Stuff You Should Know - SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Tylenol Murders, Part I

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

On one terrible day in Chicago in 1982, seven people died suddenly and mysteriously. In just a matter of hours, it becomes clear, someone has poisoned bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol, one of the most trusted and widely-used products in America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Betrayal Weekly is back for season two with brand new stories. The detective comes driving up fast and just like screeches right in the parking lot. I swear I'm not crazy, but I think he poisoned me. I feel trapped. My breathing changes. I realize, wow, like he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster. But these aren't just stories of destruction.

They're stories of survival. I'm going to tell my story and I'm going to hold my head up. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bridget Armstrong, host of the new podcast,

The Curse of America's Next Top Model. I've been investigating the real story behind that iconic show. I ended up having anorexia issues, bulimia issues, by talking to the models, the producers, and the people who profited from it all. We basically sold our souls, and they got rich.

If you were so rooting for her and saw her drowning, what did you help her? Listen to the curse of America's Next Top Model on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Now Up is one of my favorite of our true crime episodes on the poisoning deaths of at least seven people in the Chicago area back in 1982. What makes this case so unsettling is that there's a problem. doesn't seem to be any connection whatsoever between the victims and the killer, the murderer just seems to have been a mad poisoner. Like most good true crime mysteries, this one is also unsolved. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh. Not me twice. There's Chuck. Guest producer Josh is back in the house. Yeah, and there's little Chuck in your pocket. Remember Little Elvis? I was just about saying that.

You got that right, Tanya. Oh, man. What a great sketch. That was Nicholas Cage, wouldn't it? Yeah, man. Did you ever see Mandy? Yes, it was terrible. I don't care what anybody else says.

Did you hate it? Terrible. Terrible movie. Yeah, Noel and I talked about it on Movie Crush. He's seen it like four times. thinks it's the best thing ever. Come on, Noel. And he was like, people either love it or hate it.

And I was like, actually, I was kind of in the middle. Were you really? Yeah, I mean, I told him young Chuck, like 22-year-old college, Chuck. Sure. Would have probably liked it a lot more. Yeah. But today, Chuck was kind of like, eh, I get it. Like, sure.

Sure. Parts of it were fine. Sure. To me, spending an hour doing character development, but not successfully making you care about the characters, just really irked me. Wow, you had structural issues. Yeah. That was really the big thing.

I also thought Linus Roach was very, very odd for casting, but... Who's that? Which one was the main bad guy that called later? That was weird. Very weird. I don't even know him, but I just... He's from Law & Order. And like some other stuff.

You got to get into Law & Order to see how much you're missing out on. That's becoming a bit. So, did we start recording yet? I think so. Oh, I already welcomed everybody to the podcast. That's right. So, Chuck, we are, this is some true crime stuff we're getting into here. That's right.

But I feel like we need to set the tone, right? Because this isn't, this didn't happen just yesterday. This happened way back in 1982 in Chicago, Illinois. And I remember this, even though I was like six at the time. It was one of my favorite years. Because of this? No. No.

The opposite of that, right? Mainly because of movies. What was so great about 1982? Look it up, man. Well, I was kind of hoping. B.T. Blade Runner. Oh, really? Yeah.

Okay, yeah. Some of the best movies. Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I was 40? That's not true. Yes, it is. Oh, really? Yes. The original.

The original Blade Runner. Huh. Did you like it? Yeah, it was good. I like the second one, too. You're like, but they spent way too much time on characters. Yeah, and I just did a little poking around about 1982, and it was a good year for an 11-year-old, but it was an uneasy time in America. Why? Well, for a bunch of awful things

happened that year, and I don't know if it was any more or less than other years, but Air Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River. Remember that? No. In Washington, D.C., the plane crashed in the river? Didn't it hit a bridge? Maybe, but there was like a daring icy river rescue. Oh, really? Yeah, 78 people died, though. That same day, a metro train in D.C. D.C., derailed, killed three people. Geez. February was when Wayne Williams was convicted. Gotcha.

