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foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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[Music] today we are still sipping on a delicious beer from the good folks over at Oscar Blues Brewing Company this is
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the freaking business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] [Music] [Music] thank you shortly after the Tylenol murders Chicago columnist Bob Green wrote The
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Following article which appeared in multiple newspapers in and around the area as well as across the country the
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article was titled message to the Tylenol killer if you are the Tylenol killer some of
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this may matter to you or it may make no difference at all if you are the Tylenol killer your whole
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murderous exercise may have seemed beautiful and the flawlessness of its execution
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you doctored the capsules and the people died and you put fear in the hearts all over
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the nation if you are the killer the success of your mission may be sustaining you
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if you are the Tylenol killer though you may be harboring just the Vegas curiosity about the people on the
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other end of your plan the people who were unfortunate enough to purchase the bottles you had touched
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if you are curious come to a small house on a quiet winding street an Elk Grove Village Illinois
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the people who live there Dennis and Gina Kellerman feel you have already been inside anyway
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maybe the names don't mean anything to you you killed their daughter she was 12.
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her name was Mary Kellerman and her crime was that she had a cold you might be interested in hearing what
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you have done to her parents they are still numb alone in the house Gina Kellerman blames herself
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you see she came home from work on the day before her daughter died and on the way she stopped to pick up some medicine
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Mary Kellerman was a child who didn't like to take medication she would go yuck when her mother
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offered her cough syrup so on that afternoon Mrs Kellerman purchased a new bottle of cough syrup
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with a flavor that Mary might like a little better and she picked up a bottle of Tylenol At
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first she was going to buy a small bottle then because she suffers from arthritis and she thought that she might
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need a pill soon she changed her mind and bought the next bigger size she bought your bottle you
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ought to see her now crying her eyes vacant as she sits in the family room and talks about what her
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life might be like only if she had stuck with the first bottle that afternoon you
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might be interested in Mary's father too he woke up the next morning and went into Mary's room she told him that her
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throat was sore he said he wanted her to stay home from school for the day he remembers exactly
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quote I heard her go into the bathroom I heard the door close then I heard something drop
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I went to the bathroom door I called Mary are you okay there was no answer I called again
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Mary are you okay there was still no answer so I opened the bathroom door and my
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little girl was on the floor unconscious she was still in her pajamas you might be interested in knowing that Mary's
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mother and father when they return from the hospital returned without Mary who as you know was dead
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they looked in the refrigerator in the refrigerator was a brown paper sack with a sandwich and a piece of pie
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inside Mary had packed her lunch the night before she thought she would be going to school
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so she made herself the sandwich she could not have known about you on the front of that refrigerator are a
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number of funny furry little animals with magnets fastened to their backs they are used to attach notes to the
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refrigerator door maybe you would care Mary made those for her mother they were gifts
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if you are wondering whether Mary's parents talk about you you don't have to wonder anymore they do
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you have never been in their house and yet they cannot walk into a room without feeling you are there
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you don't know them but you have changed their lives forever they feel as if they can't get away from
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you although they realize that they make no difference to you they find themselves
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caught in an awful game of making trade-offs in their mind if you had only wanted to steal their
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car they think if you only had wanted to burn down their house anything they would have said yes to anything
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anything but this do you want to know what they are thinking about you quote I would pay anything if whoever
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did this would walk up to my front door right now that's what Mary's father said
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I would give everything I own because once he walks through that door he's mine as it is you should know
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Mary's parents are too shattered even to visit the cemetery Mary is buried at Saint Michael the
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Archangel a nearby Palatine Illinois and they wish they could go to her grave but they can't the hurt is too deep and
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you are keeping them even from that if you are the Tylenol killer you should know one more thing
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Mary's mother can't have any more children Mary was her only baby you might be interested in knowing that
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Mary was born one month premature and then as she entered the world her mother was scared because she was not
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crying but the doctor smiled and said it's okay she's only sleeping and she was she was a quiet child and because the
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Kellerman's knew she would be their only child she was especially precious to them
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you should know that Mary's mother has not gone into Mary's bedroom since her daughter died
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her clothes are still there and her school books and papers the door is closed Mary's mother and father have to walk
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past it every time they go upstairs Mary's father has gone inside but just once he went in to pick out the clothes for
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Mary to wear at her funeral if you are the Tylenol killer you might want to know that Mary's parents always
