The Tylenol Murders /// Part 1 /// 480 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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[Music] [Music] thank you imagine it's a normal Wednesday a work day a school day a day in the
life but you don't feel normal you have a headache a cold or a fever you do the most normal thing in the
world you take your preferred pain reliever pills with a sip of water knowing that soon you'll feel like
yourself again only you don't within minutes of taking the pills you experience respiratory failure
seizure cardiac arrest and death this is what happened in the greater Chicago area in Illinois
several people took over the counter pain medication for everyday ailments purchased at their neighborhood pharmacy
only to die inexplicably within hours what in the world happened here How could a medication the very essence
of something intended to make people better kill them so suddenly and efficiently it is the very rare but very
real crime of product tampering someone some ones or maybe even a group of people were poisoning the General
Public killing indiscriminately shopping at the grocery store was like playing Russian roulette
but what was the motive the how was clear but the why and what for is anyone's guess
was the motive simply just to kill was this a form of public terrorism or mass extortion or both
and what kind of monster uses a painkiller as a vehicle for murder this is true crime garage
and this is the case of the Tylenol murders [Music] September 29th 1982 Mary Kellerman was 12 years old the
middle schooler lived in Elk Grove Village Illinois she wasn't feeling well that day and had stayed home from school
she told her dad that she had a headache and a sore throat and he went to the medicine cabinet and brought her an
extra strength Tylenol capsule he took from a bottle his wife purchased the day before at a Jewel Osco store in Elk
Grove Village Mary dutifully swallowed the pill went into the bathroom and then she collapsed by the time paramedics
arrived they found Mary in full cardiac arrest she was rushed to the hospital where she
was pronounced dead around 10 A.M doctors could only guess that she had suffered an aneurysm she was her parents
only child that same morning postal worker Adam Janus of nearby Arlington Heights Illinois age 27. went
to his local Jewel Osco store on Vale Avenue in Arlington Heights and purchased steak flowers and a bottle of
extra strength Tylenol capsules he had lunch with his new wife Teresa and then not feeling well took two capsules from
the bottle he had just purchased and swallowed them down he went to bed but immediately started
convulsing and passed out Teresa called 9-1-1 when the paramedics arrived around two o'clock they rushed
Adam to the ER where he was pronounced dead at 3 15. Dr Thomas Kim at Northwest Community Hospital told Adams Family
quote nothing seemed to help he suffered sudden death without warning it was most
unusual end quote devastated Adam's family including his 25 year old brother Stanley and Stanley's wife also named
Teresa age 19 gathered in the Janus home to be with loved ones and make funeral arrangements for their loved one
in their distress they both developed headaches and were handed a bottle of Tylenol the same one
that Adam's pills came from both Stanley and Teresa soon dropped to the floor and
started convulsing Adam's wife Teresa called 9-1-1 for the second time that day Dr Kim was still on
duty at the hospital when the second batch of Janus family members were brought in with inexplicable symptoms
they were both in full cardiac arrest and soon died confounded at the mysterious deaths of
several family members in one house Dr Kim decided that poison control centers should be contacted
Dr John Sullivan of Rocky Mountain poison Center told Dr Kim that what he was describing sounded like cyanide
poisoning meanwhile nurse Helen Jensen spoke to the remaining members of the Janus Clan and determined that the three
dead people had all ingested extra strength Tylenol prior to dying she went to the Janice home
where nurse Jensen found the Tylenol bottle on the kitchen counter and the receipt for its recent purchase in the
trash Jensen counted the pills remaining in the bottle and noted that six pills were missing six pills missing three
people inexplicably dead Janice brought the bottle to the administrators at Northwest Community
Hospital and voiced her concerns but didn't feel that she was listened to after all Tylenol was the number one
selling pain reliever worldwide it made people feel better it didn't kill them nurse Jensen wasn't the only one who saw
a pattern firefighters in Elk Grove and Arlington Heights Chuck Kramer Richard keyworth and Phil capitelli noticed the
9-1-1 calls and quickly surmised that something was up with these unexplained deaths in the neighboring towns
guessing that they might be somehow related they reported to police that it seemed that all the victims had taken
Tylenol right before suffering fatal symptoms but while some people were just starting to observe similarities in the
four strange deaths in the area on September 29th more people continued to take Tylenol for various ailments well
Tylenol had 35 percent of the market share of pain relievers in 1982. it was the number one selling brand worldwide
