The Tylenol Murders /// Part 2 /// 481 | 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] [Music] thank you shortly after the Tylenol murders Chicago columnist Bob Green wrote The
Following article which appeared in multiple newspapers in and around the area as well as across the country the
article was titled message to the Tylenol killer if you are the Tylenol killer some of
this may matter to you or it may make no difference at all if you are the Tylenol killer your whole
murderous exercise may have seemed beautiful and the flawlessness of its execution
you doctored the capsules and the people died and you put fear in the hearts all over
the nation if you are the killer the success of your mission may be sustaining you
if you are the Tylenol killer though you may be harboring just the Vegas curiosity about the people on the
other end of your plan the people who were unfortunate enough to purchase the bottles you had touched
if you are curious come to a small house on a quiet winding street an Elk Grove Village Illinois
the people who live there Dennis and Gina Kellerman feel you have already been inside anyway
maybe the names don't mean anything to you you killed their daughter she was 12.
her name was Mary Kellerman and her crime was that she had a cold you might be interested in hearing what
you have done to her parents they are still numb alone in the house Gina Kellerman blames herself
you see she came home from work on the day before her daughter died and on the way she stopped to pick up some medicine
Mary Kellerman was a child who didn't like to take medication she would go yuck when her mother
offered her cough syrup so on that afternoon Mrs Kellerman purchased a new bottle of cough syrup
with a flavor that Mary might like a little better and she picked up a bottle of Tylenol At
first she was going to buy a small bottle then because she suffers from arthritis and she thought that she might
need a pill soon she changed her mind and bought the next bigger size she bought your bottle you
ought to see her now crying her eyes vacant as she sits in the family room and talks about what her
life might be like only if she had stuck with the first bottle that afternoon you
might be interested in Mary's father too he woke up the next morning and went into Mary's room she told him that her
throat was sore he said he wanted her to stay home from school for the day he remembers exactly
quote I heard her go into the bathroom I heard the door close then I heard something drop
I went to the bathroom door I called Mary are you okay there was no answer I called again
Mary are you okay there was still no answer so I opened the bathroom door and my
little girl was on the floor unconscious she was still in her pajamas you might be interested in knowing that Mary's
mother and father when they return from the hospital returned without Mary who as you know was dead
they looked in the refrigerator in the refrigerator was a brown paper sack with a sandwich and a piece of pie
inside Mary had packed her lunch the night before she thought she would be going to school
so she made herself the sandwich she could not have known about you on the front of that refrigerator are a
number of funny furry little animals with magnets fastened to their backs they are used to attach notes to the
refrigerator door maybe you would care Mary made those for her mother they were gifts
if you are wondering whether Mary's parents talk about you you don't have to wonder anymore they do
you have never been in their house and yet they cannot walk into a room without feeling you are there
you don't know them but you have changed their lives forever they feel as if they can't get away from
you although they realize that they make no difference to you they find themselves
caught in an awful game of making trade-offs in their mind if you had only wanted to steal their
car they think if you only had wanted to burn down their house anything they would have said yes to anything
anything but this do you want to know what they are thinking about you quote I would pay anything if whoever
did this would walk up to my front door right now that's what Mary's father said
I would give everything I own because once he walks through that door he's mine as it is you should know
Mary's parents are too shattered even to visit the cemetery Mary is buried at Saint Michael the
Archangel a nearby Palatine Illinois and they wish they could go to her grave but they can't the hurt is too deep and
you are keeping them even from that if you are the Tylenol killer you should know one more thing
Mary's mother can't have any more children Mary was her only baby you might be interested in knowing that
Mary was born one month premature and then as she entered the world her mother was scared because she was not
crying but the doctor smiled and said it's okay she's only sleeping and she was she was a quiet child and because the
Kellerman's knew she would be their only child she was especially precious to them
you should know that Mary's mother has not gone into Mary's bedroom since her daughter died
her clothes are still there and her school books and papers the door is closed Mary's mother and father have to walk
past it every time they go upstairs Mary's father has gone inside but just once he went in to pick out the clothes for
Mary to wear at her funeral if you are the Tylenol killer you might want to know that Mary's parents always
considered themselves to be overly protective Mary always had to be home by dark
even when she was out with friends she had to call home frequently just to say she was all right
the reason Mary's parents were like that was that they knew something that a 12 year old girl could not know they knew
that the world at times can be a cruel place and that parents have a duty to protect their child from dangers the
child might not even know are there they thought they knew about every danger that could possibly touch Mary
but they did not know about you [Music] in one of his books FBI agent John Douglas discusses the painstaking
investigation that occurred in the weeks following the murders task force members interviewed employees
from each affected store they went door to door with police sketches of persons seen near the stores they tried to lift
fingerprints from the contaminated bottles that were found still on the store shelves only a single smudge was
