampering easy.

Furthermore, capsule casings could be pulled apart to allow its contents to be replaced, with the two halves then reattached to appear untouched. Investigators noted that some of the poisoned capsules were put together more artfully than others, leading them to believe that either two or more people were involved, with some working more carefully than others, or that it was the work of just one person who didn't have much patience. Millions of pills were surrendered nationwide. In addition to the five bottles that led to the victim's death, three more bottles sold

in the Chicago area were found to have been poisoned. Two were handed in by customers, while the other was found in an Osco drugstore in the northwestern suburb of Schaumburg. The recall was a success, bringing an abrupt end to the crisis, and ensuring the death toll ended at seven. A task force comprised of more than 100 investigators from 15 agencies fronted inquiries into what was now regarded a mass murder investigation, with many officers working 15-20 hour shifts with no breaks to expedite efforts to find the culprit.

In a surprise revelation, Johnson and Johnson disclosed that they had not been completely forthright earlier, admitting they did indeed store potassium cyanide at some of their factories. The substance was used in laboratory-based chemical testing, specifically to test povidone, the primary binder used to make Tylenol. Company officials insisted these labs were in a remote and separate location, far from the manufacturing sector, and were confident the foreign substance would have been detected if it was added during production. As only a few capsules per bottle were contaminated, and they had come from two separate batches

and factories, it seemed unlikely the poisoning was carried out during the manufacturing process. Nevertheless, investigators interviewed current and former staff, as well as their friends and families, but failed to identify any disgruntled suspects who had a deadly bandetta against the company. The contaminated Tylenol bottles were manufactured in Washington and Texas in August, before being dispersed nationwide to approximately 100 distributors, who then turned them over to around 11,000 retailers. As none of the victims knew one another, and the crisis was isolated to the Chicago area,

it seemed likely that the tampering occurred after the Tylenol was shipped to Illinois, but before it was purchased by the victims. Employees at each of the stores that sold the poisoned pills were questioned, as were the janitors, delivery men, and maintenance personnel who had access to the stores, but no arrests were made. Many theories arose, including that the crimes were committed by one of Johnson & Johnson's competitors, or someone who stood the profit from investing in the safety packaging industry. Recently released prison inmates, psychiatric patients, and a Puerto Rican terrorist group

were also investigated as possible suspects. It was even speculated that the murderer only intended to kill one of the victims, but carried out the widespread contamination as a cover-up. Consequently, several of the victims' family members, friends, and associates were questioned, but they too were eventually cleared. Investigators considered whether someone might be seeking reprisal for the death of a loved one caused by a Tylenol overdose, and poured through a year's worth of local newspapers trying to find reports of such an incident.

According to uncover anything, they scanned the papers for something that could give significance to the date of the murders, but once again found nothing of interest. In the meantime, a police hotline rang off the hook as callers offered up thousands of leads, but the process of sifting through this information was hampered by pranksters, false confessions, and psychics detailing their dubious visions. It seemed as though the perpetrator was local to the Chicago area. After purchasing or shoplifting the bottles, they then returned to the stores to discreetly deposit them back on the shelves.

No clear foreign fingerprints were isolated on any of the tampered bottles, indicating the killer may have worn gloves, which would have drawn attention given that the weather was warm, but no such sightings were reported. As it was a four-hour drive between the six affected stores, investigators believed the perpetrator distributed the bottles in a single day, likely the day before the poisonings commenced. This theory was supported by an incident reported by two Illinois police officers occurring in the early morning hours of Tuesday, September 28.

The pair arrived to the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge and Restaurant in Elgin to grab a bite to eat, where, on the grassy median strip separating the parking lot from the adjacent road, they noticed two cardboard boxes marked with the words, extra-strength Tylenol capsules, and the name McNeil, the subsidiary company of Johnson & Johnson responsible for manufacturing Tylenol. Information displayed on the boxes indicated they contained 30 bottles of extra-strength Tylenol. One box was open, and only 24 bottles remained inside, two of which were open.