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considered themselves to be overly protective Mary always had to be home by dark
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even when she was out with friends she had to call home frequently just to say she was all right
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the reason Mary's parents were like that was that they knew something that a 12 year old girl could not know they knew
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that the world at times can be a cruel place and that parents have a duty to protect their child from dangers the
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child might not even know are there they thought they knew about every danger that could possibly touch Mary
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but they did not know about you [Music] in one of his books FBI agent John Douglas discusses the painstaking
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investigation that occurred in the weeks following the murders task force members interviewed employees
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from each affected store they went door to door with police sketches of persons seen near the stores they tried to lift
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fingerprints from the contaminated bottles that were found still on the store shelves only a single smudge was
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lifted from one of the bottles they scrutinize security camera video such as it was in 1982. police were able
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to uncover one photo that bore scrutiny an ATM machine automated camera had taken a still shot of a store checkout
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counter line at exactly the moment that Paula Prince was paying for her Tylenol this grainy photo was eventually
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publicly released by the Chicago Police Department in the photo several people are visible standing in line including
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one bearded tall man standing maybe 10 feet behind Paula and staring directly at her police have said that they
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believe that this man might be the poisoner it's very possible but like we said in the last episode
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the time frame of when this individual could have tampered with the Tylenol pills and returned them to the stores is
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days I'm not exactly sure Captain what makes police say that this you know that crafted their statement to
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be that we believe this guy could be the poisoner seen in this ATM camera security camera footage it was clear
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they're they're bias against people with beards probably um but yet they didn't pick out the
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Tulane guy with his beard so we have one two three four five six people in the photo that I can see one
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of them is our would-be victim and again potentially the man in the very back of
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this photo he could in fact be the poisoner then in another possibly helpful piece of evidence we have one
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witness who comes forward who may have some significant information this was an elderly woman who told police that she
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saw a man in a drugstore take something out of his jacket pocket and place it on
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the drugstore shelf she at the time assumed that he was possibly a shoplifter who had returned an item and
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second guessed himself right if she was correct in her recall it meant that the theories about the murderer operating at
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the retail level were spot on bond also there's been plenty of times I've been shopping and I throw something in my
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pocket not thinking about it oh crap I don't need to have that in my pocket so it could be something as simple as
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that but like you said and I think we both agree on it's more likely this individual took the pills somewhere else
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tampered with them and then brought them back as we mentioned John Douglas was brought in to create a profile of the
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poisoner he believed that the killer was one single man acting alone poisoning tylenol at the retail level
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he described the Tylenol murders as a form of terrorism and the crime one of psychological distance committed by a
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cowardly non-confrontational person he concluded that the murder had not targeted a specific person or store
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intending instead to generally terrorize and cause panic in Mayhem the killer he believed was a man driven
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by rage and anger someone with a history of personal failures this would be someone who had many instances in their
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life where he believed he'd suffered injustices and unfair treatment he may have a military background would
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have trouble keeping a job and likely had a psychiatric record he would have had periods of depression
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and hopelessness and he was probably set off by some stressful event immediately
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prior to the late September murders of course without a crime scene or targeted victim it would prove very difficult to
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apprehend the Killer Douglas says in his book quote we don't know if the subject was getting back at
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the manufacturer the stores that distributed the drugs the victims themselves or Society in general the
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killer could have no connection to tylenol at all selecting it simply because it was so popular and cyanide of
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the type used was readily available and cheap John Douglas wasn't the only one to suspect that the killer was an
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outlier Time Magazine said that psychologists called the killer so strange that their normal guidelines
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just don't work and a Chicago area investigators stated publicly that they were looking for a
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Madman well their investigation is going to be very difficult too because during
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the whole time they're trying to find whoever did this you have to be worried that that same individual is going to do
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this to another product and at the same time this is happening just within the next 30 days of the
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initial investigation they had over 270 copycats yeah and we'll dive into that in a minute but I wanted to point out
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here Captain the in the traditional John Douglas style of investigating and potentially apprehending a suspect
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he is going to push these agencies to put forward some precautionary methods for drawing the killer out to challenge
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the killer to come forward in some form or fashion to present himself to law enforcement
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and he had several different tactics which he suggested that they use at the time of the Tylenol murders one being
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that the local stores had beefed up security and nobody could tamper with any of the products that they were
