Tonight, a series of unexplained deaths
near Chicago in 1982 starts a nationwide panic.
The victims are connected by one frightening detail.
- It looks like all these people
took Tylenol and died that day.
- Every hospital and every home in America
probably had a Tylenol in their cabinet.
Now we uncover the top theories
surrounding an ongoing FBI investigation.
- What if these people weren’t killed at random?
- Whoever had done it had just been dormant
for things to quiet down.
- He looks very similar
to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Can the elusive killer finally be identified
and brought to justice?
- It’s really a race against time
to try and figure out who’s doing this and why.
Who actually committed
the Chicago Tylenol murders?
September 29th, 1982.
At30 a.m. in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg,
12-year-old Mary Kellerman awakens with a sore throat.
- Mary Kellerman wakes up
and tells her parents she’s not feeling well.
She has sniffles. She’s coughing.
And to alleviate her symptoms, she takes a Tylenol.
- Her dad is downstairs and he hears a thud,
runs back upstairs
and Mary is sprawled on the bathroom floor.
They rush Mary to the hospital.
When she finally gets there, Mary was pronounced dead
at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village.
A few hours later in nearby Arlington Heights,
27-year-old postal worker, Adam Janus collapses
after complaining of minor chest pains.
He’s rushed to Northwest Community Hospital.
- Adam arrives in critical condition.
Shortly thereafter,
he dies of what doctors thought was heart failure.
In shock,
Adam’s brother Stanley and sister-in-law Theresa
return home from the hospital
and take Tylenol for headaches.
That same day, they also collapse and die.
- The police are baffled.
We have three victims in the same family in the same house.
They initially suspect carbon monoxide poisoning.
They called the technicians,
but no carbon monoxide was detected.
So the police called the public health department
looking for some medical guidance
and they send nurse Helen Jensen
to the Janus family.
Jensen finds a bottle
of extra-strength Tylenol
with six capsules missing.
- Three doses taken from a bottle, three people dead.
So Jensen takes this bottle back to the medical center
to get it tested because she feels
that this could be something of importance.
- Authorities at Northwest Community Hospital
turn it over to law enforcement.
- Helen Jensen suspects the Tylenol from the beginning.
And she actually says this to the investigating officers.
"I think it’s something in the Tylenol."
- The Janus family, having no idea what has killed
three members of their family so far, they’re terrified.
So they’re brought to the hospital,
put under observation, and officials went so far
as to give them their last rights
because they didn’t know what was killing these people.
And they didn’t know if they were next.
While the Janus family remains under watch,
18 miles away in the suburb of Winfield,
Mary Reiner arrives home.
She’s recently given birth and wants pain relief.
- Soon after taking extra-strength Tylenol,
Mary Reiner collapses.
She’s rushed to the hospital and she also dies soon after.
Five fatalities, each an apparent mystery.
Authorities are confounded.
- The Januses and Mary Kellerman
all died in Cook County,
which meant they all ended up in the same morgue.
There were also two bottles of Tylenol--
the Tylenol bottle that was used by the Januses
and the Tylenol bottle
that Mary Kellerman got her Tylenol from.
Both bottles have the same lot number,
which is MC2880.
They also have another weird thing in common.
- They both had the distinctive smell
of bitter almonds,
and they’re trained professionals who know
about poisons and contaminants, and that bitter almond smell
could only mean one thing: cyanide.
- It’s a real mystery. Who would do this?
Why did this happen?
Why cyanide? Police have tons of questions.
- What cyanide does is blocks the cells in your body
from absorbing and transporting oxygen.
And it does it very quickly.
It’s a very fast-acting, very dangerous poison.
Tests performed on capsules
confirmed the investigators’ fears.
- Not only were the Januses and Mary Kellerman
killed with cyanide, but it was a dose of cyanide
that was about a thousand times more potent
than what you would need to kill a person.
- Authorities are panicked because they don’t know
how far this is gonna go.
Is it just in Chicago suburb?
Is it nationwide? They don’t know.
While authorities struggle to connect the dots,
there’s another incident.
- At around00 a.m., a woman named Mary McFarland
was working at her telephone company job.
Not feeling great, so she took a Tylenol.
