IL IL - Chicago Tylenol Murders: 7 people dead from cyanide poisoning, 1982

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I’d be surprised if the culprit didn’t wear gloves when carrying out his dirty deeds. If so, doubtful they will solve the case using DNA evidence. Unfortunately it may be a case that is never solved. Jmo
 
IMHO I am hopeful by the prospect of DNA and key evidence. This case has always been frightening to me. It would be great to know all the answers. I wonder if there was some targeting or if it was completely random. It has an element of both. I have always felt that poisonings are particularly wicked and sneaky. Not that up close and personal is better. It definitely indicates a serious darkness in the individual committing the crime. There have been some big cases solved recently. Maybe this will be too.
 
I lived in the Chicago suburbs when this happened and there was a concurrent outbreak of some disease via milk sold at Jewel stores. I want to say salmonella but I've slept since then!

At the time Jewel stores often had an Osco either in the same building or sharing a parking lot- so it was insanely scary.
 
wgnradio.com

James Lewis, the suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed 7 in the Chicago area, has died

The suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area, triggered a nationwide panic, and led to an overhaul in the safety of over-the-counter medication packaging,…
wgnradio.com

A lot of interesting information in this article. I don't recall knowing about the death of his young daughter as a possible motive.

Looking for more info about what aired on local WGN news regarding requests for charges in both Cook and DuPage within the last few years.
 
Cubby said:
wgnradio.com

James Lewis, the suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed 7 in the Chicago area, has died

The suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area, triggered a nationwide panic, and led to an overhaul in the safety of over-the-counter medication packaging,…
wgnradio.com

A lot of interesting information in this article. I don't recall knowing about the death of his young daughter as a possible motive.

Looking for more info about what aired on local WGN news regarding requests for charges in both Cook and DuPage within the last few years.
Click to expand...

I believe it was the Chicago Tribune who did a very good series of articles on the Tylenol murders last year. Very detailed retrospective.

There was another suspect, Roger Arnold, who was seriously considered by local LE. He looked very suspicious, too, and was actually found with his own amateur chemical lab at home. He was a disgruntled worker who worked on the docks of Jewel distribution center that handled Tylenol shipments for the Chicago area.

Arnold had bought a large shipment of cyanide in the months before the murders.

www.cbsnews.com

Chicago Tylenol murders: Who did it? No one has ever been charged, but questions still surround James Lewis

Just last week, the CBS 2 Investigators learned Lewis was interviewed for hours outside of his Boston home.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
 
Cubby said:
wgnradio.com

James Lewis, the suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed 7 in the Chicago area, has died

The suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area, triggered a nationwide panic, and led to an overhaul in the safety of over-the-counter medication packaging,…
wgnradio.com

A lot of interesting information in this article. I don't recall knowing about the death of his young daughter as a possible motive.

Looking for more info about what aired on local WGN news regarding requests for charges in both Cook and DuPage within the last few years.
Click to expand...
I hadn't known that either, or that Mr. Lewis killed a neighbor but got off on a technicality!

When this happened, I was taking a gap year (or a few) after graduating from high school, working at Target, and a couple years away from deciding I wanted to be a pharmacist, and Target definitely cleared its shelves too even though I was not living in the Chicago area.

Some people believe that Michael Swango (look him up if you don't know who he is, and be prepared to dive down a VERY deep rabbit hole) actually did this. That wouldn't surprise me, TBH.
 
airportwoman said:
I hadn't known that either, or that Mr. Lewis killed a neighbor but got off on a technicality!

When this happened, I was taking a gap year (or a few) after graduating from high school, working at Target, and a couple years away from deciding I wanted to be a pharmacist, and Target definitely cleared its shelves too even though I was not living in the Chicago area.

Some people believe that Michael Swango (look him up if you don't know who he is, and be prepared to dive down a VERY deep rabbit hole) actually did this. That wouldn't surprise me, TBH.
Click to expand...
Swango is an interesting suspect, I remember him being in the news when the FBI was trying to build a case against him for killing some of his patients.

The probLen with Swango and James Lewis is that investigators couldn’t place them in Chicago or even the state of Illinois at the time of the poisonings. There was no physical evidence.

The contaminated bottles of Tylenol were only from batches shipped to the Chicago Jewel Osco stores. Someone had to intercept them during shipping or by traveling to individual stores in the Chicago area to purchase them.
 
Betty P said:
Swango is an interesting suspect, I remember him being in the news when the FBI was trying to build a case against him for killing some of his patients.

The probLen with Swango and James Lewis is that investigators couldn’t place them in Chicago or even the state of Illinois at the time of the poisonings. There was no physical evidence.

The contaminated bottles of Tylenol were only from batches shipped to the Chicago Jewel Osco stores. Someone had to intercept them during shipping or by traveling to individual stores in the Chicago area to purchase them.
Click to expand...

They weren't all from Jewel Osco. Per previous links up thread there was a purchase made at a Walgreens in Chicago, Frank's Finer foods in Wheaton and Frank's Finer Foods in Winfield.
 
