The Shocking 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders: Is The Killer Still Out There After All These Years?

today's video is brought to you by audible visit audible. com kendall ray or text kendall ray to 500 500 to try audible today [Music] so a few weeks ago i was talking to my dad about how i can't take advil or aspirin because i'm pregnant my doctor only wants me to take tylenol and i'm not sure exactly why that is but we started talking about tylenol and my dad was like you know there's a great case really for you to talk about on your channel i don't know if you've ever covered this but the tylenol poisoning from the 80s was wild and i had never heard of it i was really intrigued i started doing some research and here we are this is a very interesting story that some of you may not know about especially if you are on the younger side and it's really crazy how this all happened you know it was a different world before this for sure the way things are packaged now is completely different and it all starts with 12 year old mary kellerman who woke up at 6 30 on september 29 1982 feeling sick feeling like she had a cold she told her parents dennis and gianna and they decided to keep her home from school that day just in case her symptoms got worse mary was a seventh grader at the time at adams junior high school in schwamberg illinois her family lived just a few minutes down the road in elk grove village which is a suburb of chicago to help combat the symptoms of her cold her father dennis decided to give her some tylenol and just a few minutes after mary took the tylenol dennis heard her walk into the bathroom and shut the door just a few seconds after that he heard a loud thud and he ran over to the door asked her she was okay she didn't respond so he opened the door and when he did he found mary unresponsive and convulsing on the bathroom floor of course they called 911 right away and then she was rushed to the hospital and doctors tried to resuscitate her but unfortunately it was too late mary was gone in fact mary was actually brain dead before she even arrived and no one knew why because her death was so sudden and no one knew what caused it they decided to perform an autopsy especially because she was so young but nothing unusual appeared in the autopsy and doctors just thought she had an unexplained sudden cardiac arrest and because she was so young the medical examiner thought he should check in with her father dennis and just make sure that her parents stories checked out so police officers went to their home and everything appeared normal no one could explain her sudden death her parents reminded them that she did take tylenol that morning in fact the paramedics actually took the tylenol with them when they brought her to the hospital but no one thought it could be related to the tylenol i mean tylenol is commonly taken there was really no reason to suspect the tylenol had anything to do with her death so then just a few hours later that same day around noon 27 year old postal worker adam janis who is from arlington heights decided he was going to stay home from work that day because he wasn't feeling well he also thought maybe he was getting a cold later that afternoon he went and picked up his kids from preschool and then he brought them to the grocery store to pick up some tylenol and he also got a steak for dinner and some flowers for his wife when he got home he made lunch for his kids and then he took two extra strength tylenol and right away he tells his wife theresa that he is not feeling well the reports differ about where exactly he was in their house some say he was in the kitchen some say he was in the bathroom i don't know if it matters much but shortly after taking the tylenol he collapsed and started convulsing 9-1-1 was called and adam was rushed to the nearby northwest community hospital and when he got there doctors were unable to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead at 3 15 pm and doctors had no idea what caused his death they went ahead and said that it was cardiac arrest which he was only 27 so that's pretty young for that his family was extremely upset and they knew that there was nothing else that they could do so his wife his parents his brother and his sister all went back to his house to mourn when they got back to the house it was about 5 pm and all of them were exhausted and totally shocked and his little brother stanley who is 25 wasn't feeling so good and he was also married to a woman named teresa they were newly married and she was only 19 years old she felt like she had a headache kind of coming on especially because she had been crying a bunch at the hospital so they both decided to take tylenol it was extra strength tylenol that was sitting out on the counter from when adam had taken it stanley was first to take it and then theresa took it just a few minutes later so stanley was the first to pass out and obviously their family is totally freaked out i mean they just lost adam just gotten back from the hospital same kind of situation so they immediately call 9-1-1 the paramedics get there and they start trying