A large quantity of white powder was scattered on the ground, along with hundreds of empty red and white capsule casings, some of which appeared to have been emptied and put back together. One officer handled the items, but as the cyanide poisonings had not yet occurred, the pair ultimately disregarded the find and went to get food as planned. As they ate, the officer who touched the items developed a headache, and his arm broke out in a painful rash and started swelling. When the pair returned to their vehicle, they stopped to re-examine the Tylenol boxes, and

at this time the second officer handled the items, and was soon overcome with a headache, laziness, and nausea. When the news of the Chicago Tylenol murders broke two days later, the officers reported their bizarre find to their superiors, and the Howard Johnson's motor lodge and restaurant parking lot was thoroughly searched. Little remained of the mysterious Tylenol boxes, and testing of what was recovered came back negative for cyanide. The first three memorial services for the Chicago Tylenol murders began on Saturday,

October 2. Around 150 mourners gathered at Queen of the Rosary Catholic Church in Elk Grove Village to farewell the youngest victim, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman. Her unexpected death had left her fellow seventh grade classmates and teachers in shock, and her grief-stricken mother had to be physically supported throughout the service. Less than ten miles away, Mary Reiner was farewelled by her loved ones in her childhood town Villa Park. Her husband Ed reminisced about their long and loving marriage, which had resulted in

four children, including their newborn son. In the neighboring suburb of Elmhurst, Mary McFarland was remembered as an exceptional single mother to her two sons aged four and two. Friends and colleagues spoke of the positive impact she had on others, from her sense of humour to her work ethic, describing her as a good person and a good friend. The scale of loss was particularly immense for the Janus family, who had lost three members within days of one another. On Tuesday, October 5, a joint funeral service was held for Adam, Stanley and Theresa.

Adam's four-year-old daughter kept her hand on her father's casket as the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago blessed all three victims and said, "'This is a great tragedy and loss. I wish as your pastor that I could relieve you of your burden of sorrow. But I can't.'" At the same time, a funeral was held for Paula Prince in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Detectives staked out each of the funerals on the lookout for anyone uninvited, out of place or otherwise acting suspiciously.

Although several people caught their attention, nothing further developed. Time-lapse surveillance cameras were discreetly positioned around the cemeteries to monitor the gravesites 24 hours a day and remained in place until the device's internal mechanisms were frozen by the inbound cold weather. On Wednesday, October 6, eight days into the investigation, an envelope labelled Tylenol arrived at the Philadelphia-based office of Tylenol's manufacturer, McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Inside was a handwritten letter which 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 have spent less than $50, and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle.

If you want to stop the killing, then wire $1 million to bank account 8449597 at Continental Illinois Bank, Chicago. 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. The letter was immediately handed to the FBI, who worked to determine if the extortion attempt was just a con man capitalizing on the crimes, or legitimately the murderer responsible for the tamperings. They managed to lift fingerprints from the document and scratch away the envelope's

postmark, revealing a postage commerce number linked to a travel agency called Lakeside in Chicago. The U.S. Department of Justice directed the Continental Illinois Bank to turn over the financial records of the account mentioned in the letter. The account had been closed five months earlier and belonged to Frederick Miller McKayhee, an heir to the Miller Brewing Fortune. Investigators quickly established that Frederick was not responsible for penning the letter, and requested he list the names of anyone who would seek to ruin his reputation.

