But their deaths did inspire a series of important moves to make over-the-counter medications safer (albeit never 100 percent safe) for the hundreds of millions of people who buy them every year. And Fahner wasnt the only source of tensions. Forty years later, Ford shook his head at the memory. Fahner stepped off the stage and ducked behind a blue velvet curtain, where a state police officer briefed him. The program went far beyond any database previously used by law enforcement in Illinois. Ted Kaczynski had proven he was a revenge-seeking terrorist, and he had connections to Chicago. Simply put, the feds entry into the investigation hinged on the admittedly preposterous notion that the manufacturer intentionally put poison in the pain reliever and then committed a misdemeanor crime by not including it on the label. The Tylenol task force may be no exception, he said, but the tensions didnt affect the overall effort. Investigators say new evidence may help finally solve the case of seven people who died after ingesting Tylenol laced with cyanide in the Chicago area in 1982. And soon, many medications and foods sold over store counters began being sold in tamper-proof, sealed packaging. Here, he offers a Spanish-language flyer to Luisa Acevada. It was then that Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, told her mother and father about her symptoms. The prints, however, dont match the prime suspect. The likelihood that the same person could have put cyanide into different batches manufactured at different times in different places was logistically zero.. Daniel Walker and several Chicago aldermen convicted in Operation Silver Shovel. The Tylenol murders fundamentally changed the way we consume medication - among other things, leading to tamper-proof pill and bottle designs. But before Sept. 29, 1982, consumer products had few defenses against a person bent on sabotage. I said, Agent, agent. Every night, I would come home after my kids were in bed, he said. The FBI put about three dozen agents on the case, under the premise that the agency needed to determine whether Johnson & Johnson had violated federal law by failing to list potassium cyanide among the active ingredients in Tylenol. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. In the years that followed, Fellmann would rise through the ranks of the Arlington Heights Police Department and eventually become police chief of far north suburban Island Lake. What the hell is this? Jose Rosa, right, was one of hundreds of Chicago city employees and volunteers to distribute warnings about cyanide-laced Tylenol in fall 1982. Indeed, the Johnson & Johnson recall became a classic case study in business schools across the nation. The Tylenol Murders Remain One of the Nation's Biggest Unsolved Mysteries Popular belief is that the killer was James Lewis, the man imprisoned for 13 years for extorting Johnson & Johnson in the. In a surveillance still photo, you can see a man who looks remarkably similar to Lewis standing in the background as one of the victims, Paula Prince, checks out. The Tylenol case marked one of the earliest uses of the approach. She told investigators that, in retrospect, she deserved her termination and swore she would do better at her next job. The dire situation, both in terms of human life and business, made it imperative that the Johnson & Johnson executives respond swiftly and authoritatively. They gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with the highly poisonous potassium cyanide. NBC News has not reviewed that evidence. (Charles Osgood / Chicago Tribune). Ford and Gildea arrived at the campus with hopes of a break in the case, only to find out the so-called professor was a high school boy pretending to work at UIC so he could pick up college girls. Do not use it.. We didnt get anything, but we were kicking around ideas like that.. Tylenols parent company, Johnson & Johnson, also saw its stock price drop after the news about the tainted capsules broke. NBC News reached out to Lewis and did not receive a response. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old child named Mary Kellerman had also died suddenly in another Chicago suburb after taking an Extra-Strength Tylenol. Things were chaotic. Tensions flared, even among law enforcement personnel sincerely dedicated to the job. Hearing that threat, the detectives said, they banged on the door and announced themselves as police. The best suspect for the Tylenol murders has always been James William Lewis, who sent an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million to stop the murders. While I was not born yet and don't personally remember the Chicago Tylenol Murders of 1982, I do feel like I have experienced some of the anxiety that has never gone away. Tribune reporter Stacy St. Clair told NBC News correspondent Kathy Park on TODAY Friday that a number of law enforcement sources close to the investigation have told her that Lewis is the only person currently described as a target of the investigation. It didnt take long for Fellmann to recognize the pressures and expectations under which the newly formed task force would operate. He needed to be there, no matter how much he hated campaigning. Back then, bottles