to resuscitate stanley when suddenly teresa also passes out so four responders are trying to work on stanley who has collapsed and another four are trying to work on teresa at the same time meanwhile at the hospital the doctor who had just worked on adam and was trying to figure out what had happened there gets alerted by a nurse that the janus family is coming back in he thought that maybe it was his parents that they were so overwhelmed with grief about adam that they were having trouble with their hearts but the nurse clarified that it was actually stanley and teresa being brought in and he was confused so they come in within hours of adam being pronounced dead and they're having the exact same symptoms unfortunately stanley died later that evening at the hospital and theresa was put on life support of course that's when they started thinking that the three of them must have consumed something the same thing whatever it was and that maybe they were poisoned but poisoning wasn't something that they had ever dealt with before so they called the rocky mountain poison and drug safety center and they suggested that the three of them had possibly died as a result of cyanide poisoning so they sent off some blood samples to a local lab for testing in the meantime they tried to figure out what they possibly all would have consumed and adam's wife theresa said that the only three things she could recall them having that day were peaches coffee and tylenol they also went to the home to see if maybe there was any type of gas leak or one idea that they had was that maybe adam had used cyanide to clean his tools but there was no sign of that at all meanwhile an off-duty firefighter named philip capitelli from the arlington heights fire department had heard both of these calls come in through his police scanner and he thought it was super strange also his mother-in-law worked with mary kellerman's mom and she told him about mary dying that same day after taking some tylenol and that's when it clicked he realized that all of these victims had taken tylenol shortly before they collapsed now mary had been taken to another hospital so that's why the two hospitals hadn't connected on the fact that all these victims had taken tylenol but once they figured that out it seemed pretty obvious so they compared both bottles of tylenol and when they opened them it seemed completely normal there were no other substance inside of them the pills looked like a normal tylenol pill so for the time being they were labeled and stored as evidence they also found that both bottles of tylenol had the same lot number mc2880 so then the chief medical examiner said to smell both bottles and that's when they figured out that both bottles had a slight smell of almond and this is really interesting only 50 of the population is able to detect this almond smell but apparently cyanide smells like almonds and that's when they figured out that these two bottles of tylenol had cyanide in them most likely and that theory was confirmed later on when the test results came back and showed that there was indeed cyanide in both bottles mary adam stanley and teresa had all been poisoned by cyanide the reports also showed that their blood contained 100 to a thousand times the lethal limit and after the chief toxicologist examined the pills more closely he realized that some of the pills actually did look different than others in the bottle some of them were bigger and the powder inside the larger pills was kind of clumpy and by the time he had access to the pills the cyanide began to eat away at the capsule's exterior and it made it way more obvious that they had been tampered with than when they originally looked so just some background information on cyanide nasty stuff cyanide is a chemical asphyxiant and when it is consumed it blocks oxygen from being able to enter the red blood cells meaning each victim was essentially suffocated from inside their veins within just a few minutes of taking the tylenol and unfortunately these four were not the only people killed that day mary lynn raynor was a 27 year old mother living in winfield illinois which is just about 25 minutes south of arlington heights september 29 1982 was the first day that she had been released from the hospital after giving birth to her fourth child just a few days earlier when she got home she took two extra strength tylenol and within just a few minutes she collapsed on the floor and her husband ed called 9-1-1 immediately mary officially died the following morning at 9 30 a. m then there was another mary mary mcfarland it's strange that three of these victims were named mary mary mcfarland was from lombard county and she worked at the bell phone center in yorktown mall and while she was at work that day she started to feel a headache coming on so of course what did she do she took some extra strength tylenol she was still at work when she took it and just a few minutes after consuming the tylenol she also collapsed to the ground right in front of her co-workers and started convulsing she was rushed to the good samaritan hospital in downers grove and got there around 7 20 p.