Frederick was the former owner of the now defunct Lakeside travel agency, and many of his ex-employees suspected he had diverted company funds to pay his own personal bills, which resulted in their final paychecks bouncing. Given the envelope used was from Frederick's former business, his list contained the names of four resentful staff members. One was Nancy Richardson. Former colleagues recalled that her husband, Robert, was somewhat eccentric and outspoken. During a wage claim hearing for the former Lakeside travel agency staff members, he

had become particularly outraged when told there was nothing they could do about their unpaid wages, as there was no money for them to lay a claim against. Immediately after the hearing, he was witnessed having a heated argument with Frederick, and although others accepted the result and moved on, Robert continued going after Frederick. Others looking into Robert's background discovered he had a rapid, unhinged temper, and a reputation for holding grudges. They obtained handwriting samples from Robert's former employer, the first National Bank of Chicago where he had worked as a temp in numerous departments until early September, and they

discovered the handwriting was a match to the extortion letter sent to Johnson & Johnson. Police attempted to apprehend Robert, but he and his wife Nancy had since left their rundown apartment in Chicago's Northside for an unknown destination. A nationwide search commenced, and the police soon discovered that the names Robert and Nancy Richardson were aliases for James and Leanne Lewis. After being abandoned by his parents at age three, James Lewis was adopted by a childless couple. He grew up to become a troublesome child who was known to fly into rages.

In one instance, he chased his mother with an axe, and in another, he faced an assault charge after breaking several of his father's ribs. At one point, Lewis was hospitalized and diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia after overdosing on over-the-counter painkillers, but he later claimed his suicide attempt and violent behavior was simply a plan concocted by his family to avoid him being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Despite the dysfunction in his home life, Lewis enjoyed school and received good grades, later attending the University of Missouri where he met his future wife, Leanne.

The pair were staunchly devoted to one another and cultivated a comfortable life, both working as bookkeepers at a tax service until Lewis exploded at the business owner over a trivial matter, prompting the couple to leave. The pair then started their own taxation business in Kansas City, where 72-year-old Raymond West became their client. Raymond was a retired truck driver who lived a quiet life alone, tending to his garden and taking daily walks. On Monday, July 24, 1978, a missing person's report was filed on his behalf as a friend

noticed Raymond's car was in the garage of his home, but knocks to his front door were going unanswered. A note was found stuck in the door, written on James Lewis' business letterhead, it read, Ray is out of town until Thursday, for further, call Jim. Police forced their way into the home and found another note on the coffee table, which read, Please don't disturb until after 1pm, sleeping late, Raymond. Despite being signed off with the elderly man's name, it was not scrawled in his handwriting. On Saturday, August 14, police conducted a second search of Raymond's house.

A foul odor lingered inside, and they uncovered bloody bed sheets in the bedroom. In the basement was a bloodstained lawn chair along with a garbage bag containing Raymond's toupee and eyeglasses. In an upstairs room, officers noticed a foot-long stain running from the ceiling down the wall and made their way into the attic to determine its source. There, they found Raymond's decomposed and dismembered body, partially wrapped in sheets and garbage bags. His legs had been severed at the hip joint and placed alongside his head.

Due to the state of his remains, a cause of death could not be established. It is discovered $5,000 had been withdrawn from Raymond's bank account and paid to James Lewis, who was promptly arrested. He maintained that the payment was a business expansion loan, which seemed unusual given Raymond was known to be tight with money. Lewis was released from police custody and permitted officers to search his home and vehicle, where they found 20 feet of knotted white rope, a garbage bag, and a black case containing papers and checks bearing Raymond's name.

He was arrested again and charged with Raymond West's murder, a crime which he vehemently denied committing. In October 1979, days before his trial was set to begin, Lewis' defense counsel argued that the police had no probable cause to arrest their client in the first instance, and that he wasn't read his Miranda rights at the time. They also claimed that the original indictment was defective and was not worded correctly, as it omitted the term felonious. As Raymond's cause of death was unknown, his attorney had lined up a series of witnesses

to testify the elderly man had high blood pressure and a potent medication regime, both of which may have been responsible. However, it didn't explain how Raymond's legs came to be severed from his body, and in a bizarre assertion, Lewis' attorney told the Chicago Reader newspaper, It's one thing to kill somebody, it's another thing to dismember them after they're dead. And whilst dismembering somebody after they're dead is repulsive and repugnant, it's not homicide. With nothing but circumstantial evidence to link Lewis to the crime, the case was dismissed