And that was just the end of a lot of unease, you know, for years. Yeah. Klaus Van Buehlaw was found guilty of attempted murder of his wife in March. I didn't make it to the end of reversal of fortune, so I honestly didn't know what happened to Klaus. Guilty. Okay. In June, was the murder of Vincent Chin, who was a Chinese American, who was a Chinese American, who was beaten to death by two men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese and they were like stealing his

their auto work oh my god I know right and then July 9th pan am flight 759 goes down in Louisiana kills all 146 people on board plus eight more on the ground and then in September early September was when I know man remember planes used to just crash yeah a lot yeah that never happens now? Not as much, but yeah, weird that we're recording this in the midst of more plane crashes. And then early September was when that paper boy in Iowa was kidnapped and never seen again, Johnny Gosch. I don't know that one. That was a big deal too because it was, you know, the paper boy and there was this false story about a pedophile ring from politicians and that turned out not to be true, but he was never found again. So basically everything that's

going on today is just a rehash of 1982, it sounds like. I just remember being about that age, and they're just, the nightly news sort of just being a horror show, and not politically speaking. You know, like real bad incidences occurring. Well, yeah, plane crash, like, just about at any age, like, that'll bring you down if you see that on the news, for sure. Yeah. Because, you know, when you get on a plane, you think, maybe this plane will go down while

I'm on it, and that would be terrible. Although I wasn't flying at 11. So all of those things you just mentioned, sweep them totally off the table. Okay. Because come the end of September of that year, nothing else mattered but what we're about to talk about now. That's right. Nothing. Nothing came close to taking over the national psyche, like the deaths of seven people beginning on September 20.

19, 1982, in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah, and one of the articles I read about this, I mean, are we trying to keep it a secret? It's a show title, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think they're going to have to figure it out. So, yeah, go ahead. The Tylenol murders? Yeah. Okay.

You're like, oh, no, no. But that comes up in part two. Oh, yeah, this is a two-parter as well. So buckle in everybody. So I was doing some research, though, and I saw one article that said something about, you know, the first domestic terror incident in United States that nobody's ever heard of. I was like, who hasn't heard of this?

A millennial wrote that headline. Well, I have to say, Josh, on the way in here. Yeah. I told him Tylenol murders, and he went, huh? He goes, what's the Tylenol? You old codger? We should probably say what Tylenol is, huh? Oh, okay.

Yeah, I guess just in case you are a millennial and you've never heard of Tylenol. But Tylenol was and still is an over-the-counter pain reliever. It's like you have aches and pains. And apparently, what's crazy, people would take Tylenol, whatever was wrong with them. Right. Because now you can go get, like, you know, aspirin and Advil and Aleve, there was no Aleve back then. True.

That was a 90s drug. There's way more over-the-counter pain relievers now than there were back then. Back then, Tylenol was basically it. Yeah, it's acetaminopin, which is different than aspirin. and I think a lot of people just think those are interchangeable. Right. The reason I believe Tylenol became so big is because aspirin upsets a lot of people's stomachs.

Right. Tylenol does not, or it's not supposed to, and that's why it came out of nowhere and just took over the aspirin market. I think by 1982, Tylenol had 37% of the market. That's pretty good. Cornered.

Yeah. Yeah. Almost half. Especially since, like, some of the other, like, aspirants have been around. since, you know, 19th century. Right. So it makes sense then that when a little girl named Marianne Kellerman

complained that she had a sore throat and wasn't feeling too good at, like, 7 a.m. on Wednesday, September 29th, 1982, her parents said, just take an extra strength to Tylenol and go back to bed. Man. For sore throat. Can you imagine the guilt? Oh, no. These parents feel.

Well, don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to Marianne Kellerman yet. I think everybody knows. Yeah, she got up, said I'm sick. He said, take this. The father said he heard her going to the bathroom and close the door, then heard something drop and went to the door saying, are you okay, you're okay? No answer. Open the door, and there she is on the floor, taken to the hospital, but died very quickly.

Yeah, probably was dead when she went to the hospital. It was pronounced there. and they suspected, and this is just a little 12-year-old girl, middle school girl, went to Jane Adams Middle School. They think she died of a stroke. That's what they thought happened to her. They were just so baffled that they're like,

it had to have been a stroke. That's the only thing they can come on like this. Yeah, so that's 7 a.m. The day is just beginning, and one atrocity has already happened. Yeah, this is a very bad day in the history of Chicago, September 29, 1982.

Yeah, absolutely. And it started early. Adam Janus, who will detail his story, but put a pen in this one, too, because he figures in even more prominently in a minute. But a little bit later, that same morning, this gentleman, Adam Janus, he's 27 years old, and lived in Arlington Heights, another Chicago suburb. And he died, and they think that this is a heart attack. He complained of chest pains after he had driven. and his daughter's neighbor home from school, said I'm going to take the day off,

comes home, eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength Tylenol that he bought from a local drugstore, collapses in front of his wife, and by, you know, a few minutes later when the paramedics arrive, he was dead. Right. And again, like you said,

they said heart attack because he'd been complaining of chest pains, which had nothing to do with it. Right. But just like Marianne Kellerman took an extra strength Tylenol for a sore throat, So he took some extra strength Tylenol for some chest pains. This is just what people did back then.