lifted from one of the bottles they scrutinize security camera video such as it was in 1982. police were able
to uncover one photo that bore scrutiny an ATM machine automated camera had taken a still shot of a store checkout
counter line at exactly the moment that Paula Prince was paying for her Tylenol this grainy photo was eventually
publicly released by the Chicago Police Department in the photo several people are visible standing in line including
one bearded tall man standing maybe 10 feet behind Paula and staring directly at her police have said that they
believe that this man might be the poisoner it's very possible but like we said in the last episode
the time frame of when this individual could have tampered with the Tylenol pills and returned them to the stores is
days I'm not exactly sure Captain what makes police say that this you know that crafted their statement to
be that we believe this guy could be the poisoner seen in this ATM camera security camera footage it was clear
they're they're bias against people with beards probably um but yet they didn't pick out the
Tulane guy with his beard so we have one two three four five six people in the photo that I can see one
of them is our would-be victim and again potentially the man in the very back of
this photo he could in fact be the poisoner then in another possibly helpful piece of evidence we have one
witness who comes forward who may have some significant information this was an elderly woman who told police that she
saw a man in a drugstore take something out of his jacket pocket and place it on
the drugstore shelf she at the time assumed that he was possibly a shoplifter who had returned an item and
second guessed himself right if she was correct in her recall it meant that the theories about the murderer operating at
the retail level were spot on bond also there's been plenty of times I've been shopping and I throw something in my
pocket not thinking about it oh crap I don't need to have that in my pocket so it could be something as simple as
that but like you said and I think we both agree on it's more likely this individual took the pills somewhere else
tampered with them and then brought them back as we mentioned John Douglas was brought in to create a profile of the
poisoner he believed that the killer was one single man acting alone poisoning tylenol at the retail level
he described the Tylenol murders as a form of terrorism and the crime one of psychological distance committed by a
cowardly non-confrontational person he concluded that the murder had not targeted a specific person or store
intending instead to generally terrorize and cause panic in Mayhem the killer he believed was a man driven
by rage and anger someone with a history of personal failures this would be someone who had many instances in their
life where he believed he'd suffered injustices and unfair treatment he may have a military background would
have trouble keeping a job and likely had a psychiatric record he would have had periods of depression
and hopelessness and he was probably set off by some stressful event immediately
prior to the late September murders of course without a crime scene or targeted victim it would prove very difficult to
apprehend the Killer Douglas says in his book quote we don't know if the subject was getting back at
the manufacturer the stores that distributed the drugs the victims themselves or Society in general the
killer could have no connection to tylenol at all selecting it simply because it was so popular and cyanide of
the type used was readily available and cheap John Douglas wasn't the only one to suspect that the killer was an
outlier Time Magazine said that psychologists called the killer so strange that their normal guidelines
just don't work and a Chicago area investigators stated publicly that they were looking for a
Madman well their investigation is going to be very difficult too because during
the whole time they're trying to find whoever did this you have to be worried that that same individual is going to do
this to another product and at the same time this is happening just within the next 30 days of the
initial investigation they had over 270 copycats yeah and we'll dive into that in a minute but I wanted to point out
here Captain the in the traditional John Douglas style of investigating and potentially apprehending a suspect
he is going to push these agencies to put forward some precautionary methods for drawing the killer out to challenge
the killer to come forward in some form or fashion to present himself to law enforcement
and he had several different tactics which he suggested that they use at the time of the Tylenol murders one being
that the local stores had beefed up security and nobody could tamper with any of the products that they were
selling there almost challenging the killer to either want to look and view the space for themselves or to test them
to see if they would tamper with a product and try to put it on one of the shelves there he also had several
different methods and tactics but one that was very interesting is the article that we read at the top of today's story
if you read between the lines there are some very interesting pieces of information that were included in
that article yeah yeah come come visit our house correct they do not give the address of the Kellerman's but they give
a very good description of where one might find the Kellerman's home second they give a very good description
of where little Mary Kellerman's body was buried what cemetery she was buried in Douglas and the FBI decided what they
were going to do was to pair up team up with a local columnist and Douglas wanted a columnist because he wanted
someone that the community was already familiar with that the community already trusted and had some type of
relationship with now he said he did not want to tell this person the journalist columnist how to
write the article so he simply sat down with Bob Green who Bob Green came forward and said I would
love to write the article he says we just simply told them what our strategy would be and let him as the
writer construct his own call when John Douglas comes into town all law enforcement should cheer
because you're going to get hours and hours of overtime Duty sitting in front of somebody's house
waiting for somebody to come back or at a grave site I can't remember what the actual number was but I think they had
surveillance on her grave site for like 24 7 for weeks yeah I don't know if it was in fact weeks I I don't have the
