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. Stores were pulling the product off shelves. Stanley Janus soon collapsed on his late brothers kitchen floor. 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. Forty years later, Ford shook his head at the memory. The latest Tribune poll showed he was down by about 20 points in the upcoming election. I do think it created a lot of problems because youre always thinking theres somebody doing something behind your back.. Stacy St. Clair joined the Chicago Tribune in 2007. To its credit, the company took an active role with the media in issuing mass warning communications and immediately called for a massive recall of the more than 31 million bottles of Tylenol in circulation. "While this tragic incident remains unsolved, this event resulted in important industry improvements to patient safety measures including the creation of tamper-resistant packaging.". Elk Grove Village Detective Michael Severns said investigators were so intent on chasing leads that they at times lost sight of the grieving families. If you are curious, come to a small house on a quiet, winding street in Elk Grove Village. 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.. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. (Fred Jewell/AP). The bottles traveled to various warehouses, including a final storage stop at a Jewel facility in suburban Franklin Park, before being delivered to different grocery stores on different days before the poisonings. We were getting flooded with calls, said John Fellmann, an Arlington Heights detective assigned to the case. 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 . 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. [Para leer en espaol] Los asesinatos de Tylenol, parte 2: Tylenol mezclado con cianuro fue el arma homicida. Male murderers are more likely, in general, to kill randomly and on a large scale. It was standing room only inside the Arlington Heights Police Department for the first meeting of what would become the Tylenol task force. The coppers and the FBI guys that I knew all worked together. The operation was primarily staffed by female agents who answered phone calls and assessed information while their male counterparts worked in the field. And when the sitting attorney general was indicted on tax fraud charges, Thompson appointed Fahner to fill the post. 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. Fahner had worked for James Thompson in the U.S. attorneys office, handling some of the citys biggest federal corruption cases. (Michael Budrys / Chicago Tribune). 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. The task force questioned stock boys, managers, disgruntled former employees and problematic customers at the hot locations, the teams name for the stores that sold the tainted Tylenol. 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. Tylenol murders: A nationwide panic, a family tragedy Her dad, aunt and uncle were killed in the notorious unsolved poisonings that terrorized Chicago. Tylenol murders investigators pursue new charges in 40-year case. Tylenol Ty, Ford said. In the meantime, Kasia Janus has said shes dealt with occasionally overwhelming sadness because of the graduations her father couldnt attend. Forty years ago, cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules led to the deaths of seven people all around the Chicago area. Tainted capsules were discovered in early October in a few other grocery stores and drug stores in the Chicago area, but, fortunately, they had not yet been sold or consumed. 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. I dont want to get off here, he quietly said. Investigators assumed the culprit was a man, though records indicate they didnt automatically rule out anyone based on gender. "As you can see, it is easy to place cyanideinto capsules sitting on store shelves," he wrote in the letter. He didnt fit that profile, Hogberg said. Police grasped for suspects who might be the so-called "Mad Poisoner." Seven people died in 1982 after taking painkillers from bottle someone police do not know who had slipped cyanide pills into. Forty years later, investigators still cant say with certainty. 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. Three months earlier, 10 Chicago officers from the citys West Side were convicted of taking bribes to protect heroin rings. A casket is carried out of St. Hyacinth Roman Catholic Church after the funeral Mass for three members of the Janus family in 1982. Several suspects did too. Why was this happening? No one has ever been charged with the murders. (Charles Osgood / Chicago Tribune). The investigators would then return around 5 p.m. to update everyone on the days developments. He didnt get in our way. And they talked to veterinarians about any unusual animal poisonings, thinking the murderer may have tested the chemical on pets first. And they would remain apart for the next four decades. Still, in his opinion, Fahner was exactly what the task force needed. Lewis, who now lives in the Boston area, has long denied any involvement in the murders and has never been charged. Employees of the Chicago City Health Department continue to test Tylenol medication for the presence of deadly cyanide at the Department's lab on Oct. 7, 1982. Former Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek told the Tribune he believed Fahners selection was purely political, done specifically because of the November election. The couple were later pronounced dead, too. The Tribune has spoken with several people who have been asked to provide DNA samples within the last decade all men who had access to poisoned bottles found in Cook County. . FBI agent Shari Kouba, one of the few women on the task force, ran the tips desk. So he thought hed maybe get a lifetime supply of ham. A drugstore clerk removes Tylenol capsules from the shelves of a pharmacy Sept. 30, 1982, in New York City after reports of tampering. Many people who handled the evidence in 1982 told the Tribune they didnt wear gloves because it wasnt part of their agencys protocol at the time. In all, the task force had only eight bottles to offer clues to where and when the tampering could have taken place. Subscribe to Heres the Deal, our politics I think after a day or two, the state police realized theyre on their own. 