Posted on 07/10/2023 8:51:45 PM PDT by Morgana
The sole suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders was found dead Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Tribune investigative reporters Christy Gutowski and Stacy St. Clair, who conducted a long investigation into the mystery, reported that sources told them prime suspect James Lewis died at his suburban Boston home at the age of 76.
In Sept. 1982, fear gripped the Chicago area and the country after seven suburban residents died due to taking Tylenol that was laced with lethal doses of potassium cyanide. Copycat killings followed later in the U.S.
Lewis was a tax consultant who sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson and said he would stop the killings if the company paid him a million dollars. He was convicted of extortion and spent 12 years in prison. But investigators never found hard evidence to tie him to the poisonings.
“(The FBI) went through some of his stuff and found the handbook of poisons,” St. Clair told WGN News last September. “And in the years since, they have finger printed that book and on page 196, the page that includes information on how much cyanide is needed for a fatal diose in the average human, they found Jim Lewis’ fingerprint.”
At around the same time Gutowski and St. Clair spoke with WGN News last fall, they said the FBI just returned back from interviewing Lewis near Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The former federal prosecutor who put Lewis behind bars for the extortion told the Tribune he was regretful Lewis was never held accountable for the killings.
“I was saddened to learn of James Lewis’ death,” Jeremy Margolis told the Tribune. “Not because he’s dead, but because he didn’t die in prison.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wgntv.com ...
I always thought the packaging industry did it.
This is back when the FBI mostly did its job.
Very cute! :)
I remember 1982 well. In one case of the death of a child, at the burial, a TV crew took film of the crowd. One young man, seeing the camera crew, covered his face and took off.
*
Yep. I never thought they would recover from that.
Some thigs nee to be forgotten. Giving home grown terrorist ideas. and there’s plenty of them.
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