on the afternoon of September 29th think about how fast all of this stuff is happening all of this these terrible
distress calls coming in people collapsing being rushed off to the hospital this is all the same day well
back to one thing that you said before the the doctor that was communicating you know to go hey find this bottle how
many pills are left one of the things that they're able to do is to smell the bottle and that smell like almonds
because cyanide has a almost a almond smell a bitter almond smell Mary Reiner 27 of Winfield known as Lynn was home
from a hospital after having just given birth to a baby boy four days earlier now she went out to Frank's Finer Foods
in her town about 25 miles from Arlington Heights to buy some regular strength Tylenol
but she didn't take these from what we can tell instead she took two extra strength
Tylenol capsules that is believed to have come from the hospital that gave these to her to take home and use as
needed I do want to throw something out here Captain before we move on but in this particular incident there are two
sources that I was looking for information on the death of Mary Reiner one comes from a book called Thai MERS
which is by Scott Bartz in his version of this portion of the story it's unknown where this extra
strength Tylenol came from that she in fact purchased regular Tylenol that day right when you look at John Douglas's
books where he briefly discusses the case in two of his books one being mind Hunter and the other the anatomy of
motive he says that it was found that she took two extra strength Tylenol pills that
were from a bottle that she had purchased at some point we don't know when right but this bottle was found in
her purse these are two very completely different stories I do not know which one is in fact correct so I wanted to
make sure we pointed that out here well didn't they surmise that all these victims would have had to buy the the
product within the last day because cyanide would have been able to eat through the capsules it would it would
corrode the gelatin capsule that encapsulates the powder and yes it would corrode that so these whoever was
constructing this and putting together The Poisoned capsules had to do it relatively soon before they were
purchased and then ingested because it would destroy them to the point where nobody in their right mind would look at
what was now in the bottle and and consume it so we're not exactly for sure where she got the extra strength Tylenol
but we're sure that she took the extra strength Tylenol that's what both of these sources do in fact State she took
these in fact Captain right in front of her husband her mother-in-law and three of her children
now Lynn went into convulsions and collapsed almost immediately within two hours she died at the same hospital
where she had birthed her son just days before wow Mary McFarlane 31 of Elmhurst
worked at the Illinois Bell phone center in the Yorktown mall in Lombard 10 miles
east of Winfield she told her co-workers that she had a headache and she took two
extra strength Tylenol capsules from a supply she kept in a container in her purse the pills came from a 50 count
bottle that she purchased the previous day at the Woolworths she had already consumed five of the
pills from that same bottle but she died within minutes of taking these last two so pointing out here
captain that in this particular case right where this woman passed away from being poisoned obviously not all of the
pills inside that 50 count bottle were contaminated doctors assumed that she had had a stroke or some type of
aneurysm late on September 29th flight attendant Paula Prince age 35. she was just back in Chicago after an East Coast
shift she stopped at a Walgreens on North Wells Street in Chicago's north side of extra strength Tylenol two days
later she was found by her sister dead on her bathroom floor with an open bottle of Tylenol sitting on the sink
and one capsule missing from this bottle so now we have seven total victims that's correct and it was determined in
this investigation captain that even though Paula Prince wasn't found until several days later right they were able
to determine that she had been dead since that Wednesday night since that September 29th again all of this
happening in just a matter of a short period of time and just three days seven people died yeah and what was difficult
here is if you look at how much it would take how much cyanide it would take to kill
somebody these people were receiving a hundred percent to a thousand percent of a lethal dose yeah and I think that's
one thing that we need to keep in mind as we're going through this case so what we can already determine is that we got
multiple bottles that have been contaminated that have been laced with poison right
and not every capsule in every bottle seems to have been contaminated with this poison it's almost like this
murderer is pulling out a couple pills filling it back up with a couple poisonous pills and then moving on to
the next bottle well and even even the capsules themselves do not seem in all of these incidents to contain the same
amount the same level of poison right now all seven of these victims were all exhibiting the same symptoms at the time
