Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Tylenol Murders (with Brad Edwards)

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

On September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman took one Extra Strength Tylenol capsule to ease her sore throat and mysteriously died less than four hours later. The same day, three members of the Janus family ingested Tylenol. Brothers Adam and Stanley died hours later. Theresa, Stanley’s wife, experienced chest pain and was rushed to the hospital, where she passed away two days later. In that span of time, two more victims – Mary Reiner and Mary McFarland – met similar fates. Shortly after, Paula Prince was discovered dead in her apartment All seven victims were living in the Chicago area; all seven had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. Authorities determined the capsules had been laced with deadly potassium cyanide; a task force was promptly assembled; and Tylenol’s parent company, Johnson & Johnson, swiftly removed products from shelves amid growing concern around the country. Soon, they introduced tamper-proof packaging that became ubiquitous for medications and other products. And yet, the crime remains unsolved to this day. One name loomed large in the field of suspects connected to the unsolved 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders: James Lewis. Investigators could never prove he did it, but Lewis held a certain fascination anyway. Why? Who was this man – and could he really have committed such an evil crime? CBS Chicago investigative reporter Brad Edwards decided to trace Lewis’s past to answer those questions for the docuseries PainKiller: The Tylenol Murders, on Paramount Plus. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, violence, poisonings, and rape. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. We've all been there. You place a phone call. It rings and rings as you wait for the person on the other end of the line to pick up. Or you've just knocked on someone's door and you're waiting for them to answer. There's a sense of anxiety.

Maybe even dread as you wait. Will you get an answer? Do you even want the other person to be there? Now imagine the person you're waiting to talk to is a suspected serial killer. Back in 1982, an unknown killer terrorized the Chicago area by lacing extra-strength Tylenol with cyanide. Seven lives were lost.

The crime was never solved. And the world was never the same. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. In today's episode, we'll be hearing from an investigative reporter, Brad Edwards,

who spent months tracing the footsteps of the prime suspect in the Chicago Tylenol murders case, James Lewis. More than anything, Brad wanted to talk to Lewis face to face to hear what he had to say about the murders he'd been connected with for more than half of his life. But first, he had to find him. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by, ZipRecruiter.

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It involves seven victims, countless investigators, at least three known suspects. It's a long and winding saga with no. No ending. It all started on September 29, 1982, when a 12-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman took an extra-strength Tylenol and died that same day. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning. Six other individuals, three from the same family. Adam Janice, Stanley Janice, Teresa Janice, each took a Tylenol from a single bottle.

all dead. Three different people. Mary McFarland, Paula Prince, Mary Reiner, all dead. That's Brad Edwards, a CBS Chicago investigative reporter who researched the case for the docu series

Pain Killer, the Tylenol murders. By October 1st, seven beautiful people had been indiscriminately murdered. By taking an over-the-counter medication to take their pain away and it kills them. And to say that caused a nationwide panic has got to be the understatement of understatements. Because everyone in America looked at their

medicine cabinet and thought, can that thing that's supposed to help me? Can it kill me? Brad began digging into the story in the spring of 2022 as the case was nearing its 40th anniversary. He pretty quickly zeroed in on the angle that was most interesting to him, and that was the man who remained the prime suspect for over 40 years, James Lewis. See, about a week after the Tylenol murders began, Lewis sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson, Tylenol's parent company. In it, he claimed he would stop the killings in exchange for $1 million. But Lewis was never found guilty of the murders and maintained he was innocent. So why send the letter? Who was this guy?

Brad wanted to find out. I think the thought was the only way we were going to get James Lewis to talk was to go get him and to get him by surprise. In September 2022, Brad actually. actually went to track down Lewis, who'd been avoiding the spotlight for years, somewhere in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Once Brad's research led him to Lewis's apartment building, he had a decision to make. Anyone knows this in journalism who does kind of a stakeout? It's a bit of Sun Su, the art of war. You think tactically, okay, when do we go to the door? When do we make the full court press? When do we ring on the doorbell?

When do we? And eventually you just got to go with your gut. After a few hours, I thought I had talked to enough neighbors that if he indeed lived there, a neighbor would have told him. So at that point in time, I grabbed my photographer and I just said, let's go. This is our chance. This is our shot. Let's do it. So luckily, the complex we went to had a vestibule.

which is basically public, right? It's between the private entrance and the outside. It's this vestibule area where there are mailboxes, et cetera, and it had different numbers of apartments. And bang, boom, all of a sudden, I see an apartment number in Lewis next to it. I'm like, boom, we got him. Standing there in the lobby, Brad buzzed the Lewis apartment over and over, knowing whoever lived there might ignore a reporter with a camera, and he'd be back to square one.