exact timeline but I do know that when the article came out they were already prepped to do 24-hour surveillance on
both Mary Kellerman's home and the gravesite yeah to Ching here here's my issue though too
with this crime is this does not have to be a local individual we have this time frame where
somebody could have came into the city took the items went went to a hotel went down the street tampered with him return
all the items and then head out of town yes that's correct that is certainly a possibility here in this case and the
reason why I bring that up is don't you think that law enforcement and John Douglas were kind of assuming that this
individual was more local well I mean we have it in the profile that we just gave
where he he says that he believes that the tampering took place at the retail level
and so what that means is no one can say for certain if this if the perpetrator is in fact local or not
if they had a way of determining that we probably would have a solved case we wouldn't be sitting here 30 years later
right but what you're saying is that the retail stores they're technically local
level so the person would have to get the those items we know they were local at
one point right in the commission of these crimes it's just like what we spoke about when we talked about the the
Zodiac Killer we don't know who he is there's been all these suspects over the years but one thing we can say for
certain is that those three letters were all mailed on the same day from San Francisco so we don't know where he
lives where he works who he is but we know on that day on that one particular day the Zodiac Killer had to be in the
city of San Francisco same situation here Captain as you're pointing out if you're targeting this in commissioning
these crimes at the retail level that means at some point you were local you had to physically be there to place
these items on the Shelf so therefore you go all right if the perpetrator was local on that day
whatever the time frame is he may still be here or he may be local permanent so we're going to run these uh these
tactics and try to draw him out now there's an interesting story that comes from this is that after a couple of
nights there you know they're surveilling Mary Kellerman's home and her gravesite hoping that the killer may
want to catch a glimpse of the home or visit the grave site maybe even show some type of remorse and go to the
gravesite yeah I don't know if you reported on this yet but uh they also publicize all the victims funerals as a
way to say hey maybe he'll show up to one of the funerals yeah Douglas also suggested I mean like I said there were
there were probably six or seven different methods that he suggested that they they do at the time one would be to
have Candlelight vigils and to take down the names and license plates of the people attending right he also suggested
you know as you said publicly announcing the the funerals which is which is very
typical of any type of crime it's you know often the funerals are publicly announced anyway
regardless of how someone dies um so it's not it's not out of bounds by any means at all but one thing that he
suggested was putting like special markers decorative markers on the graves themselves and maybe this guy might want
to go and take one as some type of souvenir right or tamper with them and on some level so something physical that
you might be able to catch this person with in their possession at some point in time and I keep saying he I I think
you're saying he as well I I think we we believe but also law enforcement believes that this was done by a male
yes um that seems to be the general consensus and it certainly seems to be John Douglas's thoughts
I know that typically females are poisoners but typically females kill people that they know it's right it's
very rare it's much more rare that a female would kill strangers compared to a male killing strangers so one story
that comes out of this this tactic of surveilling the home and the grave site is that after a few nights of this these
stakeouts in the Boneyard at the the cemetery a guy approaches the gravesite in the middle of the night hmm
so police move in because they want to hear what this guy's going to say does he smell like bitter almonds he says
something to the effect of you know he's apologizing saying um I didn't mean to do this uh
the man's crying and apologizing and said that it was an accident I never meant to kill you
the problem then becomes that police hear the man say Susan I never meant to kill you Susan right
we're not sure who Susan is but it's quickly determined that well she's somewhere in that graveyard
Susan's grave was right next to Mary Kellerman's grave the man was going to her grave to Susan's grave to apologize
to her because Susan was killed in a hit and run situation this was the man that was
responsible for killing Susan so hold on to ghanim yeah got him so What Becomes of this is they never got Mary
Kellerman's killer but they did get this man who was involved in this hit and run
accident with this Susan victim and not only did they get this guy off the streets and solve that crime but it also
in a way proves Douglas's theory that this is actually a thing yeah that it actually happens and it's a way that
they can be more proactive rather than just sitting on their hands waiting for the killer to either strike again or or
show himself in some manner yeah but if if you're a fan of Mind Hunter and you believe
somewhat the storytelling and mind Hunter then John Douglas was the guy that people would talk [ __ ] to so at
some point somebody's going we're paying all these cops all these extra money and
nothing's turned up and this is John Douglas way of saying how well one my theory is correct but two
well we got a bad guy off the street because we had law enforcement there at the grave sites and in early 1983 the
Cook County Medical Examiner announced that they had re-examined 17 unexplained deaths that occurred around the time of
the Tylenol murders and that three of them appeared to have resulted from cyanide in all three cases lethal doses
of cyanide as well as acetaminophen were found in their blood but it was too late
to discern whether these people were definitive victims of the Tylenol murder any extra strength Tylenol in their
homes had long since disappeared [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] we're back cheers mates cheers crazy to
