1982 was a very bad year for Tylenol. Seven people in the Chicago area died after taking acetaminophen capsules laced with potassium cyanide. This string of murders led to several copycat incidents and influenced the way that medicine and food are packaged to this day.
On the morning of September 29, a young suburban twelve year old girl named Mary Kellerman took a capsule of Extra-Strength Tylenol. She died soon after. That same day another man from the Chicago suburbs named Adam Janus died while being treated for an unknown illness in a hospital. That same day, his brother Stanley and his sister-in-law Theresa died while gathered together with their family to mourn Adam’s death. The police soon figured out that all three of the relatives had taken acetaminophen from the same bottle. Within the next week, two other women who resided in the suburbs of Chicago died suddenly from a similar illness. Again the police discovered that the common thread between all these deaths was that the victims had all taken Tylenol. Samples were taken from each of the bottles involved and laboratory technicians discovered the presence of cyanide in each one.
The police immediately set out to warn the public not to use that particular medication through the media and by making announcements with bullhorns while cruising through Chicago’s suburban neighborhoods.
At this point, police believed that the cyanide taint did not come from the factory since all the contaminated bottles were from different manufacturing plants but the bottles were also purchased within a narrow geographical area on the outskirts of the city. Forensic scientists concluded that the murderer had purchased the bottles, laced the capsule with the poison, then discreetly replaced them on the shelves where they would be purchased by unsuspecting customers.
The Johnson and Johnson company embarked on a massive publicity campaign, urging people not to buy their brand. On October 1, they recalled all their Tylenonal products from the stores. In response to the crisis, Johnson and Johnson re-designed their pharmaceutical packaging to make tamper-resistant containers. They also stopped production of Tylenol capsules and started making their pain-relieving medicine in solid tablet form instead, thereby making it more difficult to lace the product with poison and also making it visibly easier to detect if something did not look as it should. Although this time period was financially disastrous for Johnson and Johnson, the company was widely praised for their responsible approach to the danger.
Although the FBI has never solved the crime or caught the perpetrator, a New York City resident named James William Lewis was arrested on extortion charges in relation to the murders. In the wake of the original seven Chicago murders, Lewis sent a letter to Johnson and Johnson demanding a large sum of money, claiming that only then would the murders stop. Soon after, he was arrested but the police investigator were unable to find any evidence that Lewis or his wife were in any way connected to the crimes. He was sentenced to prison and paroled in 1995. Lewis has always denied having any real connection to the actual poisonings.
Otherwise, the FBI only had a small number of suspects with little evidence and no motive. One suspect was a man who had a nervous breakdown then shot and killed a bartender for telling the police that he was the murderer. He later died in prison. Another suspect was Laurie Dann, a woman who killed several children in a school shooting before committing suicide in 1988. The Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was also later investigated for the crimes because he had lived in the area at the time and some of his earliest attacks also took place in the area.
In the aftermath, several other cases of murder by poisoned medicine happened in other parts of America. Criminal investigators have concluded that they were all copycat murders, all done by different people, none of which were related to the original Chicago Tylenol Murderer.
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