Then, a man opened the door. I knew it was him right away. I knew it was James Lewis. And he'd aged more. He was older than I thought he would be. He had this grandfatherly look, you know, and I expect. I would see a monster, not a grandfather. The man was wearing a t-shirt, advertising a fireworks stand,

which Brad and his team later realized was located in Carl Junction, Missouri, the hometown of James Lewis. As Brad confronted the suspected killer, he actually felt a sort of calm wash over him. He asked the man if he was James Lewis and told him he was making a documentary. Even though his identity was obvious by that point, the man still denied who he was. But he didn't close the door, and he didn't tell me to leave.

And I also didn't want to be this kind of jocular investigative reporter. Why did you kill those people? Or did you kill those people in Chicago in 1982? I mean, really truly the goal was not to be the investigative reporter hiding in the bush. jumping out and surprising him. I knew if I had peppered him with a bunch of questions, the door would just slam right in my face. So the goal was try to keep that door open

as long as I could, establish a rapport as long as I could. Who knows if this is the last time anyone will ever see him. They spoke for only a couple of minutes, but to Brad, it felt longer. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was just on the verge of getting something out of Lewis, when a neighbor interrupted them and told them to close the door. So Brad left his phone number, hoping to continue the conversation later.

After the encounter, Brad brought the tape to law enforcement officers who had worked the Tylenol murders case. They confirmed the man was James Lewis. Even though Lewis admitted nothing to Brad in person, the investigators were all hooked by this exchange. Several were certain Lewis would eventually want to talk to Brad. they suspected he'd move toward the spotlight if he had the chance. For now, Brad could only hope he'd get a call one day. It had been almost 40 years since the murders. He knew time might be running out.

And by now, Brad and his producer Kara Only had poured hundreds of hours of work into researching the story. It was one of the deepest dives they had ever done. Brad Edwards has won over 100 awards, including multiple regional Emmys, and in 2021, he brought home the National Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing. It's basically like winning a national championship. His reporting has led to some truly positive change in the world. One of his exposés led to stronger legal protections for abuse victims, and he even helped exonerate an innocent woman who was facing a 50-year sentence.

By the time he first heard the name James Lewis, he'd been a broadcast journalist at CBS Chicago for a decade. He says it all started in a news meeting. Our boss pulled us together and said, have you ever heard of the Tylenolk killings? And I had not, which stunned me because I'm a true crime guy. and the fact that I hadn't heard it immediately intrigued me. I got the thumbnail sketch of it, and I really think my jaw almost dropped. Because as a news anchor, as an investigative reporter,

as a guy who's been doing this for 20 years, I feel like every story we do has some similarity to another. Oh, I've heard this one before. I've seen this one before. The Tylenol killings was not like that. I have never heard of anything like this. That meeting kicked off a months-long investigation into the Tylenol murders that is now a docu-series, painkiller, on Paramount Plus. Back in 1982, CBS Chicago was one of the major outlets reporting on the Tylenol murders.

Nearly 40 years later, they still had hundreds of hours of footage in their archive. It's weird because I'm looking through our archival footage, and, you know, I thought it would have just been all this Tylenol murder, Tylenol murder, Tylenolmur, well, then all of a sudden are reporters in Kansas City. Then all of a sudden, there's a shot of a crawl space in Kansas City, and they're talking about the death of a neighbor or something like that in 1970. And I'm like, gosh, that's fascinating. Brad learned that footage came from a report on the 1978 unsolved murder of Raymond West, a 72-year-old man who went missing for weeks until police found his decomposed dismembered body in his attic. It had presumably been hoisted up there by his killer. Just like the seven victims of the Tylenol murders,

Raymond West had never been given justice. And just like the... the Tylenol murders case, James Lewis had been the prime suspect in Raymond's suspicious death. It made Brad wonder what else this man might have gotten away with. What fascinated me most was what happened prior to the Tylenol killings and the indiscriminate murder of seven people in 1982. I wanted to find out everything that led up to that moment. that moment in everything after had been covered, that had been done. I want to know everything

that led up to that. You know, who is this person? What else lies in his past? And that was the juggernaut of darkness. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for

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which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. When you are born and then abandoned, like James Lewis was, changes his name, never knows really who his birth, parents were where he came from, that was the foundation for his life, abandonment. After reporter Brad Edwards tracked down James Lewis in Cambridge, he tried to piece together the puzzle of Lewis's life from the very beginning. There were some major setbacks, like the loss of records, conflicting reports, even a tornado to contend with, but a portrait of Lewis began to emerge. James had been born Theodore Wilson,

before both of his parents left, and he wound up in an orphanage. I mean, his early life sounds like it is pretty rough, but not because it's of his parents. James Lewis appeared to be adopted by some pretty good people, some people who probably loved him. And again, patching this together is really difficult because it's just not a lot of documentation that goes back so long, especially about a kid who's abandoned.