and he left court a free man. Prosecutor James Bell told reporters that it was, quote, In December 1981, Lewis and his wife Leanne fled the state after police became aware of his involvement in a fraudulent credit card scheme. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but the couple successfully evaded capture, heading northeast to Chicago, where they adopted the aliases Robert and Nancy Richardson, making it one of 17 aliases Lewis adopted over the years. Leanne secured a job working as an accounting clerk at Lakeside Travel Agency before its

closure three months later. Lewis bounced between temp jobs, leaving the National Bank of Chicago in early September, which prompted the now unemployed couple to relocate again. News of Lewis' fugitive status and connection to the Tylenol case began making headlines and he started penning letters to the Chicago Tribune newspaper to declare his innocence. Earthmarks on the letters revealed he was now living in New York, leading 200 FBI agents to descend on the city in an effort to find him. As it was evident that Lewis was regularly reading the Chicago Tribune, every newsstand

that stocked the paper was put under 24-hour surveillance, but he never showed up to make a purchase. Agents concluded he must have been reading copies of the newspaper in a library and paid a visit to all the city libraries to inform the staff to be on the lookout for Lewis. On Monday, December 13, a New York public library employee contacted the police when they saw Lewis sitting and reading two books, newspapers of the Southwest and the largest corporations in America, while jotting down the names and addresses of newspaper publications. He was promptly placed under arrest without incident, and his wife turned herself into

authorities soon after. Lewis' fingerprints were checked against those on the Johnson & Johnson extortion letter, revealing a match and further cementing his involvement. His handwriting also matched a second extortion letter that had been addressed to President Ronald Reagan in mid-October, which warned that the Tylenol poisonings would continue unless a federal taxation overhaul was conducted. The writer also threatened to fly remote-controlled model airplanes into the White House to scramble secret service telecommunications.

It appeared Lewis wrote this second letter in a desperate bid to deflect police attention upon realizing his attempt to frame Frederick Miller McKayhee had only succeeded in bringing attention to himself. Lewis eventually admitted to writing the Johnson & Johnson extortion letter as an act of revenge against Frederick for leaving his wife $500 out of pocket, while also alerting police to the businessman's alleged fraudulent practices. Lewis had stockpiled envelopes from Lakeside Travel Agency, and investigators suspected he had waited for the right crisis to pin on his wife's former boss, striking when the

Chicago Tylenol murders presented the perfect opportunity. Although Lewis maintained he never intended to collect the million dollars he demanded from Johnson & Johnson, police found evidence to suggest the tech savvy con man knew how to use a computer to transfer money from one bank account to another. He was subsequently charged with attempted extortion. Although he denied having anything to do with the Tylenol murders, arguing that he was in New York at the time the tamperings were believed to have taken place, investigators were not fully convinced.

Many noted he bore a resemblance to the man caught on camera in Walgreens, who had been watching Paula Prince as she unknowingly purchased the poisoned capsules, right down to the groomed beard and spectacles. Less than a month after Mary Kellerman had been laid to rest, the Chicago Tribune published a candid piece titled, Living in the Tylenol Killer's Shadow, in which columnist Bob Green addressed the child's killer directly, writing, If you are the Tylenol killer, some of this may matter to you, or it may make no difference at all.

If you are the Tylenol killer, though, you may be harboring just the vaguest curiosity about the people on the other end of your clan, the people who were unfortunate enough to purchase the bottles you had touched. If you are curious, come to a small house on a quiet, winding street in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The people who live there, Dennis and Gina Kellerman, feel you have already been inside anyway. The piece went on to describe the crushing guilt felt by Gina for purchasing the Tylenol

that ended up taking her daughter's life. Bob Green explained, If you are the Tylenol killer, you should know one more thing. Mary's mother can't have any more children. Mary was her only baby. You might be interested in knowing that Mary was born one month premature, and that as she entered the world, her mother was scared because she was not crying. But the doctor smiled and said,