Yeah, and that's what complicated it a little bit at first was that, you know, if you take the Tylenol, it means you felt bad already. So obviously, you know, they're going to be saying, like, wait a minute, chest pains or sore throat. Like, how does that figure in? Yeah. And it didn't. Plus also, what made this even more baffling is that Marianne Kellerman was 12 and healthy. Adam Janus was 27 and healthy. Yeah.

And all of a sudden they just dropped dead. People don't just drop dead. No matter what you see on TV or in the movies or whatever, dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing when you're a healthy person. That just doesn't happen. Next, we have Mary Reiner. Same day. Same day.

This is still all on the same day. She's 27 years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had just come home from the hospital after having given birth to her fourth kid a couple of days before. Super, super sad. of these are, obviously, but being just a brand new mom for the fourth time is just so tragic. And then by 3.45, she was so ill. She was rushed back to the hospital, and again, died very, very quickly. Yeah, and like Adam Janus collapsed in front of his wife. She collapsed in front

of her young eight-year-old daughter, one of her children saw her. And, yeah, when she was taking the hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This is mid-afternoon. Mary McFarland, was up next. She was over in the suburb of Lombard, and she worked at an Illinois Bell phone center where do you remember, like, you'd go get your phone, like the rotary phone, you know, you'd actually lease your phone? I wasn't involved in that process, but we had them in our home. Okay. Well, your parents went to a place. I never knew that. I figured they just bought that stuff. No, there was like a store where you would go. It's like the phone company's retail store, and you would go and be like, that pink one.

It's like smartphones today. Kind of. Same model. Kind of. Yeah, I guess so. But this was with a big clunky rotary phone. And you had to pay extra for the extra long court. Well, Mary McFarland worked in one of these stores, and at about 4 o'clock at the Illinois

Bell phone center, she had a massive headache that just came on out of nowhere. And she went in back and got some extra strength Tylenol out of her purse. Took a couple of them, and within minutes collapsed in the store. Yeah, she was young as well. She was 31 years old. Mother of two. And then, remember I was talking about Adam Janice a few minutes ago, his family goes to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there. He passes away. And so the family makes their way home to begin mourning and just sort of trying to reconcile what had just happened. His brother, Stanley, he was only 25, and then his wife, Teresa, who was only 19, are both just. overcome and worn out and have headaches. So they're at Adam's house, they go to his medicine cabinet, get out the Tylenol that he took, completely unknowingly, obviously. And Stanley hits the ground, foam comes from his mouth,

his eyes roll back in his head, everyone's freaking out, and a few minutes later, his wife collapses. And they call the ambulance by the time the ambulances get there. I think Stanley died that day. Teresa somehow managed to live a couple of days. Yeah, she hung on, and I don't know if, like, her dose was lesser or what, but she survived for a couple of days after that. Yeah, I mean, my guess is that there just wasn't as much cyanide in the capsule she took.

Right. Did I just give something else away? Yeah, you did. So Stanley took his Tylenol first, and then Teresa took hers, and one of the paramedics noted, like, Teresa was the one that called the ambulance out to come out for Stanley. And when they get there, they're both like on the ground. And they're like, what's going on?

And one of the paramedics said everything that was happening to the guy happened to the woman like a couple minutes later. Right. Like she was just following him through this process of like basically systemic organ failure. And this is the same day that his brother had passed away. Yep. This is about five, six hours, six hours after Adam Janus had died. Then finally, I know this is all tough to go through every.

everyone. We almost selected this as our next live show. I'm really glad we did. It's probably a good idea. Because, I mean, can you imagine trying to liven this up with some jokes? I thought at the time, I was like, no, we can do that. But, yeah, the more I got into it, I was like, yeah, it's probably not good live material. Right. We should have a rule of thumb that any story that begins with the death of a 12-year-old girl is not live show material.

I think you're right. So finally, we have Paula Prince, Paula Jean Prince. This is a couple of days later. This is not the same day. This is on Friday evening. She was a 35-year-old flight attendant, and she was found dead in her apartment after police responded for a welfare check that her sister called in saying, hey, you know, I know she's a flight attendant and all, but no one knows where she is. Can you go check on her? A welfare checkup.

And they finally found her, and she was gone. Yes. Very, very sad. She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of extra strength of Tylenol still open on the counter. and she, they looked into her receipts and found that she had purchased it on Wednesday, September 29th. That's right. So at the end of this very short span of time in the Chicago area, we have seven people dead. And I feel like that's a good time to take a message break.

Yeah? Yeah. All right. Hi, I'm Janica Lopez, and in the new season of the Overcomber podcast, I'm taking you on an exciting journey of self-reflection. Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have kids and to really just devote myself and my time? I wanted to be successful on my own, not just because of who my mom is.

