41 Years Later Police Closing in on Chicagos Tylenol Killer

I still can't believe they never found out who did this.

I'll never forget when this happened. I was in school and working part time at a convenience store when this happened. We had to literally take every single pill medication off of our shelves and dump it all in the trash.

[quote]For all the shit the police get they sometimes deserve some credit. 41 years later they are using the most advanced tech to bring Chicagos Tylenol murderer to justice.

For the most part, the police you "get shit" are street cops, not the kind of police that would be working on a case like this one.

[quote]Chicagos

Oh, for fuck's sake! Seriously???

I thought some of the evidence linked one of the dead to the tampering. It’s been years since I read that, maybe Wiki?

R3 Im from LA. You really expect us to know anything about flyover burgs? :p

This is actually one of my early childhood memories. I was six years old and I remember my parents and their friends talking about it around the kitchen table. My mom was especially paranoid and threw out every pill that was in the house. Not just Tylenol, but Aspirin, Excedrin etc. This really terrified people. As young as I was, I can remember it vividly.

I would bet that the Tylenol killer used gloves.

They should have called Paul Drake.

I’m getting a strong vibe that detectives think the judge and his wife were in on it.

Another logical place to look is the family with 3 victims. Did someone want that family gone? Family annihilator?

I’m sure all this gas been explored many times over the past 40 years.

I thought one of the suspects was on a security camera watching one of the victims buy the Tylenol at a Walgreens

Four years later Tylenol would tap Susan Sullivan to reassure people Tylenol was safe

This she began a two-decade career pitching Tylenol

The deaths of three family members was a tragic coincidence. The victims brother and sister in law didn't live in the victims home so there was no way to predict they would take pills from the same bottle.

The Scooby-Doo ending would be the DNA proving it was Susan Sullivan all along, killing people just so she could get a long-running endorsement gig.

Didn't that change how medications were packaged from then on? Everything sealed so you could see if it had been tampered with.

R9, I see why you might think that, but I interpret it as they're looking to rule out the people who legitimately had reason to touch the pill bottles. I get the impression that they still think it's the Lewis guy.

Yes, r15. I don't remember if this was before or after childproof lids, but everything started getting wrapped in plastic, had reinforced lids, packed in a sealed box, etc. They also stopped making OTC capsules that could be pulled apart, tampered with and put back together.

[quote] They also stopped making OTC capsules that could be pulled apart, tampered with and put back together.

Oh, how I miss Contact and its tiny time pills.

[quote]They also stopped making OTC capsules that could be pulled apart, tampered with and put back together.

I believe that happened later in the 80s, after a woman named Stella Nickell laced Excedrin capsules with cyanide to kill her husband. To avoid suspicion, she also laced a few other bottles with cyanide and then took them back to several stores and put them back on the shelf. A woman died from the tainted pills.

A good article on psycho bitch Stella Nickell

Wow, this is stunning news. The Tylenol murders were huge in early high school and I’ll never forget the mass fear when they occurred.

The book about Stella Nickel is called Bitter Almonds by Gregg Olsen. That's the smell cyanide gives off, which only some people can smell. It's a good read.

Murders, whatever. I want this person brought to justice for making packaging so goddamn hard to open.

R23 I couldnt agree more. I broke my thumb so I bought a bottle of Aleve to help with the pain. The problem was My thumb hurt too much to either hold those side things or twist the lid. I had to ask the neighbor to help. That was embarrassing.

I loved Contac, too.

I had forgotten how great that stuff was!

R23, preach. Isn’t it mind blowing that a single case forever changed the packaging on ALL medicines?

Medicine packaging isn’t the only thing that changed. Food never had those plastic bands or film inside the lid like you see today with yogurt, ice cream, etc.

Yeah, and the ones that didn’t have those plastic bands became a TikTok sensation when assholes decided to lick them on camera.

They've been "closing in" on the person responsible for decades. I doubt the perpetrator will ever be caught.