m and spent hours in critical condition before she was pronounced dead at 3 15 a. m she was only 31 years old and was the single mother of two boys which is incredibly sad then that same day september 29th paula prince who was a 35 year old flight attendant with united also consumed some tylenol after landing at the o'hare airport in chicago it was about 9 30 p. m when she purchased it there's actually cctv footage that shows her standing in line at the store and she didn't even have a chance to get to the hospital she was alone when she died so no one was able to call 9-1-1 in fact they didn't find her until october 1st when her sister called the police because she never showed up for a dinner reservation they had and that same day that they found her teresa janus was taken off of life support and because these victims all died in different places and with different medical teams it was not connected right away that this was from tylenol it wasn't until northwest community hospital got the lab results back that they ended up contacting the other hospitals and were able to find out about the other victims and how they had taken tylenol so obviously this is a big concern for everyone for citizens for tylenol not looking so good in 1958 johnson johnson acquired mcneil laboratories and mcneil consumer products were responsible for manufacturing prescription drugs containing acetaminophen which is the active ingredient in tylenol when johnson johnson acquired mcneil they began promoting a new over-the-counter pain reliever called tylenol back in the 60s and because they were the only brand to sell this type of product back then they controlled the market and even as other brands of similar medication started coming on the market tylenol was still the most trusted and had about 37 of the market and by the early 1980s tylenol had over 100 million users it was so popular that in the first three quarters of 1982 tylenol was responsible for 19 of johnson johnson's overall profits mom kathy's sick she has a fever please get the children's tylenol not aspirin not anymore because i found out children's tylenol is the one more pediatricians give their own kids to bring down your child's fever fast trust children's tylenol state-of-the-art medical equipment hospitals use it to locate pain and to help fight pain they have a choice of pain relievers what do they use most tylenol look last year hospitals dispensed 10 times as much tylenol as the next four brands combined hospitals can trust tylenol to give effective relief without the stomach irritation possible with aspirin or any other type of pain reliever well if hospitals use tylenol shouldn't you tylenol the pain reliever hospitals use most so as you can imagine word traveled pretty fast by september 30th that several people in the chicago area had died after taking tylenol and people of course were freaked out of course it wasn't long until word got back to tylenol and they realized they had a real crisis on their hands that morning on the 30th there was a press conference held going over the victims names and how they had all taken tylenol that morning on the 30th it was announced that stanley teresa adam and mary mary kellerman had all died from taking tylenol and the other deaths were not connected to theirs at this point they also shared with the public that they confirmed that there was cyanide in the bottles of tylenol that all of these people had consumed the press conference was at 8 a.

m and by 9 15 a. m most of the stores in the greater chicago area had completely removed tylenol from their shelves some of them decided to leave the tylenol bottles as long as they removed the ones from the specific lot number some stores were more cautious and removed them all but a lot of people thought that it was just that batch that had been tampered with this was not a cockroach in the box kind of a of an issue people had lost their lives that really created that vulnerability that sense of risk that sense of threat that i think really scared a lot of people and justifiably the conversation was well we need to recall okay do we recall from the store do we recall from the city do we recall from the region and of course people were totally freaked out and not just in chicago people were freaked out across the entire country my grandma was living in florida at the time and she was very worried about her tylenol she got rid of it immediately and was worried about tylenol she had given my dad and his brother a couple days earlier and that's what people were very concerned about at first too you know am i going to eventually get sick if i took tylenol a couple days ago or last week people were calling up the poison control hotlines over and over to the point where they were just ringing off the hook that bizarre mystery of tylenol laced with cyanide still has not been solved tonight investigators say they are searching for quote a madman people were terrorized they didn't know what product they had in their home that could possibly be lethal if they ingested it scared really that something somebody could have tampered with some of the other products you had police riding around with their bull horns yelling throw out your tylenol flush it down the toilet do not take any time at all until further notice people were checking themselves into the er thinking they'd been poisoned i was just nervous it was absolute chaos flush it all down and of course johnson johnson hopped on this immediately