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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:44
listening I'm your host Nick and here in the garage we don't tolerate nonsense of
00:01:48
any kind in fact we've had five consecutive days since our last nonsense and here to crush that is the captain
00:01:56
every day we have nonsense he just doesn't pay attention it's it's good to be seeing it's good to see you thanks
00:02:02
for listening thanks for telling a [Music] friend this week we are very excited to
00:02:12
be featuring Mama's Little yella pills by Oscar Blues Brewing Company this is a delicious Bohemian pillner unlike most
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Mass Market psers that are diluted with corn and rice mama is built on pilsner and honey malt then Double H
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this pills is very rich in flavor with an ABV of 4.7% that makes it luxurious but a low do refresher garage grade
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three and 3/4 bottle caps out of five and here's a big cheers to some of our cool and refreshing friends first up a
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cheers to Nicole and her son captain in Arkansas oh poor kid a big shout out to Jen B and Malibu and here's a we like
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your jib to Christine from New Fairfield Connecticut and a big cheers to jinny and Post Falls Idaho next Captain we
00:03:03
have a big cheers from our friend Amy our neighbor from down the street and last but not least we have Dustin and
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beautiful but Montana everyone we just mentioned well they helped us out with this week's beer run and for that we
00:03:17
thank you that's right say it with me BW r n Beer Run thanks for listening make sure you subscribe to the show make sure
00:03:25
you tell a friend and that is enough of the business all right kitties every every body gather around grab a chair
00:03:31
grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] imagine it's a normal Wednesday a work
00:04:19
day a school day a day in the life but you don't feel normal you have a headache a cold or a fever you do the
00:04:29
most normal thing in the world you take your preferred pain reliever pills with a sip of water knowing that soon you'll
00:04:38
feel like yourself again only you don't within minutes of taking the pills you experience respiratory failure
00:04:49
seizure cardiac arrest and death this is what happened in the greater Chicago area in Illinois several people took
00:04:59
over over the counter pain medication for everyday ailments purchased at their neighborhood pharmacy only to die
00:05:07
inexplicably within hours what in the world happened here how could a medication the very essence
00:05:14
of something intended to make people better kill them so suddenly and efficiently it is the very rare but very
00:05:21
real crime of product tampering someone some ones or maybe even a group of people were poisoning
00:05:29
the general public killing indiscriminately shopping at the grocery store was like playing Russian
00:05:37
roulette but what was the motive the how was clear but the why and what for is anyone's
00:05:45
guess was the motive simply just to kill was this a form of public terrorism or mass extortion or
00:05:53
both and what kind of monster uses a painkiller as a vehicle for murder this is true crime garage and this is a
00:06:03
case of the Tylenol [Music] murders September 29th 1982 Mary Kellerman was 12 years old the
00:06:27
middle schooler lived in Elk GR Village Illinois she wasn't feeling well that day and had stayed home from school she
00:06:35
told her dad that she had a headache and a sore throat and he went to the medicine cabinet and brought her an
00:06:41
extra strength Tylenol capsule he took from a bottle his wife purchased the day before at a juwel Osco store in Elk gr
00:06:49
Village Mary dutifully swallowed the pill went into the bathroom and then she collapsed by the time paramedics arrived
00:06:58
they found Mary in full Cardiac Arrest she was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead around 10:00 a.m.
00:07:06
doctors could only guess that she had suffered an aneurysm she was her parents only child that same morning postal
00:07:15
worker Adam Janice of nearby Arlington Heights Illinois age 27 went to his local juel Osco store on Vil Avenue in
00:07:25
Arlington Heights and purchased steak flowers and a bottle of extra strength Tylenol capsules he had lunch with his
00:07:33
new wife Teresa and then not feeling well took two capsules from the bottle he had just purchased and swallowed them
00:07:41
down he went to bed but immediately started convulsing and passed out Teresa called 911 when the paramedics arrived
00:07:50
around 2:00 they rushed Adam to the ER where he was pronounced dead at 3:15 Dr Thomas Kim at Northwest
00:07:59
Community Hospital told Adam's Family quote nothing seemed to help he suffered sudden death without warning it was most
00:08:07
unusual end quote devastated Adam's family including his 25-year-old brother Stanley and Stanley's wife also named
00:08:15
Teresa age 19 gathered in the Janice home to be with loved ones and make funeral arrangements for their loved one
00:08:24
in their distress they both developed headaches and were handed a bottle of all the same one that Adam's pills came
00:08:31
from both Stanley and Teresa soon dropped to the floor and started convulsing Adam's wife Teresa called 911
00:08:40
for the second time that day Dr Kim was still on duty at the hospital when the second batch of Janice family members
00:08:47