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selling there almost challenging the killer to either want to look and view the space for themselves or to test them
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to see if they would tamper with a product and try to put it on one of the shelves there he also had several
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different methods and tactics but one that was very interesting is the article that we read at the top of today's story
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if you read between the lines there are some very interesting pieces of information that were included in
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that article yeah yeah come come visit our house correct they do not give the address of the Kellerman's but they give
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a very good description of where one might find the Kellerman's home second they give a very good description
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of where little Mary Kellerman's body was buried what cemetery she was buried in Douglas and the FBI decided what they
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were going to do was to pair up team up with a local columnist and Douglas wanted a columnist because he wanted
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someone that the community was already familiar with that the community already trusted and had some type of
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relationship with now he said he did not want to tell this person the journalist columnist how to
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write the article so he simply sat down with Bob Green who Bob Green came forward and said I would
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love to write the article he says we just simply told them what our strategy would be and let him as the
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writer construct his own call when John Douglas comes into town all law enforcement should cheer
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because you're going to get hours and hours of overtime Duty sitting in front of somebody's house
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waiting for somebody to come back or at a grave site I can't remember what the actual number was but I think they had
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surveillance on her grave site for like 24 7 for weeks yeah I don't know if it was in fact weeks I I don't have the
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exact timeline but I do know that when the article came out they were already prepped to do 24-hour surveillance on
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both Mary Kellerman's home and the gravesite yeah to Ching here here's my issue though too
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with this crime is this does not have to be a local individual we have this time frame where
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somebody could have came into the city took the items went went to a hotel went down the street tampered with him return
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all the items and then head out of town yes that's correct that is certainly a possibility here in this case and the
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reason why I bring that up is don't you think that law enforcement and John Douglas were kind of assuming that this
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individual was more local well I mean we have it in the profile that we just gave
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where he he says that he believes that the tampering took place at the retail level
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and so what that means is no one can say for certain if this if the perpetrator is in fact local or not
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if they had a way of determining that we probably would have a solved case we wouldn't be sitting here 30 years later
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right but what you're saying is that the retail stores they're technically local
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level so the person would have to get the those items we know they were local at
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one point right in the commission of these crimes it's just like what we spoke about when we talked about the the
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Zodiac Killer we don't know who he is there's been all these suspects over the years but one thing we can say for
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certain is that those three letters were all mailed on the same day from San Francisco so we don't know where he
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lives where he works who he is but we know on that day on that one particular day the Zodiac Killer had to be in the
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city of San Francisco same situation here Captain as you're pointing out if you're targeting this in commissioning
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these crimes at the retail level that means at some point you were local you had to physically be there to place
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these items on the Shelf so therefore you go all right if the perpetrator was local on that day
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whatever the time frame is he may still be here or he may be local permanent so we're going to run these uh these
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tactics and try to draw him out now there's an interesting story that comes from this is that after a couple of
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nights there you know they're surveilling Mary Kellerman's home and her gravesite hoping that the killer may
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want to catch a glimpse of the home or visit the grave site maybe even show some type of remorse and go to the
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gravesite yeah I don't know if you reported on this yet but uh they also publicize all the victims funerals as a
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way to say hey maybe he'll show up to one of the funerals yeah Douglas also suggested I mean like I said there were
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there were probably six or seven different methods that he suggested that they they do at the time one would be to
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have Candlelight vigils and to take down the names and license plates of the people attending right he also suggested
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you know as you said publicly announcing the the funerals which is which is very
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typical of any type of crime it's you know often the funerals are publicly announced anyway
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regardless of how someone dies um so it's not it's not out of bounds by any means at all but one thing that he
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suggested was putting like special markers decorative markers on the graves themselves and maybe this guy might want
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to go and take one as some type of souvenir right or tamper with them and on some level so something physical that
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you might be able to catch this person with in their possession at some point in time and I keep saying he I I think
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you're saying he as well I I think we we believe but also law enforcement believes that this was done by a male
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yes um that seems to be the general consensus and it certainly seems to be John Douglas's thoughts
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I know that typically females are poisoners but typically females kill people that they know it's right it's
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very rare it's much more rare that a female would kill strangers compared to a male killing strangers so one story