think the Chicago Tylenol murders 1982 September 29th Tylenol goes from 37 percent of the
market share to 8 after the murders surprising they got eight percent yeah sadly the tampering inspired hundreds of
CopyCat incidents across the U.S the FDA recorded more than 270 different incidents of product tampering in the
months following the Tylenol deaths some of this was for the most part no no that's
270 within the first month well we have we might have different information here
the large part of this 270 number regardless of if if it was in a 30-day time period 45 days or 90 days is
most of these are pretty small time hacks these are not people trying to kill people or kill people on a mass
level a lot of this is people trying to collect some kind of money from manufacturers or from stores for items
that they can take something as simple as maybe spaghetti sauce and put some you know a dead bug in it or they had
found dead rats in some food products they also found things like pills tainted with everything from rat poison
to hydrochloric acid that actually did in fact get some people sick around the country
and as said some copycats branched into food tampering that Halloween parents reported finding sharp pins concealed in
candy corn and candy bars and some communities ban trick-or-treat all together I mean this would be a very
scary time because once look the the initial thing you go okay there's a Madman out there
but like you said 270 within the next couple months now you're going there's multiple mad people and they're not just
trying to poison Tylenol capsules they're trying to tamper with other food products and and medical products there
is one portion of this case that is absolutely terrifying the quote Tylenol murders expanded out of the state of
Illinois to take on a new shape in the state of Washington around the greater Seattle area and this case starts on
Wednesday June 11. 1986 when 40 year old Susan Snow got up early you know just like she would any
other work day both Susan and her husband Paul Webb King aged 45 were going to go about their normal work day
routines Susan was the assistant vice president of Puget Sound National Bank typically Paul would leave for work
before Susan and that would be the same on this day as well so Paul heads off to work Susan is going
to finish up getting ready and then leaves leave the house as well however Susan's daughter Haley would
soon find Susan unconscious on the bathroom floor Haley called 9-1-1 and the paramedics
were sent to the house when the paramedics arrived on the scene they found Susan still lying unconscious on
the floor but she was still alive she was quickly transported to a Seattle hospital now unfortunately Susan was
brain dead and eventually she was taken off of life support and passed on during her autopsy the medical examiner
detected that Telltale bitter almond smell associated with Sinai poisoning and sure enough after further
investigation The Examiner determined Susan had died of cyanide poisoning now that morning Susan and her husband Paul
both took two extra strength Excedrin pills this is your basic over-the-counter headache slash pain
reliever in fact this is one of the major competitors for Tylenol at the time and Susan and Paul for whatever
reason preferred this brand it was quickly determined that Susan took two pills full of cyanide and the
two extra strength Excedrin capsules that Paul took on that same day had no cyanide in them at all Susan was
dead about six or so hours later Paul was lucky enough that the pills he took were not tampered with
Susan of course not so lucky now after a public campaign two more tainted bottles
were found on store shelves this is the whole Tylenol murder Chicago experience 2.0
taking place now in Seattle I wonder if that's why they're Sleepless then on June 17th 42 year old Stella nickel
called Seattle PD to report that her husband Bruce who had died suddenly two weeks before on June 5th 1986 that she
believed that he had taken Excedrin two extra strength Excedrin tablets shortly before he died now at the time the King
County Medical Examiner listed Bruce's cause of death as pulmonary emphysema now armed with this new information is
starting to look like his death wasn't natural but it was a murder the bottle that Bruce took his pills from was from
the same Lot number as the pills ingested by Susan Snow by now of course Bruce has been buried
for some time but the hospital still had some of Bruce's blood because he was an
organ donor and sure enough there was cyanide in the sample it looked like Bruce was another unlucky victim of
product tampering and this time it's not going on in Chicago but 2 000 miles away
and four years later in the greater Seattle area now the super strange thing here is the authorities were able to
figure out that there were a total of five bottles that contained cyanide somehow of these five bottles two of
them managed to end up at Bruce and Stella Nichols household so of the five adulterated bottles of
extra strength Excedrin authorities found in Seattle two came from the Stellas from Stella's home and we think
there was eight now look Johnson Johnson didn't test all of them but we believe there was eight bottles of the Tylenol
so five here that they know of but possibly another few that they didn't catch so the lab test on her two bottles
showed traces of fish tank algae cleaner in the doctored pills the traces match the fish tank cleaner in Stella's home
Stella had poisoned her husband and planted additional tainted bottles around town killing Susan snow in the
process so she could hide her crime and collect insurance to open up a fish store of her own
remember that was one of the suspected possible theories in the Chicago case right is that somebody
would want to kill someone they knew directly but cause other deaths to camouflage the murder well this is
definitely a high level high sophistication level of crime it could be looked at as such but I think in the
Chicago case and again here in the Stella nickel case it might seem that way on the surface
but it's actually not very difficult to do at all especially in the Chicago case
when there was no real tampering proof seals on those actual bottles if the cyanide is readily available and someone
just needs a general knowledge of cyanide then all they need to do is take the bottle open pull the capsule apart