were brought in with inexplicable symptoms they were both in full cardiac arrest and soon died confounded at the
00:08:56
mysterious deaths of several family members in One one house Dr Kim decided that poison control centers should be
00:09:03
contacted Dr John Sullivan of Rocky Mountain poison Center told Dr Kim that what he was describing sounded like
00:09:12
cyanide poisoning meanwhile nurse Helen Jensen spoke to the remaining members of
00:09:17
the Janice Clan and determined that the three dead people had all ingested extra
00:09:23
strength Tylenol prior to dying she went to the Janice home where nurse Jensen found the Tylenol bottle on the kitchen
00:09:32
counter and the receipt for its recent purchase in the trash Jensen counted the pills remaining in the bottle and noted
00:09:39
that six pills were missing six pills missing three people inexplicably dead Janice brought the bottle to the
00:09:49
administrators at Northwest Community Hospital and voiced her concerns but didn't feel that she was listened to
00:09:55
after all Tylenol was the number one selling pain reliever worldwide it made people feel better it
00:10:02
didn't kill them nurse Jensen wasn't the only one who saw a pattern firefighters
00:10:08
in Elk Grove and Arlington Heights Chuck Kramer Richard keyworth and Phil capitelli noticed the 911 calls and
00:10:17
quickly surmised that something was up with these unexplained deaths in the neighboring
00:10:23
towns guessing that they might be somehow related they reported to police that it seemed that all the victims had
00:10:30
taken Tylenol right before suffering fatal symptoms but while some people were just starting to observe
00:10:36
similarities in the four strange deaths in the area on September 29th more people continued to take Tylenol for
00:10:43
various ailments well tyen all had 35% of the market share of pain relievers in 1982 it was the number one selling brand
00:10:54
worldwide on the afternoon of September 29th think about how fast all of this stuff is happening all of this these
00:11:02
terrible distress calls coming in people collapsing being rushed off to the hospital this is all the same day well
00:11:10
back to one thing that you said before the the doctor that was communicating you know to go hey find this bottle how
00:11:17
many pills are left one of the things that they were able to do is to smell the bottle and that smelled like almonds
00:11:25
because cyanide has a almost a almond smell a bitter almond smell Mary Riner 27 of Winfield known as Lynn was home
00:11:35
from a hospital after having just given birth to a baby boy 4 days earlier now she went out to Frank's Finer Foods in
00:11:44
her town about 25 miles from Arlington Heights to buy some regular strength Tylenol but she didn't take these from
00:11:53
what we can tell instead she took two extra strength Tylenol capsules that that is believed to have come from the
00:12:01
hospital that gave these to her to take home and use as needed I do want to throw something out here Captain before
00:12:09
we move on but in this particular incident there are two sources that I was looking for information on the death
00:12:20
of Mary Riner one comes from a book called Tai Ms which is by Scott Barts in his version of this portion of the story
00:12:33
it's unknown where this extra strength Tylenol came from that she in fact purchased regular Tylenol that day right
00:12:41
when you look at John Douglas's books where he briefly discusses the case in two of his books one being M Hunter and
00:12:49
the other the anatomy of motive he says that it was found that she took two extra strength Tylenol
00:12:58
pills that were from a bottle that she had purchased at some point we don't know when right but this bottle was
00:13:06
found in her purse these are two very completely different stories I do not know which one is in fact correct so I
00:13:13
wanted to make sure we pointed that out here well didn't they surise that all these victims would have had to buy the
00:13:21
the product within the last day because cyanide would have been able to eat through the capsules it it would corrode
00:13:29
the gelatin capsule that encapsulates the powder and yes it would corrode that so these whoever was constructing this
00:13:40
and putting together The Poisoned capsules had to do it relatively soon before they were purchased and then
00:13:48
ingested because it would destroy them to the point where nobody in their right mind would look at what was now in the
00:13:54
bottle and and consume it so we're not exactly for sure where she got the extra ST Str Tylenol but we're sure that she
00:14:01
took the extra strength Tylenol that's what both of these sources do in fact State she took these in fact Captain
00:14:09
right in front of her husband her mother-in-law and three of her children alen went into convulsions and collapsed
00:14:17
almost immediately within 2 hours she died at the same hospital where she had birthed her son just days before wow
00:14:27
Mary McFarland 31 of Elmhurst worked at the Illinois Bell phone center in the Yorktown mall
00:14:35
in Lumberg 10 Mi east of Winfield she told her co-workers that she had a headache and she took two extra strength
00:14:43
Tylenol capsules from a supply she kept in a container in her purse the pills came from a 50count bottle that she
00:14:51
purchased the previous day at the warts she had already consumed five of the pills from that same bottle but she
00:15:00
died within minutes of taking these last two so pointing out here captain that in
00:15:06
this particular case right where this woman passed away from being poisoned obviously not all of the pills inside
00:15:16