of their passing these are seizures convulsions and quick deaths seven people who lived within just a few
miles of each other in five different towns around the Chicago area seven people who had one thing and one
thing only in common they had all taken Tylenol from bottles that were purchased
very recently the coroner's office and cook in DuPage counties where all the deaths occurred
did not think to test for cyanide poisoning or in fact any poisoning of any kind no foul play was suspected this
was at first Tylenol was at the time the most popular pain reliever on the market with 450
million dollars in annual sales and 37 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever Market
the concept that it could harm people was really truly Unthinkable at this time based on his conversations with the
Poison Control Center we're going back to Dr Kim he was the one that was on duty when all three of
the members from the Janus family came into the hospital suffering the same symptoms right all passing
Dr Kim sent blood samples from the Janus family to the lab and had them tested for cyanide
the test showed a lethal level of cyanide in these samples so much that the lab tech wasn't certain that the
test was even accurate Dr Kim collected the extra strength Tylenol bottles taken from the Janus
family home by nurse Jensen and the one taken from Mary Kellerman's home brought to him by an Arlington
Heights police officer who heard about the Janus family desk right he called The Cook County medical
examiner's office at 3 A.M and asked them to test the capsules in these bottles for Cyanide the chief
toxicologist for the Cook County Medical examiner's Office his name is Michael Schaefer examined the capsules from the
seized bottles of extra strength Tylenol as soon as he opened the containers he knew what he would find the smell as you
pointed out captain of bitter almonds was evident and obvious to this man potassium cyanide has an odor like
bitter almonds but it is only detectable by a portion of the population reports vary but it's between 30 and 40
percent of the population can detect this smell Dr Schaefer noted that about 10 of the capsules
were slightly swollen and discolored and contained potassium cyanide at a level toxic enough to provide thousands of
fatal doses only Trace Amounts of Tylenol were found in these capsules and Dr Shaffer also determined something
else and this is important the cyanide used would have been strong enough to degrade the gelatin-based
capsule shells very quickly but these pills were only in the beginning stages of this degradation they still looked
almost normal what this means as you pointed out earlier captain that someone had filled
these capsules very recently likely within just a handful of days someone had opened new bottles of extra
strength Tylenol opened individual capsules inside emptied them filled them with cyanide
which would resemble like a white powder closed the capsules back up and replaced
them into the bottles it then appears that the bottles were placed back on store shelves for consumers to purchase
at this time there's no seal on these when you went to buy a pain reliever you got a bottle when you open it up I think
they had the cotton swab at the beginning but they didn't have a seal there was no seal of of any kind and now
we got a whole Community that's all of a sudden wondering wait a second how many deaths recently just in the
past few days could be attributed to Tainted Tylenol as you pointed out Captain 37 percent of
the over-the-counter pain reliever Market this Chicago is a large area a lot of people yeah one of the biggest cities in
the United States well cyanide poisoning is poisoning that results from exposure
to any of a number of forms of cyanide early symptoms include headaches dizziness fast heart rate shortness of
breath and vomiting this phase may be followed by seizures slow heart rate low blood pressure loss of consciousness and
cardiac arrest um onset of the symptoms usually occur within a few minutes some survivors have
long-term neurological problems the Cook County Medical examiner's Office held a press conference on
September 30th 1982 stating publicly that the Mary Kellerman and all three of the januses
had definitely died from consuming extra strength Tylenol laced with cyanide when the press conference occurred no
one had attributed the deaths of Lynn Reiner or Mary McFarland to Tylenol and Paula Prince's body had not yet been
found right this is going to cause all kinds of shock fear and panic about the poison
medication throughout the entire country the Tylenol poisonings became the most extensively covered news event since the
assassination of John F Kennedy well just like you said I I mean the report I have is 35 percent of the market share
but you said 37 so we're talking about the most popular pain reliever on the market
I mean it's they're backed by Johnson and Johnson right mm-hmm people barrage poison hotlines with
calls and flooded Hospital ERS the Food Drug Administration issued warnings to Consumers not to ingest extra
strength Tylenol until the source of the poison could be identified close to the epicenter of the poison
outbreak police in Illinois roamed the streets with bull horns warning residents not to consume the drug
