Posted on 09/24/2007 5:49:59 PM PDT by qam1
It’s a Chicago area cold case that frightened the entire nation -- seven people died from taking Tylenol. This week, we mark the 25th anniversary of the Tylenol murders. Someone replaced the medicine in that popular pain reliever with poison. The incident sparked a massive investigation that brought together a city, state and suburban police departments and the FBI. The killer has never been found.
One the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, an emergency call was made to the Arlington Heights Fire Department.
There was nothing paramedics could do when they got to Adam Janus’ home.
"The fellas came back after an hour and a half and told us they lost a relatively healthy 27-year-old man that had just died,” said Chuck Kramer, a former Arlington Heights firefighter.
At first, it was thought Janus had a heart attack. That night, his grieving brother, Stanley, and other family members gathered at Adam’s house to make funeral arrangements. There, Stanley took a few steps and dropped to the floor.
Once again, paramedics were called to the same address. Kramer was alarmed.
"Especially when it was a man down in the morning and he's dead and now I have another man down, same address, six hours later," he said.
Stanley Janus died, so did his wife Teresa – three members of one family gone.
What could have happened? Was there a gas leak at the house? Hours later, at the hospital, health department nurse Helen Jensen interviewed the Janus family. She gleaned one bit of information that proved crucial.
Kramer witnessed the interview.
"The only thing these three people have in common - other than they're relatives - they don't live in the place -- is that they took Tylenol,” Kramer said.
It was Tylenol that had been on a counter in Adam Janus’ home. Firefighters Kramer, Richard Keyworth, and Phil Cappitelli – all good friends – started comparing notes.
Cappitelli told them about a 12-year-old girl, Mary Kellerman, who had also died suddenly that same day in Elk Grove Village.
Keyworth discovered she too had taken Tylenol. The firefighters alerted investigators who discovered the medicine had been tainted with cyanide.
"Somehow or another we connected this thing,” Keyworth said. “If there were other tainted capsules, we saved lives at that point. We had no idea how big this thing was going to get."
Four others, all over the Chicago area, would die after taking what they thought was a safe pain reliever. 31 million Tylenol capsules were pulled from store shelves across the country and local governments and the media warned consumers.
Some 200 investigators from various law enforcement agencies went to work. One member, John Fellman, then an Arlington Heights detective, says they interviewed thousands.
"The first six weeks, there wasn't a day off,” Fellman said. “It was seven days a week. We were working 12-, 14-, 16-hour days."
Investigators concluded someone had taken Tylenol home, replaced the medicine with cyanide and put the boxes back on store shelves.
One man, James Lewis, went to prison for writing an extortion letter to the maker of Tylenol, claiming her would continue the poisoning unless he got $11 million. But he was never charged with the murders themselves. In 1987, Lewis talked to CBS 2’s Mike Parker and denied that he committed the murders.
Today, when leads come in, they are pursued. But the 25-year-old Tylenol case is cold.
"We have seven homicides that still sit out there unsolved,” Fellman said.
"I wish I could get five minutes with him, because I saw what he did,” Kramer said.
As Robert Grant, the head of the Chicago FBI office told CBS 2, sometimes tragedy leads to action. After the Tylenol murders, the federal government passed anti-tampering laws and drug companies now put safety seals on their over-the-counter products. Today, when someone opens them, you know it.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
I remember this all too well; in fact while working out at the gym the other day, Tylenol aired an ad defending their safety record for the last twenty years.
An odd sad footnote.
My Trust & Estates book (fairly popular among all law schools) features the probate case of the Janus husband & wife who died within thirty minutes of each other.
They got caught when someone noticed that the lot numbers didn't match.
At the time, my Dad was the CEO of a major California wine company, and for a couple of weeks he and my Mom were getting threatening calls from someone claiming to have sabotaged some wine shipments. It was all very hush-hush, and nothing ever came from it. It was, however, quite unsettling.
Of course Lewis denied committing the murders, he could still be charged.
oh yeah... I remember that too. Can’t remember what it was but we were all thinking, “here we go again”.
Yep, I was 13 when this happened. I can recall when virtually no product was tamper-resistant. I remember as I got older and would fumble with the new, difficult to open packaging, I'd always sarcastically exclaim, "Thanks! Tylenol dude!"
Now tamper-resistant packaging is a way of life and I do feel safer for it.
God knows who it is.
It was the packaging industry.
Release date: 06/22/2006
Contact Information: Roy Seneca (215) 814-5567
PHILADELPHIA – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified a Merck and Co. pharmaceutical research facility in West Point, Pa. as a source of the cyanide-related discharge that killed more than 1,000 fish in the Wissahickon Creek last week.
In the process of an investigation by EPA’s mid-Atlantic region and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP), a representative from the Merck facility notified EPA on Tuesday that about 25 gallons of potassium thiocyanate was released into the sewer system on the morning of June 13 from a vaccine research pilot plant. The representative noted this discharge was not in accordance with the company’s protocols for proper waste disposal. Such discharges are also regulated by EPA’s national pretreatment program.
Potassium thiocyanate is a chemical compound that includes cyanide. It has a wide range of applications including use in the manufacture of industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals and pesticides.
The disclosure by Merck, in conjunction with earlier analysis of water samples taken from the sewer collection system and stream, indicate that the discharge from the Merck facility was tied to the fish kill. The discharge is believed to have entered the Upper Gwynedd wastewater treatment plant through its sewage collection system, interacted with chlorine and emerged in the Wissahickon Creek.
Fish were killed by discharges coming from the wastewater treatment facility. The fish kill prompted health advisories to avoid recreational contact with the Wissahickon and a segment of the Schuylkill River. The advisory was lifted for the Schuylkill last Friday, but remains in place on the Wissahickon.
EPA will continue a full investigation in cooperation with PADEP and other government agencies, and will take appropriate action to help ensure that such a release does not recur.
EPA Regional Administrator Donald S. Welsh praised the investigative team that includes multiple EPA mid-Atlantic region divisions and PADEP. Welsh also noted the critical assistance provided by other government agencies including the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the Philadelphia Water Department and Upper Gwynedd Township.
My guess is luckily, whoever did this got hit by a bus or something and died before he/she ever got the chance to do it again
bump for later read
I remember seeing this on TV when I was a small child. It was the first time I had heard of Cyanide. I remember never seeing Tylenol in capsules after that happening.
Yup. All it takes is one maniac to alter a whole industry. Think about how the Unabomber forever changed how the USPS processes mail, or how Richard Reid has made shoe-removal a regular part of airplane travel.
And another blow to our feelings of safety and innocence. Like 9/11 on a smaller scale. We knew we were at the mercy of lunatics, we just didn't appreciate how numerous and merciless they were.
I wonder how many died from real tylenol- we had a friend who took it regularly and it rotted her liver - killed her.
Some of the new safety features on packaging are a pain but they are necessary...
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