that 50count bottle were contaminated doctors assumed that she had had a stroke or some type of aneurism late on
00:15:24
September 29th flight attendant Paula Prince age 35 she was just back in Chicago after an
00:15:32
East Coast shift she stopped at a Walgreens on North well Street in Chicago's north side of extra strength
00:15:39
Tylenol two days later she was found by her sister dead on her bathroom floor with an open bottle of Tylenol sitting
00:15:48
on the sink and one capsule missing from this bottle so now we have seven total victims that's correct and it was
00:15:57
determined in this investigation captain that even though Paula Prince wasn't found until several days later right
00:16:06
they were able to determine that she had been dead since that Wednesday night since that September 29th again all of
00:16:14
this happening in just a matter of a short period of time in just three days seven people died yeah and what was
00:16:21
difficult here is if you look at how much it would take how much cyanide it would take to kill somebody these people
00:16:28
were receiving 100% to 1,000% of a lethal dose yeah and I think that's one thing that we need to keep in mind as
00:16:36
we're going through this case so what we can already determine is that we got multiple bottles that have been
00:16:42
contaminated that have been laced with poison right and not every capsule in every bottle seems to have been
00:16:51
contaminated with this poison it's almost like this murderer is pulling out a couple pills filling it back up with a
00:17:00
couple poisonous pills and then moving on to the next bottle well and even a even the capsules themselves do not seem
00:17:09
in all of these incidents to contain the same amount the same level of poison right now all seven of these victims
00:17:18
were all exhibiting the same symptoms at the time of their passing these are seizures convulsions and quick deaths
00:17:26
seven people who lived within just a few miles of each other in five different towns around the Chicago area seven
00:17:34
people who had one thing and one thing only in common they had all taken Tylenol from bottles that were purchased
00:17:42
very recently the coroners office in cook and DuPage counties where all the deaths occurred did not think to test
00:17:50
for cyanide poisoning or in fact any poisoning of any kind no foul play was suspected this was at first
00:17:59
Tylenol was at the time the most popular pain reliever on the market with $450 million in annual sales and 37% of the
00:18:09
over-the-counter pain reliever Market the concept that it could harm people was really truly Unthinkable at this
00:18:17
time based on his conversations with the Poison Control Center we're going back to Dr Kim he was the one that was on
00:18:25
duty when all three of the members from the Janice family came into the hospital
00:18:31
suffering the same symptoms right all passing Dr Kim sent blood samples from the Janice family to the lab and had
00:18:40
them tested for Cyanide the test showed a lethal level of cide in these samples so much that
00:18:48
the lab tech wasn't certain that the test was even accurate Dr Kim collected the extra
00:18:54
strength Tylenol bottles taken from the Janice family home by nurse Jensen and the one taken from Mary Kellerman's home
00:19:03
brought to him by an Arlington Heights police officer who heard about the Janice family deaths right he called The
00:19:11
Cook County medical examiner's office at 3:00 a.m. and asked them to test the capsules in these bottles for cide the
00:19:20
chief toxicologist for the Cook County Medical examiner's Office his name is Michael schaer examined the capsules
00:19:28
from the seized bottles of extra strength Tel as soon as he opened the containers he knew what he would find
00:19:37
the smell as you pointed out captain of bitter almonds was evident and obvious to this man potassium cyanide has an
00:19:46
odor like bitter almonds but it is only detectable by a portion of the population reports vary but it's between
00:19:53
30 and 40% of the population can detect this smell Dr Schaefer noted that about 10 of the
00:20:01
capsules were slightly swollen and discolored and contained pottassium cyanide at a level toxic enough to
00:20:09
provide thousands of fatal doses only Trace Amounts of Tylenol were found in these capsules and Dr schaer
00:20:18
also determined something else and this is important the cyanide used would have
00:20:24
been strong enough to degrade the gelatin based capsule shells very quickly but these pills were only in the
00:20:31
beginning stages of this degradation they still looked almost normal what this means as you pointed
00:20:39
out earlier captain that someone had filled these capsules very recently likely within just a handful of days
00:20:46
someone had opened new bottles of extra strength Tylenol MH opened individual capsules inside emptied them filled them
00:20:54
with cyanide which would resemble like a white powder closed the capsules back up and replaced
00:21:02
them into the bottles it then appears that the bottles were placed back on store shelves for consumers to purchase
00:21:09
at this time there's no seal on these when you went to buy a pain reliever you got a bottle when you open it up I think
00:21:17
they had the cotton swab at the beginning but they didn't have a seal there was no seal of of any kind and now
00:21:26
we got a whole community that's all of a sudden wondering wait a second how many
00:21:31
deaths recently just in the past few days could be attributed to Tainted Tylenol as you pointed out Captain 37%
00:21:40
of the over-the-counter pain reliever Market this Chicago is a large area a lot of people yeah one of the biggest
00:21:48