after a press conference by the mayor Chicagoans turned all of their home supplies of Tylenol into the police
along with any records that they may have of when and where it was purchased by Thursday September 30th both Jewel
Osco and chicago-based Walgreens ordered the removal of all Tylenol from their shelves Nationwide
retailers across the country pulled extra strength Tylenol from Lot number mc2880
the lot number the Janus and Kellerman bottles were part of which was the only Lot number in which
cyanide had been identified the two tainted bottles had both gone through a warehouse in the Chicago
suburb of Franklin Park and had been manufactured in Fort Washington the manufacturing facility was tested
and was found not to be contaminated with Cyanide and they end up finding out that all the bottles were bought at
different locations yes they were all purchased at different drug stores and and you're saying that two of the
bottles came from the same distribution Factory that is correct distribution warehouse
that's correct but keep in mind at this time in the ball game these are the only
two bottles that they have decided were contaminated with cyanide right so while
investigators and Johnson and Johnson the parent Corporation of the company that manufacture Tylenol we're still
determining the potential scope of the tainted medicine the autopsy was being performed on Lynn Reiner in DuPage
County the medical examiner there was informed of the Tylenol poisonings in other towns and also that Lynn had taken
some Tylenol capsules just before dying foreign [Music] [Music] a big shout out to jib Jiggler from
Parts on them there you go get out of our town so now very quickly we have a new
suspected case of cyanide poisoning this with the autopsy of Lynn Reiner so naturally law enforcement went to the
Reiner home they found a bottle of regular strength Tylenol that Leonard purchased that day this was Lot number
one eight three three MB it's still sitting on the kitchen sink but they also found some extra strength Tylenol
capsules which they believe were given to Lynn by the hospital when it discharged her
in her bottle of regular strength Tylenol upon testing the capsules the assistant
chief toxicologist for the Illinois Department of Public Health determined that they were filled with potassium
cyanide an inexpensive low Purity grade that is typically used in manufacturing in heavy industry let it taken two extra
strength Tylenol capsules one of which had contained cyanide the other apparently did not
of the other six extra strength Tylenol capsules found in her bottle four were poisoned none of the regular strength
pills in the bottle that she had purchased were tainted at all although authorities suspect that it is
possible that Lynn's poison pills came from the hospital Johnson and Johnson removed all the pills from area
hospitals and destroyed them without testing any of them so we will never really know it's easy to say to have
them test them all now because how big this crime became correct and you also have to wonder how much work and effort
are they putting into motion to just get the capsules off the shelves and and collect all of them so nobody else gets
harmed or killed yeah it's just this is not these are not easy tasks and these are things that you need to do
immediately with the quickness so we still have law enforcement looking into these other unexplained deaths so
investigators looking into the Unexplained death of Mary McFarland the the Bell Telephone store worker began to
question whether her death could also have been caused by Tylenol they found 10 extra strength Tylenol capsules in
the container in her purse five of which were determined to contain cyanide these apparently came from the
bottle that they found in her apartment this was Lot number 1910 MD this bottle contained 33 capsules one of
which was filled with cyanide this was a new Lot number and then a fourth the pills consumed by Paula Prince the
bottle bore the lot number one eight zero one m a which had not been listed by the company
among the known contaminated Lots interestingly the extra strength Tylenol bottle in Paula's bathroom was a 24
count bottle unlike the 50 count bottles used in the other depths right cyanide was found in one of the remaining
capsules but six other capsules were discolored they had been corroded by the cyanide leaking from that one tainted
pill from Johnson and Johnson the parrot company what ensued is considered the birth of Crisis management the corporate
method of handling a PR disaster right Johnson and Johnson announced at first a localized recall of just pills from the
tainted Lots but by October 5th they expanded that recall to a complete Nationwide recall of their painkiller
capsules at 31 million bottles that's exactly correct 31 million bottles were pulled from retail locations this is
estimated to have cost Johnson and Johnson about 100 million dollars they offered a reward of a hundred thousand
for any information one hundred thousand dollars reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons
responsible for the cyanide poisoning the recall I believe is what cost over a hundred million dollars you'd think
maybe we would offer a little bit more money than a hundred if it was my company and
we just lost 100 million I go hey I'm offering a million I'll pay I'll pay the one percent of