A new book about the Stella Nickell case just came out: American Mother: The True Story of a Troubled Family, Motherhood, and the Cyanide Murders That Shook the World by Gregg Olson. I haven't read it yet but plan to.

How much did the plastics industry benefit from this incident, I wonder? And how much did the increased production of plastic expedite the climate crisis?

How much did the plastics industry benefit in the wake of this incident?

How much did that increased production of plastic speed the climate crisis?

Aw, shit. Sorry for the double post.

Who is the primary suspect and what was the motive?

There is a good podcast that came out in the last six months entitled “The Tylenol Murders” from the Chicago Tribune, I am listening to it now.

The prime suspect is a fellow named James Lewis. He is the one that is seen in the security camera footage at Walgreens watching one of the victims buy contaminated Tylenol.

He went to jail for trying to extort Johnson and Johnson during the scandal. Apparently he had a daughter who died after heart surgery when she was 5. The cause of death-ruptured Johnson & Johnson sutures.

It was because of this douchebag that we now have all the annoying 'safeguards' on jars and bottles -- the inner foil caps that can't be removed without a knife, those freaking childproof caps that no one can open. Prior to this, if you had kids in the house you kept your drugs out of their reach. Now we have foil safeguards on everything from catsup bottles to baby aspirin.

I didn't know security cameras in stores were even around back in 1982.

I wasn't even potty trained in 1982.

And you barely are now.

Touche r39

[quote] It was because of this douchebag that we now have all the annoying 'safeguards' on jars and bottles

That’s not a good thing to you?

Did you not read upthread where young assholes were posting videos of themselves licking ice cream and then putting it back into the freezer? Why did they do that? Because it had no protective seal.

R41 It makes life much harder for people with arthritis or people with hand injuries. Just take those TikTokers and imprison them for 20 years for bio-crimes. Problem solved.

That makes no sense.

Yes, I understand arthritis sufferers may have problems with some items, but to remove all safety protocols on all of those items is dumb. How can we imprison the idiots we don’t see, who didn’t record themselves but did the same thing, or worse?

I was really young when this happened but I remember it dominating the nightly news for weeks. Scary shit.

R43 There are at least a hundred security cams in your local large grocery store. And with the spike in shoplifting security has been enhanced. What good is medicine if a person cant access it?

Now if they can just find the cunt that dropped the bloody Kotex in the pets aisle of Woolworth's in 1969 that I slipped on and embarrassed myself over as a kid.

It was horrible.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Tylenol killer got a terrible headache from the strain of his nefarious activity?

Where on earth were people getting the cyanide from?

I was in one of the dining halls at Northwestern and people came in screaming "Don't take any Tylenol!"

r48 that's one thing I always wonder when I watch shows like Forensic Files etc. and the murder was committed with cyanide - "where the fuck are these people getting cyanide?" It's not like you can walk into any store and buy that shit. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for cyanide.

Check your DMs, r50. I’ll hook ya up.

^ eBay, silly

Back then you could buy cyanide from vending machines-- and it didn't have a protective seal, so it was easier to open and start using it right away.

Well played, r53. Really well played!

The nanny state took away our cyanide.

The woman from Othram labs said that her company has solved other notorious cases with DNA but she can't say anything until the police agencies themselves come out with the information.

I really, really want to take her out and get her drunk.

When cyanide is outlawed, only outlaws will have cyanide!

My mom used to send me to the store to buy her a six pack of beer, a pack of Lucky Strikes and a pint of cyanide. I was 8 years old and I rode my bike and felt so grown up. Kids today will never know the feeling.

First, they came for our cyanide . . .

Cyanide is used in jewelry making so you could order a certain amount through the mail. That's how Jonestown got their supply, they ordered a little at a time and stockpiled it.

It was also available at the Tylenol facility but only certain people had access so authorities determined it wasn't factory contamination.