And almost immediately, she passes out
and has to be rushed to the hospital where she died.
- After Mary McFarland collapses,
they’re looking to see, is this another victim?
And sure enough, there are poison pills in there
just like the others.
That morning,
deputy medical examiner Edmund Donoghue
addresses the public.
- Definitely, someone tampered with the capsules,
but we have no idea of where that occurred.
- Donoghue hits the airwaves, letting everyone know
that if you have Tylenol from this certain lot number,
whatever you do, do not take that Tylenol.
Remember, it’s 1982. There’s no social media.
There’s three networks.
To get the word out, police were even
going around with loudspeakers,
making announcements in the streets
to make sure people would not be taking Tylenol
from this lot number at this time.
- This is a huge deal because Tylenol is probably
the number one pain medicine in the country at the time.
Every hospital and every home in America
probably had a Tylenol in their cabinet.
- Johnson & Johnson moves quickly to recall
4.7 million capsules from lot number MC2880--
had all been manufactured in Pennsylvania.
At this point, they’re treating it like a homicide.
They just have no idea how to figure out who’s doing it.
The next day,
authorities form a coordinated multi-agency task force.
- Chicago PD is involved and it ends up being something
like 140 law enforcement officials who are involved,
including the FBI.
- Not only were they investigating
multiple homicides,
but they were also trying to figure out,
are there any more bottles on the shelves out there,
which was key.
- Before this task force can even mobilize
and hit the streets, there’s another incident.
In Old Town, Chicago around00 p.m. that day,
a woman named Paula Prince is found dead
on the floor of her home.
And there is an open bottle of Tylenol
on her bathroom counter.
But this bottle is different.
- It was actually manufactured in Texas.
And the number on that particular bottle was 1920MD.
Now we have a different lot number
that’s been tainted with cyanide.
And of course, now all the red flags go up.
- They now know that this isn’t contained to a single lot.
It is spread and they don’t know how far it might go.
That night, Mayor Jane Byrne
orders all Tylenol removed from Chicago shelves.
- People, of course, were panicked.
So they were calling up, "I just took a Tylenol.
Am I going to die?"
Emergency responders on the other end would say,
"Well, if you’re able to call, you’re gonna be okay,
but don’t take any more."
- The first problem for police is where do you start?
Is it just a random lunatic? Is it a serial killer?
The obvious first place to look is to see if maybe
it’s something that happened in the supply chain.
Investigators start
with the Chicago offices of Johnson & Johnson.
Police interview several current
and former Johnson & Johnson employees
looking for anyone bearing a grudge.
- Johnson & Johnson put out a $100,000 reward
and for any tips that might lead to whoever was doing this.
Nothing came of it.
- They’re also concerned about
if there are other pills still.
Their interviews with employees
don’t get them anywhere.
So a drastic step has to be taken.
On October 5th,
Johnson & Johnson recalls all Tylenol products nationwide--
a total of 31 million bottles
valued at more than $100 million.
- They were able to test them. 50 pills were contaminated.
Those 50 pills were only in eight bottles.
Two of the bottles had been returned in the recall.
One other bottle was found after the fact still
on a shelf, but hadn’t been sold yet.
They’re lucky somebody else didn’t buy those three bottles.
- They know these tainted pills were only produced
in Pennsylvania or Texas in these two lot numbers.
One thing they don’t find is any evidence of pills
that are tainted with cyanide
outside the Chicago Metro area.
And while Johnson & Johnson is testing all of this,
they make another huge breakthrough.
A chemist at J&J discovers
that when you put cyanide inside a Tylenol capsule,
it degrades within 24 hours,
which means these crimes had to happen locally
because the amount of time it takes for that pill
to dissolve after you put the cyanide in it,
doesn’t allow for shipping it out from a factory
and waiting until it hits store shelves.
You gotta act fast.
At this time,
pill bottles didn’t have tamperproof seals on them.
So anyone could open a medicine bottle
without detection virtually anywhere.
- If it’s not an inside job,
this case becomes much more difficult.
Now they have to canvass the entire Chicago area
for any suspect.
Early October, 1982.
Media coverage of the Chicago Tylenol murders
is constant and frenzied.
