The tips were written up on 3x5 index cards. By the time he reached his house in Evanston, he was the de facto leader of what had quickly become the countrys highest-profile murder case. None matched. Thats being made out of whole cloth all these years later. Four decades later, task force leaders downplay accusations of tensions among the agencies, suggesting history has been revised in an effort to explain why no one has been charged with the murders. Come to 1425 Armstrong Lane.. The operation was primarily staffed by female agents who answered phone calls and assessed information while their male counterparts worked in the field. I dont think that bore fruit at all.. A native of the south suburbs, Gutowski received a master's degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield and is a graduate of Southern Illinois University. The decision cost the company more than $100 million, an enormous amount in 1982. A photograph of a television screen shows the specific lot number for a batch of Extra-Strength Tylenol that was the first to be recalled. Unfortunately, each victim swallowed a Tylenol capsule laced with A lethal dose of cyanide. In all, the task force had only eight bottles to offer clues to where and when the tampering could have taken place. But on Oct. 1, 1982, he had been a detective for only a year. Retired FBI agent Roy Lane Jr., shown in August, is the only member of law enforcement who has been part of the Tylenol investigation in its entirety. Tylenol Ty, Ford said. Now Fahner had to win the job for himself, and he faced a formidable opponent in Democrat Neil Hartigan, a vote magnet from Chicagos North Side. (Chicago Tribune), Look, like any other series of government bureaucracies, theres always tension between agencies, he said. The task force didnt know who or why.. And I would wake them up just to say good night, you know?. He is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine and the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the author ofThe Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick and the Discovery of DNAs Double Helix (W.W. Norton, September 21). And then there are agents who dont. That same day, a 27-year-old postal worker named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died of what was initially thought to be a massive heart attack but turned out to be cyanide poisoning as well. According to the state police memo obtained by the Tribune, the FDAs work traced the cyanide from the tainted capsules to Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based lab supply company, which distributed that particular batch in 1978. Christy Gutowski focuses her work on stories about criminal justice, public corruption and issues that impact the everyday man. Tainted capsules were discovered in early October in a few other grocery stores and drug stores in the Chicago area, but, fortunately, they had not yet been sold or consumed. Others found Fahner the obvious choice. The Tylenol task force may be no exception, he said, but the tensions didnt affect the overall effort. . Within a year, and after an investment of more than $100 million, Tylenols sales rebounded to its healthy past and it became, once again, the nations favorite over-the-counter pain reliever. When Ford and Gildea arrived at the North Side flophouse where the man lived, he was still on the phone with a company operator and was promising to punish Hormel just like he had in the Tylenol case. That evening, Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner sat on a dais listening to stump speeches at the Kane County Republican Organizations annual dinner. That wasnt there.. Why was this happening? Reporters from the Chicago Tribune tracked down Lewis last month as part of the investigative podcast "Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders" and asked him if he has any theories on who the Tylenol Killer might be. The coppers and the FBI guys that I knew all worked together. Members of the Illinois State Police join, as well. Photo by Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images. They gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with the highly poisonous potassium cyanide. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). Written by a high-ranking Illinois state police supervisor in April 1983, the document describes the wide net authorities cast in the hopes of solving the mystery. I always wear the blue suit and the red tie, Lane said. I do think it created a lot of problems because youre always thinking theres somebody doing something behind your back.. The FBI and Chicago police performed separate, but largely parallel, investigations until Oct. 6. They can do it, in part, by revisiting the earliest days of the Tylenol investigation, a time when evidence was not always handled according to todays careful standards. Arlington Heights police Chief Rodney Kath, second from left, works with other members of the Tylenol task force at its Des Plaines headquarters in 1982. It would likely be someone with gray hair. Left: And soon, many medications and foods sold over store counters began being sold in tamper-proof, sealed packaging. Stanley died that very day and Theresa died two days later. Following the same theory, investigators took pictures of everyone who attended the victims funerals and set up time-lapse cameras at grave sites to see if they could capture anyone acting unusual. Customers who had a problem, anybody that could make some money out of it.. Forty years after the infamous Tylenol murders killed her father and two other close relatives, a Wisconsin woman refuses to take the popular pain pills. The death toll now stood at five: Reiner, McFarland, Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, his brother Stanley Janus of Lisle and 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village. These packaging protections soon became the industry standard for all over-the-counter medications. If people threw out their Tylenol, authorities would never know the full extent of the tampering. We were getting flooded with calls, said John Fellmann, an Arlington Heights detective assigned to the case. Helena Tarasewicz, mother of Tylenol victim Theresa "Terri" Janus, weeps over the casket containing her daughter's body during graveside services at Maryhill Cemetery in Niles in 1982. I realized I was in the deep end of the pool, he said. Investigators took pictures of people who attended the victims funerals to see if they could capture anyone acting unusual. Several months have passed since the suburban detective made his pitch to the Cook County states attorneys office. Studies have found women who kill use poison more often than men do, but they typically target people they know. What was he liked as a boss?, She added: Good and bad, I want to hear those stories, because its a reflection of who I am., Hurricane Ian: South Carolina and Florida comb wreckage to assess deadly toll, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Some expressed surprise at how casually other people treated the poisoned bottles. Siekmann drove to a state laboratory in the city with the bottle on the seat next to him. I think we ended up charging that guy with a misdemeanor, some disorderly conduct or some nonsense, he said. The results came back positive for cyanide at 1:30 a.m. Local police departments and states