It's alright, she's only sleeping. And she was. She was a quiet child, and because the Kellermans knew she would be their only child, she was especially precious to them. Green detailed how the Kellermans had considered themselves overprotective of their only child, who had to be home by dark and to call frequently to let them know she was alright. Quote, They thought they knew about every danger that could possibly touch Mary, but they didn't

know about you. Bob Green's column included the following statement to Mary's killer. If you are wondering whether Mary's parents talk about you, you don't have to wonder any more. They do. You have never been in their house, and yet they cannot walk into a room without feeling you are there. You don't know them, but you have changed their lives forever.

They feel as if they can't get away from you. As it is, you should know, Mary's parents are too shattered even to visit the cemetery. Mary is buried at St. Michael the Archangel in nearby Palatine, Illinois, and they wish they could go to her grave, but they can't. The herd is too deep, and you are keeping them even from that. Even with the full permission of the Kellerman family, Bob Green's emotional peace had actually been commissioned by the Tylenol Task Force in the hopes that would compel the unknown killer to visit Mary's grave.

After the column was published, her headstone was put under 24-hour covert surveillance for several months, but the killer did not appear. In the month following the Chicago Tylenol murders, hundreds of copycat incidents emerged across America, with the Food and Drug Administration tallying more than 270 occurrences of product tampering. People across the country fell ill after consuming pills tainted with everything from rat poison to hydrochloric acid. On Halloween, parents reported finding sharp pins concealed in candy, forcing some communities

to ban trickle-treating altogether. Tylenol returned to store shelves just over a month following the murders, after Johnson and Johnson developed triple-sealed tamper-proof packaging and invented the Caplet, a tablet coated with gelatin that was easy to swallow but harder to contaminate. These innovative concepts became the global industry standard and were soon implemented by other companies involved in the production of medicine and other consumables. Eight months after James Lewis sent the fraudulent letter to Johnson and Johnson, he was convicted of extortion and sentenced to serve 20 years in federal prison.

Although he remained a suspect in the Tylenol murders, he was just one of 400 people of interest who were extensively investigated for their possible involvement. Among them was 48-year-old Roger Arnold, a dockhand who worked for a Jewel Food's warehouse west of Chicago, the supermarket chain that sold the poisoned Tylenol to Adam Janus and Gina Kellerman. In early October 1982, Arnold was drinking at a bar called Lilies when he started telling stories about killing people with cyanide. The bar's owner, Marty Sinclair, overheard the remarks and contacted authorities.

The police conducted a search of Arnold's Southside apartment and uncovered a bag of chemical powder, funnels, beakers, test tubes, four unlicensed firearms, how-to crime manuals and copies of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Arnold was arrested and questioned for three days in relation to the Chicago Tylenol murders, during which he professed his innocence and told officers, I'd like to be in on the homicide of the guy that turned me in for what he did to me. The powder found in Arnold's apartment was determined to be potassium carbonate, a relatively harmless salt used in the production of glass and soap.

He refused to say what the chemicals were used for but asserted it was for nothing illegal. He was ultimately released without charge, but the notoriety of having been considered a suspect in the case took a huge toll on his reputation. Colleagues gave him the unwanted nickname Tylenol Kid and his local community kept their distance eyeing him with constant suspicion. Overwhelmed by the profoundly negative impact the single tip-off had on his life, Arnold sought revenge on the person who gave his name to the police. Eight months later, on the night of June 17, 1983, he drove to Lily's bar and confronted

the owner Marty Sinclair, telling him, You turned me in, before shooting him at point blank range. However, in a case of mistaken identity, Arnold had not shot Marty Sinclair at all. He had executed 46-year-old father of three, Johnston Nisha, who happened to closely resemble Marty. Arnold was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison, serving only 15. Prior to his death in 2008, he expressed remorse at his botched act of revenge, remarking,

I killed a man, a perfectly innocent person, I had choices, I could have walked away. As the Chicago Tylenol Murders investigation continued, a dossier listing potential persons of interest grew to 10,000 names. A special computer program was created to collate the hundreds of reports taken by the various police departments, which would alert officers to important discoveries, like when an individual was mentioned in multiple reports, or a common thread was recognized. Despite these efforts, with no direct connection between the victims and no motive, crime scene, or useful evidence, investigative options were limited.