with their fingers and refill it with cyanide the problem for the perpetrator of this crime and this is something that
you will see often with bomb makers as well is it with poisoning and with bomb making
there's the same risk involved for the perpetrator that you end up harming or killing yourself in the process of
creating these devices to kill others cyanide is not only lethal as ingested but can also be lethal
um to the touch and I don't want to go too far into that because I don't have a complete understanding of it and I don't
want to try to pretend that I do but from the information provided to me it seems like it's risky Behavior to even
be handling right this type of poison we'll get used to it because I just ordered a bunch of it off of Amazon but
what's interesting here in this case Captain the Stella nickel case is that I mean she's actually a really
terrible murder because one her horrific crimes I mean this is not just a situation of
wife kills husband but wife kills husband and is willing to kill at least one if not several other people in an
attempt to cover up and get away with the murder of her husband so completely willing to kill total strangers just to
get away with this crime but two killing her husband to get money so this murder plot was fueled by greed
Stella took out two life insurance policies on her husband and Stella was such a slave to her greed that she would
have got away with this murder but she couldn't get out of her own way so check this she had two insurance
policies that she took out on her husband Bruce unbeknownst to Bruce fishy she purchased two twenty thousand dollar
policies that she was the sole beneficiary on then Bruce had life insurance through his work for thirty
one thousand dollars okay so with these two forged signature policies of twenty thousand dollars
we're at forty Grand now add the Thirty One Thousand from his work policy Stella
stands to make seventy one thousand dollars from Bruce death so if Stella would have been okay with
seventy one thousand dollars she would have never been caught the medical examiner ruled the death a
natural death nobody was any the wiser until Susan Snow died later from ingesting the extra
strength Excedrin and then Stella nickel informs the police hey my husband Bruce
who died of natural causes weeks ago he took Excedrin right before his death as well
now that is because Bruce's work policy paid out 105 thousand dollars more if Bruce's death
was accidental opposed to Natural and this is a big and what was going on in the spring of 1986
it was national news at the time big news as I like to say the families of the seven dead Chicago Tylenol victims
were suing McNeil consumer Products Incorporated a division of Johnson and Johnson
eventually they would settle with these families for millions and millions of dollars
Stella not only won an accidental death benefit of Bruce's work plan but she wanted to be able to sue a Big Brand a
household name for Millions right is this agreed so for that Bruce couldn't be the only one to die from product
tampering slash poisoning so in a way she outed herself instead of becoming a widow with an
extra 71 thousand dollars she ended up arrested and convicted receiving two 99-year terms under the new federal
tampering law Stella nickel was the first person in U.S history to be convicted of murder through product
tampering from my understanding captain that is a federal offense that's a federal crime and she was convicted on
the federal level of product tampering that resulted in Murder so technically the state of Washington could still
charge and then convict her with murder at a later date she's still alive she's living in some
low security prison uh and well yeah when she got sentenced and the judge said to 90 90 year sentences you said
she said so you're saying there's a chance right I might I still could get out now during the first four days of
the investigation in the Tylenol case back in Chicago in 82 the task force interviewed over 1 000 people and
amassed thousands of pages of documentation and created a suspect list of 24 names
by week out this list was down to four individuals one was a loading dock worker at Jewel a massive company
operating warehouses distribution center and packaging plant in the Chicago area
this man this suspect 48 year old Roger Arnold was known to possess and use Sinai and rant about killing people with
cyanide capsules he was also known to carry illegal weapons and during the course of this investigation refused a
lie detector test the other strange thing here too Captain is it looks like Roger Arnold actually may have known
or through a separation of a few degrees known one of the victims in the Tylenol
case seven degrees of Kevin Bacon he worked with the father of Lynn Reiner right one of the victims and her
father's name was Howard fearin and apparently this Arnold guy was in possession of two recently purchased
one-way tickets to Thailand when he was arrested in early October what they did was he's a suspect in this
case he was also a suspect in a June 1982 assault so we're going to arrest him on charges of assault from that
incident in June hold him and investigate him in this Tylenol case this will allow us to search his home in
his home they find weapons making manuals including a book about how to encapsulate encapsulate cyanide
for a Time Authority suspected that Arnold was in cahoots with Faron in the Tylenol murders they also suspected
Reiner's husband Ed for a time but both he and Faron passed polygraph tests they were cooperating
with the investigation it's not really clear why Roger Arnold was eventually cleared but he went on to
shoot a man to death whom he suspected had turned his name into the police as a potential suspect in the Tylenol murders
case he was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1984 for 15 years for that murder and
then he later died in the year of 2008. again according to the information I saw
it sounds like they cleared this Roger Arnold Guy this is certainly clear him of murder and then he commits murder
because somebody turned him in for the FBI to look at him That's How The Story Goes criminals are pretty stupid well I
think that you have to be of a certain type to even land on the list of potential suspects in the Tylenol
murders and you can see how his personality played out in the long term another suspect was a Chicago man who