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that comes out of this this tactic of surveilling the home and the grave site is that after a few nights of this these
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stakeouts in the Boneyard at the the cemetery a guy approaches the gravesite in the middle of the night hmm
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so police move in because they want to hear what this guy's going to say does he smell like bitter almonds he says
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something to the effect of you know he's apologizing saying um I didn't mean to do this uh
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the man's crying and apologizing and said that it was an accident I never meant to kill you
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the problem then becomes that police hear the man say Susan I never meant to kill you Susan right
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we're not sure who Susan is but it's quickly determined that well she's somewhere in that graveyard
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Susan's grave was right next to Mary Kellerman's grave the man was going to her grave to Susan's grave to apologize
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to her because Susan was killed in a hit and run situation this was the man that was
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responsible for killing Susan so hold on to ghanim yeah got him so What Becomes of this is they never got Mary
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Kellerman's killer but they did get this man who was involved in this hit and run
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accident with this Susan victim and not only did they get this guy off the streets and solve that crime but it also
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in a way proves Douglas's theory that this is actually a thing yeah that it actually happens and it's a way that
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they can be more proactive rather than just sitting on their hands waiting for the killer to either strike again or or
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show himself in some manner yeah but if if you're a fan of Mind Hunter and you believe
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somewhat the storytelling and mind Hunter then John Douglas was the guy that people would talk [ __ ] to so at
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some point somebody's going we're paying all these cops all these extra money and
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nothing's turned up and this is John Douglas way of saying how well one my theory is correct but two
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well we got a bad guy off the street because we had law enforcement there at the grave sites and in early 1983 the
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Cook County Medical Examiner announced that they had re-examined 17 unexplained deaths that occurred around the time of
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the Tylenol murders and that three of them appeared to have resulted from cyanide in all three cases lethal doses
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of cyanide as well as acetaminophen were found in their blood but it was too late
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to discern whether these people were definitive victims of the Tylenol murder any extra strength Tylenol in their
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homes had long since disappeared [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] we're back cheers mates cheers crazy to
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think the Chicago Tylenol murders 1982 September 29th Tylenol goes from 37 percent of the
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market share to 8 after the murders surprising they got eight percent yeah sadly the tampering inspired hundreds of
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CopyCat incidents across the U.S the FDA recorded more than 270 different incidents of product tampering in the
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months following the Tylenol deaths some of this was for the most part no no that's
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270 within the first month well we have we might have different information here
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the large part of this 270 number regardless of if if it was in a 30-day time period 45 days or 90 days is
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most of these are pretty small time hacks these are not people trying to kill people or kill people on a mass
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level a lot of this is people trying to collect some kind of money from manufacturers or from stores for items
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that they can take something as simple as maybe spaghetti sauce and put some you know a dead bug in it or they had
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found dead rats in some food products they also found things like pills tainted with everything from rat poison
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to hydrochloric acid that actually did in fact get some people sick around the country
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and as said some copycats branched into food tampering that Halloween parents reported finding sharp pins concealed in
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candy corn and candy bars and some communities ban trick-or-treat all together I mean this would be a very
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scary time because once look the the initial thing you go okay there's a Madman out there
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but like you said 270 within the next couple months now you're going there's multiple mad people and they're not just
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trying to poison Tylenol capsules they're trying to tamper with other food products and and medical products there
00:29:56
is one portion of this case that is absolutely terrifying the quote Tylenol murders expanded out of the state of
00:30:02
Illinois to take on a new shape in the state of Washington around the greater Seattle area and this case starts on
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Wednesday June 11. 1986 when 40 year old Susan Snow got up early you know just like she would any
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other work day both Susan and her husband Paul Webb King aged 45 were going to go about their normal work day
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routines Susan was the assistant vice president of Puget Sound National Bank typically Paul would leave for work
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before Susan and that would be the same on this day as well so Paul heads off to work Susan is going
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to finish up getting ready and then leaves leave the house as well however Susan's daughter Haley would
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soon find Susan unconscious on the bathroom floor Haley called 9-1-1 and the paramedics
00:31:00
were sent to the house when the paramedics arrived on the scene they found Susan still lying unconscious on
00:31:07
the floor but she was still alive she was quickly transported to a Seattle hospital now unfortunately Susan was
00:31:16
brain dead and eventually she was taken off of life support and passed on during her autopsy the medical examiner
00:31:24
detected that Telltale bitter almond smell associated with Sinai poisoning and sure enough after further
00:31:31
investigation The Examiner determined Susan had died of cyanide poisoning now that morning Susan and her husband Paul
00:31:38
both took two extra strength Excedrin pills this is your basic over-the-counter headache slash pain
00:31:45
reliever in fact this is one of the major competitors for Tylenol at the time and Susan and Paul for whatever
00:31:53
reason preferred this brand it was quickly determined that Susan took two pills full of cyanide and the
00:32:01
two extra strength Excedrin capsules that Paul took on that same day had no cyanide in them at all Susan was
00:32:11