But he first pops on the radar around the time where he tries to murder his adoptive parents with an axe. According to the few records available, this event occurred when Lewis was 19 years old after he tried to get into his father's gun cabinet. his dad, presumably worried about his son, who'd just gone missing for two days, said no. Lewis then chased his parents while wielding an axe and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. From what Brad could tell, things seemed to settle down after that. Lewis married a woman he met at college, Leanne, and in 1969, they welcomed their only child, a daughter, Tony Ann.

Together they opened a small business in Kansas City, Missouri, offering. offering bookkeeping and tax services to clients around town. I'm not going to Bonnie and Clyde them, but it's like James and Lee Ann Lewis were a couple upon themselves. It was kind of them versus the world. They had one great love in their life, and that was their daughter, Tony Ann. It's kind of like moved to Kansas City, live an average life, taxman and his wife, raising their daughter, and then comes the case of Raymond West, which is to me the most fascinating, unsolved crime all-ever cover.

I mean, something terrible happened to Raymond West. 72-year-old bachelor Raymond West was a tax client at Lewis and Lewis. On July 24, 1978, a friend of Raymond's came looking for him at home, When no one answered, he checked the perimeter of the house. Nothing seemed amiss exactly, although there was a large lock secured on the outside of the door. But the friend was immediately suspicious of James Lewis, who prepared Raymond's taxes and was known to hang around Raymond's house, even when he wasn't welcome. Why is there a padlock on a front door? I mean, who locks himself in.

So I just raised his eyebrows. He calls police. Please call James Lewis right away. And Lewis says that the missing Raymond West had gone to the Ozarks for a few days with his girlfriend. The neighbor knew Mr. West didn't have a girlfriend. Everyone I've ever talked to, they don't think the missing man ever had a girlfriend. And also didn't go places without telling people. So, red flag right there.

A couple days later, Raymond's friend followed up with the help of police. This time, they discovered two strange notes at his home. The first was on Raymond's front door, on Lewis and Lewis letterhead, and it reinforced this unlikely story about going to the Ozarks. Inside the house, a second letter said Raymond was sleeping in and didn't want to be disturbed. The neighbor's like, Raymond wouldn't have written a note like that, and it wasn't even in Raymond's handwriting. This neighbor, the neighbor guy is so persistent. Few days later, he actually goes to the bank because he wants to know, hey, if my neighbor went missing, he must have cashed a check.

Well, there was one check made out in cash, and it was made out to the taxman, James Lewis, for five, $1,000. Exacerbated neighbor finally gets a hold of the cops again. This is weeks later, and they notice a real foul smell, even from the outside of the home. Detectives make entry to Mr. West's house. They found a large stain on a sheet that looked like blood, a bullet hole in the wall, bullet shell casing by the mirror blood splatter on the floor. In the basement, they found a green lawn chair with red stains. It appeared to be blood, plastic trash bag with what appeared to be a man's wig inside. The victim had a wig, dark-rimmed glasses, the victim wore said glasses, bloodstained sheets.

All were identified as belonging to Ray West. Police eventually found Raymond in his own attic. The crawl space Brad had seen in the archival footage, both of Raymond's legs were severed, and someone had wrapped his torso in a garbage bag. By the time of the discovery, he was badly decomposed. The autopsy later noted his cause of death could not be determined. Lewis was arrested in connection with the case.

Police uncovered a mountain of incriminating evidence in his car, including blank checks belonging to Raymond. Especially chilling was a really unique, knotted rope, identical to the one used to hoist Raymond's body into his attic. Even though it seemed like a slam-dunk case, the charges against Lewis were dropped on a technicality because he wasn't properly Mirandized. We've got this story that is so dark

but tells us to me everything you ever needed to know, not about the murder victim, but about the Tylenaw suspect James Lewis. So Brad was compelled to keep digging. To him, the information that was out there about West's case at the time was all focused on Lewis. But who was Raymond West? And what happened to his story?

