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

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grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] 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 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 a
case of the Tylenol [Music] murders September 29th 1982 Mary Kellerman was 12 years old the
middle schooler lived in Elk GR 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 juwel Osco store in Elk gr
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 10:00 a.m.
doctors could only guess that she had suffered an aneurysm she was her parents only child that same morning postal
worker Adam Janice of nearby Arlington Heights Illinois age 27 went to his local juel Osco store on Vil 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 911 when the paramedics arrived
around 2:00 they rushed Adam to the ER where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 Dr Thomas Kim at Northwest
Community Hospital told Adam's 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 Janice 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 all 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 911
for the second time that day Dr Kim was still on duty at the hospital when the second batch of Janice 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 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 Janice 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 911 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 tyen all had 35% 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 were able to do is to smell the bottle and that smelled like almonds
because cyanide has a almost a almond smell a bitter almond smell Mary Riner 27 of Winfield known as Lynn was home
from a hospital after having just given birth to a baby boy 4 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 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 Riner one comes from a book called Tai Ms which is by Scott Barts 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 M 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 surise 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 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 ST Str 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 alen went into convulsions and collapsed
almost immediately within 2 hours she died at the same hospital where she had birthed her son just days before wow
Mary McFarland 31 of Elmhurst worked at the Illinois Bell phone center in the Yorktown mall
in Lumberg 10 Mi 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 50count bottle that she
purchased the previous day at the warts 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 50count bottle were contaminated doctors assumed that she had had a stroke or some type of aneurism 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 well 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 in 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 100% to 1,000% 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 a 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 coroners office in cook and 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 in annual sales and 37% 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 Janice family came into the hospital
suffering the same symptoms right all passing Dr Kim sent blood samples from the Janice family to the lab and had
them tested for Cyanide the test showed a lethal level of cide 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 Janice 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 Janice family deaths right he called The
Cook County medical examiner's office at 3:00 a.m. and asked them to test the capsules in these bottles for cide the
chief toxicologist for the Cook County Medical examiner's Office his name is Michael schaer examined the capsules
from the seized bottles of extra strength Tel 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% of the population can detect this smell Dr Schaefer noted that about 10 of the
capsules were slightly swollen and discolored and contained pottassium cyanide at a level toxic enough to
provide thousands of fatal doses only Trace Amounts of Tylenol were found in these capsules and Dr schaer
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 MH 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%
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 sign 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 office held a press conference on September 30th 1982 stating publicly
that the Mary Kellerman and all three of the janises had definitely died from consuming extra strength Tylenol laced
with cyanide when the press conference occurred no one had attributed the deaths of Lyn Riner 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 pic 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 mean
the report I have is 35% of the market share but you said 37% so we're talking about the most
popular pain reliever on the market I mean it it's they're backed by Johnson and Johnson right mhm people barraged
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 roam
the streets with bullhorns warning residents not to consume the drug after 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 juel
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
mc28 80 the lot number the Janice and Kellerman bottles were part of which was the only Lot number in which cide 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 then they end up finding out that all the bottles were
bought at different locations yes 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 cide right so while investigators and Johnson and Johnson
the parent Corporation of the company that manufactured Tylenol were still determining the potential scope of the
tainted medicine the autopsy was being performed on Lyn Riner 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
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cheers Captain I need to Cheers uh have I cheers jib Jiggler from Parts Unknown a big shout out to jib Jiggler from
Parts Unknown 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 Lyn Riner so naturally law enforcement went to the Riner home they found a bottle of
regular strength Tylenol that ly had purchased that day this was Lot number 1833 MB it's still sitting on the
kitchen sink but they also found some extra strength Tylenol capsules which they believe were given to Lyn in 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 Lynn had
taken two extra strength Tylenol capsules one of which had contained cyanine 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 this is not these are not easy task 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 Bel 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 cide these apparently came from
the bottle that they found in her apartment this was Lot Number 1 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 1 181 ma which had not been listed by the company among the known contaminated lot
interestingly the extra strength Tylenol bottle in Paula's bathroom was a 24c count bottle unlike the 50count bottles
used in the other deaths right cide was found in one of the remaining capsules but six other capsules were
discolored they had been corroded by the cide leaking from that one tainted pill
from Johnson and Johnson the parrot company what ensued is considered the 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 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
they offered a reward of 100,000 for any information $100,000 reward for information leading
to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the cyanide poisoning the the recall I believe is what cost
over $100 million you'd think maybe we offer a little bit more money than 100 if it was my company and we just lost
100 million i' go hey I'm offering for in a million mhm I'll pay I'll pay the 1% 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 inand 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 were 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 there in 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 re
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 that 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 drug store doing the same process over and over that's exactly right the the other thing that
was quickly determined to Captain by Johnson and Johnson and and investigators was that all of the 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 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 mixup 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 so if we do have a disgruntle 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 they're 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 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 purchase it and take it home it's also a safer way because if I go into a drugstore and I purchase this product Oh
I need some extra strength tying I got a headache my cooworker is 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 mhm 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 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 198 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 hor 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'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 mhm and to requestion 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 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 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 examined 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 manned 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 in where it was purchased and in that jazz which
seems to be fairly known by this point in our investigation but you're also because you want to make
that one of these victims wasn't actually a Ted victim an intended victim whoever perpetrated that murder was
camouflaging that murder with the crime and 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
list 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 farer 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
and different but proximate towns all kind of at the same time so 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 advised that the cide 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 office no corrosion was found within 48 Hours of
the induction of the cide 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 MH 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 test
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 cide 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 the purchase and the ingestion we have that all figured out
we don't have when they were actual T tampered with because now we're looking at a a lot larger window than A8 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 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 want explosive diarrhea but what was interesting here Captain is that all in
all it was determined that 1060 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 in Woodfield Mall in Shamburg 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 Lyn riner'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% 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 Mist area 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 C
back into the bottles and then drive around or what have you and place these on these shelf fronts at the different
retail locations but again this this makes 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 an 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 cuz 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 bought eight 10 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 a group of people would have sprinkled these
bottles around the Chicago area in 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 cide 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 happened 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 oh 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 need it right now right then yeah so I mean it's a very the level of
sophistication of uh tack 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 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 100% the
or 100% the lethal dose or even a th% 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 leth 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 be 100% or 1,000% it worked 100% of the time right that it was ingested well it's like sex pan or
like 60% of the time it works all the time so just to go 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 you buy a bottle of Tylenol or other medication the bottle
Tylenol specifically has a silver foil safety seal and closing it and the box is glued shut back then you just
untucked the Box lid and then screwed off the cap of the bottle this timers 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 among other things and this was incredibly
surprising to me Captain apparently they're both readily [Music] available for more True Crime garage for
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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, a case of cyanide-laced pain relievers that caused panic and led to major changes in product safety regulations.

Key points

A Deadly Pain Reliever. Over-the-counter pain medication led to inexplicable deaths in the Chicago area.
The Tylenol Murders. A series of mysterious deaths linked to tainted Tylenol capsules shocked the nation.
Cyanide Contamination Discovered. Investigators find that some Tylenol capsules are contaminated with cyanide, leading to a crisis.
Nationwide Recall. Johnson and Johnson announces a massive recall of 31 million bottles of Tylenol.
Mystery of the Tampered Pills. Questions arise about how the cyanide was introduced into the Tylenol capsules.
Investigation Intensifies. A task force of 140 law enforcement personnel is formed to investigate the Tylenol murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How could a medication intended to make people better kill them so suddenly?

5:14WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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