Only really frivolous things went in that other pile, she said. They apologized, he said, but the trust had been broken. A photograph of a television screen shows the specific lot number for a batch of Extra-Strength Tylenol that was the first to be recalled. Our highest responsibility has always been the health and safety of our consumers," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement to NBC News. Other task force members, it should be noted, werent particularly fond of Chicagos efforts either. (Carl Wagner / Chicago Tribune). Stanley Janus soon collapsed on his late brothers kitchen floor. If people threw out their Tylenol, authorities would never know the full extent of the tampering. And they talked to veterinarians about any unusual animal poisonings, thinking the murderer may have tested the chemical on pets first. He brought personal knowledge (as the former state police director) and experience regarding a criminal investigation. In one instance, someone reported that a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago had been bragging about access to labs with cyanide. And when the sitting attorney general was indicted on tax fraud charges, Thompson appointed Fahner to fill the post. 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. Though the company expanded the recall the same day to cover the batch involved in McFarlands death, the piecemeal approach troubled Fahner. But on Oct. 1, 1982, he had been a detective for only a year. She would be the seventh and final person to die from taking the poisoned medication. 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. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). The substance was grainier than the untainted Tylenol on the left. 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. Left: (Stan Policht / Chicago Tribune). Ford said he quickly interrupted. Forty years ago, cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules led to the deaths of seven people all around the Chicago area. As a state crime, murder fell under the purview of local law enforcement. The batch contained more than 1,800 pounds of cyanide, divided into packages of various sizes. J.J. Bittenbinder a tough-talking, mustachioed detective who would later gain fame as a TV safety expert served as a liaison to Fahners task force in Des Plaines. CBS put a human face on the story which contained the following: "When 12 year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Ill., awoke at dawn with cold symptoms; her parents gave her one Extra-Strength Tylenol and sent her back to bed. Others found Fahner the obvious choice. Here, he offers a Spanish-language flyer to Luisa Acevada. Extra-Strength Tylenol bottles, for example, came in a paper box with an unglued lid. No one has ever been charged with the murders. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old child named Mary Kellerman had also died suddenly in another Chicago suburb after taking an Extra-Strength Tylenol. I always wear the blue suit and the red tie, Lane said. His wife whom he had just married fell limp in the living room a short while after that. But when she opened the . Severns worked on the case for three days before he realized no one had offered an update to young Mary Kellermans grieving parents. Siekmann, who had been working since 8 a.m., believed some capsules were tainted from the first time he laid eyes on them. The new timeline suggests Lewis wrote the letter before the public knew the deaths were linked to the tainted Tylenol pills, according to the Chicago Tribune. That same day, a 27-year-old postal worker named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died of what was initially thought to be a massive heart attack but turned out to be cyanide poisoning as well. Authorities already considered the womens deaths to be cyanide related by the time they contacted Fahner during his campaign event. He received the assignment by default, and then it became part of a national news story. The gelatin-based capsules were especially popular because they were slick and easy to swallow. 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. I thought he was perfect.. Fahner had worked for James Thompson in the U.S. attorneys office, handling some of the citys biggest federal corruption cases. What the hell is this? The decision cost the company more than $100 million, an enormous amount in 1982. McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of the health care giant, Johnson & Johnson, manufactured Tylenol. 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. If you are curious, come to a small house on a quiet, winding street in Elk Grove Village. The tainted bottle from the Schaumburg pharmacy contained three partial prints on the capsules, but (they) were not suitable for comparison, the memo states. IE 11 is not supported. Tensions flared, even among law enforcement personnel sincerely dedicated to the job. Early on the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, a tragic, medical mystery began with a sore throat and a runny nose. Now she's sharing her story for the first. Among those questioned was a clerical worker who was fired for repeatedly missing work. Hearing that threat, the detectives said, they banged on the door and announced themselves as police. They would work the case in Chicago and send someone else to Des Plaines to play nice with the others. Pursuing the mission, however, eventually sent the FBI and the Chicago Police Department in two different directions. Im absolutely sure about that. Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner talks about the Tylenol deaths on Oct. 1, 1982. Every agency imaginable attended, many of them represented by their top leaders. And they would remain apart for the next four decades. At the time just four, Janus recalls being with her father, Adam, in their Chicago suburb when he bought an Extra-Strength Tylenol bottle that someone had slipped cyanide pills into. The pills were sold at stores in suburban Chicago, and bottles of Tylenol were immediately pulled from shelves to be tested by health departments for the presence of cyanide. Forty years later, investigators still cant say with certainty. And you had a lot of very experienced, very intelligent, very resourceful people thinking about this all the time, thinking about angles, thinking about ideas, testing them and implementing them wherever we possibly could. The attorney general largely stopped campaigning after joining the task force, but his face was on TV every night. The Soviets were willing to assist, but their satellites werent trained on the Chicago suburbs at the time. I stepped off that dais, Fahner told the Tribune this year. Dr. Howard Markel Seven people between the ages of 12 and 35 years old died in 1982 after ingesting extra-strength Tylenol capsules that were found to have been laced with cyanide, a deadly chemical. The White House, however, had ordered the FBI to find a way into the case amid growing public panic. In reality, some task force members still accuse their colleagues of secretive behavior 40 years later. I do think it created a lot of problems because youre always thinking theres somebody doing something behind your back.. Forty years later, these earliest days remain a point of pride for some and a source of frustration for others. Flight attendant Paula Prince bought a tainted bottle of Tylenol at the Walgreens at Wells Street and North Avenue in Chicago. The operation was primarily staffed by female agents who answered phone calls and assessed information while their male counterparts worked in the field. History's Greatest Mysteries looks into the theories regarding the Tylenol Murders in Chicago 1982. A new book by a former Johnson & Johnson employee suggests the Tylenol poisonings, which killed seven people in the Chicago area in 1982, took place in the company's production or distribution. (Chicago Tribune archive). The task force opted to work out of an Illinois state police bunker in Des Plaines, a central location that would be home to a tip line, twice-a-day investigator briefings and news conferences for the scores of reporters camped outside the building. Medicare Pharmacy employee Mary Butler, right, shows a box of Extra-Strength Tylenol to Officer Michael Miljan in Arlington Heights. He couldnt leave. Details about the seven victims, how they obtained the tainted bottles and their final moments were outlined in a confidential police memo obtained by the Tribune. Reporters from the Chicago Tribune tracked down Lewis last month as part of the investigative podcast "Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders" and asked him if he has any theories on who the Tylenol Killer might be. Here, you go, Pete, the police chief said, passing the bottle to him without the type of evidence bag that would now be standard in any investigation. I tell you, this wasnt a CSI show, he said. Each person underwent a rigorous background check. And as soon as we got the word out that Tylenol had been laced, people said, What do we do? I said, Well, if youve got any in your medicine cabinet either put it in a plastic bag and keep it or throw it away. (Michael Budrys / Chicago Tribune). The investigation would fork, taking the FBI and Chicago police down vastly different paths. Daniel Walker and several Chicago aldermen convicted in Operation Silver Shovel. The task force knew the mechanism behind the murders, Fellmann said. But thats not a problem, the investigators say. The Tylenol case marked one of the earliest uses of the approach. They also started grumbling about politics overshadowing their work. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing news stories and features across the trending, pop culture, sports, parents, pets, health, style, food and TMRW verticals. Six suburbanites had already died from cyanide poisoning by that time, but this was Chicagos first and, in the end, only victim. A native of the south suburbs, Gutowski received a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield and is a graduate of Southern Illinois University. But others, including Lane, found it immensely helpful and from his perspective ultimately accurate. James Thompson, Illinois Secretary of State James Edgar and shook his head. It was standing room only inside the Arlington Heights Police Department for the first meeting of what would become the Tylenol task force. On that day, two unrelated things happened: A pub owner made a phone call to police, and an extortion letter arrived at a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary. 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. Former Chicago police Detective Jimmy Gildea, shown at his Chicago home in July, investigated the death of Tylenol victim Paula Prince. Former DuPage County Coroner Pete Siekmann, who in 1982 was a deputy coroner, handled the Tylenol bottles from Mary "Lynn" Reiner and Mary McFarland. That testing uncovered three more poisoned bottles: two turned in by customers in Wheaton and Chicago and one found on a Schaumburg pharmacy shelf. Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million Tylenol bottles as panic spread nationwide following the deaths. But I didnt have the gray hair yet.. The task force didnt know who or why.. However, investigators believe circumstantial evidence is enough to make this a "chargeable" case, but that decision would have to come from prosecutors, according to documents reviewed by the Chicago Tribune. We used every single technique available to us. Johnson & Johnson initially recalled only those products with the same batch number as the Janus and Kellerman bottles. A casket is carried out of St. Hyacinth Roman Catholic Church after the funeral Mass for three members of the Janus family in 1982. The dire situation, both in terms of human life and business, made it imperative that the Johnson & Johnson executives respond swiftly and authoritatively. He held news conferences, sometimes twice a day, to meet the insatiable media demands. The evening marked an important shift in the tragedy, moving from a swiftly solved medical mystery into a massive criminal investigation. 