Brad wanted the chance to tell the world who Raymond was before he became a footnote in the Tylenol murders case because one of his guiding principles is what he calls Giving voice to the voiceless But that to me is like a bunch of BS Like a lot of reporters say that And there really aren't the voiceless There are just the voices we don't pay attention to

We don't want to listen to We don't give time to Here we actually have have a case where we gave voice to the voiceless, and that was a man who was murdered some 40-something years ago. A body buried without justice is never laid to rest. In life, Raymond was eccentric but charming. Neighbors would say he perpetually pruned his rose bushes. He had an affinity for collecting old Avon perfume bottles,

kept fastidious bank records, had a good amount of money, saved well, never had a love interest from what we can tell, lived and maybe took care of his own mother. How this man could have ended up a torso in his own crawl space. Just seems like a man was just thrown away relegated to the ash bin of history without anyone giving a shit.

And that fascinated me, and I wanted to find out why. But not everybody had forgotten about Raymond. I was almost at the give up point in my quest to find answers about the death of Raymond West. I get a hold of former prosecutor James Bell, and I ask him about the case, and he's like, yeah, I know. know about it. I'm like, what do you know about it? And he's like, well, I was in the prosecutor's office for only a couple of years. This is decades ago, and it's the only file I ever kept. He kept the police report on the murder. It's the only thing he ever kept. James Bell had worked on the case against Lewis for the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office

back in 1978. When he spoke to Brad, Bell laid out all the ways in which he thought the Raymond West case had been mishandled, resulting in Lewis's dropped charges. Because Lewis hadn't been Mirandized before evidence was collected from his car, everything that could have tied him to Raymond's death was thrown out. What was left wasn't enough to build a strong case. There was a fingerprint on the pulley system used to lift Raymond's body into the attic. At the time, detectives couldn't definitively match it to Lewis's prints. But about three years Later, investigators on the Tylenol case thought they might be able to finally connect the fingerprint to Lewis. When the Tylenol Task Force found out about the murder of Raymond West, they said, hey, Kansas City,

give us everything you got on that Raymond West case. This James Lewis may have done this Tylenol thing. So they sent that thumbprint that they couldn't identify in 78 to the FBI lab in Quantico. And FBI fingerprint experts identified it. And they said that thumbprint is James Lewis's. So all of a sudden, Kansas City police are like, Bada boom, Bada Bing. We can recharge Lewis now for the rain. West murder.

Only problem was. By that time, much of the evidence in Raymond's case had been lost, and somewhere along the way, the pulley hoist with Lewis's fingerprint was misplaced. It was clear to Brad that this series of mishaps still had a profound effect on former prosecutor Bell. And, I mean, he opened up, like, he talked. to me like I was some trusted source for 40 years. The things he said to me and the way he said them were so damning and were so pointed that I was like thinking he's given his last will and testament.

Come to find out he was. James Bell passed away in 2023. whether it be in the prosecutor's office, whether it be in his later career, he did always fight for the little guy. And I think he kept the Raymond West file because he always probably felt like Raymond West was the littlest of guys you could have fought for. So I believe that prosecutor Bell knew this is one of his final opportunities to go on the record of. about how bungled this case was. And had the Raymond West case been solved, James Lewis would have been put away from murder for life,

and Tylenol would have never happened. The Raymond West case wouldn't be the last time Lewis may have managed to slip through the cracks of the justice system. Unfortunately for Lewis... The people who Lewis crossed Always remember. In 1982, shortly after the Tylenol murders, authorities were zeroing in on the person who sent the extortion letter to Johnson and Johnson. The evidence all led to James Lewis.

But they were having trouble tracking him down. That's because at the time he was using a pseudonym. Investigators believed they were looking for a man named Robert Richardson. And Richardson had fled his last known whereabouts in charge. Chicago less than a month before the Tylenol victims died. But the Tylenol Task Force was about to get a big leg up with help from a Kansas City detective named David Barton. Detective Barton is watching the news, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, and this story comes up about this crazy Tylenol killings out of Chicago, Illinois. And they flash up a picture.