attorneys offices have been trying to crack the case for 40 years. He bought a rancid ham at Jewel and when he opened it, it was spoiled. And they talked to veterinarians about any unusual animal poisonings, thinking the murderer may have tested the chemical on pets first. Security cameras were scarce in suburban Chicago in 1982, but investigators checked the images that existed. And so the Department of Justice just looked up a law and by a little bit of a hook and a crook said the FBI has jurisdiction because of an FDA law (about) truth in labeling.. Lane would think of that line a year later when, without prompting, a suspect called him and offered to help solve the case. Some investigators on the case, including a few still involved with it, considered the rendered profile too vague to be of any real use. Because all the other possibilities had been eliminated.. (Earl Gustie / Chicago Tribune). We had gloves in our car and basically used them on decomposed bodies. The FBI put about three dozen agents on the case, under the premise that the agency needed to determine whether Johnson & Johnson had violated federal law by failing to list potassium cyanide among the active ingredients in Tylenol. They had a lot of questions and I didnt have any answers at all., Mike Severns, a former Elk Grove Village police detective assigned to Mary Kellerman's murder, says it still bothers him that officials neglected to update her grieving parents in the early days of the investigation. Johnson & Johnson initially recalled only those products with the same batch number as the Janus and Kellerman bottles. Pain in the neck, Hogberg said of his CPD counterparts. The CPD set up its own tip line and organized 35 detectives to work out of what was then Area 6 Headquarters at Belmont and Western. (Josh Reynolds/AP) The investigation into the 1982 Tylenol murders was pretty dormant when an FBI . What are the Tylenol murders? Testing found cyanide in the Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule on the right. Other task force members, it should be noted, werent particularly fond of Chicagos efforts either. The effort was Herculean, said Jeremy Margolis, a former U.S. attorney who was assigned to the task force. They were particularly concerned that something happened during the manufacturing or the shipping or storage, Wolnik said. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old child named Mary Kellerman had also died suddenly in another Chicago suburb after taking an Extra-Strength Tylenol. What was my dads favorite color? Though the company expanded the recall the same day to cover the batch involved in McFarlands death, the piecemeal approach troubled Fahner. For example, Johnson & Johnson quickly established that the cyanide lacing occurred after cases of Tylenol left the factory. Given the totality of the circumstances, some thought it unusual for the Illinois attorney general to lead the investigation. They can account for the differing DNA profiles. When that happened, the suspect would make contact with an investigator and offer to help solve the case. The 20-year-old would be buried alongside her husband and her brother-in-law Adam in a triple funeral made even more heartbreaking when relatives had to pull Terris mother off her daughters casket before it was lowered into the ground. Chemists working for the Illinois Public Health Department in Chicago test the contents of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. Thats just human nature. He told her no, then carried the memory of the Kellermans anguish with him for the rest of his time on the task force. History's Greatest Mysteries looks into the theories regarding the Tylenol Murders in Chicago 1982. The poisonings spanned multiple towns and two counties. I think its pretty important, the aide replied. Paramedics came and took Adam Janus to a nearby hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead from what they suspected may have been a heart attack. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune). So as we organized, there were about 10, 15 different avenues of investigations to pursue, like disgruntled employees, former employees, lawsuits, Lane said. But when she opened the . The Chicago Tylenol murders were a series of poisoning deaths resulting from drug tampering in the Chicago metropolitan area in 1982. He brought personal knowledge (as the former state police director) and experience regarding a criminal investigation. But thats not a problem, the investigators say. Critics who had prematurely announced the death of the brand Tylenol were now praising the companys handling of the matter. As the 40th anniversary of the 1982 Tylenol murders approaches, investigators are working with prosecutors on a now-or-maybe-never effort to hold a longtime suspect responsible for the. In reality, some task force members still accuse their colleagues of secretive behavior 40 years later. (Fred Jewell/AP). When Thompson, a Republican, became governor in 1977, Fahner followed him to Springfield to lead the Illinois state police. Kasia said she still remembers hearing her mother scream when she couldnt wake her father up the next day, 29 September 1982. Each person underwent a rigorous background check. Medicare Pharmacy employee Mary Butler, right, shows a box of Extra-Strength Tylenol to Officer Michael Miljan in Arlington Heights. READ: The awful work of the real doctors who inspired M*A*S*H. The case continued to be confusing to the police, the drug maker and the public at large. The Tribune interviewed nearly two dozen members of the task force, many of whom confirmed the reports veracity and added their own perspective. The task force investigating the Tylenol killings doubted that James Lewis would be reckless enough to stay in Manhattan after mailing an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million . It was standing room only inside the Arlington Heights Police Department for the first meeting of what would become the Tylenol task force. Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million Tylenol bottles as panic spread nationwide. We used every single technique available to us. And 35 years later, this murder mystery is still . Seven people between the ages of 12 and 35 years old died in 1982 after ingesting extra-strength Tylenol capsules that were found to have been laced with cyanide, a deadly chemical. We were looking for somebody that really looked like they didnt belong. It was so Dick Tracy to me, Steed said. Over the next few days, three more strange deaths occurred: 35-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner of Winfield, Illinois.. The police investigation into the Tylenol murders has centered around prime suspect James Lewis for decades. Whoa, whoa, he recalled. All 3 networks lead with the Tylenol story on the first day of the crisis. Severns, who had two young children, heard the undeserved guilt in her voice. The Chicago Tylenol Murders: With Laurence Fishburne. Joe McQuaid, a task force investigator with the state police who had worked for Fahner when he was director, acknowledged it was an unorthodox setup. As for the ongoing case, sources familiar with the investigation told the Chicago Tribune that charges are not imminent and may not come at all because the case lacks physical proof. 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