Like, I felt like I needed to be better or work twice as hard as she did. Join me for conversations about healing and growth. Life is freaking hard, and growth doesn't happen in comfort. It happens in motion, even when you're hurting. All from one of my favorite spaces, The Kitchen. Honestly, these are going to come out so freaking amazing. Be a part of my new chapter and listen to the new season of the Overcomfort Podcast as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just wanted to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month.

So join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head.

Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting. We feel sometimes like we're leaving a part of us behind when we enter a new space, but we're just building. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Volisha Butterfield, Media Founder, Political Strategist, and Tech Powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersection. of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that.

I'd love for you to break down. Why was so important for you to do C? You can't win as something you didn't create. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Belichia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. A very fake, capital-driven environment and society will have a lot of people tell half-truths. I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is.

Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call, said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just want to call on and let her know. There's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation. Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community.

September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat Army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't want to have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission.

I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and the traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Janica Lopez. And in the new season of the Overcomber podcast, I'm taking you on an exciting journey of self-reflection.

Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have kids and to really just devote myself and my time? I wanted to be successful on my own, not just because of who my mom is. I felt like I needed to be better or work twice as hard as she did. Join me for conversations about healing and growth. Life is freaking hard. And growth doesn't happen in comfort.

It happened in motion, even when you're hurting. All from one of my favorite spaces, The Kitchen. Honestly, these are going to come out so freaking amazing. Be a part of my new chapter and listen to the new season of the Overcumper podcast as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the I-HeartRatRate. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting.

We feel sometimes like we're leaving a part of us behind when we enter a new space, but we're just building. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Valicia Butterfield, media founder, political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture. culture and leadership. I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that. I'd love for you to break down why it was so important for you to do C. You can't win as something you didn't create. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Malicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. A very fake capital-driven environment and society will have a lot of people tell half-truths. I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if it, if it, if you, it's a lot of people tell you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if it, if you

If the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is. Listen to Culture raises us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So you said cyanide. How did you know that? Because I was 11 years old, and I watched the nightly news. like all 11-year-olds did. He just called it, right?

Just me and Brokaw, Dan Rather, Cople. Yep. Who else? That was it. Peter Jennings. He came a little later, but sure. Was he?

Yeah. Yeah, he came after somebody. Well, I mean, Cronkite wasn't still around. Was he, or was he? I don't know. I don't think so. I was kind of into the news as a kid a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean, that was where you got your news back then.

Yeah, you would watch the evening news. It's very strange to think about now. right with the up-to-the-minute news cycle so oh yeah I know how much more innocent things were back then I know so remove yourself from the benefit of hindsight or the benefit of Dan Rather's insight and put yourself in the shoes of the the people in Chicago right yeah these are five these are seven different deaths I think from five different townships in the greater Chicago area including Chicago Paula Prince the last person to die lived in Chicago

These people aren't talking These people have no idea what's going on It's just that there were seven separate

baffling deaths You keep saying five You want two fewer people to be dead Yeah I do That's good

My wishes aren't working though It just so happens That the ambulance The paramedics That showed up To attend

to marry Marianne Kellerman The first girl to die They were just logging everything, because it was such a baffling thing, and they logged her Tylenol. Yeah, logged as in collected. Right.

Yeah. Took it as evidence to maybe look into. Who knows? Sure. But they took the extra strength Tylenol that she had taken, not thinking anything of it, but just basically throwing anything at the wall to see what it stuck. Yeah, I'm sure the dad was like, you know, she went in, took some Tylenol and dropped dead. Right.

So it probably made sense, even though it's just Tylenol to say, like, well, hey, let's at least take this in. Yes. And that Tylenol, right. You know? Because that bottle of Tylenol made its way into the hands of a medical examiner whose name was... Michael Schaefer tested the Tylenol and was rather surprised to find that some of the capsules had not Tylenol in it, but 65 milligrams of potassium cyanide. Yeah. And it takes about 50 milligrams to kill a healthy adult.

Yeah, I mean, some of them, I don't think they were all exactly the same, but some of them, had been completely emptied of any acetaminophen and completely filled with cyanide. With cyanide, right? Yeah, I mean, it was someone intent on for sure killing people. Yes, because cyanide is no joke. No. It's a really, really small molecule, and it normally attaches to metals outside of the body, which is why you have minerals, I guess, which is why you have potassium cyanide.

Right. But when it goes into the body, when you ingest it, however you ingest it, whether it's from a Tylenol capsule or breathing cyanide gas like they used to use to execute people with. Yeah, like they stopped using it for executions because it was such a brutal death. Yeah, it's a very cruel, painful way to die. In the body, it detaches from its mineral or metal, and it attaches to a protein in the body called cytochrome C oxidase, which doesn't sound like it'd be a big problem. but it turns out that that's about the worst protein that cyanide could attach itself to because we really need cytochrome C oxidase to breathe. Yeah.