- This is a huge story. Mass hysteria breaks out.
It’s like the Kennedy assassination in the coverage
and the way it just captivates America’s attention.
- Well, there was somewhere in the area
of a 100,000 different newspaper articles
that were done on this particular case.
- The scariest thing is that seven days have passed
and they still have no viable suspect.
Then on Wednesday, October 6th,
investigators finally receive what they hope will be a clue.
- A ransom letter arrives at the Johnson & Johnson offices.
And this letter claims to be from the person
who is poisoning these Tylenol pills.
So finally, police have a suspect.
- In the letter, "the Tylenol killer"
appears to be bragging about his prowess.
It only takes him ten minutes to contaminate a bottle.
He’s only spent $50 to kill all of these people.
And, "Hey, Johnson & Johnson,
"if you don’t want the killings to continue,
"you better wire a million dollars to this bank account.
And don’t tell the FBI."
And the tone is so creepy.
He says, "It’s so easy to get buyers
to swallow the bitter pill."
Ugh. It’s a sociopath.
- This is not a smart crime.
If this is a genuine ransom letter,
the person who sent it put
their actual bank account number in the letter.
The account belongs to a man named
Frederick Miller McCahey.
Could the Tylenol killer finally have a name?
- So investigators follow the trail
and speak to Frederick Miller McCahey.
And he’s an heir to the Miller Brewing fortune.
Clearly, he’s not likely to be the Tylenol killer.
- So they analyze this letter and police find a fingerprint
and it traces back to a man named Robert Richardson.
On October 13th, 1982, police issue a warrant
for his arrest over extortion charges.
- There’s a big, big manhunt
looking for this Robert Richardson.
They have over 100 law enforcement officers,
but at this point, he’s in the wind, he’s a ghost.
A few days later,
the alleged killer makes contact again.
A second threatening letter shows up,
this time at the White House.
- This letter matches
the handwriting of the first letter.
It also includes a death threat to President Reagan.
- President Reagan!
- In the letter, he demands a taxation overhaul
or else the killings will continue.
Within days, a third letter arrives,
this time to the "Chicago Tribune."
But unlike the other letters,
this one is an attempt to clear his name.
- And he basically identifies himself as James Lewis,
sends a thumbprint in, a copy of his driver’s license.
Everything’s there
for law enforcement to identify who he is.
Lewis’ thumbprint is a match
and investigators find out
that Robert Richardson is an alias.
- And he says, "You know, I was just being opportunistic.
I have nothing to do with this."
It was really a crime of opportunity,
not a mass-murdering, at least as far as he was concerned.
- So James Lewis is now
at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list.
They take his photo and they circulate it nationwide.
They have a massive, massive manhunt
looking for this Lewis.
- And they arrest him on December 13th of 1982.
So he’s in custody at this point.
The next day,
his wife Leann turns herself in to the Chicago police.
Her bail is also set at $5 million.
- They were probably relieved that they had
a really strong suspect in custody.
It didn’t seem that more people were dying
of the same ailments.
- Lewis admits to sending the ransom letters,
but he denies any involvement in the murders.
He was simply trying to frame McCahey
because he felt he was crooked
and he was trying to get the FBI to look at him.
And hopefully that they would
look into any of his financial activities.
- Now, Lewis has been interviewed multiple times
and he basically sticks to his story
that he didn’t have anything to do with it.
Tainting of the pills-- we find out that Lewis’ wife
who’s in custody, worked for McCahey.
There was a falling out.
Apparently, the wife’s last check,
which was for-- in the area of $511 bounced.
So for $511,
this guy goes after this individual McCahey
and basically implicates him in the Tylenol murders.
Is Lewis simply inventing an elaborate defense
or could his story actually be true?
- To defend himself, Richardson/Lewis says,
"You know, this would be really easy to do.
Let me show you how."
And he talked them through opening up capsules,
replacing the powder inside with cyanide,
closing it back up.
"See, it’s so simple. Anyone could do it,"
wasn’t the smartest move because now police
were really feeling comfortable that this was their guy.
- And what’s crazy about this whole thing is you start
looking at Lewis’s background, and at one point in time,
he actually had some involvement
in the pharmaceutical industry.