cities in the United States well cyanide poisoning is poisoning that results from
00:21:54
exposure to any of a number of forms of sign early symptoms include headaches dizziness fast heart rate shortness of
00:22:03
breath and vomiting this phase may be followed by seizures slow heart rate low blood pressure loss of consciousness and
00:22:12
cardiac arrest um onset of the symptoms usually occur within a few minutes some survivors have long-term neurological
00:22:23
problems the Cook County Medical Examiner office held a press conference on September 30th 1982 stating publicly
00:22:31
that the Mary Kellerman and all three of the janises had definitely died from consuming extra strength Tylenol laced
00:22:39
with cyanide when the press conference occurred no one had attributed the deaths of Lyn Riner or Mary McFarland to
00:22:48
Tylenol and Paula Prince's body had not yet been found right this is going to cause all kinds
00:22:55
of shock fear and panic pic about the poison medication throughout the entire country the Tylenol poisonings became
00:23:05
the most extensively covered news event since the assassination of John F Kennedy well just like you said I mean
00:23:13
the report I have is 35% of the market share but you said 37% so we're talking about the most
00:23:20
popular pain reliever on the market I mean it it's they're backed by Johnson and Johnson right mhm people barraged
00:23:30
poison hotlines with calls and flooded Hospital ERS the Food Drug Administration issued warnings to
00:23:40
Consumers not to ingest extra strength Tylenol until the source of the poison could be
00:23:46
identified close to the epicenter of the poison outbreak police in Illinois roam
00:23:51
the streets with bullhorns warning residents not to consume the drug after after a press conference by
00:23:59
the mayor Chicagoans turned all of their home supplies of Tylenol into the police
00:24:05
along with any records that they may have of when and where it was purchased by Thursday September 30th both juel
00:24:13
Osco and Chicago based Walgreens ordered the removal of all Tylenol from their shelves
00:24:20
Nationwide retailers across the country pulled extra strength Tylenol from Lot number
00:24:26
mc28 80 the lot number the Janice and Kellerman bottles were part of which was the only Lot number in which cide had
00:24:36
been identified the two tainted bottles had both gone through a warehouse in the
00:24:41
Chicago suburb of Franklin Park and had been manufactured in Fort Washington the manufacturing facility
00:24:49
was tested and was found not to be contaminated with cyanide then they end up finding out that all the bottles were
00:24:56
bought at different locations yes were all purchased at different drug stores and and you're saying that two of the
00:25:02
bottles came from the same distribution Factory that is correct distribution warehouse that's correct but keep in
00:25:10
mind at this time in the ball game these are the only two bottles that they have
00:25:15
decided were contaminated with cide right so while investigators and Johnson and Johnson
00:25:22
the parent Corporation of the company that manufactured Tylenol were still determining the potential scope of the
00:25:28
tainted medicine the autopsy was being performed on Lyn Riner in DuPage County the medical examiner there was informed
00:25:37
of the Tylenol poisonings in other towns and also that Lynn had taken some Tylenol capsules just before
00:25:51
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00:28:16
cheers Captain I need to Cheers uh have I cheers jib Jiggler from Parts Unknown a big shout out to jib Jiggler from
00:28:25
Parts Unknown there you go get out of our town so now very quickly we have a new suspected case of cyanide poisoning
00:28:34
this with the autopsy of Lyn Riner so naturally law enforcement went to the Riner home they found a bottle of
00:28:41
regular strength Tylenol that ly had purchased that day this was Lot number 1833 MB it's still sitting on the
00:28:51
kitchen sink but they also found some extra strength Tylenol capsules which they believe were given to Lyn in by the
00:28:58
hospital when it discharged her in her bottle of regular strength Tylenol upon testing the capsules the
00:29:07
assistant chief toxicologist for the Illinois Department of Public Health determined that they were filled with
00:29:14
potassium cyanide an inexpensive low Purity grade that is typically used in manufacturing in heavy industry Lynn had
00:29:23
taken two extra strength Tylenol capsules one of which had contained cyanine the other apparently did not of
00:29:32
the other six extra strength Tylenol capsules found in her bottle four were poisoned none of the regular strength
00:29:41
pills in the bottle that she had purchased were tainted at all although authorities suspect that it is possible
00:29:49
that Lynn's poison pills came from the hospital Johnson and Johnson removed all the pills from area hospitals and
00:29:56
destroyed them without testing any of them so we will never really know it's easy to say to have them test them all
00:30:05
now because how big this crime became correct and you also have to wonder how much work and effort are they putting
00:30:14
into motion to just get the capsules off the shelves and and collect all of them
00:30:19
so nobody else gets harmed or killed yeah it's this is not these are not easy task and these are things that you need
00:30:26
to do immediately with the quickness so we still have law enforcement looking into these other unexplained deaths so
00:30:35
investigators looking into the Unexplained death of Mary McFarland the the Bel telephone store worker began to
00:30:43