And the picture is a guy they're looking for in the Thailand-law killings. The guy's name is Robert Richardson. And Barton relays it that his kid said to him, he stood up out of his chair and said, that's not Robert Richardson. That's goddamn James Lewis. Brad got the chance to speak with David Barton. He hadn't been responsible for the bungled Raymond West case, but he never forgot about it. And he'd come close to catching Lewis a second time about,

two and a half years later in a bizarre white-collar mystery. They realized that there was someone out there who, in these rows of mailboxes that used to be set up on the street, someone would just set up a mailbox in a bucket out of nowhere, and that mailbox started getting legitimate mail. And months after, people were calling up saying, hey, you know, I think I got my, this was before stolen identities, but, hey, someone opened up a credit card in my name. Hey, someone took a loan out in my name. Hey, someone, and they couldn't figure out exactly what was going on.

In early 1981, Barton and his team learned about the suspicious mailbox from the local post office. Their surveillance led them directly to, well, you might be able to guess. Detective Barton starts looking through the pictures and says, quote, God damn it, that's James Lewis again. So now they got Lewis on mail fraud and potentially land fraud. They raid his house. When cops actually go to his house, his station wagon is there and hanging out of the back of his station wagon in this bucket billed with cement is the brickin' mailbox.

So they're like, we got this guy. Brad learned the search of Lewis's home turned up some interesting items. It was enough to issue a warrant for his arrest in the fraud scheme, including credit card applications and mailboxes. And there were some odd how-to guides written by Lewis himself with instructions and pointers on carrying out various crimes. Also in his library, a book on poisons, including reportedly a page on cyanide. Investigators had no choice to leave that book behind as it was unrelated to the fraud scheme. This is all pre-tylonal deaths, but whatever happened, that was the end of the Kansas City story because when James and Leanne Lewis realized what was going on, they fled town.

Lewis absconded to Chicago in December 1981, less than a year before the Tylenol murders. But his time in Kansas City wasn't entirely without consequences. Thanks to David Barton, detectives in the Tylenol case learned the real identity of their prime suspect, James Lewis. By then, he'd moved again, this time to New York and assumed yet another alias. A manhunt ensued, but the way Lewis tells it, he wasn't exactly on the run. He sent more letters, and he freely walked around the city, even strutting past. on-duty officers. After he was captured in a public library in December 1982,

Lewis was put on trial. He eventually admitted to writing the letter to Johnson & Johnson and was convicted of attempted extortion. Separately, he was found guilty of mail fraud in the identity theft ring Detective Barton had investigated. For those crimes, Lewis spent about 13 years in prison. As for solving the Tylenol murders, They presented to the grand jury and a grand jury, our peers, listened to everything they had on James Lewis, and they never brought a charge.

The evidence against Lewis was circumstantial. Nobody was ever charged for the murders of Mary Kellerman, Adam Stanley, and Teresa Janice, Mary Reiner, Mary McFarland, and Paula Prince. James Lewis maintained he didn't do it. But he's still the only person with a conviction related to the Tylenol case. There are those Brad spoke with who all these years later still believe Lewis could be responsible. Maybe that's because of the three suspects ever named in this case, Lewis seems to have had the strongest possible motives. But Brad's research turned up a bombshell that changed everything we thought we knew about one of those motives. This episode is brought to you by Prime.

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soft lightly lined cubs for a natural shape, and no wire comfort that last all day. All over smooth, all-day comfort. Vanity Fair Laundee. Find yours at Target today. Investigators on the 1982 Tylenol Murders case named three suspects over the years, Ultimately, they only had circumstantial evidence against any of them, so they looked for a motive. Based on his past, Lewis seemed capable of pulling off this bizarre, evil crime against seven victims, including a young girl. But why would he want to?

It turns out Lewis had not one, but two possible motives. The first theory is that he wanted revenge for roughly 600 bucks. So his wife worked for a travel agency in the greater Chicago area. The travel agency went bankrupt and didn't pay James Lewis's wife her final check. So James Lewis wrote the extortion letter and had it postmarked and franked using the postal machine at the now. now defunct travel agency. Knowing authorities would immediately connect it to the travel agency, and James Lewis says that that was his goal.

Lewis insisted he only wanted to bring negative attention to his wife's former employer. There is no question that, like, James Lewis was. was the angry type. James Lewis is the type you don't screw over. And, you know, he was very close with his wife. And then there's the second possible motive that Lewis wanted revenge on Johnson and Johnson, the parent company of Tylenol, for a tragic event that still haunted him. And it has to do with his daughter we mentioned earlier. So James and Leanne Lewis of a beautiful young girl in 1969 named Tony Ann Lewis. She has Down syndrome,

which comes along with a bevy of other serious medical issues. But they love Tony Ann. I mean, they doted over at five years old, she had a heart surgery.