was mentally unstable and made threats against some of the stores where the tainted Tylenol was eventually found
this was Kevin Masterson Masterson's ex-wife had settled a lawsuit against Jewel remember that Jewel Osco company
her employer for mistreatment in connection with a shoplifting case and Kevin had ranted about getting even with
some of the retailers who ended up selling Tylenol that killed people so he's in this whole dispute with his
wife's employer he under this theory is seeking Revenge to attack the stores maybe even put them
out of business because they end up selling this Tylenol that's killing people yeah so it's not so it's not essentially
an attack on the people per se or attack on Johnson Johnson these are both bystanders and the fact that you want to
shut down the store correct that would be the motive if in fact he is the perpetrator however he
too it looks like was investigated quite thoroughly and then dismissed at some point as a viable suspect
well again what you said in episode one assistant they're not being investigated
just by a local detectives or local law enforcement we have a lot of hands on deck at the time 30
over 30 some FBI agents helping with this investigation from the onset that's a lot back in 1982. yeah and a task
force of almost 200 law enforcement members looking in and investigating this case there was Vernon Williams Jr
of New Jersey he saw this as an opportunity to try to extort one hundred thousand dollars from
Johnson and Johnson by threatening to taint more pills he was jailed for attempted extortion
but clearly had nothing to do with the murders per law enforcement yeah and then well I thought this when I
first heard about him this seems to be a good one at the time because in 82 is when we hit a very bad
recession so I thought well maybe somebody's you know when your whole country is in crisis financially you
know okay well maybe somebody would try to take advantage of the situation and and get money through through crime
and then there was James William Lewis on October 6 1982 Johnson and Johnson received a handwritten all caps letter
with a New York postmark that read Johnson and Johnson parent of McNeil Laboratories
gentlemen as you can see it is easy to play cyanide both potassium and sodium into capsules sitting on store shelves
and since the cyanide is inside the gelatin it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill
another beauty is that cyanide operates quickly it takes so very little and there will be no time to take counter
measures if you don't mind the publicity of these little capsules then do nothing
so far I have spent less than fifty dollars and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle
if you want to stop the killing then wire one million dollars to bank account number eight four four nine five nine
seven at Continental Illinois Bank Chicago Illinois don't attempt to involve the FBI or
local Chicago authorities with this letter a couple of phone calls by me will undo anything you can possibly do
well this guy sounds like a madman he sounds like a good suspect I mean you have motive but also you have the
guy coming out and he's confessing to the crime yeah so the FBI lifted fingerprints from this letter and then
noted the metered postage with the identifying Pitney Bowes number and an old date yeah Pitney Bowes that's a
pre-sort it's a machine that helps you put together mail the envelope was stamped April 15
1982. so well before any of these Tylenol murders the meter was traced to a company called Lakeside Travel
the bank account referenced which was no longer opened at that point belonged to
Frederick Miller McKay heir to the Miller Brewing Company Fortune although he owned Lakeside
Travel police quickly determined that McKay he had not written the letter and he gave authorities a list of
disgruntled employees or Associates of his business on that list were the names Robert and
Nancy Richardson Robert Richardson was an alias used by James William Lewis who was wanted by
police in another state which we will get into in a minute investigators initially thought that the
extortion letter sent to Johnson and Johnson by Robert Richardson was just a hoax to embarrass mccahy but after they
did some digging into James Lewis's past they discovered that he had been charged
with murder and was suspected of business and tax fraud so they began to put a little more stock into the
possibility that the letter was really sent by the actual poisoner but they couldn't find Lewis
meanwhile he continued his pattern of sending ranting letters all postmarked from New York City
Lewis sent the Chicago Tribune and the Kansas City Star letters denying that he and his wife had committed the Tylenol
murders in another letter Lewis attacked police handling of the murder and had been charged with the Raymond West case
so he is telling these newspapers that he and his wife had nothing to do with the Tylenol murders and he's complaining
that the police in the Raymond West murder case had bungled that whole investigation
and that he was trying to get that case reopened for some time Lewis began signing his real name at some point and
even put his right thumbprint on one of the letters the letters were written in strange
militaristic vengeful language here's an excerpt from John Douglas that I found interesting quote we are not
armed unless one means in the anatomical paraplegic sense we shall never carry weapons
domestically weapons are for two quite similar types of mentality one criminals and two police we are neither
Douglas noted that this personality seemed to mesh with what he had profiled a cowardly type that would be saddled
with inner rage and preferred indirect attacks Lewis also sent some letters to President Ronald Reagan in October of
1982 threatening to murder him with a remote control airplane and poison more people with cyanide laced Tylenol if
certain tax policies were not changed this seems like a man that fancies himself a bit of a Robin Hood to try to
change things for the good or the good as he says it but threatening violence if you don't give him his way yes Robin
of Loxley I'm going to cut your heart out with the spoon before becoming a suspect in the Tylenol murders Lewis
owned and operated a Kansas City business tax service called Lewis and Lewis this is where they befriended an
elderly client whose name was Raymond West we've already mentioned his name this man completely disappeared in 1978.
