tylenol murders theories

But ultimately, three more people Mary Reiner, Mary McFarland and Paula Prince died within days after taking what they thought was an Extra-Strength Tylenol. Perhaps he traded homemade bombs for poisoned pills. There, research chemist Karen Wolnik and her colleagues established a trace element pattern a sort of chemical fingerprint for each sample to determine whether it was identical to the poison used in the Tylenol killings. (James Mayo / Chicago Tribune). Fahner ordered his staff to work through the night, calling local police, sheriffs, coroners, the FBI, the FDA, prosecutors and public health officials. The latest Tribune poll showed he was down by about 20 points in the upcoming election. Nearly three weeks after the murders, for example, the FBI asked Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene to write a column about Mary Kellerman and include specific details such as the familys home address and the location of the little girls grave, with her parents permission. I had people dropping dead all over the place.. There was no clear leader. The Illinois State Police told NBC News the investigation remains ongoing. I have no idea who gave that one, but it was perfect.. We had gloves in our car and basically used them on decomposed bodies. Still, in his opinion, Fahner was exactly what the task force needed. A native of the south suburbs, Gutowski received a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield and is a graduate of Southern Illinois University. (Fred Jewell/AP). 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. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). America was gripped by paranoia and fear. But their deaths did inspire a series of important moves to make over-the-counter medications safer (albeit never 100 percent safe) for the hundreds of millions of people who buy them every year. (Stan Policht / Chicago Tribune). He also would have a history of animal cruelty, Lane told the Tribune. The profilers believed the killer was likely to visit one of those named places to see the heartbreak he had caused. 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. Another theory was that whoever poisoned the medication did it at home or in a car, then placed the bottles back on the shelves. 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. John Fellmann at his home in Huntley in September. Whoa, whoa, he recalled. Local police departments and states attorneys offices have been trying to crack the case for 40 years. On that day, two unrelated things happened: A pub owner made a phone call to police, and an extortion letter arrived at a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary. Investigators pulled library records to see who had checked out books on cyanide. Forty years after that terrifying period in September 1982, investigators say new evidence and a potential motive may be enough to finally solve the case. If people threw out their Tylenol, authorities would never know the full extent of the tampering. (Chicago Tribune), Look, like any other series of government bureaucracies, theres always tension between agencies, he said. Beginning on Sept. 29, 1982, and over the next week, seven people were murdered in the Chicago area after unknowingly taking Tylenol pills that were spiked by a killer. The Tylenol task force may be no exception, he said, but the tensions didnt affect the overall effort. The FBIs counterintelligence unit even reached out to their Soviet counterparts to see if they had any spy satellite images that could help, according to former FBI agent Grey Steed. Another tip involved a man who was threatening to poison Hormel food products. Three of the deaths occurred in Arlington Heights, where police told NBC Chicago last year that they still have the pills, bottles and boxes as evidence. She also laments that her dad never got to meet her and her husband, her son, her stepson and her step-grandson. In fact, so many big dogs were present, Fellmann said he couldnt find a free chair inside his own 60-seat roll call room. Theories The first suspect is 48 year old dock worker Roger Arnold, who said some suspicious things about the Tylenol murders at a bar one night. As a result of the crime, makers of Tylenol developed new product protection methods. The original theory behind the crimes was a culprit who took the Tylenol bottles from drug and grocery stores in the Chicago area over a period of weeks, opened the capsules and added potassium cyanide, after which the culprit would return the bottles to the stores to be purchased. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). (Stan Policht / Chicago Tribune). Its a one-way street for information back and forth. Severns confronted people at both agencies, who blamed each other for keeping him in the dark. When that happened, the suspect would make contact with an investigator and offer to help solve the case. Jose Rosa, right, was one of hundreds of Chicago city employees and volunteers to distribute warnings about cyanide-laced Tylenol in fall 1982. Their departments relationship with the FBI had been rocky for decades, but it was at a particularly low point in September 1982. And there were a lot of bottles to come out of that lot.. Among them was Lane, a well-respected federal agent who would help put away all kinds of criminals during his nearly 30-year career, including mob boss Sam Carlisi, former Illinois Gov. In an attempt to paint a more detailed portrait of the killer, the FBI turned to a relatively new technique at the time called criminal profiling, in which agents try to identify the personality and behavioral characteristics of an offender based on an analysis of the crime. That said, he was charged with extortion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Severns, who had two young children, heard the undeserved guilt in her voice. Many people who handled potential evidence in 1982 didnt wear gloves because it wasnt protocol at the time. He held news conferences, sometimes twice a day, to meet the insatiable media demands. And wherever they fell on the issue, that position hasnt changed much over the past four decades. Rosen's theory is that the tampering did not happen on store shelves, but at the manufacturing plant before the product was shipped out. Stores were pulling the product off shelves. Chemists working for the Illinois Public Health Department in Chicago test the contents of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. Now Fahner had to win the job for himself, and he faced a formidable opponent in Democrat Neil Hartigan, a vote magnet from Chicagos North Side. Chicago police Detectives Jimmy Gildea. The coppers and the FBI guys that I knew all worked together. Some investigators on the case, including a few still involved with it, considered the rendered profile too vague to be of any real use. Prince was officially declared dead by the Medical Examiner's office at 6:45 p.m. Investigators discovered a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol in her bathroom with one capsule missing and a. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing news stories and features across the trending, pop culture, sports, parents, pets, health, style, food and TMRW verticals. When the family returned home, both Adam's brother Stanley and Stanely's wife Theresa took a Tylenol, resulting in both of their deaths. Neither did the chemist who performed the cyanide test. Former Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek, shown in September, says he felt Ty Fahner was chosen to head the task force for political reasons. Forty years later, these earliest days remain a point of pride for some and a source of frustration for others. The Kellerman and Janus bottles contained Tylenol from lot MC2880, manufactured in Pennsylvania on April 26, 1982. . To this day, however, the perpetrators of these murders have never been found. James Thompson, Illinois Secretary of State James Edgar and shook his head. In theory, the plan would prevent anyone from griping about being kept out of the loop. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. As Fahners team made calls, a DuPage County deputy coroner named Pete Siekmann sat in an office at the Illinois Department of Public Healths toxicology lab in Chicago and waited to see if the Tylenol capsules taken by Mary Lynn Reiner and Mary Sue McFarland were poisoned. The police questioned him and searched his home, they turned up several interesting connections. Fahner stepped off the stage and ducked behind a blue velvet curtain, where a state police officer briefed him. And they would remain apart for the next four decades. We didnt get anything, but we were kicking around ideas like that.. And I want people to know that, yeah, this was my family, and it has changed all of us.. The death toll now stood at five: Reiner, McFarland, Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, his brother Stanley Janus of Lisle and 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village. In 1989, the FDA established federal guidelines for manufacturers to make all such products tamper-proof. the fact remains, the Tylenol murders of 1982 . 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. Records show law enforcement has spent the past several years dealing almost entirely with forensic evidence. The Tylenol case, however, would loom largest over his professional life. I dont want to get off here, he quietly said. At first, the story focused in the Chicago/Cook County . Tylenol murders: A nationwide panic, a family tragedy Transformed by tragedy Her dad, aunt and uncle died 40 years ago after taking poisoned Tylenol. Though the company expanded the recall the same day to cover the batch involved in McFarlands death, the piecemeal approach troubled Fahner. They apologized, he said, but the trust had been broken. At the time just four, Janus recalls being with her father, Adam, in their Chicago suburb when he bought an Extra-Strength Tylenol bottle that someone had slipped cyanide pills into. Each person underwent a rigorous background check. I stepped off that dais, Fahner told the Tribune this year. And lives were at risk. FBI agents carry boxes out of the apartment building in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. If you are curious, come to a small house on a quiet, winding street in Elk Grove Village. Many people who handled potential evidence in 1982 didnt wear gloves because it wasnt protocol at the time. Former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner stands on the former site of the Tylenol task force headquarters in Des Plaines, now an empty parking lot. Elk Grove Village Detective Michael Severns said investigators