of pills did not have tamper-proof seals, just a cotton ball stuffed inside. In Illinois, some towns began pulling bottles from the store shelves and sent police officers down the street with bullhorns encouraging people to throw out their Tylenol. The CPD set up its own tip line and organized 35 detectives to work out of what was then Area 6 Headquarters at Belmont and Western. The Soviets were willing to assist, but their satellites werent trained on the Chicago suburbs at the time. "While this tragic incident remains unsolved, this event resulted in important industry improvements to patient safety measures including the creation of tamper-resistant packaging.". Introduction Heading link Copy link. Nobody knew what to do with (the investigation) because it was all over the place, Fahner said. Next week: Police investigate a poor mans James Bond, and an eighth person dies. The attorney general largely stopped campaigning after joining the task force, but his face was on TV every night. Now she's sharing her story for the first. We were looking for somebody that really looked like they didnt belong. Former Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, shown in September, says he felt Ty Fahner was chosen to head the task force for political reasons. They would work the case in Chicago and send someone else to Des Plaines to play nice with the others. The Illinois State Police told NBC News the investigation remains ongoing. Tamper-resistant pill containers were introduced with packaging that allows consumers to notice if a bottle of pills or medication has been opened or altered. Why was this happening? The investigation would fork, taking the FBI and Chicago police down vastly different paths. I stepped off that dais, Fahner told the Tribune this year. Tylenol murders victims Among the victims there were three from the same family, as Adam Janus, aged 27 collapsed after ingesting extra-strength Tylenol and was rushed to the hospital where he died. Joe McQuaid, a task force investigator with the state police who had worked for Fahner when he was director, acknowledged it was an unorthodox setup. The first tainted Tylenol victim - Mary Kellerman, 12, of Elk Grove Village - collapsed and died on . And it took over my life.. The Illinois Department of Law Enforcement, now called the Illinois State Police, wanted him to help. He also laid the foundation to get Extra-Strength Tylenol off store shelves statewide, going beyond the single batch the pain relievers manufacturer had recalled that day. The poisonings spanned multiple towns and two counties. Among the earliest priorities was 24-hour surveillance outside the victims homes, on the assumption that someone who killed anonymously would want to see the results of their work and might drive by the house. In 2010, DuPage County prosecutors filed a sealed affidavit stating investigators had found DNA on three bottles and the capsules inside, according to documents obtained by the Tribune. Eight of them would be three-member squads composed of a federal agent, a state investigator and a suburban detective from one of the towns where the victims lived or tainted bottles were discovered. Over the next few days, three more strange deaths occurred: 35-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner of Winfield, Illinois. And they would remain apart for the next four decades. All of them, it turned out, took Tylenol shortly before they died. Stanley died that very day and Theresa died two days later. One man, James Lewis, claiming to be the Tylenol killer wrote a ransom letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million in exchange for stopping the poisonings. And only months later, it changed the way we purchase and consume over-the-counter medications. [Para leer en espaol] Los asesinatos de Tylenol, parte 2: Tylenol mezclado con cianuro fue el arma homicida. Mary was dead by 7 a.m. Stores were pulling the product off shelves. Adam Janus, a 27-year-old postal worker, wasnt feeling well and without having any way to know the mortal peril that the bottle posed for him, he took a pill from it before going to sleep that day. Kasia said she long blamed herself for her fathers death, even though she was just in preschool when it happened. But ultimately, three more people Mary Reiner, Mary McFarland and Paula Prince died within days after taking what they thought was an Extra-Strength Tylenol. Seven people died in 1982 after taking painkillers from bottle someone police do not know who had slipped cyanide pills into. Flight attendant Paula Prince bought a tainted bottle of Tylenol at the Walgreens at Wells Street and North Avenue in Chicago. [[Para leer en espaol] Los asesinatos de Tylenol, parte 2: Tylenol mezclado con cianuro fue el arma homicida. Pain in the neck, Hogberg said of his CPD counterparts. From the start, Detectives Ford and Gildea didnt understand the purpose of driving out to Des Plaines each day in rush hour traffic when they had a murder to solve back in the city. We used every single technique available to us. Product tampering would become a crime in 1983 as a result of these murders, but in 1982 there was no federal law against it. So, the theory was the tampering took place at the store, said