what I just lost to figure out what what [ __ ] did this what murder is out there they flew in
hundreds of chemists to assist in this testing process they worked hand in hand with the FBI and other investigators and
Johnson and Johnson examined the three distribution centers through which the tainted Tylenol bottles were processed
all of these were looked at and they publicly said that they found nothing nor was anything found at the one
Distribution Center in Pennsylvania that all the bottles had passed through the pills have been manufactured at
different plants so this is troubling because this means that they were not tainted during the manufacturing process
nor knowing what we now know about Cyanide and how it would react in that capsule and corrode everything
I think there was there's little reason to believe that anyway yeah you're moving a little fast let's let's slow
down for a second so we have seven victims seven victims that we believe we're all poison three of them took
pills from the same bottle correct so we have a total of four different bottles and that you're saying
that all the bottles came from different stores but how many came from different
distribution centers okay so we have yes we have seven victims who would have consumed capsules from
see therein lies a big question in this whole case with one of the victims we're
not really 100 certain where she obtained the poison capsules right so we could be talking about a situation of
seven victims with five different tainted bottles of Tylenol or four and then somehow she received
these poison pills from either the hospital or elsewhere we we can't say for certain but what we can say is given
the lot numbers on the bottles that we know tested positive for cyanide that they it seems like they had come
through similar from the same Distribution Center what is also determined is that they were
manufactured at different plants and from my understanding there was a plant in Texas and a plant in Pennsylvania
probably other plants as well but determined that pills came from those two plants manufactured at those two
plants which again points that it's not tainting the pills during the manufacturing process right
whoever did this did this at a later time after they had been manufactured packaged up and shipped off to be sold
yeah it almost seems like this individual is walking into the store maybe had a couple pills in his hand the
the cyanide pills opens up the Tylenol because we have no safety precautions at this this point and
just replaces a couple pills moves on to the next bottle or maybe does several bottles at that location
or just maybe one and then moves on to another drugstore doing the same process over and over that's exactly right the
the other thing that was quickly determined too Captain by Johnson and Johnson and investigators was that all
of the pills from these bottles or the bottles themselves had been manufactured the previous
spring so if they were contaminated during the manufacturing process they would have
been extensively corroded by September late September when people were consuming these things right now
that is one it's going to be horrific for the general public because now it seems like
we got some Rogue person out there who is in a very evil indiscriminate way killing Unknown People to the Vic to the
suspect or a group of people that are doing this to terrorize the community but it is a good thing for Johnson and
Johnson because it's not a mix-up in the manufacturing process it's not they are in fact
responsible but not to the level of that it's going on when the pills are made right and so if we do have a disgruntled
employee that they're still having to go around store by store they're not tampering with the medication during the
the initial processes correct someone's doing this after these these pills have already made it through the
distribution centers so either somebody's taking them off of a truck somewhere or off of multiple trucks that
would deliver these kind of goods or their I mean they could even be actually purchasing them from stores
taking them home and then putting together their poisoned bottle and then returning them to the store right did
you just show up at the store and you put it back on the Shelf yeah pull it out of your pocket put it at the front
of the Shelf where someone's going to grab it and and purchase it and take it home it's also a safer way because if I
go into a drugstore and I purchase this product I need some extra strength Tylenol I got a headache my co-workers
driving me nuts and they give me this bottle of pills while they also give me a receipt
so then when I come back in with the tampered pills and I maybe I go to put it back on
the shelves but I get caught right and if they say something I go oh no no this is my bottle here's my receipt
and so it would it would protect me when I went back to putting the the tampered with or the
poison back on the Shelf yeah yeah you wouldn't want to be leaving a paper trail of returning that that bottle you
would want to go around and purchase these from different stores at different times maybe even well in advance of you
doing this or again take them off of a truck or multiple trucks depending on where you