were so intent on chasing leads that they at times lost sight of the grieving families. Or, at the very least, get them to remember his name. Ford said he told the renowned pathologist the bottle was on the vanity, and Stein, who wasnt wearing gloves, went to grab it. You werent there. The task force met each morning at the Des Plaines headquarters to discuss leads and get their assignments. He also laid the foundation to get Extra-Strength Tylenol off store shelves statewide, going beyond the single batch the pain relievers manufacturer had recalled that day. Customers who had a problem, anybody that could make some money out of it.. And it took over my life.. McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of the health care giant, Johnson & Johnson, manufactured Tylenol. That wasnt there.. It all goes to them, and you get nothing in return., Chicago police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek talks about the Tylenol investigation on Oct. 7, 1982, about a week after the seven deaths. We locked him up.. It didnt take long for the Tylenol murders to become national news. The agents didnt bother to pretend that labeling rules were their true motivation for getting involved. The evening marked an important shift in the tragedy, moving from a swiftly solved medical mystery into a massive criminal investigation. As the de facto leader of the task force, he would come to be known in the media as "Tylenol Ty." Kasia said she still remembers hearing her mother scream when she couldnt wake her father up the next day, 29 September 1982. It didnt take long for Fellmann to recognize the pressures and expectations under which the newly formed task force would operate. We had an absolute tsunami of Tylenol bottles. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). 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. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune). I thought he was perfect.. It was 1982. Thats just human nature. History's Greatest Mysteries looks into the theories regarding the Tylenol Murders in Chicago 1982. In keeping with that theory, the task force contacted hospitals to ask about anyone treated for poison burns or symptoms, in case the killer became ill or injured during the spree. The 18-page investigative summary also provides key evidence, including the names of the three main suspects, during the first seven months of the case. The FBI put about three dozen agents on the case, under the premise that the agency needed to determine whether Johnson & Johnson had violated federal law by failing to list potassium cyanide among the active ingredients in Tylenol. Illinois state police and FBI supervisors did most of the talking at that first meeting, several attendees told the Tribune. It started in 1982, not long after the murders. This Oct. 18, 1982, column by Tribune columnist Bob Greene included specific details at the request of the FBI, such as the home address of Tylenol victim Mary Kellerman. With fears mounting, Johnson & Johnson recalled all over-the-counter Tylenol capsule products on Oct. 5, nearly a week after Mary Kellermans death. Left: The Tylenol case marked one of the earliest uses of the approach. From the start, Detectives Ford and Gildea didnt understand the purpose of driving out to Des Plaines each day in rush hour traffic when they had a murder to solve back in the city. Introduction Heading link Copy link. I realized I was in the deep end of the pool, he said. The company, however, did not keep records of where the products were shipped. They gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with the highly poisonous potassium cyanide. He regaled reporters with all kinds of stories during that final interview, but none seemed to amuse him more than the unhappy Hormel ham man. "As you can see, it is easy to place cyanideinto capsules sitting on store shelves," he wrote in the letter. The bottle's cap was easily opened. The Tylenol Murders Pt. I mean, it just got to me, Severns said. The Chicago Tylenol Murders: With Laurence Fishburne. The profilers predicted the culprits past likely included treatment for mental health issues and an attack on his parents. 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. Our highest responsibility has always been the health and safety of our consumers," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement to NBC News. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune), John Fellmann at his home in Huntley in September. Unfortunately, each victim swallowed a Tylenol capsule laced with A lethal dose of cyanide. Fahner left the dinner immediately and made calls throughout the drive home, taking advantage of his position as a statewide official with access to a car phone, then a relatively rare piece of technology. Tensions flared, even among law enforcement personnel sincerely dedicated to the job. What are the Tylenol murders? Investigators quickly dismissed the possibility that the killer was targeting a single victim and the other bottles were contaminated to make it harder to solve that murder. My theory is that Anna is a diabetic and had just come home from a . The killer was likely to visit one of the earliest uses of approach. Man who was threatening to poison Hormel food products McFarlands death, the approach! 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