Basically, it, I mean, this sounds like such a cruel thing because it's just rapid cell death and it's not like your throat closes up and you can't breathe. Like, you're inhaling oxygen and you are technically taking breaths, but the oxygen is not getting in the cells. No, it's not because that C, or that Cicrome C oxidase is what helps transport the oxygen and allows the oxygen to be used for energy. Yeah. So if the potassium is clinging to it, the oxygen can't.

It just stays in the bloodstream, and it doesn't get used by the cells. And since your central nervous system is the most oxygen-hungry system in your entire body, does a lot of work. It starts to shut down first. And when your brain and your spinal cords start shutting down, all sorts of, of things happen. Your lungs start shutting down. Your heart, God bless it, keeps beating for minutes after the rest of your body shut down. So you're not technically dead. They're not sure exactly how long the pain and excruciation of dying from cyanide lasts, but they think you're

probably conscious and aware and freaked out for about a minute at least, and your heart may continue beating for three or four minutes after that. So it's not a pleasant death at all. I mean, you're gasping for air, you're breathing in air, nothing's happening. Like I said, Stanley Janice, he was foaming at the mouth, and his eyes rolled back in his head in front of his family. It's just like, it's awful, like writhing on the floor, gasping for air, you're breathing, but it's not doing anything. It's just, I can't imagine anything more horrifying. Right, because your central nervous system has kind of fallen out of its, out of control or rhythm. Convulsions are usually a hallmark of cyanide poisoning.

And then you turn bright red at the end of it. Yeah, a cherry red, they said, because when your body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells and the oxygen becomes depleted, your skin kind of turns like a rusty brownish red. But because it can't unload that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red and your skin turns bright red. And then the other real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit like almonds. Yeah, I mean, not a bit. But, I mean, these bottles supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond. And unless you know what that means, then you're probably not clued in, you know.

Like, I wouldn't have known. If I opened a bottle of Tylenol and it smelled like bitter almond, I'd probably be like, huh. Right. It's a nice smell, actually. Yeah, I like this Tylenol. Yeah. I guess they have a new almond flavor. Awful.

So Michael Schaefer, that medical examiner, has just realized that this little girl has been poisoned. But he knows nothing about these other deaths. Yeah. There's nothing like that. It's not entirely clear how everything became connected or who connected it. But what I find just particularly astonishing is that within just a few hours, by that evening, by the evening of September 29th, people were saying there's something up with the Tylenol in these mysterious deaths that have been going on all around Chicago. Yeah, I mean, we'll get into the drag net they cast. But within a few days, they had kind of solved everything, but who did it and how it may have happened.

Who done it? Who done it. So, yeah, very quickly they figured out the Tylenol. There are a couple of different stories on, like you said, on who was the first person to point this out. One story is that a reporter for the City News Bureau in Chicago was doing the reporter thing and doing some deep diving and investigating and called up a deputy coroner and said, hey, I think this is what's happening.

They told the police. Another story is that two people who didn't know each other kind of came together independently to let people know. One was a fire captain named Philip Capitelli. I knew it. I knew you were going to do that. There was like a 90% chance. You know why?

Because we got a lot of support from people that wrote in saying, I'm Italian, and I love it. Keep doing it. Right. And only one guy who hated it. But ironically, it was Fire Captain Philip Capitelli who had written in and said no. So he, here was his deal.

His mother-in-law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the victim's mother. Yeah, the first of the little girl. And she said, hey, would you mind looking into this? Because I'm friends with this little girl's mom. And it's weird that she dropped dead at age 12. And he's a fire captain, and they're all connected to, you know, the police and to the Sure. Medical community.

Everybody knows you want something done. Ask a fire captain. I would. Sure. Because they'll bust into the room with an axe and get everybody's attention. So he's investigating. And then there's a nurse named Helen Jensen. And she, I don't, do you know why she was so into this case?

Was she just a do-gooder? No, no, no. She was the public health nurse for Cook County, I believe. Oh, okay, so she had an official designation to investigate. Yes, but unfortunately, no one would listen to her because this is 1982 and she was a nurse. Right. Even though she was like a public health director, she was still a nurse and people wouldn't listen to her. And she recalled in an oral history I read about this that she was stomping her feet out of frustration saying like there's something wrong with the Tylenol.

Like the Tylenol is behind all this and people wouldn't listen to her. Amazing. Supposedly she and Philip. Capitelli. got together and joined forces. Right. And I guess we're able to convince everybody that, no, there's something wrong with the, with the Tylenol. And by this time, people started talking.