one of their attorneys went right to the medical examiner's office to learn more and this crisis is one of the more famous ones and it's often used as an example of good crisis management for students learning about pr and advertising the executives at johnson and johnson immediately jumped into action not caring about the money they would lose or the damage to their brand their reaction was how do we save lives as quickly as possible and if possible how do we save this product they didn't worry about the money they didn't worry about the impact in the company they stopped shipment ordered all their distribution chain to pull it back in so that we could figure out what was going on and that sticks out in my mind it was not a negotiation or discussion in fact they stepped forward and volunteered it some analysts predict the tylenol brand name will disappear within a year we concluded we were never going to be judged by what caused the problem we were always going to be judged on on how we responded to it that first day september 30th when the news went public they were under the impression that it really was contained to just chicago so they told retailers in the rest of the country that they were fine to keep tylenol on their shelves by 3 pm that day johnson and johnson released an official recall of all tylenol products from lot number mc2880 but even though they tried telling the public that just that lot number was tampered with of course people weren't gonna take the chance and nobody felt safe taking tylenol or giving it to their kids so their market share dropped to seven percent overnight soon johnson and johnson got word of the other deaths that had been caused after taking tylenol and that's when they realized that mary reiner's bottle was from lot number 1833 mb and so they expanded the recall to tylenol bottles that had that lot number as well but the recall expanded even further on october 1st when paula prince's body was discovered and investigators learned that her tylenol had a different lot number on it hers was from 1801 m a that night october 1st 1982 at 11 p. m mayor jane byrne had a press conference and told the public that no person should consume tylenol in any form no matter the lot number and it was also stated during this press conference that johnson johnson was not responsible for what had happened johnson johnson had to recall 31 million bottles of tylenol on october 5th which is the equivalent of 100 million dollars worth of product the production of tylenol completely halted and the advertisement of tylenol stopped as well in fact johnson johnson put out paid advertising against the consumption of their product more than 10 million recalled bottles were tested and a total of 50 pills were laced and were distributed amongst eight of those bottles five of those bottles belonged to the deceased victims two bottles had been sent back laced and one bottle had yet to be sold johnson johnson offered people safe replacement capsules for the bottles that they recalled and they also put out a 100 000 reward for anyone who had information about who did this and why they ended up establishing a 1 800 number for people who were concerned to call in and even opened up a phone line where they would be able to provide reporters with updated information as quickly as possible because this was a huge nationwide crisis i think they're going the extra mile to make it sure that it's consumers safe tylenol the so-called eighth victim of this tragedy is continuing to recover and by october 5th the attorney general and the fbi were both working on this case and by this time the whole country was aware of this crisis and people were so freaked out people were calling the hotlines like crazy people were going into the hospitals wondering if they had been poisoned people who just had you know minimal symptoms but had taken tylenol really became concerned as we know the children tying all the chewable have not been implicated yet exactly what is going on right now they're just assuming that it could be the cyanide-laced capsule also control center the phone has been ringing off the hook at rush presbyterian st luke's medical center in chicago it's the regional poison control center for the entire chicago area boys and specialists oh we've been receiving calls uh about once every 15 seconds at the rush presbyterian saying looks we only have three poison lines and they're lit up constantly ever since yesterday morning right now they're telling people which lots of tylenol are known to have contaminated capsules and checking to see if callers have displayed any symptoms of cyanide poisoning if uh they have a tummy run emergency room if they don't have that they took it yesterday we just tell them you're probably gonna have no problem with it just hold on to the bottles don't take any talent all extra strength for the time being until you hear otherwise most of what's going on here is informational officials here say if anyone has taken a cyanide laced tylenol capsule they probably wouldn't be able to make it to the phone to call with the amount of cyanide in these pills anyone who had taken them would be dead within minutes of consuming them and all of this really changed the way that people saw consumer products fundamentally i mean if a trusted painkiller like tylenol had the capacity to kill people what was next so the recall was very effective there were no other tylenol related deaths reported but now they had