Raymond's body was found in an attic in his own home about three weeks after he disappeared
the body was found dismembered he had been cut up wrapped in sheets and trash bags and somehow hoisted to the storage
area using pulleys and rope he was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death or even actually who he was at
the time later they determined that it was in fact Raymond West now what leads them to this James Lewis guy he's a
client of Lewis's in Kansas city and police found a check from West Bank account made out to James Lewis for five
thousand dollars dated on the last day that Raymond West was seen alive after discovering this they searched Lewis's
car which yielded additional evidence including rope trash bags and more checks from Raymond West on five
thousand dollars back then was a lot of money it's like 10 million dollars today
now they charged him with the murder of Raymond West however this trial that was
set for late 1979 it was actually tossed out it was dismissed by a judge who ruled that the rest in the search of
Lewis's home and vehicle were illegal so Lewis is going to get lucky in this situation now Lewis
once he's free and clear and doesn't have to worry about these murder charges he goes back to work what's interesting
and I find this to be interesting here Captain is that he did a startup company which he co-founded with an Indian
pharmacist to import industrial pill-making machines from India police continue to investigate Lewis for
anything they were so convinced that he did this murder that they wanted to catch him on anything that they could
find you know tax fraud falsifying credit card applications swindling clients anything that they could
possibly find and some of the things they suspected him of too were mail fraud by the end of 1981 it sounds like
local authorities in Kansas City had enough evidence to charge Mr Lewis with something
but before they could James Lewis decides he and his wife are going to go on the Run
where do they go they went to Chicago so this guy has a history of potentially murdering people he has a history of
potential falsifying documents tax fraud mail fraud swindling his clients out of money and
possibly land deals he's on the run from authorities in Kansas City who have warrants out for this guy now he's in
Chicago oh and he has experience in pill making yeah which again like you said it
puts in the area he's definitely fits all the profiles and a lot of people that look into this case or have looked
into this case this becomes their number one suspect and what's weird too is that let's say
this guy was out for Revenge by all appearances it looks like the Revenge he was seeking might have been
against this Fred mccahy the the very wealthy man that stands to inherit the Miller Brewing Company Fortune
that is because remember you pointed out the Pitney bows envelope that police were able to trace
back to sometime in April of 1982. I used to I used to work on a Pitney Bowes machine yeah we had them at uh some of
the places that I worked as well now what happened here Captain is not only did they trace that to that
date but they also traced the account to that Lakeside Travel company owned by that Fred McKay He Who
Lewis's wife had that big pay dispute with right this McKay he fella supposedly owed her 500 maybe 600 it was not that
big amount of money I expected it to be a large amount of money considering that
seven people died in this Tylenol murders case but those that envelope was stolen along
with a stack of other envelopes from that travel company on the last day that his wife worked there so maybe he used
it as it was convenient that the envelope was already there postage all we already paid or was he trying to
purposely give this to law enforcement and maybe get them to lead them back to this Fred McKay guy so basically this
would be him framing Fred for the Tylenol murders yes or again maybe just a way of covering his own tracks and
sending them on a wild goose chase now remember Douglas said that this person the murderer probably would have
experienced some type of stressor disruptive life event leading up to contaminating the bottles and then
killing these innocent people well James lost his job that he had in Chicago in August of 1982.