FBI agent Lane. Lab technicians Nlada Marzette, left, and Lynn Pilaggi inspect the contents of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules for cyanide contamination at the Illinois Department of Public Health in 1982. The decision cost the company more than $100 million, an enormous amount in 1982. His wife whom he had just married fell limp in the living room a short while after that. Even after he retired from the FBI in 1996, he didnt let it go. That box had been turned in, along with an unused bottle, a couple weeks after the murders by the wife of a DuPage County judge. The Tylenol murders launched a massive criminal investigation. The investigators would then return around 5 p.m. to update everyone on the days developments. In 1989, the FDA established federal guidelines for manufacturers to make all such products tamper-proof. The tips were written up on 3x5 index cards. In fact, so many big dogs were present, Fellmann said he couldnt find a free chair inside his own 60-seat roll call room. Testing found cyanide in the Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule on the right. The Chicago Tylenol Murders: With Laurence Fishburne. Within 48 hours of the murders, the task force used this information to conclude publicly that the pills could not have been poisoned during production. It sounds like an urban legend, but it was chillingly real in 1982. You werent there. His task force partners the FBI and state police had blindsided the Elk Grove Village detective, and he was angry. The FBIs counterintelligence unit even reached out to their Soviet counterparts to see if they had any spy satellite images that could help, according to former FBI agent Grey Steed. The lot numbers for the McFarland, Reiner and Prince bottles indicated they were manufactured in Round Rock, Texas, and went to different warehouses in the Chicago area before ending up on store shelves. Seven people in the Chicago area were killed that year by Tylenol that had been poisoned with potassium cyanide. And he grabs the pills, picks them up in his hand, dumps a whole bunch of them in his hand and starts sniffing, Ford recalled. Ford said Stein encouraged him to smell the pills, but the detective refused and pushed away the pathologists hand. Arlington Heights police Chief Rodney Kath, second from left, works with other members of the Tylenol task force at its Des Plaines headquarters in 1982. Members of the media the same people who were constantly pestering him for information nicknamed Fahner Tylenol Ty. It stuck. Police Officer Michael Miljan leaves an Arlington Heights pharmacy after making sure bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol were being removed from shelves. Helena Tarasewicz, mother of Tylenol victim Theresa "Terri" Janus, weeps over the casket containing her daughter's body during graveside services at Maryhill Cemetery in Niles in 1982. We were getting flooded with calls, said John Fellmann, an Arlington Heights detective assigned to the case. Jose Rosa, right, was one of hundreds of Chicago city employees and volunteers to distribute warnings about cyanide-laced Tylenol in fall 1982. But on Oct. 1, 1982, he had been a detective for only a year. 3: A Nightmare on Halloween: With Molly Jean Brandenburg, Carter Roy. It marked the first mass recall in U.S. history, involving more than 31 million bottles. Because all the other possibilities had been eliminated.. Im just being honest, Siekmann said. Forty years later, it still bothers him. He would gravitate toward someone with a blue suit and red tie, the quintessential 1980s-style power suit. Police departments were working the murders in relative isolation, and each county had its own states attorney to oversee the case. 1996 - 2023 NewsHour Productions LLC. The discovery, so far, has been more of a curse than a blessing for present-day investigators, who have spent years obtaining DNA samples from investigators, public health officials, scientists and medical professionals who came in contact with the poisoned Tylenol. The batch contained more than 1,800 pounds of cyanide, divided into packages of various sizes. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). There was no clear leader. He believed Thompson was behind the move, though Fahner denied it. Investigators pulled library records to see who had checked out books on cyanide. Extra-Strength Tylenol bottles, for example, came in a paper box with an unglued lid. September 22, 2022. The gelatin-based capsules were especially popular because they were slick and easy to swallow. Most came from a banking service that snapped a photograph of anyone writing a check. For example, Johnson & Johnson developed new product protection methods and ironclad pledges to do better in protecting their consumers in the future. Security cameras were scarce in 1982, but investigators checked the images that existed, including this photograph from a drugstore camera showing Paula Prince, center, buying a bottle of tainted Tylenol. In keeping with that theory, the task force contacted hospitals to ask about anyone treated for poison burns or symptoms, in case the killer became ill or injured during the spree. It was at this point, early October of 1982, that