The Tylenol Murders: Still Unsolved After 34 Years

It’s a given today that many grocery store items — medicine, vitamins, orange juice — come with a safety seal. “Do not purchase product if safety seal is not present” is something we’ve become accustomed to reading on our products. You have the Tylenol scare to thank for that.

Thirty-four years ago, however, that was not the case. Closed items at stores just came with a top, and maybe a cotton swab if it was medicine. There were no elaborate seals to prevent anyone from tampering with the product. As recently as 1982, it was deemed unnecessary. People just didn’t do that.

But a three-day scare that centered on Tylenol, the No. 1 nonprescription painkiller in the country, changed the lives of Americans forever.

Seven people died over a three-day span from Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 1982, all collapsing suddenly after ingesting an Extra-Strength Tylenol pill. One of several that were found during an investigation to have been laced with a beyond fatal amount of potassium cyanide.

Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Schaumburg, was the first to die. She collapsed in her bathroom at 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 29 after taking Tylenol to ease the pain from an early morning sickness.

Adam Janus, a 27-year-old postal worker from Arlington Heights, came home early that same day at noon, took two Tylenol and collapsed. His brother Stanley and sister-in-law Theresa both died later that day after taking Tylenol from the same bottle while mourning Adam’s death.

Mary “Lynn” Reiner was at home in Winfield just a week after giving birth to her fourth child when she ingested the poisoned Tylenol.

Mary McFarland, 31, of Elmhurst was working at an Illinois Bell store in Lombard. Paula Prince, a flight attendant for United Airlines, was found dead in her Chicago apartment two days after purchasing Tylenol at a Walgreens nearby.

A multi-agency investigation found the tampered pills to have been sold on shelves at a variety of stores in Chicagoland. They were sold at Jewel Foods, 122 N. Vail in Arlington Heights; Jewel Foods, 948 Grove Mall, Elk Grove Village; Osco Drug Store, Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg where two laced bottles were found; Walgreen Drug Store, 1601 N. Wells, Chicago and Frank’s Finer Foods in Winfield.

A cyanide-laced Tylenol bottle was also found on the shelf of a Dominick’s in Chicago near the Walgreens where McFarland bought her tampered bottle, but a nationwide recall of all Tylenol products was made before that one could be sold.

The string of deaths captured the fear of everyone in Chicagoland, and soon after, the entire nation. The victims could have been anyone. Everyone has been to the grocery store, yet no one could have predicted someone tampering with the product in such an evil way.

Tamper-proof packaging immediately became the norm throughout the United States. Hundreds of people still wouldn’t use not just Tylenol, but any product like it. They were in fear from the Tylenol Murders for years.

And all the questions people had in September of 1982 remain today. The crime has not been solved.
The accepted theory behind the killings has been centered on a “madman” pulling Tylenol bottles from stores, tampering with them and placing them back on the shelves. The suspect profile was a man in his 20s, a loner with some knowledge of science but one who was not successful in life. He may have done it for attention, could have had a vendetta against Tylenol parent Johnson & Johnson or targeted one of the victims and had the others killed to mask the motive of the crime.

Whodunit? The Tylenol Murders Remain One of the Nation's Biggest Unsolved Mysteries

Popular belief is that the killer was James Lewis, the man imprisoned for 13 years for extorting Johnson & Johnson in the time immediately following the deaths. But investigators have never been able to firmly link him to the actual crime. And they have tried for years, interviewing him several times without an attorney present in prison.

Other theories have come and gone as well. Some have suggested it was Laurie Dann, the woman who shot several children at an elementary school in north suburban Winnetka six years after the Tylenol scare. Some have said it could have been “The Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, but most agree the crime did not fit his pattern.

Then-Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner said in a Chicago Magazine article marking the tragedy’s 30th anniversary in 2012 that “hundreds of people” called in the days after the news broke seeking leads and running leads.

“We were getting a lot of wackos calling, saying they did it,” he said.

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But an interesting theory has arisen in recent years, and it is backed by the daughter of one of the crime’s seven victims.