work or your accessibility to said trucks well it's 19. and you you want to just go back in there and place them on
the Shelf yeah which nowadays would go hey pull up the the horrible camera footage pull up that horrible camera
footage that we're not going to be able to make out who's in that picture but it's 1982
most stores do not have surveillance so I believe every place that they believe that these were purchased at
there was no surveillance cameras so they couldn't do anything about that but what they did do was all these stores
went back and I I'm I'm assuming this this came from law enforcement hey go back to the last week or so of any
shoplifters that you had and to re-question them the reaction from law enforcement to these Tylenol deaths
which came quickly to be known as the Tylenol murders or timers as the FBI called the case was well it
was Swift and immediate investigators from various agencies went to work forming a task force of 140 law
enforcement personnel officers from the five different towns were involved and because the case also
fell under Federal jurisdiction because of the United States Commerce laws the FBI jumped in as well sending 32 agents
to the area within hours of the murders coming to light a young within hours of the murders coming to light a young John
Douglas who would go on to be known as a legendary criminal profiler and FBI agent and more importantly friend of our
show was on a plane to Illinois we'll discuss his conclusions in a bit the task force looked into every angle
imaginable in this situation task force members examined a possible manipulation
of Johnson and Johnson's stock prices by some kind of crime syndicate right because you're looking for a competing
company yeah who who has something to gain out of this out of this Mass hysteria that has
been caused yeah they examine foreign terrorist groups they examined angry employees or
ex-employees at each location where the tainted Tylenol was manufactured stored or sold these people were interviewed
and evaluated shoplifters as you pointed out previously arrested for shoplifting from these drug stores they
were looked at a second time and spoke to in regards to this crime recently released inmates and mental
patients in the vicinity were profiled and interrogated as well police ran checks on every car receiving a traffic
ticket in the areas around the stores during September 29th during that whole time frame agents man the task force
hotline logging each tip no matter how crazy it seemed when it came in they also questioned every family member and
close friend of each victim I'd like to hear a top 10 list of the the craziest calls that came in on this on this case
yeah so you're interviewing all of the family members and close friends one because you're trying to fill out the
whole timeline on you know when and where it was purchased and in that jazz which seems to be fairly known by this
point in our investigation right but you're also doing that because you want to make sure that one of these victims
wasn't actually a targeted victim an intended victim whoever perpetrated that murder
was camouflaging that murder with the crime in the other deaths right investigators on the case were
conflicted between those who suspected that the tampering had occurred in the distribution process and those who
believed that it happened at the retail level authorities obtained lists of all employees of retailers and
the distribution chain as well you know anybody that would have had access to these Tylenol bottles or the cases that
they came in of course this list was massive this was a bunch of people to pour through
Illinois Attorney General Tyron Farner excuse you initially said that they were investigating disgruntled employees and
had already had 20 to 30 potential suspects in this case but the focus changed to retail level
tampering because it just seemed too implausible that the pills could have been messed with at a distribution
center and then put back into the supply chain right in large part Captain as you
pointed out that they're put on the front of shelves in different but proximate towns all kind of at the same
time so the timing was suspected to be very recent and almost simultaneous because
of the belief that the cyanide would corrode the capsules very quickly causing them to distort and change color
people would notice people would not ingest them experts advise that the cyanide would
eat through the pills within hours or days this is a little tricky here Captain because
I read the results of several tests and this was run by the Cook County Medical examiner's Office no corrosion
was found within 48 Hours of the induction of the cyanide the possibility expanded the time frame meant that no
one was really sure when or how the tainted pills had been placed on the shelves although
they had all been purchased within hours of causing death so basically what you're saying is is we know that all
these victims purchased or received their bottle of extra strength Tylenol within 24 hours of their death so even
though the cops were saying hey if you you add cyanide to these capsules they would disintegrate within a day
once they actually did some tests on these Cooks County they come back and say well actually once we uh you know