this could be the stressor but what we do know is that the the James's left Chicago
on September 4th 1982 using the names William and Karen Wagner this is where you get into that really gray area right
Captain where because there's a lot of people that believe that Lewis is the best suspect that
maybe he is in fact the actual poisoner but we talked about the delicateness of the gelatin capsules in relationship to
the cyanide that was placed inside of them right could one have contaminated all of these
products put them on the shelves back in early September and then they're not purchased until late September and
consumed then it seems a little difficult to believe but we know he still he's still involved
very much involved and active in this case even after the fact that he leaves maybe he thought I can poison these
people leave and throw some other people under the bus after the fact and they'll never
catch me because I'm not even in the air anymore maybe that's maybe as you pointed out the perpetrator is not local
so he couldn't have gone to Mary Kellerman's grave could not have gone to her home or this guy was once local was
not local after people started dying I know he's a lot of people's top suspect her favorite suspect in this case my
problem with it is the type of criminal he is the the Chicago Tylenol murders or what
do you call them the timers yep the timers that's a goofy sounding name but uh to me it's it's an act of terrorists
it's so it's too great Terror and fear into not just Chicago but you're doing it in Chicago
because it's one of the biggest cities but you're maybe somehow connected to it so but it's gonna it's it's about the
overall fear of the nation basically or setting a bomb or setting this trap and then once the things are once the events
start taking place you're off in a distance watching it happen admiring your work that to me is the way a
terrorist would work this guy just does not fit that profile to me I think this again I think this is less
about money and more about and still stealing fear where I think a lot of his crimes were
connected to money um yeah so I just think uh good suspect but it wouldn't be my
number one well and the thing about him as well and the other thing that makes this case very difficult is you cannot
it's too hard to determine if this is supposed to be public terrorism or mass extortion because correct Lewis yes he
tried to extort money from Johnson and Johnson but so did some other guy in New Jersey who had nothing to do and was
proven to have nothing to do with the case so does that mean that Lewis didn't have anything to do with the case
potentially we can't say for certain but what we don't have other than this situation is we don't have someone
coming forward that we believe to be the actual poisoner saying you know what I'm going to keep doing this I'm going
to keep killing people unless you pay me off right so it might not even be extortion at all it
might be as you said just public terrorism the other problem with that though then
too becomes often terrorists have an agenda or they have something that they need to
bring into the spotlight of how they've been wronged in some form the problem is usually
someone claims responsibility for these terrible Acts we don't have that either nobody coming forward saying you know we
are this group and this is why we committed these acts against the people of Chicago
[Music] so there's nobody really coming forward trying to gain from this or claiming responsibility it's just really
falls under what could be just a really confusing crime yeah we don't have anybody coming
forward and saying we're a small foreign faction yeah so what you do have with this Lewis character he eventually
is charged with extortion stemming from the Tylenol murders case he ends up serving about 12 years in
prison on the extortion charge he was released in 1995 but he's one of these he's one of these real pain in the
ass types that while he's in prison he's granting interviews and he's talking about you know I was not the Tylenol
killer but if I was this is how I would do it right this is how I would uh contaminate the capsules this is how I
would place them in the stores you know saying all the all the stuff that make you go
okay I cannot clear this man I cannot get it out of my mind that he could be in fact the Tylenol killer in January of
2010 both James William Lewis and his wife were asked by the FBI to submit DNA samples and fingerprints to the
authorities Lewis stated quote if the FBI plays it fair I have nothing to worry about Lewis continues to deny all
responsibility for the Tylenol killings so are you saying that he submitted DNA I said he submitted DNA yeah so in 2009
the FBI came forward and said hey we're going to use all new technology to re-examine the evidence in the Chicago
Tylenol murders case asking then Lewis for DNA and then a year later they asked the famous Ted Kaczynski for his DNA
the Unabomber the Unabomber now he said he would give it to them but he had one condition he wanted there
was going to be an auction of his belongings and he wanted for the auction to stop and not be held he wanted to
keep his possessions saying that he did if he did give them his DNA that maybe his DNA would partially match and he
would need his items from his cabin to prove that he never owned potassium cyanide as for the murders they remain
unsolved the case remains open and the one hundred thousand dollar reward still unclaimed quote one of the most
Sensational murder cases this Century has gone unsolved because the person who did it randomly killed seven people said
Dan Webb the U.S attorney during the investigation he goes on to say if you have no motive if all you're doing is
killing people for no reason whatsoever then that is likely to be the most perfect murder because there won't be
any ties back to you [Music] for everything true crime check us out at truecrime garage.com and make sure
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our merchandise store Colonel do we have any recommended reading for this week we
all need a little Escape once in a while so this week we are recommending a fictional novel by friend of the show
Christopher Ferris his new book called The Fountain is out and available everywhere deep in the Ozarks holler
lurks an ancient source of power called The Fountain it drives men and women mad
and leads them to do strange and terrible things it is growing in strength only in a visible wall held in
place by centuries of sacrificial magic protects an unwitting Mountain Community
from a descent into bloodshed dead and Madness check out the fountain by Christopher Ferris we will have that
listed on our recommended page at truecrime garage.com for you and until next week be good be kind and don't
litter [Music] thank you foreign

The Tylenol Murders /// Part 2 /// 481

Part 2 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

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 Chicago Tylenol murders, the investigation, and the emotional toll on victims' families, highlighting ongoing unresolved issues.

Key points

The Tylenol Murders. A chilling account of the Tylenol murders and their aftermath.
The Kellerman Family's Tragedy. The heartbreaking story of Mary Kellerman and her parents' grief.
A Grave Apology. A man approaches a grave at night, confessing to a past crime. 'I never meant to kill you, Susan.'
The Rise of Copycat Crimes. After the Tylenol murders, over 270 incidents of product tampering were reported across the U.S.
Stella Nickel's Greed. Stella Nickel poisoned her husband to collect insurance money, becoming the first convicted of murder through product tampering.
A Madman's Letter. A suspect sends a chilling letter to Johnson & Johnson, claiming he can poison products easily.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You have changed their lives forever.

The impact of the Tylenol killer on the Kellerman family.

7:58WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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