In 1982, the country was in a paranoid frenzy after a news story broke. Seven people had died due to poisoning of Tylenol capsules. This tragedy resulted in the distrust of America pharmaceutical companies. It also encouraged reform of packaging and distribution of over-the-counter drugs everywhere.
And the scariest thing about it? They never caught the murderer. Investigations remain underway more than thirty years later.
September 29, 1982, was a normal Wednesday in Elk Grove, Illinois. Feeling sick, but not sick enough to miss school, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman took a capsule of extra strength Tylenol. Minutes later, she was dead.
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Adam Janus of Arlington Heights died soon after Mary. Not knowing the cause of his brother’s death, Stanley Janus and his wife, Theresa, took pills from the same bottle and each perished as well. Three more in the Chicago died before warnings were finally broadcast.
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Investigators concluded that someone had been adding potassium cyanid into the capsules of extra strength Tylenol. The murderer had have to purchased individual packages and returned the poisoned pills to the store over the period of several weeks.
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Johnson & Johnson was forced to halt distribution of Tylenol, in addition to recalling 31 million bottles with a total retail value of over $100 million dollars.
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Early on in the investigations, a man named James William Lewis sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million dollars to stop the murders. He was never linked to the killings, as he was living in New York City, but was arrested for extortion, serving 13 years of a 20 year sentence before being released in 1995.
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Although the Tylenol tampering quickly stopped, a number of copy cat incidents occurred, including the poisoning of Excedrin capsules which resulted in the deaths of Susan Snow and Bruce Nickell of Washington State. Bruce’s wife, Stella, was eventually convicted of both murders.
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The Chicago Tylenol murder case has still yet to be solved. In 2011, the FBI looked into the possibility of a link between the murders and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Despite the fact that Kacynski frequently lived in Illinois, conclusive evidence has been able to convict him.
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As was said before, the reform of drug packaging has led to an increased safety when it comes to pharmaceuticals, but it’s still a creepy thought that someone could use the convenience of mass production for murder instead of health.