investigators made the connection between the poisoning deaths and Tylenol, the best-selling, non-prescription pain reliever sold in the United States at that time. But on this unseasonably warm October morning, during a separate meeting between the FBI and state police, Lane was one of several investigators who gathered to brainstorm possible motives behind the crime. He had never been better known in Illinois and was inching up in the polls too. She has received numerous national honors for her work. After eliminating the possibility that the poisonings happened at the plant level, investigators scoured the backgrounds of workers at trucking companies and storage warehouses involved in the distribution of the tainted bottles, as well as other company records. Before the 1982 crisis, Tylenol controlled more than 35 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever market; only a few weeks after the murders, that number plummeted to less than 8 percent. Bottles that werent tossed out were sent to J&J, the FDA and various government laboratories for testing. The victims had all taken Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. Another theory was that whoever poisoned the medication did it at home or in a car, then placed the bottles back on the shelves. Please check your inbox to confirm. And everyone in the meeting is aware of one undeniable truth: There is no physical evidence linking a suspect to the poisonings. McNeill and Johnson & Johnson offered replacement capsules to those who turned in pills already purchased and a reward for anyone with information leading to the apprehension of the individual or people involved in these random murders. America was gripped by paranoia and fear. Many people who handled potential evidence in 1982 didnt wear gloves because it wasnt protocol at the time. Forty years ago, cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules led to the deaths of seven people all around the Chicago area. Retired FBI agent Roy Lane Jr., shown in August, is the only member of law enforcement who has been part of the Tylenol investigation in its entirety. NBC News has not reviewed those documents. he answered. The more she . Former Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, shown in September, says he felt Ty Fahner was chosen to head the task force for political reasons. In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed what was called the Tylenol bill, making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. And then there are agents who dont. Shari Kouba, shown in July at an FBI office in Mount Prospect where she used to work, ran a tips desk as part of the Tylenol task force. Come to 1425 Armstrong Lane.. The 18-page investigative summary also provides key evidence, including the names of the three main suspects, during the first seven months of the case. Flight attendant Paula Prince bought a tainted bottle of Tylenol at the Walgreens at Wells Street and North Avenue in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). Local police departments and states attorneys offices have been trying to crack the case for 40 years. Im not saying that the task force didnt work or thats why the case was never solved, Severns said. He couldnt leave. He told her no, then carried the memory of the Kellermans anguish with him for the rest of his time on the task force. As a state crime, murder fell under the purview of local law enforcement. 6 Amazon travel essentials for your next getaway, starting at $12. The agents didnt bother to pretend that labeling rules were their true motivation for getting involved. A casket is carried out of St. Hyacinth Roman Catholic Church after the funeral Mass for three members of the Janus family in 1982. Editors note: This report has been updated to remove the reported amount of cyanide used. John Fellmann, whose last name was misspelled on his ID from 1980, was a young Arlington Heights police detective when he was assigned to the Tylenol murders. Pero quin fue el asesino? So he thought hed maybe get a lifetime supply of ham. Arlington Heights police Chief Rodney Kath, second from left, works with other members of the Tylenol task force in an old state police bunker in Des Plaines. Former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner stands on the former site of the Tylenol task force headquarters in Des Plaines, now an empty parking lot. Members of the Illinois State Police join, as well. I was the detective at the scene. Many people who handled potential evidence in 1982 didnt wear gloves because it wasnt protocol at the time. A theory emerged: What if the Mad Poisoner was actually the Unabomber? Thats clear, Margolis told the Tribune. Six suburbanites had already died from cyanide poisoning by that time, but this was Chicagos first and, in the end, only victim. Former DuPage County Coroner Pete Siekmann, who in 1982 was a deputy coroner, handled the Tylenol bottles from Mary "Lynn" Reiner and Mary McFarland. Brandenburg, Carter Roy to oversee the case for 40 years child named Mary Kellerman had also died suddenly another. Threat, the quintessential 1980s-style power suit swore she would do better at her next job highly potassium. 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