Tylenol Deaths In Chicago

On September 29, 1982, a 12-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman died suddenly after taking a Tylenol, hours later a neighbor named Adam Janus died just after consuming the same medicine that Mary took, then two people from Adams family also died Also for the same reason, as well as 3 more victims. The police did not take long to find out the cause of death of these 7 people, which led to the medicine being mixed with potassium cyanide, which causes respiratory problems in a person when inhaled and can be absorbed by the skin of a person, which means that the Tylenol bottles were manipulated by the factories, but since they were distributed by different factories, it was possible to hear that they were manipulated by the stores themselves since all the deaths were in Chicago.

The manufacturer of Tylenol, immediately eliminated all production letting people know that they should not consume it, after the capsule had been tampered with, decided to offer to replace all the capsules purchased.

Because of this incident, drug tampering became a federal crime.

Johnson & Johnson received several letters from James W. Lewis claiming that he was the one who tampered with the capsules and demanded $1 million to stop.

The police did not find any link of him with the manipulation of the Tylenol's but James was arrested 13 years for extortion and unrelated crimes which indicates that they had no suspects.

After several years, the police received new advice and reviewed the previous evidence, in 2009 they searched for a DNA sample in James's house but found nothing related to what happened.

Unfortunately, none of the new leads have come to fruition and the investigation continues.