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. In fact, so many big dogs were present, Fellmann said he couldnt find a free chair inside his own 60-seat roll call room. Advances in technology have allowed investigators to determine the postmark date on the extortion letter written by Lewis that demands $1 million be wired to a bank account "if you want to stop the killing," according to the Chicago Tribune's review of the documents. President Reagan wanted the FBI in the investigation, retired FBI Special Agent Roy Lane Jr. told the Tribune. The first tainted Tylenol victim - Mary Kellerman, 12, of Elk Grove Village - collapsed and died on . He investigated the Tylenol poisonings in the Janus family and later served as police chief in Island Lake. What are you giving this story for? So they ran him off the stage and I got up there.. On Friday afternoon, doctors removed Stanley Janus wife, Terri, from life support. All of them, it turned out, took Tylenol shortly before they died. And it took over my life.. Paramedics came and took Adam Janus to a nearby hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead from what they suspected may have been a heart attack. NBC News has not reviewed those documents. Other copy-cat poisonings, involving Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications, cropped up again in the 1980s and early 1990s but these events were never as dramatic or as deadly as the 1982 Chicago-area deaths. Forty years later, these earliest days remain a point of pride for some and a source of frustration for others. Within a week, her death would panic the entire nation. While acetaminophen the active ingredient in the top-selling pain reliever was a fine white powder, these were filled with a grainy, translucent substance. I had people dropping dead all over the place.. Among those questioned was a clerical worker who was fired for repeatedly missing work. The final Tylenol death was confirmed on the evening of Oct. 1, when 35-year-old flight attendant Paula Prince was found dead in her Old Town condominium. Fahner thought state officials needed to be even more aggressive, despite the consequences for the investigation. Neither did the chemist who performed the cyanide test. 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. That testing uncovered three more poisoned bottles: two turned in by customers in Wheaton and Chicago and one found on a Schaumburg pharmacy shelf. The substance was grainier than the untainted Tylenol on the left. Some of those interviews may have gone to an agent who didnt do a good job., 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. Extra-Strength Tylenol, shown in a Tribune studio photograph, once was packaged in a paper box with an unglued lid. Kouba reviewed each as it came in, deciding which needed a field agents attention and which could be placed in a bin with other ludicrous claims. Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million Tylenol bottles as panic spread nationwide following the deaths. And my next thought was that there are too many cooks in the kitchen.. Though the company expanded the recall the same day to cover the batch involved in McFarlands death, the piecemeal approach troubled Fahner. 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. Her parents gave permission. There wasnt that much tension, Fahner said. Thompson put him in charge of the investigation to get TV time. he answered. The Tylenol Murders Victims Mary Kellerman On September 29, 1982, 12 year old Mary Kellerman woke up feeling ill. Chicago police Detective Charlie Ford, assigned to the Prince murder, recalled being stunned when Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein showed up at the victims Old Town condo and immediately asked to see the Tylenol. The investigation would fork, taking the FBI and Chicago police down vastly different paths. 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. When the family returned home, both Adam's brother Stanley and Stanely's wife Theresa took a Tylenol, resulting in both of their deaths. So, the theory was the tampering took place at the store, said FBI agent Lane. It was so Dick Tracy to me, Steed said. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). Now she's sharing her story for the first. You werent there. Studies have found women who kill use poison more often than men do, but they typically target people they know. wide worlds of science, health andtechnology. The task force didnt know who or why.. (Chicago Tribune), Look, like any other series of government bureaucracies, theres always tension between agencies, he said. Flight attendant Paula Prince bought a tainted bottle of Tylenol at the Walgreens at Wells Street and North Avenue in Chicago. Investigators took pictures of people who attended the victims funerals to see if they could capture anyone acting unusual. And neither does the DNA. FBI agents carry boxes out of the apartment building in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. The tips were written up on 3x5 index cards. 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. 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. It didnt take long for Fellmann to recognize the pressures and expectations under which the newly formed task force would operate. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune), If you stopped a thousand people on the street, youd be lucky if one of them could tell you who Ty Fahner was. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. As everyone left that first meeting Friday morning, DuPage deputy coroner Siekmann, who hadnt slept in more than 24 hours, looked around the room and wondered how it would all work. Members of the media the same people who were constantly pestering him for information nicknamed Fahner Tylenol Ty. It stuck. At first, the story focused in the Chicago/Cook County . Within a year, and after an investment of more than $100 million, Tylenols sales rebounded to its healthy past and it became, once again, the nations favorite over-the-counter pain reliever. The Chicago Tylenol murders were a series of poisoning deaths resulting from drug tampering in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1982. [[Para leer en espaol] Los asesinatos de Tylenol, parte 2: Tylenol mezclado con cianuro fue el arma homicida. They would work the case in Chicago and send someone else to Des Plaines to play nice with the others. In work that would later be heralded in scientific journals, the scientists also tested the cyanide kept at the Tylenol plant to see if it somehow got into the production process. The company also introduced price reductions and a new version of their pills called the caplet a tablet coated with slick, easy-to-swallow gelatin but far harder to tamper with than the older capsules which could be easily opened, laced with a contaminant, and then placed back in the older non-tamper-proof bottle. A decadeslong investigation has centered around Massachusetts man James Lewis, 76, who was 36 at the time of the murders. Sadly, the tragedies that resulted from the Tylenol poisonings can never be undone. Would fork, taking the FBI in the kitchen, cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules led the. He investigated the Tylenol task force needed out, took Tylenol shortly before they died primarily staffed female... Now lives in the letter Tylenol at the store, said John Fellmann, an Arlington Heights assigned. 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