[quote] Food never had those plastic bands or film inside the lid like you see today with yogurt, ice cream, etc.

There are still brands of ice cream in the US that are not sealed. You take the lid off and there it is. It’s pretty shocking.

[quote] The woman from Othram labs said that her company has solved other notorious cases with DNA but she can't say anything until the police agencies themselves come out with the information.

Are we sure she isn’t full of shit?

That fucker stole my last year of trick or treating from me. My parents firmly believed in no trick or treating for teenagers, and we weren't allowed the year of the Tylenol murders.

On the bright side, they weakened on their - you are too young to read adult horror novels - stance, and bought me Stephen King's The Stand to make up for the lack of trick or treating.

If they’re using touch DNA, which it sounds like it is, this will be bogus. That’s pseudoscience and many courtrooms won’t even allow it into evidence. It’s junk science.

This asshole is directly responsible for things like the blister packs of sinus medicine where you have to peel the paper-thin foil off the back to eject the pill.

My old pharmacy dispensed drugs with a reversible cap; it came childproofed, but after you opened it, you could screw it shut on the other non-childproofed side. A very good idea.

R65, really. What is touch DNA? But firstly, are you a defense lawyer.

R67, it’s microscopic DNA, too small to even actually test. They say they get it off of items that have been touched. It’s next to nothing. It’s a huge scam. The fact that this woman is saying that they can test 40 year old items that have deteriorated and that even mixed samples on it can be tested, and there’s no inaccuracy to their machines, screams touch DNA scammer. All these cases they solved but can’t reveal… scam.

Thanks to that asshole we now have layers of plastic over everything.

Film Recovery Systems, whose careless handling of cyanide led to the deaths of three workers in 1983. They were in Elk Grove Village, close to the Des Plaines cases.

1 worker. Three guilty. Anyway, they were very loose with their cyanide.

The woman with the Excedrin capsules was an idiot. They found her fish tank gravel in it.

Tattoos in the vids and pix match perfectly. LPSG went through it all.

R68, what are they testing then? How does it work? I’m curious to know more about touch DNA and why it isn’t used in courts.

[quote]Anyway, they were very loose with their cyanide.

Let’s not be too harsh. I mean, really, who among us can say at one time or another we weren’t too?

[quote]It was because of this douchebag that we now have all the annoying 'safeguards' on jars and bottles -- the inner foil caps that can't be removed without a knife, those freaking childproof caps that no one can open. Prior to this, if you had kids in the house you kept your drugs out of their reach. Now we have foil safeguards on everything from catsup bottles to baby aspirin.

As it should be. It was long overdue when they started these safety measures with all the crazies in the world (even back then).

I always suspected Nancy and Ronnie Reagan were behind the Tylenol murders. After all, Tylenol was an OTC medicine which poor people took since you didn't need a prescription as you would for a 'high end' drug (the kind Nancy and her friends took). This was their attempt to start getting rid of the middle and lower classes. And they started in Chicago - where Ronnie personally knew 'the Welfare Queen' who rode around in a new Caddy and bought lobsters at the supermarket with her welfare checks and food stamps (remember her ?)

It was James Lewis but they had no evidence.

R77 That is the most hilarious subversive post ever. Love it.

Lewis was convicted of sending the letters trying to extort Johnson & Johnson out of $1M to stop the poisonings, and he kind of looks like the man in the security camera photo they have of one of the victims buying Tylenol in the store, apparently watching the victim at the checkout. He's larger in the security footage though so it's not clear that it's him.

The DoJ paperwork released via FOIA in 2009 shows the DoJ definitely believe he's the one behind the entire thing.

I've been thinking about Contac for two days now. I really need to get a life.

There's a pretty good oral history here of the murders and at least one cop says he doesn't think it was Lewis at all.

R79 - Thank you !

[quote]Oh, how I miss Contact and its tiny time pills.

Spansules! I love spansules!