A month after that heart surgery, she died. And this destroyed the Lewis's. It was theorized. It was theorized for a long time that James Lewis and his wife blamed a failure in the sutures. Basically, the sutures breaking apart as to why Tony Ann's surgery failed, ultimately causing her death. This was a theory that had been floating around for years.

Someone had figured out that the sutures were manufactured by a subsidiary of, Johnson and Johnson. It all seemed like a logical explanation to Brad, but then he spoke with a doctor who reviewed Tony Ann's autopsy. This renowned forensic pathality said it was one of the most well-done, remarkable, A-plus thorough autopsies he had ever seen. Basically, you know, the doctor who conducted the autopsy was the gold standard. And he says, without a doubt, there was no suture failure. And Tony Ann died from a not uncommon complication during heart surgery where a blood vessel burst, without a doubt. We don't know exactly how the suture theory came about, but for those looking to find a personal motive for James Lewis, it probably made sense. This was the love of his life, this little girl. James Lewis, knowing how his mind works and in flawed ways, could have blamed Johnson and Johnson for his daughter's death even without any legitimate or concrete information.

So we finally know the truth, but it's possible Lewis still believed that Johnson and Johnson was indirectly responsible for Tony Ann's death. For years, he kept a website and frequently railed against the company that owned both Tylenol and the subsidiary that manufactured Tony Ann's sutures. Ultimately, investigators could never place Lewis in Chicago at the time of the murders. He stated over and over that he wasn't responsible for the poisoning deaths. So with all these motives and conflicting theories and statements, it's no surprise that Brad's mind still isn't made up on who committed the Tylenol murders. Yeah, I don't know who did it.

I have no idea who did it. And I don't know if authorities have any idea who did it. They've named James Lewis. James Lewis will put himself forward with the extortion letter. James Lewis is a bad person, a terrible human being likely. His crimes scattered across decades. I don't know if he did this. But he does think it's possible Lewis did it.

After all, he once offered authorities his own theory about how the killer might have easily tampered with the capsules. Lewis even drew a diagram of this method and suggested it was simple enough to carry out in the parking lot of a drugstore. I talked with people who knew him. He was really smart. So, you know, I looked at a guy who really got away

with trying to murder his parents, got away with murdering one of his clients, got away with, at least initially, a massive amount of. of fraud against individuals in Kansas City. Lewis was also connected to yet another horrific case in 2004. One of his neighbors stated that Lewis kidnapped her, held her for 24 hours, forced chemicals down her throat, threatened her, and raped her.

He spent three years in prison awaiting trial before the charges were dropped because the neighbor chose not to testify. Who knows what else he could have gotten away with. So why not get away with this? Brad had hoped Lewis would one day contact him, using the phone number he left with him back in Cambridge. Everyone had told him, Lewis liked to talk,

and Brad wanted to hear what he had to say. So he wrote Lewis letters trying to play to his ego. Then in July 2023, news broke that James Lewis had died. Here is part of the final letter Brad wrote to him. I know you loved your little daughter, Tony Ann. So did Raymond West. He waved at her when she was in your tax office.

He was your client, just an old man, alone, perpetually pruning his rose bushes. So why? She was just a little girl with a broken heart. I know that broke yours. No one's to blame, though. It wasn't the sutures made by Johnson and Johnson. So again, why?

We've written your story, but it's unfinished. The ending is yours, if you desire. Reports questioned what Lewis's death meant for the Tylenol murders investigation. That answer remains unclear. But for Brad, the story, may be far from over. In the process of our reporting, we've had people reach out to us and said, hey, there's another missing person in James Lewis history.

There was another premature death. There was another unexplained this. Hey, have you ever checked this out? So I don't plan to stop. My investigative reporting mantras take something demonstrably wrong and make it right. I don't want to fail particularly Raymond West. But again, I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop until I dig up all the skeletons in Lewis's morgue.

And I don't know how many there are. Thank you for listening to serial killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. We'd like to give a special thanks to Brad Edwards and Kara Olney for lending their expertise to today's story. Check out the docu-series, Painkiller the Tylenol Murders on Paramount Plus. Brad's investigation is featured in episode four. Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast.

This episode was written by Mickey Taylor, produced by Mickey Taylor and Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Sam Bear. Our head of programming is Julian Borrow. Our head of production is Nick Johnson. Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson. Want to hear something spooky. Some monster. It reminded me of Bigfoot.

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A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed, is brutally beaten. and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast crime beat on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.