FBI criminal behavior specialists were given the task of developing a psychological profile of the killer, and although they couldn't come up with a unanimous result, they agreed that the perpetrator was likely male, aged in his 20s or 30s, well above average intelligence, meticulous in his personal habits, and a loner who may hold a disdain for women. The specialists were perplexed to discover that the perpetrator hadn't left behind a message or any type of indicator to draw conclusions from, making it particularly difficult to establish their rationale. One psychologist concluded that the killer likely believed they had a perfectly good

reason for committing the crimes, but might never justify it to anyone else. It was his opinion that normal investigative procedures were not going to work in this situation, and that the person responsible was likely never going to be found. Nevertheless, politicians and senior police personnel continued to mask the dire status of the investigation by implying progress was being made. Frustrated by these false claims, Illinois police called a press conference to admit they knew nothing more now than they did when the first murders took place. These comments caused an immediate backlash, and when Chicago police superintendent Richard

Brizak was asked by his superiors to justify the remarks, he answered, By November 1982, the Tylenol task force had been reduced from 115 investigators to approximately 50, and by March the following year, the police tip line had been disconnected. From the one year anniversary of the murders arrived, the task force had been scaled down further to a team of just 10 full-time state and federal agents. That month, Illinois criminal investigations commander Thomas Shump told the Chicago Tribune that efforts were still underway to re-examine all the data collected over the previous year. Files were constantly being shifted between investigators in the hopes a fresh pair of

eyes would pick up on something that had been missed. Shump was surprised the case had not been solved sooner, stating, I applied my best people to this case. These are guys used to success, and early on, we all thought we were going to be successful this time too. We were full of energy, convinced that it was just a matter of hard work, painstaking research and making our own breaks. When you apply the kind of resources we used, you solve 99% of the cases.

That year, a bill was passed by the US Congress titled the Tylenol Bill, making it a federal crime to tamper with consumer products. The penalty for tampering aimed at hurting the reputation of a business included a $10,000 fine and up to three years in prison. Those convicted of meddling with products and endangering consumers' lives or safety faced up to a $100,000 fine and a life sentence. These new laws were put into practice just three years later, when two people in Washington State died after consuming over-the-counter excedrin pain relief capsules laced with cyanide.

This crime, covered in episode 93 of Case File, was unrelated to but directly inspired by the Chicago Tylenol murders. The mystery endured over the following years, with millions of dollars and investigative hours amounting to very little advancement and no major breakthroughs. Nine years after the tragedy, the families of the seven victims initiated a legal action against Johnson and Johnson, alleging that product tampering was a well-known problem before the murders and that the company should have taken steps to safeguard their product. In May 1991, an out-of-court settlement was reached after three days of negotiation, with

the exact terms and dollar amounts sealed by a court order. The plaintiffs were pleased with the result, as the compensation included provision for the college education of the eight children whose parents died in the poisonings. Some experts believed the company chose to forgo a trial, as even an exorbitant financial settlement was preferable over the potential brand damage that would result from litigation. At Johnson & Johnson spokesperson maintained the company had nothing to do with the poisonings and was just another victim of the crime, stating, While there is no way that we could have anticipated a criminal tampering with our product or prevented

it, we wanted to do something for these families and finally put this tragic event behind us. During his imprisonment for extortion, Tylenol Murders suspect James Lewis met with U.S. Attorney Jeremy Margolis to volunteer his services to help solve the crime. During the pair's meetings, Lewis provided hundreds of pages of manuscripts, diagrams and theories as to how the killings were carried out. In one sketch, he depicted how cyanide could be inserted into capsules, but captioned it with the statement, drawn on speculation at the request of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy D. Margolis to ensure it could not be treated as a confession.