Sure. And, you know, the idea that Michael Schaefer had identified Tylenol, I don't know if it was the same day or the day after or something like that. But all this is within a span of 36, 48 hours tops. Yeah, it's really fast. That all of this is going on, that the dots are being connected. Right. So then what follows is Cook County's Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Edmund Donahue, holds a presser. I've either watched this one or one of the other ones.

Like I remember specifically seeing this press conference on the news. Probably saw Jane Burns. That would have been the nationwide one, I guess. Yeah, and I was like, how would that have been nationwide? And then I looked it up. WGN was a super station starting in 1980. Oh, you know it, man. So, everybody saw it because WGN could broadcast Nationwide by 1982.

I watched Cubs games as a kid just because it was on. Yep. That was it. Like that and Braves games were all you could see. Yeah, man. So Dr. Donahue has a presser, a local presser. Of course, there is panic initially. Yeah, he scares the S out of everybody because he comes out of nowhere and says,

stop taking the Tylenol. Oh, yeah. Sure. And so anyone, I mean, imagine how many people in Chicago had taken Tylenol within two hours of that press conference. Right. And are thinking, like, should I go to the hospital? Right. And as a matter of fact, the poison control lines for basically in every city where somebody saw this started to light up right after that. And people were like, I just took Tylenol. Am I okay? Or gave my kid?

Yeah. Can you imagine? And what came to be the pat response was if you are still standing and talking to us, you're probably. okay. Which is sort of a double-edged sword. Right. It's like, don't worry, you die super fast. Right, kind of. So just relax.

So just hold the line for five minutes, and then I'm going to come back and check on you, and if you're still talking, you're fine. Oh, man. All right, so then the Chicago mayor's office gets involved, like you said, Mayor Jane Byrne, she gets, says, you know, print a bunch of flyers, print them in a bunch of languages. Maybe on Goldenrod and Cornflower Blue? Sure.

Why not? Really catch people's attention. She had police drive through with loudspeakers on their car, literally saying, like, don't take Tylenol. Reenacting that scene from the Blues Brothers, where they're driving. I was thinking Slacker, and that's funny. Two different movies. But do you remember they're driving through in the police car with the loudspeaker talking about their show? Yeah, same in Slacker.

I don't remember. I guess I didn't make it to the end of Slacker either. It was in the middle-ish. It was no dazed and confused, huh? Oh, just different movies. Okay. So they're posting flyers. Cops are driving around, blaring it through neighborhoods.

And then she has a press conference. She has all Tylenol removed from the Chicago area. She calls for it. Well, sure. She didn't go around with her basket. No, I'm not 100% clear if she was actually able to demand that the Tylenol be removed. I think she was more warning. Yeah, I mean, I doubt if there was any law she could invoke.

I wonder, though. Seems like you would want something like that. I would imagine. Yeah. on this. There was a poll that was taken the next month in October that found that 90, and this was in cities all over the country, that found that 90% of respondents were aware of this Tylenol poisoning story. Some press agency, like a news clipping service, said that it's the number of stories dedicated to it were second only to the number of stories dedicated to the

assassination of JFK. That's how big this story became. overnight. And again, one of the reasons why is because everybody took Tylenol for everything all the time. That's just what you did. It was just something everyone took. And that same product was now killing people. So the most chilling part of all this to me, and this is all chilling, maybe the copycat stuff. Because almost immediately, copycat incidences started popping up all over the country. There were 270 reports of product tampering. In the month after, 36 were, quote, hardcore true tamperings.

And that's what's the most chilling to me is, like, there were that many people, at least 36, let's go on the low end, 36 people across the country that wanted to kill people and just saw an idea. And we're like, oh, that's what I'll do now. I should have thought of that myself. I mean, that's scary, man. Yeah. What's scary but also infuriating is that there's such terrible self-starter that they had to be a copycat murderer in that. Right.

You know what I'm saying? Sure. Like it's bad enough that they're trying to kill somebody. Yeah. Randomly kill somebody. Anonymously kill somebody. They didn't even think of it themselves. I know.

That is a pathetic murderer right there. That's pretty pathetic. Put my foot down. Excedrin, extra strength, excedrin capsules were found poison with mercuric chloride. Mm-hmm. And that almost killed a man in Colorado. His name was William Sinkovich. And he got, he had liver and kidney failure, but he did survive.

This one gets me. More than one person thought, oh, well, you know, people spray and, like, drop things in their eyes and nose. I'll put acid in there. So tampered synex and tampered vizene both turned up after they had burned people with acid. Chemical burn up your nose. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's a bad one. So food was also on the list of things being tampered with.