question whether her death could also have been caused by Tylenol they found 10 extra strength Tylenol capsules in
00:30:50
the container in her purse five of which were determined to contain cide these apparently came from
00:31:00
the bottle that they found in her apartment this was Lot Number 1 1910 MD this bottle contained 33 capsules one
00:31:09
of which was filled with cyanide this was a new Lot number and then a fourth the pills consumed by Paula Prince the
00:31:17
bottle bore the Lot Number 1 181 ma which had not been listed by the company among the known contaminated lot
00:31:28
interestingly the extra strength Tylenol bottle in Paula's bathroom was a 24c count bottle unlike the 50count bottles
00:31:36
used in the other deaths right cide was found in one of the remaining capsules but six other capsules were
00:31:46
discolored they had been corroded by the cide leaking from that one tainted pill
00:31:53
from Johnson and Johnson the parrot company what ensued is considered the the birth of Crisis management the
00:31:59
corporate method of handling a PR disaster right Johnson and Johnson announced at first a localized recall of
00:32:07
just pills from the tainted Lots but by October 5th they expanded that recall to
00:32:13
a complete Nationwide recall of their painkiller capsules 31 million bottles that's exactly correct 31 million
00:32:23
bottles were pulled from retail locations this is estimated to have cost Johnson and Johnson about $100 million
00:32:31
they offered a reward of 100,000 for any information $100,000 reward for information leading
00:32:38
to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the cyanide poisoning the the recall I believe is what cost
00:32:46
over $100 million you'd think maybe we offer a little bit more money than 100 if it was my company and we just lost
00:32:55
100 million i' go hey I'm offering for in a million mhm I'll pay I'll pay the 1% of what I just lost to figure out
00:33:04
what what [ __ ] did this what murder is out there they flew in hundreds of chemists to assist in this testing
00:33:13
process they worked hand inand with the FBI and other investigators and Johnson and Johnson examined the three
00:33:20
distribution centers through which the tainted Tylenol bottles were processed all of these were looked at
00:33:27
and they publicly said that they found nothing nor was anything found at the one Distribution Center in Pennsylvania
00:33:35
that all the bottles had passed through the pills have been manufactured at different
00:33:39
plants so this is troubling because this means that they were not tainted during the
00:33:48
manufacturing process nor knowing what we now know about Cyanide and how it would react in that capsule and corrode
00:33:58
everything I think there was there's little reason to believe that anyway yeah you're moving a little fast let's
00:34:03
let's slow down for a second so we have seven victims seven victims that we believe were all poison three of them
00:34:11
took pills from the same bottle correct so we have a total of four different bottles and that you're saying that all
00:34:20
the bottles came from different stores but how many came from different distribution centers okay so we have yes
00:34:29
we have seven victims who would have consumed capsules from see there in lies a big question in this whole case with
00:34:39
one of the victims we're not really 100% certain where she obtained the poison capsules right so we could be talking
00:34:46
about a situation of seven victims with five different tainted bottles of Tylenol or four and then somehow she re
00:34:56
received these poison pills from either the hospital or elsewhere we we can't say for certain but what we can say is
00:35:03
given the lot numbers on the bottles that we know tested positive for Cyanide that they it seems like they had
00:35:11
come through similar from the same Distribution Center what is also determined is that they were
00:35:18
manufactured at different plants and from my understanding there was a plant in Texas and a plant in Pennsylvania
00:35:24
probably other plants as well but determined that pills came from those two plants manufactured at those two
00:35:32
plants which again points that it's not tainting the pills during the manufacturing process right that whoever
00:35:40
did this did this at a later time after they had been manufactured packaged up and shipped off to be sold yeah it
00:35:48
almost seems like this individual is walking into the store maybe had a couple pills in his hand the the cyanide
00:35:55
pills opens up the Tylenol because we have no safety precautions at this this point and just replaces a couple pills
00:36:06
moves on to the next bottle or maybe does several bottles at that location or just maybe one and then
00:36:13
moves on to another drug store doing the same process over and over that's exactly right the the other thing that
00:36:19
was quickly determined to Captain by Johnson and Johnson and and investigators was that all of the from
00:36:27
these bottles or the bottles themselves had been manufactured the previous spring so if they were contaminated
00:36:35
during the manufacturing process they would have been extensively corroded by September late September when people
00:36:42
were consuming these things right now that is one it's going to be horrific for the
00:36:50
general public because now it seems like we got some Rogue person out there who is in a very very evil indiscriminate
00:36:58
way killing Unknown People to the Vic to the suspect or a group of people that are doing this to terrorize the
00:37:07
community but it is a good thing for Johnson and Johnson because it's not a mixup in the manufacturing process it's
00:37:16