- He also had a short-lived business venture
where he was importing pill-making machines
from India.
Lewis’ criminal record
also gets investigators’ attention.
- James Lewis had a troubled past.
He had committed assaults as a teenager,
chased after his stepfather with an axe,
tried to kill himself.
He would later say that he did those things
to try to get out of the Vietnam War draft.
But a lot of people questioned that.
- He also served two years for tax fraud,
but he was very prolific.
Investigators have all they need to prosecute
Lewis for extortion, including a confession.
Now they need to prove he’s a murderer.
- So law enforcement starts to build a timeline of this guy’s
whereabouts the months before the poisoning.
They find out that this guy is running from law enforcement
in Kansas City back in December of 1981.
- When he left Kansas City, this is when he started
using the alias of Robert Richardson
and his wife also used the same Richardson alias.
- James Lewis’ main alibi
for not committing the Tylenol murders
is that he wasn’t anywhere near Chicago
when the killings occurred.
In early September, 1982,
he and his wife booked cash tickets on Amtrak,
left Chicago for New York City
using the aliases William and Karen Wagner.
They lived there in Manhattan for weeks at the same time
these Tylenol killings were happening.
Investigators confirm
the couple did indeed rent a New York hotel room,
but suspicion remains.
- They’ve gotta figure out, okay,
he’s in New York on September 4th.
Could he possibly have come back to Chicago,
tainted the pills, and then went back to New York?
- The problem is no one can prove that hypothesis
because we didn’t have the technology back then
that we have now.
There aren’t cameras on every street light.
But there is one camera
that might hold the answer.
It’s now 2 1/2 months
after the Chicago Tylenol murders.
Police have a potential suspect,
James William Lewis in custody,
but can they prove he’s the killer?
- Police have James Lewis on extortion.
I mean, he’s confessed to it.
It’s a pretty open and close case,
but he is adamant that he had nothing to do
with the poisonings,
and they cannot place him in Chicago.
His alibi is really pretty strong.
Until new evidence surfaces.
- When Paula Prince bought her bottle of Tylenol,
there actually was surveillance video.
- And this is a key part of this investigation
because they’re able to go back and find that
she purchased her Tylenol on September 28th of 1982.
And what’s interesting here
is they actually have security camera video,
and it’s at the register where she’s paying for her Tylenol.
- This was huge.
There’s a gentleman a couple feet behind her
who looks an awful lot like James Lewis.
- So if he’s there during the time that Paula Prince
bought her tainted bottles, then that’s it, right?
You’d think you would have enough to close this case.
Unfortunately,
the video isn’t clear enough for a positive ID.
- Lewis presents himself as an opportunist,
as a conman, as a hustler, but he says he’s not a killer.
That’s not in his repertoire.
But when police dig deeper,
they discover Lewis isn’t quite as innocent
as he claims.
- As police unfold his background,
they find that he actually
had been charged with murder before.
- In the mid ’70s,
Lewis was running a little tax and bookkeeping firm
with his wife Leann in Kansas city.
And one of their favorite clients
was an elderly guy named Raymond West.
- On July 23rd, 1978, Raymond West disappears.
His friend Charles Banker goes to Raymond West’s house
to see how he’s doing, see if he’s turned up.
There is a letter on Raymond’s door.
- "Ray’s out of town. For further, call Jim."
And it’s on the Lewis & Lewis stationery.
That’s pretty weird according to his friend.
So, you know, Ray doesn’t go out of town--
certainly not without telling him about it.
Banker calls police.
When the police come, they enter the house.
Police look around the house.
They don’t see anything strange so they leave.
- Three weeks passed and Charles Banker
came back to Raymond’s house on August 14th, 1978.
And he opened the door. There was a terrible odor.
He went and got the police who were experienced enough
that they knew from the smell what they were dealing with.
- So police in the basement,
they find a bloody lawn chair, rope,
and a garbage bag containing his toupee,
eyeglasses, and a blood-stained sheet.
Upstairs, officers notice a stain
running from the ceiling to the wall.
- In the attic, they find a body
with its legs dismembered.
There’s white rope around the remains,
bags covering parts of his body,
and the decomposition is tremendous.
- They knew it was the work of a killer.