to figure out who did this and why would they want to do this there's no single person or even a group of single persons that stand out above the rest at this point in time we had no clues as to the motivation except the taking of human life it made no sense there was no clear and intended victim but just anyone anyone who happened to have the misfortune to buy a bottle of tie-in of course they started thinking that maybe it was a disgruntled tylenol employee or an employee of johnson and johnson police are looking for disgruntled employees angry customers anybody with a grudge against the stores or tylenol police are even checking stock transactions to see whether someone was trying to push down the value of johnson and johnson stock they were able to rule out that they had actually laced the pills inside the manufacturing plant but they knew that whoever did lace the pills had gotten bottles from different stores whoever did it laced 50 pills put them into different bottles and then put them back on the store shelves and unfortunately back then cctv was not as common as it is today and they found no footage of anyone putting a tylenol bottle back on the shelf investigators really didn't have a lot to work with at that point so they decided to publicize the funerals of the victims hoping that the killer would be weird enough to just show up and this happens a lot it's a tactic that investigators use quite a bit but unfortunately this time it brought them no leads and they still had no idea who would have done this was it someone who just wanted to wreak havoc on society wanted to see others suffer and die or was it someone who wanted to hurt johnson and johnson and tank their stock then on october 6th just a day after the nationwide recall of all tylenol products an unsigned extortion letter was sent to the manufacturer threatening to repeat all these killings unless he was wired one million dollars and the letter provided an account number for the money to be sent to this letter was immediately sent to the fbi and they determined that it was written by a man named james lewis authorities today stepped up their search for the man accused of demanding a million dollars from the makers of tylenol to prevent further murders so of course they began a manhunt for james and it wasn't till december of that year that james was spotted at a new york library he was arrested and brought into custody but after they investigated james a little further it became obvious that he was not the perpetrator of the original attack first of all james was not even in chicago when the poisoning took place and because cyanide quickly eats away at the capsule itself it was determined that whoever put them on the shelves had to have worked very quickly laced them and then pretty much immediately got them onto shelves and they had to be put on the shelves about 48 hours or less from when they were consumed lewis made himself a suspect because he tried to shake down money with the implication being that he had done it wouldn't do it again but we had several other suspects none of which would answer the question of why and there was no direct link as to the indiscriminate taking of life the investigation continued there was no evidence depending on anybody at that time also it was determined that the account number that james had put on the letter didn't even belong to him it actually belonged to a man named frederick mchahey who james was angry at because he believed he conned his wife out of 500 bucks so he was hoping that he could pin the tylenol poisonings on him and that the fbi would go after him and even though james had committed some crimes in the past that would make him possibly seem like the killer it was determined that he was not the tylenol killer james was sentenced to 20 years in prison for extortion but he was released in 1995 after serving only 13 years suspect number two roger arnold that year on october 9th roger was at an irish pub in lincoln park where he made comments about being the killer he was literally at the pub whipping out a baggie of white powder and showing it off to people telling them that it was cyanide and that he was the one who committed the attack so the pub owner called the chicago police and they brought him in he lived on the south side of chicago and he gave police permission to search his home they ended up finding a rifle four handguns and a ton of ammunition but no cyanide he was held without bail so that they could question him about the tylenol attack and he tried to tell them that he did have cyanide in his home that he used for special projects but he had gotten rid of it after the tunnel attack plus there were a few other connections between him and the tylenol attacks for one mary reiner purchased her tylenol bottle across the street from where arnold's ex-wife was a patient at a psychiatric ward and arnold worked at a jewel warehouse where mary's father had actually been working as a truck driver some strange connections but nothing that solidified his connection to the attack they questioned his ex-wife and she said that she didn't really think he was capable of committing a crime like that however he had given her tylenol a few months prior and she had thrown up after taking it so they ended up searching arnold's house for a second time and they ended up finding two one-way tickets to thailand and a variety of crime manuals including the anarchist cookbook and training manuals from the u.