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 soon, many medications and foods sold over store counters began being sold in tamper-proof, sealed packaging. Later that morning, Siekmann drove to the northwest suburbs to share what he had learned with a group of law enforcement officials assembled by Fahners team. Finally, in late July, officials from both Cook and DuPage gather for a video conference. That said, he was charged with extortion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Local police departments and states attorneys offices have been trying to crack the case for 40 years. The Tylenol task force may be no exception, he said, but the tensions didnt affect the overall effort. He already had a new job. Relatives, including two who took polygraph tests, were quickly eliminated from suspicion. The tip line received more than 6,000 calls within the first few weeks. In those early days, there were so many agencies involved, so many people desperate to solve the case. In theory, the plan would prevent anyone from griping about being kept out of the loop. What are the Tylenol murders? Conspiracy theories about motives and suspects for all these heinous acts continue to be bandied about on the Internet to this day. It marked the first mass recall in U.S. history, involving more than 31 million bottles. The police investigation into the Tylenol murders has centered around prime suspect James Lewis for decades. Someone, police hypothesized, must have taken bottles off the shelves of local grocers and drug stores in the Chicago area, laced the capsules with poison, and then returned the restored packages to the shelves to be purchased by the unknowing victims. Testing found cyanide in the Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule on the right. 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. I dont know what he thought. Still, in his opinion, Fahner was exactly what the task force needed. Bottles that werent tossed out were sent to J&J, the FDA and various government laboratories for testing. They can do it, in part, by revisiting the earliest days of the Tylenol investigation, a time when evidence was not always handled according to todays careful standards. Forty years later, Ford shook his head at the memory. NBC News has not reviewed those documents. Ted Kaczynski had proven he was a revenge-seeking terrorist, and he had connections to Chicago. Extra-Strength Tylenol, shown in a Tribune studio photograph, once was packaged in a paper box with an unglued lid. But the police chief of the Chicago suburb where Adam Janus lived, Joe Murphy, told CNN he hopes forensic technology used to analyze DNA could eventually produce the break they need to conclusively identify whoever was responsible for the Tylenol killings. The city's most notorious unsolved murdersthe killing of seven people with cyanide-laced Tylenols in 1982is back in the news, as the seating of a grand jury is 1 2 (Don Casper / Chicago Tribune), Obviously, Johnson & Johnson didnt put cyanide in their own product. In an attempt to paint a more detailed portrait of the killer, the FBI turned to a relatively new technique at the time called criminal profiling, in which agents try to identify the personality and behavioral characteristics of an offender based on an analysis of the crime. It didnt take long for the Tylenol murders to become national news. The Unsolved Tylenol Murders of 1982: The Unabomber Theory Written by C.W.S. [Para leer en espaol] Los asesinatos de Tylenol, parte 2: Tylenol mezclado con cianuro fue el arma homicida. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). They knew the weapon. Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek talks about the Tylenol investigation on Oct. 7, 1982, about a week after the seven deaths. Police departments and fire stations began collecting bottles, as well. I think we ended up charging that guy with a misdemeanor, some disorderly conduct or some nonsense, he said. Records show law enforcement has spent the past several years dealing almost entirely with forensic evidence. Prince was officially declared dead by the Medical Examiner's office at 6:45 p.m. Investigators discovered a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol in her bathroom with one capsule missing and a. So as we organized, there were about 10, 15 different avenues of investigations to pursue, like disgruntled employees, former employees, lawsuits, Lane said. 1: Poisoning the Well: Directed by Travis Clark. The task force investigating the Tylenol killings doubted that James Lewis would be reckless enough to stay in Manhattan after mailing an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million . "As you can see, it is easy to place cyanideinto capsules sitting on store shelves," he wrote in the letter. It was so Dick Tracy to me, Steed said. Marquette 10 is one of a thousand reasons why theres tension, personal jealousy, personal ambition, jurisdictional turf fights. With fears mounting, Johnson & Johnson recalled all over-the-counter Tylenol capsule products on Oct. 5, nearly a week after Mary Kellermans death. His brother and sister-in-law, Stanley, 25, and Theresa, 19, of Lisle, Illinois, rushed to his home to console their loved ones. We didnt get anything, but we were kicking around ideas like that.. Investigators quickly dismissed the possibility that the killer was targeting a single victim and the other bottles were contaminated to make it harder to solve that murder. So he thought hed maybe get a lifetime supply of ham. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. Sadly, the tragedies that resulted from the Tylenol poisonings can never be undone. Ford, a Vietnam veteran with a classic Chicago accent and an Irishmans love of storytelling, died of a heart attack a few days after speaking with the Tribune. 