The Tylenol Murders /// Part 2 /// 481 | Forensic Files

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[Music] [Music] 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 you're whole murderous exercise may have seemed beautiful in
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 vaguest 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 in Elk Gro 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 going went to 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 returned 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 tradeoffs 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 St Michael the Archangel in 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 Ed in knowing that
Mary was born one month premature and that 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 B 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 consider
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
[Music] you 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 too 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 scrutinized 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 ft 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 M camera security
camera footage that's clear they're their bias against people with beards probably um but yet they didn't pick out
the two-lane 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 or 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 spoton well and 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 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 mention 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 in 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 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 they in
ation 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 that 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 they 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 now 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 M second they give a very good description of where little Mary Kellerman's body was
buried what cemetery she was bu married 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 column 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 gravite yeah ch- Ching here 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 Doug
were kind of assuming that this individual is 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 had 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 they 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 May may even show some type of remorse and go to the grave site yeah I I don't know if you reported on this yet
but uh they also publicize all the victims funerals as a 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 M 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 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 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 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 surveiling the home and the grave site is that after a few nights of this the
stake in the Boneyard at the the cemetery a guy approaches the grave site in the middle of the
night so police move in because they want to hear what this guy's going to say and 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 oh 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 oh situation this was the man that was responsible for killing Susan so hold on
did got him 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 in mind Hunter then John Douglas was the
guy that people would talk [ __ ] to and so at some point somebody's going we're
paying all these stops all these extra money and nothing's turned up and this is John Douglas's way of saying how well
one my theory is correct but two we got a bad guy off the street because we had law enforcement there at the grave sites
in early 1983 the Cook County Medical Examiner announced that they had reexamined 17 unexplained deaths that
occurred around the time of the Tylenol murders and that three of them appear to
have resulted from Cyanide and 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 [Music]
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crazy to think the Chicago Tylenol murders 1982 September 29th tyl all goes from 37% of the market
share to 8% after the murders surprising they got 8% yeah sadly the tampering inspired hundreds of CopyCat incidents
across the US 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 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
it was in a 30-day time period 45 days or 90 days is most of these are pretty small time acts 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 uh 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 conceal in candy corn and candy bars in 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 two 70 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 workday both
Susan and her husband Paul Web King aged 45 were going to go about their normal workday routines Susan was the assistant
vice president of pett 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 911 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 tell tail bitter almond smell associated with Sinai poisoning
and sure enough after further investigation The Examiner determined Susan had died of cide poisoning now
that morning Susan and her husband Paul both took two extra strength Excedrin pills this is your basic
over-the-counter headache SL 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 cide and the two extra strength Etc en capsules that Paul took on that same day
had no cide 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
stor 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
exedran 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 empyema now armed with this new
information it's 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 mhm 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 Mi 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 toal of
five bottles that contain cide somehow of these five bottles two of them managed to end up at Bruce and Stella
Nichols household what a quinky dink so of the five adulterated bottles of extra
strength Etc authorities found in Seattle two came from the Stella's 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 doctor 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 uh especially in the Chicago case when there was no real tampering proof seals on those actual bottles if
the cide 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 Sinai the problem for the
perpetrator of this crime and this is something that will see often with bomb makers as well is that 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 cide 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 but
from the information provided to me it seems like it's risky Behavior to even be handling right this type of um poison
we'll get used to it cuz 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 murderer because one her horrific crimes
I mean this is not just a situation of white 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 $20,000 policies that she was the sole
beneficiary on then Bruce had life insurance through his work for $31,000 okay so with these two forged
signature policies of $220,000 were at 40 Grand now add the 31,000 from his work policy Stella
stands to make $71,000 from Bruce's death so if Stella would have been okay with
$71,000 mhm 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 eedan 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 $15,000 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 mcneel 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 wanted an accidental death
benefit of Bruce work plan but she wanted to be able to sue a Big Brand a household name for Millions right this
agreed so for that Bruce couldn't be the only one to die from product tampering SLP poisoning so in a way she outed
herself M instead of becoming a widow with an extra $71,000 she ended up arrested and convicted receiving 2