not they are in fact responsible but not to the level of that it's going on when
00:37:21
the pills are made right so if we do have a disgruntle employee that they're still having to go
00:37:29
around store by store they're not tampering with the medication during the the initial
00:37:37
processes correct someone's doing this after these these pills have already made it through the distribution centers
00:37:46
so either somebody's taking them off of a truck somewhere or off of multiple trucks that would deliver these kind of
00:37:53
goods or they're I mean they could even be actually purchasing them from stores taking them home and then putting
00:38:02
together their poisoned bottle and then returning them to the store right you just show up at the store and you put it
00:38:10
back on the Shelf yeah pull it out of your pocket put it at the front of the Shelf where someone's going to grab it
00:38:15
and purchase it and take it home it's also a safer way because if I go into a drugstore and I purchase this product Oh
00:38:23
I need some extra strength tying I got a headache my cooworker is driving me nuts
00:38:28
and they give me this bottle of pills while they also give me a receipt so then when I come back in with the
00:38:36
tampered pills and I maybe I go to put it back on the shelves but I get caught right mhm and if they say something I go
00:38:44
oh no no this is my bottle here's my receipt and so it would it would protect me when I went back to putting the the
00:38:54
tampered with or the poison poison back on the Shelf yeah yeah you wouldn't want
00:39:00
to be leaving a paper trail of returning that that bottle you would want to go around and purchase these from different
00:39:10
stores at different times maybe even well in advance of you doing this or again take them off of a truck
00:39:19
or multiple trucks depending on where you work or your accessibility to said trucks well it's 198 and you you want to
00:39:28
just go back in there and place them on the Shelf yeah which nowadays would go hey pull up the the horrible camera
00:39:35
footage pull up that hor horrible camera footage that we're not going to be able
00:39:39
to make out who's in that picture but it's 1982 most stores do not have surveillance so I believe every place
00:39:49
that they believe that these were purchased at there was no surveillance cameras so they couldn't do anything
00:39:55
about that but what they did do was all these stores went back and I'm I'm assuming this this came from law
00:40:03
enforcement hey go back to the last week or so of any shoplifters that you had mhm and to requestion them the reaction
00:40:13
from law enforcement to these Tylenol deaths which came quickly to be known as the Tylenol murders or
00:40:21
timers as the FBI called the case was well it was Swift and immediate investigators from various agencies went
00:40:29
to work forming a task force of 140 law enforcement Personnel officers from the five
00:40:36
different towns were involved and because the case also fell under Federal jurisdiction because of the United
00:40:43
States Commerce laws the FBI jumped in as well sending 32 agents to the area within hours of the murders coming to
00:40:52
light a young within hours of the murders coming to to light a young John Douglas who would go on to be known as a
00:41:00
legendary criminal profiler and FBI agent and more importantly friend of our show was on a plane to Illinois we'll
00:41:09
discuss his conclusions in a bit the task force looked into every angle imaginable in this situation task force
00:41:18
members examined a possible manipulation of Johnson and Johnson stock prices by some kind of crime syndicate
00:41:26
right because you're looking for a competing company yeah who who has something to gain out of this out of
00:41:33
this Mass hysteria that has been caused yeah they examined foreign terrorist groups they examined angry employees or
00:41:43
ex-employees at each location where the tainted Tylenol was manufactured stored or sold these people were interviewed
00:41:51
and evaluated shoplifters as you pointed out previously arrested for shoplifting from
00:41:58
these drug stores they were looked at a second time and spoke to in regards to this crime recently released inmates and
00:42:09
mental patients in the vicinity were profiled and interrogated as well police ran checks on every car receiving a
00:42:16
traffic ticket in the areas around the stores during September 29th during that whole time frame agents manned the task
00:42:25
force hotline logging each tip no matter how crazy it seemed when it came in they
00:42:31
also questioned every family member and close friend of each victim I'd like to hear a top 10 list of the the craziest
00:42:38
calls that came in on this on this case yeah so you're interviewing all of the family members and close friends one
00:42:45
because you're trying to fill out the whole timeline on you know when in where it was purchased and in that jazz which
00:42:52
seems to be fairly known by this point in our investigation but you're also because you want to make
00:43:00
that one of these victims wasn't actually a Ted victim an intended victim whoever perpetrated that murder was
00:43:08
camouflaging that murder with the crime and the other deaths right investigators
00:43:14
on the case were conflicted between those who suspected that the tampering had occurred in the distribution process
00:43:21
and those who believed that it happened at the retail level authorities obtained
00:43:27
list of all employees of retailers and the distribution chain as well you know anybody that would have had access to
00:43:38
these Tylenol bottles or the cases that they came in of course this list was massive this was a bunch of people to