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. Here's what to know about the history of the case and the latest developments. We had gloves in our car and basically used them on decomposed bodies. The police questioned him and searched his home, they turned up several interesting connections. The panic stemming from the Tylenol murders resulted in a permanent change in the packaging of medicine. Following the same theory, investigators took pictures of everyone who attended the victims funerals and set up time-lapse cameras at grave sites to see if they could capture anyone acting unusual. He is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine and the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the author ofThe Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick and the Discovery of DNAs Double Helix (W.W. Norton, September 21). And by days end, flight attendant Paula Princes body would be discovered and tests would show that a Tylenol bottle inside her home contained four cyanide-laced capsules. The effort was Herculean, said Jeremy Margolis, a former U.S. attorney who was assigned to the task force. As a result of the crime, makers of Tylenol developed new product protection methods. Critics who had prematurely announced the death of the brand Tylenol were now praising the companys handling of the matter. As Fahners team made calls, a DuPage County deputy coroner named Pete Siekmann sat in an office at the Illinois Department of Public Healths toxicology lab in Chicago and waited to see if the Tylenol capsules taken by Mary Lynn Reiner and Mary Sue McFarland were poisoned. To this day, however, the perpetrators of these murders have never been found. Christy Gutowski focuses her work on stories about criminal justice, public corruption and issues that impact the everyday man. I said, Excuse me. Indeed, the Johnson & Johnson recall became a classic case study in business schools across the nation. Police reports mention several former Johnson & Johnson employees, though none was ever considered a serious suspect. 6 Amazon travel essentials for your next getaway, starting at $12. The first tainted Tylenol victim - Mary Kellerman, 12, of Elk Grove Village - collapsed and died on . So whatever fits or doesnt fit the storyline, that didnt happen. Three months earlier, 10 Chicago officers from the citys West Side were convicted of taking bribes to protect heroin rings. Members of the media the same people who were constantly pestering him for information nicknamed Fahner Tylenol Ty. It stuck. In the first year alone, the task force used it to track more than 35,000 individuals and 15,000 companies contacted as part of the investigation. They came up with nothing. Perhaps he traded homemade bombs for poisoned pills. He hangs up, opens the door and we come in like gangbusters, Gildea said. Forty years after the infamous Tylenol murders killed her father and two other close relatives, a Wisconsin woman refuses to take the popular pain pills. Even after he retired from the FBI in 1996, he didnt let it go. Whoa, whoa, he recalled. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration then cautioned the public against taking the pain reliever in capsule form. Medicare Pharmacy employee Mary Butler, right, shows a box of Extra-Strength Tylenol to Officer Michael Miljan in Arlington Heights. The Tylenol Murders Pt. The killer may have salted the bottles with cyanide-laced capsules while standing in the store aisle, investigators thought. Her parents gave permission. Chemists working for the Illinois Public Health Department in Chicago test the contents of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. The 50-count bottle, which the woman told police she purchased at Franks Finer Foods in Wheaton, contained seven capsules filled with potassium cyanide, records show. Michael Petros, DrPH Wednesday, September 29, 1982 at 6:30am CDT, the nightmare that was to be known as the "Tylenol Murders" began 1. The man shrugged off his dismissal when investigators asked, saying it was the nature of the business. He didnt fit that profile, Hogberg said. There was no clear leader. 3: A Nightmare on Halloween: With Molly Jean Brandenburg, Carter Roy. As the de facto leader of the task force, he would come to be known in the media as "Tylenol Ty.". Some of the investigators started using it privately, too. By the time he reached his house in Evanston, he was the de facto leader of what had quickly become the countrys highest-profile murder case. The FBI and Chicago police performed separate, but largely parallel, investigations until Oct. 6. I mean, it just got to me, Severns said. Congress eventually criminalized tampering with medications and other consumer products, classifying that as a federal crime that could carry up to life imprisonment in cases involving a death. Several suspects did too. Within a week, her death would panic the entire nation. All Rights Reserved. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/tylenol-murders-1982, Why Eleanor Roosevelts civics book for kids is making a comeback. An FBI agent stood up and started to give a rundown of Chicagos case. But if they kept the bottles in their medicine cabinets, more people could die. But for something like this, for looking at a pill, it never would even cross our mind., Former DuPage County Coroner Pete Siekmann, who in 1982 was a deputy coroner, handled the Tylenol bottles from Mary "Lynn" Reiner and Mary McFarland. The victims had all taken Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. 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. It didnt take long for Fellmann to recognize the pressures and expectations under which the newly formed task force would operate. Over the next several months, Fahners task force would do groundbreaking police work, generate 19,000 pages of investigative reports, be accused of playing politics and, ultimately, fail to hold anyone accountable for the murders. He regaled reporters with all kinds of stories during that final interview, but none seemed to amuse him more than the unhappy Hormel ham man. The Tylenol murders would soon spur the development of plastic seals and tamper-evident packaging. 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