dead about six or so hours later Paul was lucky enough that the pills he took were not tampered with
00:32:19
Susan of course not so lucky now after a public campaign two more tainted bottles
00:32:25
were found on store shelves this is the whole Tylenol murder Chicago experience 2.0
00:32:33
taking place now in Seattle I wonder if that's why they're Sleepless then on June 17th 42 year old Stella nickel
00:32:42
called Seattle PD to report that her husband Bruce who had died suddenly two weeks before on June 5th 1986 that she
00:32:53
believed that he had taken Excedrin two extra strength Excedrin tablets shortly before he died now at the time the King
00:33:03
County Medical Examiner listed Bruce's cause of death as pulmonary emphysema now armed with this new information is
00:33:11
starting to look like his death wasn't natural but it was a murder the bottle that Bruce took his pills from was from
00:33:20
the same Lot number as the pills ingested by Susan Snow by now of course Bruce has been buried
00:33:27
for some time but the hospital still had some of Bruce's blood because he was an
00:33:32
organ donor and sure enough there was cyanide in the sample it looked like Bruce was another unlucky victim of
00:33:41
product tampering and this time it's not going on in Chicago but 2 000 miles away
00:33:46
and four years later in the greater Seattle area now the super strange thing here is the authorities were able to
00:33:53
figure out that there were a total of five bottles that contained cyanide somehow of these five bottles two of
00:34:01
them managed to end up at Bruce and Stella Nichols household so of the five adulterated bottles of
00:34:09
extra strength Excedrin authorities found in Seattle two came from the Stellas from Stella's home and we think
00:34:17
there was eight now look Johnson Johnson didn't test all of them but we believe there was eight bottles of the Tylenol
00:34:24
so five here that they know of but possibly another few that they didn't catch so the lab test on her two bottles
00:34:34
showed traces of fish tank algae cleaner in the doctored pills the traces match the fish tank cleaner in Stella's home
00:34:43
Stella had poisoned her husband and planted additional tainted bottles around town killing Susan snow in the
00:34:51
process so she could hide her crime and collect insurance to open up a fish store of her own
00:34:59
remember that was one of the suspected possible theories in the Chicago case right is that somebody
00:35:07
would want to kill someone they knew directly but cause other deaths to camouflage the murder well this is
00:35:14
definitely a high level high sophistication level of crime it could be looked at as such but I think in the
00:35:21
Chicago case and again here in the Stella nickel case it might seem that way on the surface
00:35:27
but it's actually not very difficult to do at all especially in the Chicago case
00:35:33
when there was no real tampering proof seals on those actual bottles if the cyanide is readily available and someone
00:35:41
just needs a general knowledge of cyanide then all they need to do is take the bottle open pull the capsule apart
00:35:48
with their fingers and refill it with cyanide the problem for the perpetrator of this crime and this is something that
00:35:55
you will see often with bomb makers as well is it with poisoning and with bomb making
00:36:02
there's the same risk involved for the perpetrator that you end up harming or killing yourself in the process of
00:36:08
creating these devices to kill others cyanide is not only lethal as ingested but can also be lethal
00:36:18
um to the touch and I don't want to go too far into that because I don't have a complete understanding of it and I don't
00:36:23
want to try to pretend that I do but from the information provided to me it seems like it's risky Behavior to even
00:36:30
be handling right this type of poison we'll get used to it because I just ordered a bunch of it off of Amazon but
00:36:39
what's interesting here in this case Captain the Stella nickel case is that I mean she's actually a really
00:36:47
terrible murder because one her horrific crimes I mean this is not just a situation of
00:36:55
wife kills husband but wife kills husband and is willing to kill at least one if not several other people in an
00:37:03
attempt to cover up and get away with the murder of her husband so completely willing to kill total strangers just to
00:37:11
get away with this crime but two killing her husband to get money so this murder plot was fueled by greed
00:37:21
Stella took out two life insurance policies on her husband and Stella was such a slave to her greed that she would
00:37:28
have got away with this murder but she couldn't get out of her own way so check this she had two insurance
00:37:35
policies that she took out on her husband Bruce unbeknownst to Bruce fishy she purchased two twenty thousand dollar
00:37:43
policies that she was the sole beneficiary on then Bruce had life insurance through his work for thirty
00:37:51
one thousand dollars okay so with these two forged signature policies of twenty thousand dollars
00:37:57
we're at forty Grand now add the Thirty One Thousand from his work policy Stella
00:38:04
stands to make seventy one thousand dollars from Bruce death so if Stella would have been okay with
00:38:11
seventy one thousand dollars she would have never been caught the medical examiner ruled the death a
00:38:18
natural death nobody was any the wiser until Susan Snow died later from ingesting the extra
00:38:27
strength Excedrin and then Stella nickel informs the police hey my husband Bruce
00:38:34
who died of natural causes weeks ago he took Excedrin right before his death as well
00:38:42
now that is because Bruce's work policy paid out 105 thousand dollars more if Bruce's death
00:38:52
was accidental opposed to Natural and this is a big and what was going on in the spring of 1986
00:39:02
it was national news at the time big news as I like to say the families of the seven dead Chicago Tylenol victims
00:39:10
were suing McNeil consumer Products Incorporated a division of Johnson and Johnson
00:39:15
eventually they would settle with these families for millions and millions of dollars
00:39:21
Stella not only won an accidental death benefit of Bruce's work plan but she wanted to be able to sue a Big Brand a
00:39:29
household name for Millions right is this agreed so for that Bruce couldn't be the only one to die from product
00:39:36
tampering slash poisoning so in a way she outed herself instead of becoming a widow with an
00:39:42
extra 71 thousand dollars she ended up arrested and convicted receiving two 99-year terms under the new federal
00:39:49
tampering law Stella nickel was the first person in U.S history to be convicted of murder through product
00:39:57
tampering from my understanding captain that is a federal offense that's a federal crime and she was convicted on
00:40:05
the federal level of product tampering that resulted in Murder so technically the state of Washington could still
00:40:13
charge and then convict her with murder at a later date she's still alive she's living in some
00:40:20
low security prison uh and well yeah when she got sentenced and the judge said to 90 90 year sentences you said
00:40:31
she said so you're saying there's a chance right I might I still could get out now during the first four days of
00:40:37
the investigation in the Tylenol case back in Chicago in 82 the task force interviewed over 1 000 people and
00:40:45
amassed thousands of pages of documentation and created a suspect list of 24 names
00:40:52
by week out this list was down to four individuals one was a loading dock worker at Jewel a massive company
00:41:01
operating warehouses distribution center and packaging plant in the Chicago area
00:41:07
this man this suspect 48 year old Roger Arnold was known to possess and use Sinai and rant about killing people with
00:41:18
cyanide capsules he was also known to carry illegal weapons and during the course of this investigation refused a
00:41:26
lie detector test the other strange thing here too Captain is it looks like Roger Arnold actually may have known
00:41:34
or through a separation of a few degrees known one of the victims in the Tylenol
00:41:41
case seven degrees of Kevin Bacon he worked with the father of Lynn Reiner right one of the victims and her
00:41:49
father's name was Howard fearin and apparently this Arnold guy was in possession of two recently purchased
00:41:58
one-way tickets to Thailand when he was arrested in early October what they did was he's a suspect in this