99-year terms under the new federal tampering law Stella nickel was the first person in US 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 in got senten and the the judge said two 90 90e sentences you said
she said so you're saying there's a chance right am I I still could get out now during the first four days of the
investigation in the tyol 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 Sinai capsules he was also known to carry illegal weapons and during the course of this
invest 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 Ty all
case seven degrees of Kevin Bacon he worked with the father of Lynn Riner right one of the victims and her
father's name was Howard Fen 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 in 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 encaps encapsulate
cide for a Time authorities suspected that Arnold was in cahoots with fron in the Tylenol murders they also suspected
riner's husband Ed for a time but both he and fron passed polygraph test 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 so they 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 mhm this was Kevin Masterson Masterson's
ex-wife had settled a lawsuit against juel remember that juel 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 attack on the people per
se or attack on Johnson and Johnson these are both byst standards 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 it's just they're not being investigated just by local detectives or local law
enforcement we have a lot of hands on deck at the time 30 o over 30 some FBI agents helping with this investig ation
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 $100,000 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 then well I thought this when I first heard about him this
seems to be a good one at the time be 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 go 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 6th 1982 Johnson and Johnson received a handwritten all caps letter with a New York postmark that
read Johnson and Johnson parent of McNeal Laboratories gentlemen as you can see it
is easy to place cide both potassium and sodium into capsil sitting on store shelves and since the cide is inside the
gelatin it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill another beauty is that cide 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 $50 and it
takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle if you want to stop the killing then wire $1 million to bank account number
84495 N7 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 know how this guy sounds like a mad man 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 Bose's number and an old date yeah Pitney Bose that's a
pre-sort it's a machine that helps you put together mail the envelope was stamped April 15th 1982 so well before
any of these Tylenol murders the meter was traced to a company called Lakeside Travel the bank account referenced with
which was no longer opened at that point belonged to Frederick Miller mcah heir to the Miller Brewing Company
Fortune although he owned Lakeside Travel police quickly determined that mahe 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 I used by James William Lewis M 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 mcah 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 thumb
print 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 Sinai laced Tylenol if certain tax policies were not
changed this seems like a 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 luxley I'm going to cut
your hat 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 3 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 pulley 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 $5,000 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 well $5,000
back then was a lot of money it's like $10 million today no 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
arrest and 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 maale
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 H 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 him 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 mcah the the very wealthy man that stands to inherit the
Miller Brewing Company fortune that is because remember you pointed out the Pitney
Bose envelope that police were able to trace back to sometime in April of 1982 I used to I used to work on a Pitney
bows 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 mcah who Lewis's wife had that big pay dispute with right this mahe 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 already paid or was heying try to purposely give this to
law enforcement and maybe get them to lead them back to this Fred mcke 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 jameses 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 cide 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's 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 cuz I'm not even in the area
anymore maybe that's maybe as you pointed out the perpetrator 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 or 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 terrorist it's so it's to create 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 going to 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 um 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 uh again I think this is less about money and more about and Ste 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 two 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
mm 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 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 time law 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 contain inate 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 reexamine the evidence in the Chicago
Tylenol murders case asking then Lewis for DNA and then a year later they ask the famous Ted kazinski for his DNA the
unibomber the unibomber 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
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 $100,000 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 US 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 [Music] you for everything true crime check us out at true Crim garage.com and make
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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 Ozark's holler lurks an ancient source of power called the Mountain it
drives men and women mad and leads them to do strange and terrible things it is growing in strength only an invisible
wall held in place by centuries of sacrificial magic protects an unwitting Mountain Community from a descent into
Bloodshed and Madness check out the fountain by Christopher Ferris we will have that listed on our recommended page
at true Crim garage.com for you and until next week be good be kind and don't litter
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The Tylenol Murders /// Part 2 /// 481

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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 discusses the Chicago Tylenol murders, the investigation, and the psychological impact on victims' families and society.

Key points

The Tylenol Murders. A chilling account of the Tylenol murders and their impact on families.
A Father's Despair. Mary's father expresses his longing to confront the killer.
The Graveyard Confession. A man approaches a grave site, revealing a shocking connection to a murder.
Stella Nickel's Greed. Stella Nickel's motive for murder is uncovered, driven by financial gain.
Historic Conviction. Stella Nickel becomes the first person convicted of murder through product tampering.
The Extortion Letter. James Lewis sends a chilling letter demanding $1 million to stop the killings.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You killed their daughter. She was 12.

The impact of the Tylenol murders on the Kellerman family.

5:54WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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