00:43:47
pour through Illinois Attorney General Tyron farer excuse you initially said that they were investigating disgruntled
00:43:54
employees and had already had 20 to 30 potential suspects in this case but the focus changed to retail level tampering
00:44:03
because it just seemed too implausible that the pills could have been messed with at a distribution center and then
00:44:11
put back into the supply chain right in large part Captain as you pointed out that they're put on the front of shelves
00:44:19
and different but proximate towns all kind of at the same time so so the timing was suspected to be very recent
00:44:28
and almost simultaneous because of the belief that the cyanide would corrode the capsules very quickly causing them
00:44:35
to distort and change color people would notice people would not ingest them experts advised that the cide would eat
00:44:42
through the pills within hours or days this is a little tricky here Captain because I read the results of several
00:44:51
tests and this was run by the Cook County Medical Examiner office no corrosion was found within 48 Hours of
00:44:59
the induction of the cide the possibility expanded the time frame meant that no one was really sure when
00:45:06
or how the tainted pills had been placed on the shelves although they had all been purchased
00:45:13
within hours of causing death so basically what you're saying is is we know that all these victims purchased or
00:45:22
received their bottle of extra strength Tylenol within 24 hours of their death MH so even though the cops were saying
00:45:30
hey if you you add cyanide to these capsules they would disintegrate within a day once they actually did some test
00:45:40
on these Cooks County they come back and say well actually once we uh you know applied the same method to put the
00:45:48
poison into these capsules we actually see no corrosion after 48 hours no corrosion within 48 hours so yes it's
00:45:57
it's a little bit messy because you have the experts the quote unquote experts saying one thing that the cide would eat
00:46:05
through the pills within a matter of just hours or a couple of days the Cook County their experiment showed
00:46:12
differently that that it would be possibly well after 48 hours before corrosion corrosion starts to take place
00:46:20
so this doesn't really help to narrow down the window of time of when whomever put the poison in these bottles and then
00:46:28
put them back on the shelves yeah basically the the the purchase and the ingestion we have that all figured out
00:46:35
we don't have when they were actual T tampered with because now we're looking at a a lot larger window than A8 hour
00:46:43
window yeah and the thing that's so tricky here too is how little would one be paying attention to other Shoppers in
00:46:53
these stores you know you see somebody putting something on a shelf you might think that oh they they just looked at
00:46:58
the back of it they read the ingredients or read the possible side effects or whatever and decided to put it back on
00:47:05
the shelf or maybe it was a dollar or two more than they were willing to pay and they they might buy a different
00:47:11
product yeah or they didn't want explosive diarrhea but what was interesting here Captain is that all in
00:47:17
all it was determined that 1060 tainted capsules were found in eight bottles of extra strength Tylenol purchased at
00:47:27
seven different locations this is after people start turning in their Tylenol after they pull them off the shelves
00:47:34
they're testing ones that that were either purchased and not you know consumed or bottles that were still on
00:47:41
these shelves two bottles were found on the shelves at Osco Drug in Woodfield Mall in Shamburg Illinois two more
00:47:52
bottles containing tainted pills were turned in by Chicago residents these four bottles were in addition to the
00:48:00
Janice Kellerman Prince and McFarland bottles so eight bottles total we still aren't certain as to where Lyn riner's
00:48:09
pills came from 100% And of course we have no idea how many bottles were just thrown away without being
00:48:16
tested a survey later found that 60% of Chicagoans had destroyed or discarded their capsules during the first week
00:48:24
after the poisonings and Johnson and Johnson was permitted to collect and Destroy collected bottles of
00:48:31
Tylenol without inspecting them for tampering all in all a very very small percentage of extra strength Tylenol
00:48:38
bottles Nationwide were tested the fact is that likely no one will ever know how
00:48:45
many pills were actually poisoned well and here's the other weird thing too again it's 1982 so let's remember this
00:48:53
is going to cause the industry to change the way they do things this is the reason why we're going to have seals put
00:49:01
on items and protective measures but we don't have security footage but we have these bottles and what do they not find
00:49:10
on these bottles they don't find fingerprints or any other form of physical evidence yeah so let's dive
00:49:16
into this uh here Captain the how the poisoning was actually done so if it was done at the retail level as most
00:49:27
investigators seem to believe and of course Johnson and Johnson is going to back this belief it meant as we said the
00:49:35
killer had purchased bottles of extra strength Tylenol stole them whatever probably just purchased them because
00:49:42
again you're not wanting to create a paper trail you're not going to want to get caught stealing Tylenol leading up
00:49:49
to this event if it were me trying to do this administer this Mist area I would probably be purchasing these bottles
