CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- September 29, 1982, the beginning of a deadly and to this day unsolved poisoning spree. Someone laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide and put them on store shelves in the Chicago-area. When it was over, seven people were dead.
“When they discovered, I think, that it was tampered, it kind of scared the heck out of Chicagoland. It was really kind of a strange time,” said Bill Anderson, whose family owns Oswald’s Pharmacy in Naperville where he worked at the time of the Tylenol murders.
John Drummond, former reporter for CBS 2 in Chicago, covered the Tylenol murders at the time.
“People were concerned about what could happen. There was panic, not only in the metro-Chicago area. You’re talking about all over the country, that somebody could go a drug store, pick up some medications, open them and be poisoned with cyanide," Drummond said.
It was the first time in law enforcement, such as anyone knew it, that there were unintended victims, said Tyrone Fahner, Illinois Attorney General at the time of the Tylenol murders.
"In other words, they wanted, somebody wanted, to kill someone, but they had no particular reason to pick out who they were killing. It frightened the hell out of everyone," Fahner said.
WBBM Newsradio looks back at the 1982 Tylenol poisoning murders and flashes forward to the investigation that continues to this day and how so much has changed as a result.
It began with several cyanide poisoning deaths, which the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office announced to reporters at a September 1982 news conference.
“These have been associated with one death in Elk Grove Village and two deaths and a serious illness of a fourth in Arlington Heights. Three victims are related, and onset of symptoms occurred in their family home, but these are two different locations, two distinct locations,” an official with the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office told reporters early on in the investigation.
Later, WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reported on the deaths of the three members of one family who took tainted capsules.
Now-retired CBS 2 reporter John Drummond also covered the Tylenol killings including Prince’s death.
"We knew that a woman, a young woman, had been found deceased, I believe in Sandburg Village. We went over there and then some of the cops came down and told me that it was a cyanide case and it was definitely a Tylenol case. And that of course heightened the interest in it. So I remember we went live and in color as they called it in the 10 o’clock news that this woman had been found. She was a flight attendant, had been found and apparently had died as a result of taking Tylenol,” Drummond recalled.
Bob Anderson was the owner and chief pharmacist at Oswald’s Pharmacy in Naperville in 1982 and remembers the fear among his customers, especially before investigators determined the poisonings were limited to Tylenol capsules.
“A warning against the use of Tylenol, extra strength capsules, is being broadcast over commercial radio. This product may be contaminated with cyanide and should be destroyed,” the dispatcher told officers.
Tyrone Fahner, who was Illinois Attorney General at the time, was in charge of the massive task force assembled to investigate the poisonings and explained at the time how it was done.
“The first reaction was how do we put a stop on this, and we weren’t sure that it was limited to tampering with Tylenol capsules. At the very beginning we just didn’t know very much,” Fahner said.
Drummond said that uncertainty fueled fear across the Chicago-area.
“It shook everybody up. Veteran reporters, people in the law enforcement office, people in all walks of life were stunned by that this could happen, that any time I go into a drug store or get medications, it could be death,” Drummond remembers.
While investigators had a good idea how the poisonings were done, the answer that never had solid evidence to back it up was who.
Lewis spent 13 years in prison on an extortion conviction, and Fahner said Lewis later gave details about the case that made him the prime suspect.
“Lewis wanted to be given credit for what he did. Even when he was in the federal institution he’d call the marshals and he’ll say ‘you know I didn’t have anything to do with this, but if I had been the perpetrator here’s what I would have done,’ and he would give examples of how the capsules were in fact laced and how they might have been put back on the shelves. This fellow had an awful lot of information is the best way to put it, and he seemed like he wanted to be getting credit for that,” Fahner said.
Drummond said there were other suspects, including Laurie Dann of Glencoe, who Winnetka police said shot six children in a school there, one of whom died, and then fled to a nearby home where a man was shot and wounded, before she took her own life during a police standoff in May 1988.
He said investigators also looked years later at Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who grew up in the Chicago-area and is serving a life prison term after federal prosecutors said between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in an attempt to start a revolution by conducting a nationwide bombing campaign.
“What he had done to draw attention to himself, and turns out he hadn’t done anything, but then he thought someone else had turned him in. So he killed somebody. Ends up going to jail for a murder that was unrelated to the Tylenol murders,” Fahner said.
Fahner also said there were copycat crimes including the deaths of a woman in New York, two people in Washington state, and a student at the University of Texas, all in 1986.
Fahner admits he’s worried more copycat crimes could happen, if the Tylenol murderer was found and prosecuted.
"In other words if you would get the perpetrators now, maybe the damage to be done would be the attention drawn to prosecute that person which would then draw other crazies out of the woodwork,” Fahner said.
The Tylenol murders remain unsolved, but Fahner thinks he knows why they happened.
“What caused it? Pure unadulterated hate. The same sort of thing that causes people to strike out these days and throw bombs into marketplaces. People who are unhappy with their own lot or unhappy or are filled with hatred. I don’t think this is anything other than pure meanness and hatred, trying to get even with somebody for whatever wrong had occurred,” Fahner theorized.
As for whether the Tylenol murders will ever be solved, Drummond is doubtful.
"Never in a court of law or in a confession. I don’t think the person who is responsible is going to on his death bed confess. I don’t think they’re going to be able to prove it through a legal system, through a judge and jury, and so on and forth. So I think this is one baby that is going to run unsolved,” Drummond said.
While the lack of an arrest in the Tylenol murders frustrates Fahner and other investigators, he said one positive thing that came out of the tragedy was the response of Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, which is credited with creating the textbook approach to crisis management.
"Because there's been no closure on exactly how the poisonings, how they occurred and actually you know where the tampering actually happened. But from an organizational perspective, you know this, the Tylenol case is really a great example of the appropriate ways for a company to respond to an issue like this. It was very forward thinking of them to say we are going to halt the sale of all these products. We’re going to pull everything off the shelf and to absorb the costs that came along with doing that,” Kennedy said.
Johnson & Johnson spent $100 million to recall a product that was the most successful over the counter pain medication in the U.S., garnering 35 percent of the market in 1981.
"This is, you know, a product that we don't expect to see any deaths. With some other pharmaceuticals that you may take, particularly prescription pharmaceuticals, we know that there's a risk for potential side effects. But hearing about a death from, you know, Tylenol, from an over the counter medication, even one is going to send up the alarm bells, right? So, they’re going to do very quickly some internal analysis to say OK like is this a one off? Are we seeing other issues? Once they see the second one, there are going to be people internally saying alright we need to sound the alarms and figure out what’s going on,” Kennedy noted.
Putting the public's safety over profits would surely send off some alarm bells among investors and in the marketplace. Professor Kennedy said Johnson & Johnson couldn't escape the fallout.
Thirty-seven years later, the investigation into the Tylenol murders continues and the case remains unsolved.