00:42:07
case he was also a suspect in a June 1982 assault so we're going to arrest him on charges of assault from that
00:42:16
incident in June hold him and investigate him in this Tylenol case this will allow us to search his home in
00:42:25
his home they find weapons making manuals including a book about how to encapsulate encapsulate cyanide
00:42:34
for a Time Authority suspected that Arnold was in cahoots with Faron in the Tylenol murders they also suspected
00:42:44
Reiner's husband Ed for a time but both he and Faron passed polygraph tests they were cooperating
00:42:52
with the investigation it's not really clear why Roger Arnold was eventually cleared but he went on to
00:43:01
shoot a man to death whom he suspected had turned his name into the police as a potential suspect in the Tylenol murders
00:43:08
case he was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1984 for 15 years for that murder and
00:43:16
then he later died in the year of 2008. again according to the information I saw
00:43:21
it sounds like they cleared this Roger Arnold Guy this is certainly clear him of murder and then he commits murder
00:43:30
because somebody turned him in for the FBI to look at him That's How The Story Goes criminals are pretty stupid well I
00:43:39
think that you have to be of a certain type to even land on the list of potential suspects in the Tylenol
00:43:45
murders and you can see how his personality played out in the long term another suspect was a Chicago man who
00:43:55
was mentally unstable and made threats against some of the stores where the tainted Tylenol was eventually found
00:44:01
this was Kevin Masterson Masterson's ex-wife had settled a lawsuit against Jewel remember that Jewel Osco company
00:44:10
her employer for mistreatment in connection with a shoplifting case and Kevin had ranted about getting even with
00:44:18
some of the retailers who ended up selling Tylenol that killed people so he's in this whole dispute with his
00:44:25
wife's employer he under this theory is seeking Revenge to attack the stores maybe even put them
00:44:33
out of business because they end up selling this Tylenol that's killing people yeah so it's not so it's not essentially
00:44:40
an attack on the people per se or attack on Johnson Johnson these are both bystanders and the fact that you want to
00:44:51
shut down the store correct that would be the motive if in fact he is the perpetrator however he
00:44:58
too it looks like was investigated quite thoroughly and then dismissed at some point as a viable suspect
00:45:04
well again what you said in episode one assistant they're not being investigated
00:45:10
just by a local detectives or local law enforcement we have a lot of hands on deck at the time 30
00:45:19
over 30 some FBI agents helping with this investigation from the onset that's a lot back in 1982. yeah and a task
00:45:29
force of almost 200 law enforcement members looking in and investigating this case there was Vernon Williams Jr
00:45:38
of New Jersey he saw this as an opportunity to try to extort one hundred thousand dollars from
00:45:47
Johnson and Johnson by threatening to taint more pills he was jailed for attempted extortion
00:45:53
but clearly had nothing to do with the murders per law enforcement yeah and then well I thought this when I
00:46:00
first heard about him this seems to be a good one at the time because in 82 is when we hit a very bad
00:46:08
recession so I thought well maybe somebody's you know when your whole country is in crisis financially you
00:46:16
know okay well maybe somebody would try to take advantage of the situation and and get money through through crime
00:46:23
and then there was James William Lewis on October 6 1982 Johnson and Johnson received a handwritten all caps letter
00:46:34
with a New York postmark that read Johnson and Johnson parent of McNeil Laboratories
00:46:42
gentlemen as you can see it is easy to play cyanide both potassium and sodium into capsules sitting on store shelves
00:46:49
and since the cyanide is inside the gelatin it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill
00:46:57
another beauty is that cyanide operates quickly it takes so very little and there will be no time to take counter
00:47:04
measures if you don't mind the publicity of these little capsules then do nothing
00:47:12
so far I have spent less than fifty dollars and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle
00:47:18
if you want to stop the killing then wire one million dollars to bank account number eight four four nine five nine
00:47:26
seven at Continental Illinois Bank Chicago Illinois don't attempt to involve the FBI or
00:47:34
local Chicago authorities with this letter a couple of phone calls by me will undo anything you can possibly do
00:47:42
well this guy sounds like a madman he sounds like a good suspect I mean you have motive but also you have the
00:47:49
guy coming out and he's confessing to the crime yeah so the FBI lifted fingerprints from this letter and then
00:47:56
noted the metered postage with the identifying Pitney Bowes number and an old date yeah Pitney Bowes that's a
00:48:05
pre-sort it's a machine that helps you put together mail the envelope was stamped April 15
00:48:13
1982. so well before any of these Tylenol murders the meter was traced to a company called Lakeside Travel
00:48:22
the bank account referenced which was no longer opened at that point belonged to
00:48:27
Frederick Miller McKay heir to the Miller Brewing Company Fortune although he owned Lakeside
00:48:36
Travel police quickly determined that McKay he had not written the letter and he gave authorities a list of
00:48:43
disgruntled employees or Associates of his business on that list were the names Robert and
00:48:50
Nancy Richardson Robert Richardson was an alias used by James William Lewis who was wanted by
00:48:58
police in another state which we will get into in a minute investigators initially thought that the
00:49:05
extortion letter sent to Johnson and Johnson by Robert Richardson was just a hoax to embarrass mccahy but after they
00:49:14
did some digging into James Lewis's past they discovered that he had been charged
00:49:19
with murder and was suspected of business and tax fraud so they began to put a little more stock into the
00:49:27
possibility that the letter was really sent by the actual poisoner but they couldn't find Lewis
00:49:34
meanwhile he continued his pattern of sending ranting letters all postmarked from New York City
00:49:42
Lewis sent the Chicago Tribune and the Kansas City Star letters denying that he and his wife had committed the Tylenol
00:49:50
murders in another letter Lewis attacked police handling of the murder and had been charged with the Raymond West case
00:49:59
so he is telling these newspapers that he and his wife had nothing to do with the Tylenol murders and he's complaining
00:50:08
that the police in the Raymond West murder case had bungled that whole investigation
00:50:15
and that he was trying to get that case reopened for some time Lewis began signing his real name at some point and
00:50:22
even put his right thumbprint on one of the letters the letters were written in strange
00:50:30
militaristic vengeful language here's an excerpt from John Douglas that I found interesting quote we are not
00:50:39
armed unless one means in the anatomical paraplegic sense we shall never carry weapons
00:50:46
domestically weapons are for two quite similar types of mentality one criminals and two police we are neither
00:50:56
Douglas noted that this personality seemed to mesh with what he had profiled a cowardly type that would be saddled
00:51:04
with inner rage and preferred indirect attacks Lewis also sent some letters to President Ronald Reagan in October of
00:51:14
1982 threatening to murder him with a remote control airplane and poison more people with cyanide laced Tylenol if
00:51:23
certain tax policies were not changed this seems like a man that fancies himself a bit of a Robin Hood to try to
00:51:31
change things for the good or the good as he says it but threatening violence if you don't give him his way yes Robin
00:51:40
of Loxley I'm going to cut your heart out with the spoon before becoming a suspect in the Tylenol murders Lewis
00:51:48
owned and operated a Kansas City business tax service called Lewis and Lewis this is where they befriended an
00:51:58
elderly client whose name was Raymond West we've already mentioned his name this man completely disappeared in 1978.