Orange juice, chocolate milk, very high-profile incident with ballpark hot dogs. Yeah. They pulled a million pounds of wieners off the shelves. And ran them through a metal detector. Yeah, because this was a scare, you know, the old urban legend of razor blades and Halloween candy. Did they actually find pins and needles and things for sure? Yes. Okay, because I thought that had literally never happened.

It hadn't. It was an urban legend that became true. Okay. But nothing in the weaners. No, some boys, I think in Detroit, claimed to have found razor blades in their ballpark weaners. And like you said, a million pounds were recalled. And then the boys were like, wow, we were just kidding.

Wow. Yeah. And ballpark, we'll talk about how ballpark was treated after that, but they were put on shoulders and carrying around for how great they handled everything. And, you know, there were a lot of hoaxes. there were a lot of tips called in about other tampering. And it had a really, like, if the purpose of this was to induce panic and fear and terror, then it absolutely worked. Absolutely.

Should we take another break? I think so, man. We're going to come back and talk about the investigation. I had this. like overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call, said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just wanted to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe

Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month. So join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat Army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't want to have to go to any more funerals, you know.

I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Janica Lopez and in the new season of the Overcover podcast, I'm taking you on an exciting journey of self-reflection. Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have kids and to really just devote myself and my time?

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Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting. We feel sometimes like we're leaving a part of us behind when we enter a new space, but we're just building. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Volisha Butterfield, media founder, political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that. I'd love for you to break down why it was so important for you to do C. You can't win as something you didn't create. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys,

Malicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. A very fake, capital-driven environment and society will have a lot of people tell half-truths. I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is. Listen to Culture Raises us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, I also want to point this out, Time magazine, you know how I'm like super into like going back and reading contemporary news articles about an event? Yeah. This one, I mean, it's all over the place.

But Time wrote about the copycat incidents back in 1982, and they said that the copycats were trying to, quote, emulate their demonic hero, the still unknown poisoner. Their demonic hero. That's what the journalists from Time decided to go with. That's funny. I mean, that seems like a very 2019 thing to write. That's what I'm saying. I feel like we're reverting back to 1982 right now.

I guess so. After that intro of yours, I'm now convinced. All right. So everybody's freaked out. There are whole towns that canceled Halloween. Because remember, this happened like a month before Halloween, and everyone was very scared about candy tampering because of the urban legend. Sure. In some places, it turned out to be true, a self-fulfilling prophecy. There were all these hoaxes. There were all these actual true product tampering, copycats. People were freaked out, and the cops needed to do something. something. And initially, these seven different deaths in five different towns in the Chicago area were being treated as five different investigations. Yeah. That didn't last very long.

Within two days, by Friday, by the time Mayor Byrne holds her press conference on WGN, what came to be called the Tylenol Task Force was formed. All five of those investigations got folded into not just local investigations, the FBI, the Illinois State Police. FDA, of course? Yeah, the FDA was involved. And then the whole thing was led by the Illinois District Attorney's Office, who was the nominal head of the investigation. Yeah, so they figured out pretty quickly that, you know, like I said earlier, they cast their dragnet. They come up with about a 50-mile radius of where all this stuff was bought and sold.

and go investigate drugstore after drugstore and they did find more bad Tylenol that's still sitting on the shelves, thankfully. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to skim past that. They found more Tylenol waiting to be bought. That's right. Like just sitting there like, hey, come by me within two days of these first deaths.

That's right. These first murders. We keep calling them deaths. These were murders. That's right. And they name their case. There's, there are always code names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty low, in my opinion.

Timers, T-Y-M-U-R-S, short, obviously, for Tylenol murders. At the very least, the S should have been a Z. Timers. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Just give it a little flavor. Agreed.

So the cops are, there was some confusion about how this went down because they're trying to figure out, you know, did it happen at the factory? Did it happen after the factory? Right. What's the supply chain like? Well, that's huge. It's like the crux of the investigation. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Where did the tainting occur? Yeah. So they found out that all of the containers were from lot number MC 2880, which was pushed out in August. Again, this was the end of September. Yep. And states east, all states east of the Mississippi, plus the Dakotas, Nebraska, and in a bit of Wyoming.

Just a touch of Wyoming for flavor. That's right. Like the Z. For that mesquite flavor. Right. However, they were from different production plants and they were sold in different drugstores. Which is weird.

It's tough to wrap your head around that because it's the same lot. Right. But they came from different plants. Right. And it turns out Tylenol has also a really weird convoluted distribution network. I think that's every company. Okay. I have a friend that works in supply chain management and I was like,

Huh? So supposedly, they'll take boxes and open them up and repackage them in smaller boxes, and it happens at, like, different companies at different points around the country. Yeah, it's pretty complicated. It is. From a product, from factory to your mouth. Right. Like what happens to kind of everything.