An article in the Chicago Reader newspaper titled, A Bitter Pill, explained, In that drawing, Lewis delineates in great detail how the killer might have used an ordinary breadboard to turn an ordinary pain reliever into an agent of death. The poisoner could drill holes in the board, place separated, empty capsule halves into the holes, fill them with cyanide and scrape off the excess with a knife, recap the capsules and put them back into their original containers. The entire process could be performed in a car at the store's parking lot, allowing the killer to buy the Tylenol, contaminate the capsules and return the bottle to the

shelf minutes later. Nothing would appear out of the ordinary because the bottle would still bear the price tags and other identifying marks of that particular store. Despite all the information Lewis provided, he never directly implicated himself in the crimes. In 1995, after serving 13 years of his 20-year prison sentence, he was released on parole. Nine years later, in 2004, he was charged with rape, kidnapping and other offences in relation to the attack of a woman in his apartment building.

On the day this trial was due to commence in July 2007, the District Attorney's Office announced that they were dropping the charges because the victim refused to testify. On the 25th anniversary of the Chicago Tylenol murders in September 2007, James Lewis published a post on his web design and programming business website, Cyber Lewis, which read, In a quarter of a century, I have not been able to escape the Tylenol man label. A Google search of James Lewis Tylenol yields over 240,000 documents and the list is growing. After 25 years of cringing in fear, I am tired of hiding in silence. I will not run and tired anymore.

I will now face this controversy head on. After 25 years, the Tylenol murders remain unsolved. I have lived a long, bizarre life and I have seen a lot, yet I am literate and lucid enough to view and describe, compare and contrast hugely diverse worlds, cultures and topics without a moment of boredom or with an eye to professionalism, demographics and marketability, plus ears and heart sensitive to good taste and victim's feelings. Two years later, in early 2009, Department of Justice investigators stated publicly that although they didn't have enough evidence to charge James Lewis, they were confident

he was responsible for the Tylenol murders. In February 2009, federal investigators executed a search warrant at Lewis' first floor apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he had lived since his release from prison in 1995. After searching the residence and a nearby storage facility, five boxes full of evidence and a late model Macintosh computer were seized. Theresa Janus' brother, Walter, said he hoped the search would finally provide police with enough information to lead to an arrest, especially considering his father was about to celebrate his 80th birthday and longed to see his daughter's killer behind bars.

Walter said, They always told us that cases like this never go into the cold file, that they just don't always get the attention they deserve. All we can do is hope. We'd like to bring it to closure. The search failed to uncover any evidence to affect an arrest, but investigators were still unwilling to rule Lewis out as a suspect. In January 2010, both he and his wife were ordered to submit DNA samples and fingerprints

to authorities after a closed-door court hearing, though these submissions also did not lead to his arrest. Lewis maintained he was just a scapegoat for incompetent police who were unable to find the real Tylenol killer, but others remained convinced of his guilt, with Chicago attorney Anton Velukas stating, I believe that the evidence which was out there would lead a rational person to conclude that Lewis was in fact the murderer. However, other investigators were less convinced, surmising Lewis was just a schemer who relished

the attention, as was evident when he self-published an e-book titled, Poison, a Doctor's Dilemma, a fictional thriller about a mass catastrophe in a mid-western city. In 2012, Lifestyle Publication Chicago magazine interviewed several people involved in the Tylenol murder case to discuss their theories about the long-standing mystery 30 years on. One detective expressed his opinion that James Lewis was not involved in any way, as the extensive investigation had revealed no direct connections. Attorney General Ty Farner disputed this, saying, Do I think James Lewis was involved?

