The 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders
On September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman suddenly passed away after consuming an extra-strength Tylenol.
Imagine having a small headache that’s making your day rough. You decide that you’ll try to do something to fix it, so you run to the store to buy some aspirin. You grab a small bottle of Tylenol, go home, and take two. You start to feel even worse after taking the medicine, and soon nobody is going to hear from you again. That aspirin you took for your small headache ended up being the death of you. This is the sad story that happened to a few people in Chicago.
On September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman suddenly passed away after consuming an extra-strength Tylenol. Later that day, Adam Janus, a man in a different suburb of Chicago, suddenly passed away after taking the same kind of medicine. Two members of his family also passed away after taking the same Tylenol. Three more people around the same area also passed away after taking the same kind of Tylenol, and authorities quickly discovered the link between the medicine and the deaths. The Tylenol capsules had been laced with potassium cyanide, a compound that’s toxic to consume. The pills were found to be laced with more than 100 times the amount needed to kill somebody.
It was found that the bottles all came from different factories, but the victims were all within the Chicago area. This means that whoever tampered with the bottles had done it once they were inside of stores. The manufacturers of Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, immediately cut all production of the medicine and told people to stop taking it along with any other medicine that had acetaminophen. They issued a huge recall, estimated to cost the company around $100 million, and since this was prior to the days of the internet where the word could easily spread, police went door to door collecting medicine and even drove down streets with bullhorns yelling to not take Tylenol. Announcements were made on school intercoms and on TV, warning people to throw away their medicine.
Who Did It?
Johnson & Johnson received several letters from James William Lewis claiming that he was the one who laced the pills, and he wanted $1 million to stop him. He and his wife lived in New York at the time, and police couldn’t find any evidence to tie him to the Chicago area, so they couldn’t actually credit him as being the culprit. He was arrested for extortion and served 13 years in prison. Some believed that James really was involved in the murders somehow, while others believed that he was just a con man trying to get money from a huge company.
Superintendent Brzeczek said that they got no breaks during this time, and he was bothered because people were reporting that progress was being made in their investigation, but there were none. He said that he didn’t think the case would ever be solved, and he wanted to tell that to the public. The police were never able to tie anyone to the murders, and the case remains unsolved to this day.
After the 25th anniversary of the crime renewed public interest, police received several new tips and investigated old evidence. In 2009 they conducted another search of Lewis’s home and received a sample of his DNA for testing, but they found nothing to incriminate him. The FBI even requested DNA samples from the Unabomber who had terrorized the same area years earlier, but he denied any involvement, and police couldn’t find any evidence of it being him. The investigation still hasn’t convicted anyone.
Arlington Heights Police Sgt. Scott Winkelman said that the investigation still remains active, and he hasn’t lost hope in being able to solve it. His department just cracked a 45-year-old cold case that convicted Donnie Rudd of murder, so the time frame of when the murders happened hasn’t led him to believe that it can’t be solved. After all, new progress is being made in how we use evidence and DNA every day, so maybe something will be found that allows them to finally solve this case.
How This Event Changed Everything
Monica Janus, whose family members died from taking the laced Tylenol, still won’t take Tylenol to this day. She makes the sign of the cross before taking any type of medication, as she recalls what happened to her family that day. She was only 10-years-old at the time, and she remembers begging her mom not to die.
Due to this incident, companies began implementing stricter standards to prevent tampering with medicines. This is why nowadays you see film inside of medicine bottles, and there’s a warning to not use the medicine if the film has been tampered with. Also, if you return medicine to a store, they’re told to throw it out instead of putting it back on the shelves. Tampering with medicines became a federal crime, and medicines changed from capsules to a solid caplet in the shape of a capsule because normal capsules were easier to tamper with.
The Tylenol murders caused a huge safety change in how we sell medicine. From putting tamper-resistant seals on packages to throwing out medicine that people return even if it shows no signs of being open, we remember the Tylenol murders and don’t want anything similar to happen again. The event even changed Halloween. Every year now, parents tell children that they have to examine their candy for any signs of being tampered with. People are fearful of what others may decide to lace, and for good reason.
The Chicago Tylenol murders continue to be one of the most notorious unsolved American crimes. They completely changed how we produce medicine to be safe, and they led to many people being afraid of taking drugstore medicine. Surviving family members of the victims are still holding out hope that one day the killer will be convicted, bringing their family justice. Murder is something that’s obviously difficult to come to terms with, and when the killer was never found, it’s even harder. Hopefully one day something will be found that finally convicts someone of this horrible crime.