They just didn’t know why or who.
- As they continue the search to gather more evidence,
they find a $5,000 check made out to guess who?
The payee is James Lewis.
- So the police ask if they can search his car.
And he says, "Sure."
In his trunk, they find 20 feet of white rope,
trash bags like the ones found in Raymond’s house,
a briefcase with Raymond West papers,
and a stack of Raymond West’s checkbooks.
In late August, 1978,
the Jackson County grand jury charges James Lewis
with capital murder.
- Before the case had even started,
before any evidence was even presented,
his attorney gets the case thrown out on a technicality.
- Once they arrested him, they failed to read him
his Miranda rights, so every bit of that evidence
that they had found would be thrown out.
And without it, there was no case.
And James Lewis walked out the door.
Despite the lack of a conviction,
investigators working the Tylenol case
now believe Lewis is capable of murder.
But do they have enough evidence to prove it?
- So this guy gets off on a murder in ’79, and in 1982,
they have him for extortion, and the authorities
can’t connect him to these Tylenol cases
because all they have is circumstantial evidence
because his alibi says he was in New York.
Can you believe that?
In October of 1983,
one year after the Tylenol killings,
Lewis is tried for extortion and convicted.
He serves 13 years of his 20-year sentence.
- So after that, police have another chance
to maybe find some closure in the Tylenol case.
So they look for more evidence.
Again, they searched his house in 2009.
They confiscated some computers and paperwork
that they hoped would point to him
as having been the mastermind of this poisoning scheme.
In 2010, they got a court order to get DNA
from James Lewis and his wife, Leann.
Charges never came.
- Is Lewis on the Walgreens video behind Paula Prince?
And is Lewis the individual
that tainted the pills or is he not?
When the Tylenol murders rock Chicago in 1982,
investigators initially believe it’s an isolated event,
but as they dig deeper,
they unravel an unsettling possibility.
The killer has been active before.
In fact, he could be
one of the most infamous criminals in U.S. history.
One week into the initial investigation,
a Chicago detective is dispatched
to Sheridan, Wyoming to follow a lead.
- On October 9th in 1982, "New York Times" released
an article that talked about a lead up in Wyoming.
There was a very similar homicide that occurred
using tainted extra-strength Tylenol with cyanide.
So they sent a team of investigators up there
to go ahead and look at this particular case.
- As it turns out,
a couple months before the Chicago murders happened,
on July 26th in Sheridan, Wyoming,
19-year-old janitor Jay Adam Mitchell
is found dead of cyanide poisoning,
just like the cases in Chicago.
- According to his mom,
the only thing he had taken prior
was extra-strength Tylenol.
- Chicago PD and the FBI
couldn’t make a direct connection
other than circumstantial evidence between
the Sheridan, Wyoming poisoning of Mitchell
and the Tylenol murders two months later in Chicago.
- The case kind of goes cold for about 30 years.
Then, a very high-profile suspect
is thrust into the spotlight.
- On May 19th, 2011,
dozens of news agencies pick up on a story about a new suspect.
The FBI was seeking DNA from none other
than Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Kaczynski was a reclusive mathematician
convicted of sending bombs
through the mail for nearly 20 years,
killing three people and wounding 23.
He’s currently serving eight life sentences for his crimes
in a prison medical facility in North Carolina.
- In 1978 through 1980,
Ted Kaczynski was living with his parents
in Lombard, Illinois, right outside of Chicago.
And obviously, we have the first four attacks
that occurred right there in the Chicago metropolitan area,
but he also intermittently stayed with his parents
after that timeframe.
Lombard could also be an ideal home base
for the Tylenol killer.
- All of the stores where those Tylenol bottles were purchased
were all within a 20-mile drive
from Kaczynski’s parents’ home.
- And so he would’ve known these stores.
He would’ve known easily how to get to them.
He would’ve been comfortable in the area.
And that’s something else to think about--
poisoning within a particular radius.
- When you look at the video of the individual
standing behind Paula in Walgreens,
not only does he look like Lewis,
but he also looks like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
- The overlap between what Kaczynski is convicted of
and the Tylenol deaths, people started to wonder,
okay, they’re both domestic terrorism cases.