applied the same method to put the poison into these capsules we actually see no corrosion after 48 hours no
corrosion within 48 hours so yes it's it's a little bit messy because you have the experts the quote-unquote experts
saying one thing that the cyanide would eat through the pills within a matter of
just hours or a couple of days the Cook County their experiment showed differently that that it would be
possibly well after 48 hours before corrosion corrosion starts to take place so this doesn't really help to narrow
down the window of time of when whomever put the poison in these bottles and then put them back on the shelves
yeah basically the the purchase and the ingestion we have that all figured out we don't have when they were actually
tampered with because now we're looking at a a lot larger window than a eight hour window yeah and the thing that's so
tricky here too is how little would one be paying attention to other shoppers in these stores you know you see
somebody putting something on a shelf you might think that oh they just looked at the back of it they read the
ingredients or read the possible side effects or whatever and decided to put it back on the shelf or maybe it was a
dollar or two more than they were willing to pay and they they might buy a different product yeah or they didn't
what explosive diarrhea but what was interesting here Captain is that all in all
it was determined that 160 tainted capsules were found in eight bottles of extra strength Tylenol purchased at
seven different locations this is after people start turning in their Tylenol after they pull them off the shelves
they're testing ones that that were either purchased and not you know consumed or bottles that were still on
these shelves two bottles were found on the shelves at Osco Drug and Woodfield Mall in
Schaumburg Illinois two more bottles containing tainted pills were turned in by Chicago
residents these four bottles were in addition to the Janice Kellerman Prince and McFarland bottles so eight bottles
total we still aren't certain as to where Lynn Reiner's pills came from 100 and of
course we have no idea how many bottles were just thrown away without being tested
a survey later found that 60 percent of Chicagoans had destroyed or discarded their capsules during the first week
after the poisonings and Johnson and Johnson was permitted to collect and Destroy collected bottles of
Tylenol without inspecting them for tampering all in all a very very small percentage of extra strength Tylenol
bottles Nationwide were tested the fact is that likely no one will ever know how
many pills were actually poisoned well and here's the other weird thing too again it's 1982 so let's remember this
is going to cause the industry to change the way they do things this is the reason why we're going to have seals put
on items and protective measures but we don't have security footage but we have these bottles
and what do they not find on these bottles they don't find fingerprints or any other form of physical evidence yeah
so let's dive into this uh here Captain the how the poisoning was actually done so if it was done at the retail level as
most investigators seem to believe and of course Johnson and Johnson is going to back this belief
it meant as we said the killer had purchased bottles of extra strength Tylenol stole them whatever probably just
purchased them because again you're not wanting to create a paper trail you're not going to want to get caught stealing
Tylenol leading up to this event if it were me trying to do this administer this Mass hysteria I would probably be
purchasing these bottles well in advance weeks in advance in case there is security footage we know that a lot of
places will recycle their recordings and maybe after a week or two weeks they are recording over old footage if they
in fact even have any type of surveillance at their their building but somebody would have obtained the
bottles and then had to doctor them somewhere elsewhere right and then put the capsules back into the bottles and
then drive around or what have you you can place these on these shelf fronts at the different retail locations but again
this this seven different locations this makes it also more difficult because if
you look at a town like Boston or you look at a town like New York and even Chicago ones that have public
transportation where you can get through the major city and jump from point to point pretty quickly
right if you're on foot so for a individual to have these let's say eight bottles that they tampered
with and then to go throughout the city and drop them off at new locations because
that's one thing that they never could tell you they could never tell you if if these bottles were in the inventory of
that said store so we don't know if the individual bot eight ten bottles and then took them you
know from one location and took them home and then tampered with them and then distributed them out right that's
correct what we do know is that these retail locations seven of them this person or group of people would have
sprinkled these bottles around the Chicago area and the western suburbs of Chicago
and whoever did this likely had to have done this very soon prior to September 29th right as pointed out if you know