Yeah. I would think simplicity would be safer. Much. You know? Probably not cheaper, though. You're probably right. So what they finally figured out was, here's what we're, we think happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory. This stuff was not tainted in the supply

chain, but this stuff was tainted it from the store and then returned back to the store. Right. Because these pills were sold in different stores, which is a big one, because it not only could it have been like part of the factory, it could have been one of the local stores distribution centers where there was somebody messing with it. Right. But since they were. were sold in jewel food stores, in Walgreens, and other places, too, around the Chicago area. That didn't make any sense. It couldn't have just been, like, the Jewel Distribution Center. And also, because they were coming from different production plants, it really couldn't have been the production plant or the factory where it came from.

It had to be, like you said, happening at the stores. Yeah, and there were a lot of initial theories, you know, was it someone who, like a former disgruntled employee of Johnson and Johnson? Right. Was it someone, was it just a serial killer who just picked Tylenol and wanted to randomly kill people? Right. And this is, that's weird. That's a weird idea at the time. Like now it just seems normal.

Like, yeah, probably. That's sad. But this was two years before the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, which is one of the very, one of the next random killings of people who just happened to be in the wrong place of the wrong time. This was kind of the first of that, but it was still so new and remote and alien that that's, that didn't seem like a realistic idea at the time. Yeah, some of the other ideas they thought maybe this was someone that was targeting a specific person or people and then randomly poisoned other people to cover their tracks. Yeah. One of the weird, one of the weird theories that came out later after, and spoiler alert, we now have. have tamper-proof medicines. I'm sure everyone's noticed. There was one theory that it was someone who had a financial stake in tamper-proof technology. Yeah, I saw something like that, too.

I don't think that there was ever a ton of credence put into that one, but point is, there were a lot, I mean, they were flying blind, basically, because it was just such an unexpected, odd, random thing. They were basically coming up with kind of any idea they could think of. But the one that the cops settled on, and the one that Johnson and Johnson also, settled on too, because they went back and tested samples from lot, MC 2880, and found that there was no, there was no taining of the, of the lot, that their samples were pure. So the cops and Johnson and Johnson both decided they settled on what's called the mad poisoner theory.

Right. That somebody went around, this 50-mile radius in the Chicago area, in about seven hours is what the cops calculated, it would have taken, either bought a bunch of tile, and then took it back to their house and poisoned it, repackaged it, and then drove around and redistributed it, or went from store to store, went in, bought some Tylenol, took it out to the car, poisoned it, and then repackaged it and brought it back in. But that it was local and it was specific to Chicago. That was the mad poisoner theory.

And again, why? Still, no one has any idea why. It could have been random. They could have been targeting somebody. It could have been a disgruntled Johnson and Johnson employee. But the main theory for the Tylenol killings of 1982 in Chicago is the mad poisoner theory. Yeah, and do you know how they tested the rest of that lot? How?

They got Detective John Pinky McFarland, who had the best drug pinky in all of Illinois. And he went around and dipped that pinky in, touched it to his tongue. Yeah. He said, it's good. He's like, I can't feel my face right now. The guy's a legend. Yeah, his pinky ring is so significant, he can barely lift his finger. He only lifts it to test drugs.

I told you we'd find some jokes. Sure. So by mid-October, this is sort of the final bit of part one here. There was another bottle that people that they found, another tainted bottle. This is so crazy. That was purchased on September 29th, so it fit the bill. And it was a woman who was feeling bad and went to go get that. Tylenol, and her sister was like, no, I've got some buffering right here.

Just go ahead and take that. And the lady presumably said, well, I really prefer a Cidaminopin, but I guess they'll take an aspirin. Yeah, her sister-in-law saved her by offering her buffering instead. You believe that? She was steps away from dropping dead at a family gathering. Unbelievable. Yeah.

And that is a good place to stop, huh? Yeah. So that's part one of the Tylenol murders or Tymers with an S. And we're going to come back with part two after this. If you want to get in touch with this in the meantime, you can go on to Stuff You Should Know.com and check out our social links. Or you can send us a good old-fashioned email, 1982 version, to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Betrayal Weekly is back for season two with brand new stories. The detective comes driving up fast and just like screeches right in the parking lot. I swear I'm not crazy, but I think he poisoned me. I feel trapped. My breathing changes. I realize, wow, like he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster.

But these aren't just stories of destruction. They're stories of survival. I'm going to tell my story and I'm going to hold my head up. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bridget Armstrong,

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