00:49:58
well in advance weeks in advance in case there is security footage we know that a
00:50:03
lot of places will recycle their recordings and maybe after a week or two weeks they are recording over old
00:50:10
footage if they in fact even have any type of surveillance at their their building but somebody would have
00:50:18
obtained the bottles and then had to doctor them somewhere elsewhere right and then put the C
00:50:26
back into the bottles and then drive around or what have you and place these on these shelf fronts at the different
00:50:34
retail locations but again this this makes seven different locations this makes it also more difficult because if
00:50:40
you look at a town like Boston or you look at a town like New York and even Chicago ones that have public
00:50:49
transportation where you can get through the major city and jump from point to point pretty
00:50:56
quickly right if you're on foot so for a an individual to have these let's say eight bottles that they tampered with
00:51:07
and then to go throughout the city and drop them off at new locations cuz that's one thing that they never could
00:51:14
tell you they could never tell you if if these bottles were in the inventory of that said store so we don't know if the
00:51:22
individual bought eight 10 bottles and then took them you know from one location and took them home and then
00:51:30
tampered with them and then distributed them out right that's correct what we do
00:51:35
know is that these retail locations seven of them this person or a group of people would have sprinkled these
00:51:43
bottles around the Chicago area in the western suburbs of Chicago and whoever did this likely had
00:51:51
to have done this very soon prior to September 29th right as pointed out if you know you just put them back on the
00:52:00
Shelf you put them at the front of the line you whoever did this would have some knowledge of cide and would know
00:52:08
that it probably would corrode these other pills and therefore if they want the Sinai to have the effect that it's
00:52:17
intended for in this case you're going to put those bottles right at the front of the line for people to grab them
00:52:24
purchase them and hopefully ingest them very soon after purchasing which we know
00:52:29
unfortunately happened in all these cases well again it's also it's a weird thing because I have
00:52:38
when I've been at the store oh I need some migraine medicine or something right oh I'll pick some up I think I'm
00:52:45
running low but it's normally an item that you pick up after you've already run out correct or you're picking it up
00:52:54
because you need need it right now right then yeah so I mean it's a very the level of
00:53:03
sophistication of uh tack again we we know pretty much how they did it or we can assume look I'm with you it makes
00:53:13
more sense that they would buy the bottles take the bottles home manipulate the situation there um and then take
00:53:22
them back doesn't make any sense to me that they would be able to to do this with with inside of a store no no you
00:53:31
immediately someone would be would notice that you were up to something well obviously not like inside the store
00:53:39
but you could get the bottle and go to the bathroom or something and I don't think it would take that long of time
00:53:44
because the the measuring out that's what gets me is the lethal doses could be anywhere from like they said 100% the
00:53:55
or 100% the lethal dose or even a th% a lethal dose meaning that this individual
00:54:03
is not measuring them out he's just filling the capsules back up but that's also because I don't think it takes much
00:54:11
you don't have to have much to have a leth lethal dose one thing that we know that he did not do as far as the
00:54:17
information we currently have is he never underestimated how much to put in to the
00:54:23
capsules so whether be 100% or 1,000% it worked 100% of the time right that it was ingested well it's like sex pan or
00:54:33
like 60% of the time it works all the time so just to go through this a little more in depth because not everybody uh
00:54:43
is as old as we are here in the garage but in 1982 the bottles available for purchase by the public as you pointed
00:54:51
out Captain were not safety sealed nowadays if you you buy a bottle of Tylenol or other medication the bottle
00:55:00
Tylenol specifically has a silver foil safety seal and closing it and the box is glued shut back then you just
00:55:10
untucked the Box lid and then screwed off the cap of the bottle this timers case is the FBI
00:55:19
called it changed the packaging process in the United States forever forever when extra strength Tylenol was
00:55:26
returned to the market in late 1982 it was reintroduced with a triple seal tamper resistant packaging a bottle
00:55:36
encased in plastic wrapping inside of a glued shut box and the federal anti-tampering act of
00:55:44
1983 changed the way that Food and Drugs were to be packaged Nationwide it made consumer product tampering a federal
00:55:53
crime well and these deaths also like we've talked about before they're violent deaths yeah so how does the
00:55:59
Sinai kill a person potassium cyanide acts very quickly to prevent the blood from absorbing oxygen from the lungs
00:56:09
which essentially starves the body of oxygen this causes convulsions cardiac arrest and then death both potassium and
00:56:19
sodium cyanide are used in jewelry manufacturing and in mining among other things and this was incredibly
00:56:27
surprising to me Captain apparently they're both readily [Music] available for more True Crime garage for
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