00:52:07
Raymond's body was found in an attic in his own home about three weeks after he disappeared
00:52:16
the body was found dismembered he had been cut up wrapped in sheets and trash bags and somehow hoisted to the storage
00:52:23
area using pulleys and rope he was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death or even actually who he was at
00:52:32
the time later they determined that it was in fact Raymond West now what leads them to this James Lewis guy he's a
00:52:41
client of Lewis's in Kansas city and police found a check from West Bank account made out to James Lewis for five
00:52:51
thousand dollars dated on the last day that Raymond West was seen alive after discovering this they searched Lewis's
00:52:59
car which yielded additional evidence including rope trash bags and more checks from Raymond West on five
00:53:07
thousand dollars back then was a lot of money it's like 10 million dollars today
00:53:11
now they charged him with the murder of Raymond West however this trial that was
00:53:19
set for late 1979 it was actually tossed out it was dismissed by a judge who ruled that the rest in the search of
00:53:27
Lewis's home and vehicle were illegal so Lewis is going to get lucky in this situation now Lewis
00:53:38
once he's free and clear and doesn't have to worry about these murder charges he goes back to work what's interesting
00:53:43
and I find this to be interesting here Captain is that he did a startup company which he co-founded with an Indian
00:53:51
pharmacist to import industrial pill-making machines from India police continue to investigate Lewis for
00:54:00
anything they were so convinced that he did this murder that they wanted to catch him on anything that they could
00:54:07
find you know tax fraud falsifying credit card applications swindling clients anything that they could
00:54:13
possibly find and some of the things they suspected him of too were mail fraud by the end of 1981 it sounds like
00:54:21
local authorities in Kansas City had enough evidence to charge Mr Lewis with something
00:54:27
but before they could James Lewis decides he and his wife are going to go on the Run
00:54:34
where do they go they went to Chicago so this guy has a history of potentially murdering people he has a history of
00:54:45
potential falsifying documents tax fraud mail fraud swindling his clients out of money and
00:54:53
possibly land deals he's on the run from authorities in Kansas City who have warrants out for this guy now he's in
00:55:01
Chicago oh and he has experience in pill making yeah which again like you said it
00:55:07
puts in the area he's definitely fits all the profiles and a lot of people that look into this case or have looked
00:55:15
into this case this becomes their number one suspect and what's weird too is that let's say
00:55:24
this guy was out for Revenge by all appearances it looks like the Revenge he was seeking might have been
00:55:33
against this Fred mccahy the the very wealthy man that stands to inherit the Miller Brewing Company Fortune
00:55:40
that is because remember you pointed out the Pitney bows envelope that police were able to trace
00:55:49
back to sometime in April of 1982. I used to I used to work on a Pitney Bowes machine yeah we had them at uh some of
00:55:57
the places that I worked as well now what happened here Captain is not only did they trace that to that
00:56:05
date but they also traced the account to that Lakeside Travel company owned by that Fred McKay He Who
00:56:13
Lewis's wife had that big pay dispute with right this McKay he fella supposedly owed her 500 maybe 600 it was not that
00:56:24
big amount of money I expected it to be a large amount of money considering that
00:56:29
seven people died in this Tylenol murders case but those that envelope was stolen along
00:56:36
with a stack of other envelopes from that travel company on the last day that his wife worked there so maybe he used
00:56:46
it as it was convenient that the envelope was already there postage all we already paid or was he trying to
00:56:53
purposely give this to law enforcement and maybe get them to lead them back to this Fred McKay guy so basically this
00:57:01
would be him framing Fred for the Tylenol murders yes or again maybe just a way of covering his own tracks and
00:57:10
sending them on a wild goose chase now remember Douglas said that this person the murderer probably would have
00:57:18
experienced some type of stressor disruptive life event leading up to contaminating the bottles and then
00:57:27
killing these innocent people well James lost his job that he had in Chicago in August of 1982.