Cubby said:
They weren't all from Jewel Osco. Per previous links up thread there was a purchase made at a Walgreens in Chicago, Frank's Finer foods in Wheaton and Frank's Finer Foods in Winfield.
Click to expand...

Yes, thanks for the reminder.

LE investigated and couldn't find any evidence that suspects who didn't live in Chicago happened to be there in the days and weeks before the poisoned products were sold.

Today, it would be different, probably easier to trace people's movements and activities.
 
meanmaryjean said:
I lived in the Chicago suburbs when this happened and there was a concurrent outbreak of some disease via milk sold at Jewel stores. I want to say salmonella but I've slept since then!

At the time Jewel stores often had an Osco either in the same building or sharing a parking lot- so it was insanely scary.
Click to expand...

Just a OT note, the salmonella outbreak connected to tainted milk from Jewel grocery stores in the Chicago area occurred in the spring of ‘85, while the Tylenol murders were in ‘82. My 5 year daughter was one of the salmonella victims back then. We were on a spring break trip to visit relatives in Evanston Il from our home in TX. She got sick after we came home, and it was while we were at her pediatrician’s office that my s-I-l who lived in IL called to tell me several of my nieces and nephews had been dx. Sure enough, my child had it too. It took a toll on her, especially since she was already dealing with a chronic health issue that continues to this day. Did the salmonella play a part in worsening it, no one can say. But she did recover from the salmonella after several months, and for that we are very grateful.
 
I think it's also possible that the crime was to cover a suicide. Did any of the "victims" have reason to kill themselves? It is also possible that the "suicide" changed "his" mind and would thus not be among the dead.
 
Most likely, the victims were all younger because older people were still taking aspirin.
 
STANDREID said:
Most likely, the victims were all younger because older people were still taking aspirin.
Click to expand...
www.chicagotribune.com

The Tylenol murders: 40 years ago, an infamous Chicago-area crime took these 7 lives

The 1982 Tylenol poisonings panicked the nation. Bottles were pulled off shelves across the U.S., and a massive criminal investigation got underway, hunting for the person who tainted the popular p…
www.chicagotribune.com www.chicagotribune.com

One was a school girl who woke up sick with the flu.

One was an instance where a man (Janus) took Tylenol for a headache or something. He died at the hospital that afternoon where EMS had taken him. The next day, his brother and newlywed wife came to his home to help his wife and mourn the loss of his brother. Both the brother and his wife, feeling they had headaches or something, took Tylenol capsules from the bottle his brother had just used. They both died, too, later that night. The widow was there with them, but no one was aware yet that it was the Tylenol causing the deaths.

Mary McFarland worked for Illinois Bell telephone. She had just taken a Tylenol at work. I think it was a bottle the employees kept in the break room. She told a co-worker she felt dizzy, then collapsed. Died later.

Paula Prince was a single woman, a stewardess for United who also had a party planning business. On her way home one night, she stopped at Walgreens to buy a bottle of the Tylenol. The next day when her friends looked for her, she was found dead at home. Later, LE found store video from when she purchased the Tylenol. A man in the photo was later investigated, but found innocent.

It was a county health department worker who discovered and made the decision that all the people had died from the Tylenol. They pulled it all off the shelves, sent out an alert and LE investigated. They narrowed it down to all the bottles coming from a shipment that originated in a local warehouse/distribution center and delivered to local drug stores. IIRC, they found that the poisoning hadn't taken place at the manufacturing plant because more than one shipment was delivered from that batch. Tylenol shipped at the same time to other areas in the US was not contaminated, only the warehouse in Chicago.

So, someone either spiked some of the bottles at the warehouse or they went around to various stores in Chicago, bought or took bottles off the shelves, took them home and spiked them, then returned them to the shelves.

Each of the contaminated bottles contained more than 1 capsule that had been tampered with.

ETA: Updated some info. about the shipment and warehouse. Also, many people followed this story very closely. The journalism/reporting on this was excellent. Reporters really stayed with the story, Chicago got all the health alerts out quickly and with great detail about how they think it happened. Everyone did a very good job keeping the public updated on what happened and how it probably happened. I remember lots of safety warnings to the public. Throw out your old medicine. Everyone temporarily stopped making OTC medicines with capsules that could be tampered with. Safety seals and wrapping became a thing.

The Chicago Tribune did an excellent series on this last year and I refreshed my memory by reading it.
 
Last edited:
PrairieWind said:
I don't think Lewis was the killer. He was living in NY at the time.
Click to expand...
True, they've never been able to place him anywhere near Chicago around that time.

There was another interesting suspect developed by a Chicago PD detective. It came from a tip from someone who overheard a guy in a bar talking about making cyanide and putting it in the Tylenol.

I don't recall his name, but they found the guy and investigated him. He was a middle aged, low income, single guy who worked on the docks at the warehouse where the poisoned bottles originated. When they searched his home, they found he was an "amateur" chemist and IIRC, he had cyanide. They investigated him closely, but the FBI seemed to think it was Lewis. They didn't have enough on the other guy.
 
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