I did, and I do. But we could never put him in the city, in the places, at the right time. This was mirrored by Chicago Police Department Lieutenant August LaCalla, who worked in the violent crime squad during the Tylenol murders. He said, Lewis is a con man, and he'll do anything to get to his goal. I really believed he might have killed somebody, but they couldn't put anything on him. Lewis remained in the large pool of suspects, which at one point included infamous unabomber

Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski's first four acts of domestic terrorism occurred in the Chicago area, and he occasionally stayed at his parents' home in Lombard, Illinois. He denied any involvement in the crime, and investigators weren't fully convinced, as it didn't entirely fit his MO. When the Chicago Tylenol murders occurred in 1982, there was an almost immediate impact on Wall Street, with Johnson & Johnson's $5.4 billion stock plummeting, and their market share collapsing from 35% to 8%.

Nevertheless, the company swift actions to contain the emergency garnered praise from the media and the public. A Washington Post newspaper article published the month following the deaths stated, Johnson & Johnson has effectively demonstrated how a major business ought to handle a disaster. After investing more than $100 million, Johnson & Johnson relaunched the Tylenol brand and regained a 30% share of the market, before resuming its number one spot as America's top-selling over-the-counter pain reliever. In 2003, Fortune magazine named the company's then-CEO James Burke as one of history's

10 greatest CEOs for his handling of the crisis. Skeptics and cynics have since viewed the company with a far more critical eye. As Johnson & Johnson initially lied about storing cyanide at their Tylenol manufacturing facilities, many theorists believe the company was somehow responsible for the contamination and went to great lengths to cover it up by encouraging the lone-temporal theory. To this day, the Chicago Tylenol murders remains one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in American history. Crimes remain perplexed by the unknown killer, whose motive remains a point of contention.

Investigators are uncertain whether the crimes were a meticulously orchestrated and targeted murder or an act of domestic terrorism. James Zagel, former director of the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement, has spoken of his hope that the case will one day be solved, noting, We've solved other crimes a year, two years, 20 years afterwards, while I have not given up hope or lost optimism. Sometimes you have to admit you've lost, but that's not the case with the Tylenol deaths. Authorities maintain the case is still active.

The families of the victims live on without justice. Six months after the murders, Mary Reiner's husband, Ed, told reporters that the couple's two-year-old son would look at photographs of his mother and ask when she was coming home. Ed explained, I tell him she's in heaven now. I still don't understand why something like this happened, and I don't think I ever will. On the crime's one-year anniversary, Teresa Janus' mother, Helen, explained that while their house used to be full of life and parties, it was now empty.

She kept a shrine of photographs to remember her daughter and son-in-law, remarking, It always hurts inside. Two decades on, Mary Kellerman's grandmother, Patricia, spoke of the continuing grief, stating, It's still devastating to the family, especially when they haven't caught who did it. I'm sure a lot of people have forgotten it, but I can tell you that the families still remember. This sentiment was shared by Joseph Janus, who lost two of his brothers to the Tylenol poisonings, and said,

It never goes away. It stays in your chest. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 2009, Mary McFarlane's brother Eliason explained how he can no longer stomach even looking at a box of Tylenol. Quote, I now think of Mary not being here, what she's missing. Her son's growing up, a granddaughter being born, a daughter-in-law she would have loved. A colleague of Paula Prince remembered her as a vivacious woman with a gorgeous smile, and spoke of the unknown killer.

Quote, that guy stole all her dreams, her life, her future. He just destroyed it all. Just poof, one pill. What makes a man do something like that? In the early days of the Tylenol investigation, Illinois criminal investigation commander Thomas Shump told the Chicago Tribune, The first thing you look for in any murder is motivation. In 99% of the cases, it's relatively easy.

A husband, wife, lover, boyfriend is involved, or narcotics are involved, and you are on your way to solving it. But with Tylenol, there was never a message left behind. It's so important to know why, what was the message, what was the reason. With Tylenol, not only can't we say who, we can't even say what, or why.