00:57:36
this could be the stressor but what we do know is that the the James's left Chicago
00:57:45
on September 4th 1982 using the names William and Karen Wagner this is where you get into that really gray area right
00:57:55
Captain where because there's a lot of people that believe that Lewis is the best suspect that
00:58:01
maybe he is in fact the actual poisoner but we talked about the delicateness of the gelatin capsules in relationship to
00:58:11
the cyanide that was placed inside of them right could one have contaminated all of these
00:58:17
products put them on the shelves back in early September and then they're not purchased until late September and
00:58:25
consumed then it seems a little difficult to believe but we know he still he's still involved
00:58:33
very much involved and active in this case even after the fact that he leaves maybe he thought I can poison these
00:58:40
people leave and throw some other people under the bus after the fact and they'll never
00:58:46
catch me because I'm not even in the air anymore maybe that's maybe as you pointed out the perpetrator is not local
00:58:53
so he couldn't have gone to Mary Kellerman's grave could not have gone to her home or this guy was once local was
00:59:01
not local after people started dying I know he's a lot of people's top suspect her favorite suspect in this case my
00:59:09
problem with it is the type of criminal he is the the Chicago Tylenol murders or what
00:59:17
do you call them the timers yep the timers that's a goofy sounding name but uh to me it's it's an act of terrorists
00:59:28
it's so it's too great Terror and fear into not just Chicago but you're doing it in Chicago
00:59:35
because it's one of the biggest cities but you're maybe somehow connected to it so but it's gonna it's it's about the
00:59:43
overall fear of the nation basically or setting a bomb or setting this trap and then once the things are once the events
00:59:52
start taking place you're off in a distance watching it happen admiring your work that to me is the way a
01:00:00
terrorist would work this guy just does not fit that profile to me I think this again I think this is less
01:00:10
about money and more about and still stealing fear where I think a lot of his crimes were
01:00:16
connected to money um yeah so I just think uh good suspect but it wouldn't be my
01:00:25
number one well and the thing about him as well and the other thing that makes this case very difficult is you cannot
01:00:31
it's too hard to determine if this is supposed to be public terrorism or mass extortion because correct Lewis yes he
01:00:42
tried to extort money from Johnson and Johnson but so did some other guy in New Jersey who had nothing to do and was
01:00:48
proven to have nothing to do with the case so does that mean that Lewis didn't have anything to do with the case
01:00:56
potentially we can't say for certain but what we don't have other than this situation is we don't have someone
01:01:03
coming forward that we believe to be the actual poisoner saying you know what I'm going to keep doing this I'm going
01:01:10
to keep killing people unless you pay me off right so it might not even be extortion at all it
01:01:17
might be as you said just public terrorism the other problem with that though then
01:01:23
too becomes often terrorists have an agenda or they have something that they need to
01:01:30
bring into the spotlight of how they've been wronged in some form the problem is usually
01:01:37
someone claims responsibility for these terrible Acts we don't have that either nobody coming forward saying you know we
01:01:47
are this group and this is why we committed these acts against the people of Chicago
01:01:54
[Music] so there's nobody really coming forward trying to gain from this or claiming responsibility it's just really
01:02:04
falls under what could be just a really confusing crime yeah we don't have anybody coming
01:02:12
forward and saying we're a small foreign faction yeah so what you do have with this Lewis character he eventually
01:02:19
is charged with extortion stemming from the Tylenol murders case he ends up serving about 12 years in
01:02:27
prison on the extortion charge he was released in 1995 but he's one of these he's one of these real pain in the
01:02:38
ass types that while he's in prison he's granting interviews and he's talking about you know I was not the Tylenol
01:02:46
killer but if I was this is how I would do it right this is how I would uh contaminate the capsules this is how I
01:02:54
would place them in the stores you know saying all the all the stuff that make you go
01:03:00
okay I cannot clear this man I cannot get it out of my mind that he could be in fact the Tylenol killer in January of
01:03:09
2010 both James William Lewis and his wife were asked by the FBI to submit DNA samples and fingerprints to the
01:03:20
authorities Lewis stated quote if the FBI plays it fair I have nothing to worry about Lewis continues to deny all
01:03:29
responsibility for the Tylenol killings so are you saying that he submitted DNA I said he submitted DNA yeah so in 2009
01:03:38
the FBI came forward and said hey we're going to use all new technology to re-examine the evidence in the Chicago
01:03:45
Tylenol murders case asking then Lewis for DNA and then a year later they asked the famous Ted Kaczynski for his DNA
01:03:57
the Unabomber the Unabomber now he said he would give it to them but he had one condition he wanted there
01:04:06
was going to be an auction of his belongings and he wanted for the auction to stop and not be held he wanted to
01:04:13
keep his possessions saying that he did if he did give them his DNA that maybe his DNA would partially match and he
01:04:22
would need his items from his cabin to prove that he never owned potassium cyanide as for the murders they remain
01:04:30
unsolved the case remains open and the one hundred thousand dollar reward still unclaimed quote one of the most
01:04:38
Sensational murder cases this Century has gone unsolved because the person who did it randomly killed seven people said
01:04:46
Dan Webb the U.S attorney during the investigation he goes on to say if you have no motive if all you're doing is
01:04:53
killing people for no reason whatsoever then that is likely to be the most perfect murder because there won't be
01:05:01
any ties back to you [Music] for everything true crime check us out at truecrime garage.com and make sure
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you sign up on the mailing list we like to send out promo codes for discounts in
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our merchandise store Colonel do we have any recommended reading for this week we
01:05:33
all need a little Escape once in a while so this week we are recommending a fictional novel by friend of the show
01:05:40
Christopher Ferris his new book called The Fountain is out and available everywhere deep in the Ozarks holler
01:05:49
lurks an ancient source of power called The Fountain it drives men and women mad
01:05:55
and leads them to do strange and terrible things it is growing in strength only in a visible wall held in
01:06:01
place by centuries of sacrificial magic protects an unwitting Mountain Community
01:06:07
from a descent into bloodshed dead and Madness check out the fountain by Christopher Ferris we will have that
01:06:14
listed on our recommended page at truecrime garage.com for you and until next week be good be kind and don't
01:06:22
litter [Music] thank you foreign