And actually, some of Kaczynski’s
first terrorist attacks originated in Chicago.
There is also another reason
authorities think Kaczynski could be responsible.
- When you look at where Kaczynski was arrested
in Montana
and you follow I-90 to go to Chicago,
almost in that direct line is Sheridan, Wyoming,
which is just off I-90.
So here we have another circumstantial connection
for Kaczynski to be involved
in at least the Sheridan, Wyoming murder
and the 1982 Tylenol murders in Chicago.
- Could Ted Kaczynski have committed this
Sheridan, Wyoming crime as a run-up or practice
to his much bigger crimes later?
- Ted Kaczynski was a really good planner.
He tested stuff out before he actually committed the crime.
You know, he tested his bombs out,
and could the Sheridan, Wyoming homicide be the precursor
to what occurred in Chicago two months later in 1982?
Could very well have been.
That’s the way Ted Kaczynski operates.
Kaczynski denies any involvement
with the Tylenol case.
- Now, Kaczynski claims he never had potassium cyanide
in his possession
and they didn’t find any in his cabin in Montana.
Since 2011, police haven’t filed
any new charges against Ted Kaczynski.
So it’s possible that there wasn’t a DNA match,
but it’s possible that they’re still building a case.
One month into the hunt
for Chicago’s Tylenol killer,
investigators ask a new and provocative claim.
- What if these people weren’t killed at random?
Investigators look into the victims’
friends and family,
searching for any potential motive.
- Does someone’s husband or wife
have a reason to commit murder?
Does an employee who is disgruntled with their job
have a reason to do this?
Most of the victims
don’t seem to have any enemies.
- But Mary Reiner might have a connection
to a possible suspect.
His name is Roger Arnold,
and he’s a self-proclaimed closet chemist.
Around the time of the murders,
he’s heard openly bragging
about having access to cyanide.
- He’s a bar fly,
so he hangs out at one particular tavern,
knows all the bartenders.
And he’s constantly talking about
how easy it is to poison people
and basically goes into detail as to how it could be done.
- One of the people listening at the bar
thought his theories were a little too close to plausible
and called in a tip,
asking for investigators to look at Arnold.
Things that raised eyebrows about Arnold were
he worked in a warehouse for Jewel grocery stores,
a place one of the bottles of Tylenol was found.
At the warehouse where he worked,
he was a colleague
with the father of one of the victims.
So we have a little bit of a tangential relationship.
- This is the first time police have identified a suspect
who might have a connection to one of the victims.
Did he have some sort of beef with the Reiner family?
Was this a revenge killing? It could be.
One thing police will tell you all the time
is there’s no such thing as coincidences.
Officers act on the tip immediately
and bring Arnold in for questioning.
- At the time, Arnold was out on an assault complaint,
so the police had good reason to check in on him.
They talked about
what Arnold thought about the Tylenol killings and,
"Hey, guy, did you have anything to do with this?"
And he said, "Absolutely not."
- Roger did tell police, "Yeah, I had cyanide,
but I got rid of it in August."
And the crimes weren’t until late September.
So according to him, it was all gone by then.
- This is all circumstantial, but it’s very alarming.
We have a suspect who fancies himself as a "closet chemist."
And he has a connection to one of the victims.
And he worked in the perfect spot
to pull off a crime like this.
And he admits to handling and having cyanide.
It’s enough to get a search warrant
for Arnold’s apartment.
- They found chemicals, weapons,
how-to guides for various criminal activities.
- And they also find two one-way tickets to Thailand.
They find five unregistered guns,
chemistry equipment, and white powder.
- They find potassium carbonate,
which is not the same as potassium cyanide.
But if you modify it a little bit, it can be deadly.
You can make a synthetic version
using other ingredients.
Arnold doesn’t help himself either
because he won’t tell police
why he has this potassium carbonate in his possession.
He just says, "It wasn’t illegal.
Don’t worry about it."
Investigators next ask Arnold
to take a polygraph exam.
- Obviously, he refuses.
So he ends up charged with the assault and weapons violations.
While he’s awaiting trial on those charges,
he’s released on a $6,000 bond and he’s very angry.
- Well, when he was being interviewed
by law enforcement,
he made a very interesting quote.