s department of defense on unconventional warfare devices they also did find white powder in his home but they did lab tests on it and found that it was harmless whatever it was eventually they had to clear arnold as a suspect because there was not enough evidence connecting him to the crime so months went by years went by without any conviction eventually though they did come up with another suspect and you guys might be familiar with this suspect ted kaczynski otherwise known as the unabomber from 1978 to 1996 ted was responsible for killing three and injuring 23 individuals and he was considered a suspect because his first attacks took place in chicago ted's parents were also from a suburb in chicago located near one of the tylenol killings but from the beginning ted denied any involvement in the tylenol case so that brings us to february of 2009 when fbi announces that there has been quite a few advancements in technology and that they're going to re-look at the tylenol case and re-examine all the evidence but that didn't seem to lead anywhere because to this day we have no idea who committed the tylenol murders no one has ever been identified for killing these seven people this whole event of course triggered major changes in the way that consumer products are packaged johnson johnson knew that the trust wasn't lost with tylenol itself tylenol had been used for so long and had been trusted by many families it was the packaging of tylenol that had lost their trust six weeks after the deaths occurred johnson johnson held a press conference and announced new and improved packaging that was going to be guaranteed to help regain the trust that they had lost hello safety seals and along with their new protection methods johnson and johnson pledged to do a better job of protecting their consumers going forward i don't know capsules it had the cotton ball it had aluminum over the top it had a child proof cap it had plastic over the child proof cap those levels of safety became the levels of trust j also decided to lower the price of the pill and they also reformulated it into a caplet so that makes it a lot harder for people to tamper with and the packaging itself became a major competitive advantage they became the leaders in this type of tamper-proof packaging so they definitely got the trust of the public back and people started flocking to johnson johnson products because they were the safest on the market the handling of this crisis was so effective that their stock price went back up 25 within a year in 1983 congress passed the tylenol bill which made it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products and in 1989 the fda established federal guidelines that required manufacturers to make all consumer products proof packaging now had become a competitive advantage everything from food products to pharmaceuticals were favorably affected if i take the cap off the milk carton you have to stick your finger in there and grab the ring and pull the ring out along with the seal i think of tylenol in 1991 the families of the victims ended up suing johnson johnson for not already having that packaging in place they argued that before this even happened there were over 300 complaints about packaging being tampered with there were also cases of incorrect numbers of pills in the bottles or foreign objects being inside the bottles but instead of going to court johnson johnson settled for an undisclosed amount and like i said to this day the killer has not been identified which is crazy and one thing that i found so interesting about this case is that the doctors said that if three family members didn't die on the same day after consuming the same tylenol they would not have probably made the connection for a while and more people could have died obviously it's horribly tragic that three people in the same family died in one day i can't even imagine what that was like for the rest of the family members but if that didn't happen a lot more lives would have been lost so in a very strange way they're almost heroes i know that sounds kind of weird but if they hadn't all taken the tylenol many more people could have lost their lives so i definitely want to hear your thoughts on this case especially if you were around in the 80s and experienced this tylenol craziness it honestly blows my mind that a medication was sold without tamper-proof packaging probably because i was born in 1993 and all of this had happened way before then but that just seems so weird to me it's kind of a duh that this was going to happen that someone was eventually going to do something like this it's almost like they should have had that in place from the beginning but that's why they were sued anyway that is it for me today guys i hope you found this case interesting i certainly did and before i go i would like to thank today's sponsor audible you guys know i have been a big fan of audible for many years now way before they were sponsoring my channel i would use it in college all the time because i'm dyslexic and reading is a difficult experience for me and today i want to recommend the book unsolved murders true crime cases uncovered which covers the tylenol murders audible allows you to enjoy all of your audio entertainment in one app they have an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers to new releases celebrity memoirs mysteries thrillers motivation wellness business and more and as an audible member every month you get to choose one title to keep from their entire catalog including bestsellers and new releases also members get full access to a growing selection of included audiobooks audible originals and podcasts and as always new audible members get a 30-day trial to check it out all you got to do is go to audible.