you just put them back on the Shelf you put them at the front of the line you whoever did this would have some
knowledge of cyanide and would know that it probably would corrode these other pills and therefore
if they want the Sinai to have the effect that it's intended for in this case you're going to put those bottles right
at the front of the line for people to grab them purchase them and hopefully ingest them very soon after purchasing
which we know unfortunately happen in all these cases well again it's also it's a weird thing because I have when
I've been at the store oh I need some migraine medicine or something right I'll pick some up I think I'm running
low but it's normally an item that you pick up after you've already run out correct or you're picking it up because
you need it right now right then yeah so I mean it's a very the level of sophistication
of uh attack again we we know pretty much how they did it or we can assume look I'm with you it makes more sense
that they would buy the bottles take the bottles home manipulate the situation there
um and then take them back it doesn't make any sense to me that they would be able to to do this with with inside of a
store no no you immediately someone would be would notice that you were up to something well obviously not like
inside the store but you could get the bottle and go to the bathroom or something and I don't think it would
take that long of time because the the measuring out that's what gets me is the lethal doses could be anywhere from like
they said a hundred percent uh or a hundred percent the lethal dose or even a thousand percent a lethal dose meaning
that this individual is not measuring them out he's just filling the capsules back up but that's also because I don't
think it takes much you don't have to have much to have a lethal dose one thing that we know that he did not do as
far as the information we currently have is he never underestimated how much to put in to the capsules so whether it be
100 or a thousand percent it worked 100 of the time right that it it was ingested well it's like Sex Panther like
60 percent of the time it works all the time so through this a little more in depth
because not everybody uh is as old as we are here in the garage but in 1982 the bottles available for
purchase by the public as you pointed out Captain were not safety sealed nowadays if you buy a bottle of Tylenol
or other medication the bottle Tylenol specifically has a silver foil safety seal and closing it in the Box
is glued shut back then you just untucked the Box lid and then screwed off the cap of the
bottle this timer's case is the FBI called it changed the packaging process in the
United States forever forever when extra strength Tylenol was returned to the market in late 1982 it
was reintroduced with a triple seal tamper resistant packaging a bottle encased in plastic wrapping inside of a
glued shut box and the federal anti-tampering act of 1983 changed the way that Food and Drugs were to be
packaged Nationwide it made consumer product tampering a federal crime well and these deaths also like we've talked
about before they're violent deaths yeah so how does the Sinai kill a person potassium cyanide acts very quickly to
prevent the blood from absorbing oxygen from the lungs which essentially starves
the body of oxygen this causes convulsions cardiac arrest and then death both potassium and sodium cyanide
are used in jewelry manufacturing and in mining amongst other things and this was
incredibly surprising to me Captain apparently they're both readily available [Music]
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of the story until then be good be kind and don't let her thank you foreign

The Tylenol Murders /// Part 1 /// 480

Part 1 of 2

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This week we explore an unsolved case out of the Chicago area. Back in the early 80’s the Tylenol Murders became the most extensively covered news event since the assassination of JFK. In just three days, seven people died all exhibiting the same symptoms. Symptoms that pointed to cyanide poisoning as the cause.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the Tylenol murders, where cyanide-laced capsules caused multiple deaths, leading to a nationwide panic and product recalls.

Key points

A Normal Day Turns Deadly. What began as a typical day quickly spiraled into chaos as pain relievers turned lethal.
The Tylenol Murders. A series of mysterious deaths linked to poisoned Tylenol capsules shocked the nation.
The First Victim. Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl, becomes the first victim of the Tylenol poisonings.
The Birth of Crisis Management. Johnson and Johnson's response to the Tylenol poisonings marked a pivotal moment in corporate crisis management.
Nationwide Recall. Johnson and Johnson expanded their recall to 31 million bottles of Tylenol, costing them $100 million.
Investigation Intensifies. The FBI and local law enforcement formed a task force to investigate the Tylenol murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Shopping at the grocery store was like playing Russian roulette.

Describing the danger of purchasing Tylenol during the tampering incident.

4:36WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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