And he said, "I’d like to be in on the homicide
of the guy that turned me in."
In the early morning of June 18th, 1983,
Arnold snaps.
- Roger Arnold becomes convinced
that the bar owner, Marty Sinclair,
is the guy who turned him in, so he starts to stalk him,
approaches him, and pulls out a gun, says,
"You turned me in." And he fires.
The man drops dead, but it’s not Marty Sinclair.
The man he killed was a computer consultant
named John Stanisha.
He was a father of three kids.
He had absolutely no connection to the case whatsoever.
Arnold is sentenced to 30 years in prison
for killing Stanisha.
- He ends up serving 15 years and then dies in 2008
without ever admitting any guilt
or involvement in the Tylenol case.
- The case files remain closed to public or press inspection.
It’s still an open investigation.
So we’ll never know how many prime suspects
may have been looked at in the Tylenol murders.
Lewis remains a person of interest
for many people involved in the case.
Roger Arnold--he’s dead now. We’ll never know.
In the years since the Chicago Tylenol murders,
many have wondered if the suspect is still out there,
why have the killings stopped?
- So since no other tainted pills show up in Chicago,
that has led some people to assume maybe the killer died
or maybe he just gave up.
But there is another really frightening possibility.
In the aftermath of the Tylenol murders,
there are hundreds of copycat attempts
all across the country--
at least, that’s what police categorized them as.
But what if they weren’t copycats?
Maybe the killer didn’t stop.
In 1986, four more deaths occur
due to tampered pain pills.
- Two of the victims are attributed to a killer
in Seattle named Stella Nickell.
She used cyanide-laced Excedrin to kill her husband
and a woman named Sue Snow.
But there are two more deaths
that are a little more intriguing.
In Austin, Texas in May, 1986,
a college student named Kenneth Faries dies
after taking cyanide-laced Anacin.
- His death was ruled a suicide
because he had supposedly had access to cyanide at his work.
And so the thinking was that he had tainted
an Anacin pill himself and intentionally taken it.
It does seem like a very horrific way
to die by suicide, but that’s what it was ruled.
- The one that probably stood out for people was in Yonkers.
On February 8th, 1986,
Diane Elsroth took some extra-strength Tylenol
that had been laced with cyanide and she dropped dead.
- The tainted bottles were found in stores
in Westchester County,
and fortunately, they were able to get them all off the shelves
before anyone else was killed.
- Investigators looked at the New York cases
to see if maybe this was a continuation
of the Chicago cases.
Maybe whoever had done it
had just been dormant for things to quiet down.
- There hasn’t been a direct connection made
between that case and the Chicago Tylenol murders,
but it’s eerie that it’s very similar.
- If the New York cases were connected
to the Chicago cases, that would’ve thrown a wrench
in all of the theories up to date
because Roger Arnold was in prison
and James Lewis was in prison.
- Or as the FBI currently believes,
maybe it is just a copycat and there still are
two poisoning suspects out there at large.
Thankfully these days, it’s very unlikely
that we’ll have another epidemic of poisoned pills.
In the wake of the Tylenol murders,
the U.S. government passed
the Federal Anti-Tampering Act in 1983.
- This case and the bill that it inspired are responsible
for the tamperproof seals and packaging
that you see on medicine bottles today.
It absolutely changed history and saved countless lives.
- These poisonings were an act of domestic terrorism,
and whoever committed them was a heinous, heartless,
horrible person who didn’t care who went down,
how they would die.
They just wanted to inflict some damage.
And it’s a terrible case.
The families that were affected
by the Tylenol murders
still are wanting justice in this case.
No one’s been charged. No one’s been convicted.
There are no answers yet in the Tylenol murders.
- And this is one of those great cold cases
from the 20th century
that there’s a lot of questions out there.
But I think with having the FBI involved
and maybe where we are right now
with some of the new DNA stuff that’s come out,
hopefully, they can bring this to a conclusion.
Authorities have gathered thousands of documents
and interviewed more than 400 persons of interest
during their ongoing investigation.
They’re currently testing the original cyanide-laced capsules
in an attempt to complete a DNA profile of the killer.
Perhaps modern technology can finally close the case.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."