Michelle Rosen, daughter of Mary “Lynn” Reiner, suggests the theory that it wasn’t one “madman” on the loose, but someone involved with Johnson & Johnson.

In a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a film to be made that would request the FBI close the case and unseal documents in connection with the now 30-year-plus investigation, Rosen claims Johnson & Johnson was sent much of the recalled bottles and only tested about 1 percent of them. A short documentary claims the theory of a grocery store “madman” was replayed in the media over and over, and a serious investigation into the possible involvement of Johnson & Johnson never occurred.

“Nothing has come from that (the 'madman' belief) in over 30 years,” Rosen said.

The campaign to raise money for a film generated more than $1,500 from 25 different supporters, but it was deemed unsuccessful by Kickstarter. If the film had been made on this theory, it would have been titled “What really happened?”

When Lewis' house on the East Coast was raided in 2009 and the case was reactivated by authorities, Rosen’s opinion that the “madman” theory was correct changed.

That’s when “the whole lie of this story became so obvious,” she wrote in the campaign memo, pointing out that since the case was officially reopened, the documents from the original investigation would again be sealed.

“I started reading everything I could to get more from reports and news articles — but because the case was reactivated, all of the documents the government held would stay sealed from the public. How convenient. Well, that explains this reactivated case. Raiding someone’s house — innocent or not — and announcing the breakthrough was all the case needed to get an 'active' status and stay sealed.”

A Johnson & Johnson employee, Scott Bartz, wrote in a book titled “The Tylenol Mafia: Marketing, Murder, and Johnson & Johnson,” the real culprit was likely a Johnson & Johnson employee in the repackaging or distribution channel.

“Not one bit of evidence ever supported the store shelf theory except for the only fact that people bought Tylenol and they died,” Bartz wrote.

Author Allan Bryce wrote a play based on this belief.

“What followed was a nationwide panic that altered consumer confidence forever. It stopped the nation in its tracks,” Bryce wrote in describing his work. “But it’s more than that. I discovered a story of evil, corporate villainy, human stupidity and human dignity that took my breath away.”

It was later argued in a family lawsuit with Johnson & Johnson that Reiner purchased her Tylenol from an enclosed pharmacy, which would point to the theory that the pills were poisoned during the distribution process.

But while recent revisionist history points to the company, the story for years had been how Johnson & Johnson reacted smoothly in the face of an unpredictable tragedy targeting one of its most used products.
It was called a perfect public relations response, "Exhibit A in the lesson book on forthright crisis management," according to a New York Times story published in 2010.

A full timeline of events on The Tylenol Murders can be found here via Chicago Magazine

Today, the FBI still has the case open. A local investigation has been turned over to the Arlington Heights Police Department. It was in Arlington Heights where it was first realized that the deaths were not random. All three members of the Janus family who were killed died on the same day in the village.

In investigating the deaths of the three Janus family members, it was an Arlington Heights firefighter who first uttered, “there’s something going on here.”

Helen Jansen, the Arlington Heights village nurse who would later serve as a trustee in the village, was the first to identify Tylenol as the possible culprit. Reports indicate she was the one to point that out to investigators on the night of Sept. 29 when an investigation began at the Janus family home.

There have been several events in American history that some point to as “the day America lost its innocence.” 9/11, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Kent State Massacre are a few.

The Tylenol Murders brought on the much-needed change to ensure the safety of grocery shoppers everywhere. The “Tylenol bill” was passed by Congress in 1983, making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. The Food and Drug Administration also established federal guidelines to make all products tamper-proof after the Tylenol case.

Fahner describes the murders as “the first act of terrorism.”

“In that there was no intended victim, just random victims...Not unlike what happens in the world today when people throw pipe bombs.”

So the Tylenol Murders need to be included in the list of American tragedies that changed the world forever, events that forced Americans to “lose their innocence.”

There’s nothing more “innocent” than shopping for medicine at the local grocery store. In 1982, that process changed forever.

And it came at quite the cost. Seven human lives.