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The Chicago Tylenol Murders · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man,
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Speaker 1: the myth legend, our super producer, mister Max over the
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Speaker 1: Counter Williams.
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Speaker 2: Max extra Strength Williams because he's strong, still over the counter.
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Speaker 1: Also sure never seen him under one. Uh that's mister
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Speaker 1: Noel Brown.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been under a counter or two in my day.
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Speaker 1: And I know some accountants they call me Ben Bullen.
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Speaker 1: And this neck of the global woods, we've got a
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Speaker 1: story that honestly may not be appropriate for all listeners,
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Speaker 1: but we do find it fascinating and we can't wait
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Speaker 1: to thank our research associate Dylan for this one. So
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Speaker 1: thank you, Dylan.
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Speaker 2: Yep, big thanks right up front. And it's true this
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Speaker 2: one is a little maybe a little more along the
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Speaker 2: lines of something that you might see us talk about
1:25
Speaker 2: on our sister pod stuff they don't want you to know,
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Speaker 2: but on the true crime side, and does involve bad
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Speaker 2: things happening to young people. So if that's triggering for you,
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Speaker 2: maybe skip this one. But we do think it's an
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Speaker 2: interesting history mystery.
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Speaker 1: And I will note behind the scenes we earlier had
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Speaker 1: a conversation where I realized every disclaimer in a podcast
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Speaker 1: kind of functions like an invitation.
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Speaker 2: You know, but at least you're putting up front and
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Speaker 2: letting the folks do with it what they.
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Speaker 1: Wilst up front, just like that sign at the entrance
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Speaker 1: to the city of dis on the edge of Hell
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Speaker 1: that says, abandon all hope you who enter here. We're
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Speaker 1: going back to September nineteen eighty two, when our super
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Speaker 1: producer and perhaps you yourself, mister Brown, were.
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Speaker 2: Not alive, not quite I was a year. Hence, September
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Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty two, there had been a string of
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Speaker 2: fatalities tied to extra strength til and All. Can we
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Speaker 2: also just say right up front here too, we're not
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Speaker 2: doing a character assassination piece on til and All. They've
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Speaker 2: already gotten bad enough as this given some of the
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Speaker 2: rhetoric coming out of the current administration.
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Speaker 1: Let's just say it plainly, folks, there is no hard
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Speaker 1: scientific evidence that thiland All or nor any of the
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Speaker 1: ingredients included in that brand name over the counter medication
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Speaker 1: would cause autism.
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Speaker 2: But what we do know is that harm was absolutely
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Speaker 2: caused by Thailand, although not in the way you might
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Speaker 2: think it was. It was tampered with and this is
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Speaker 2: also what led to some important regulations around over the
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Speaker 2: counter drug packaging. So Chicago, the Chicago Land area as
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Speaker 2: we love to call it, and locals as well, was
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Speaker 2: in a bit of a panic surrounding these these unfortunate
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Speaker 2: deaths tied to extra strength til and all the rest
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Speaker 2: of the world was paying attention, mind you, in the
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Speaker 2: form of newscasts, trying to see if this was going
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Speaker 2: to be a larger scale issue, if maybe some of
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Speaker 2: this whatever adulterance that made their way into the drugs,
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Speaker 2: the popular drugs, would find their way into their market.
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Speaker 2: So it was a massive pr scandal, and you know
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Speaker 2: the kerfuffle for the Tailanol brand.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was indeed a moral panic up there
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Speaker 1: with the Satanic panic or the sale of witch trials
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Speaker 1: even and uh, what what authorities quickly figure out is
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Speaker 1: that the there are lethal doses of Thailanol branded products.
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Speaker 1: They were consumed by seven victims. But the active ingredient
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Speaker 1: here was not something that I should say, the fatal
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Speaker 1: ingredient was not something that Thailanol purposely included. Instead, uh,
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Speaker 1: the stuff these folks were consuming have been tampered with,
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Speaker 1: and the capsules the little pills. I like saying capsules
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Speaker 1: instead of us as, so say we all max get
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Speaker 1: on board.
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Speaker 2: So we uh.
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Speaker 1: What we found is that these capsules were laced with
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Speaker 1: potassium cyanide, which can be incredibly dangerous to human anatomy
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Speaker 1: in a high enough dose.
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Speaker 2: So ben I mentioned a little bit about packaging and
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Speaker 2: chain es that resulted from this formal event. So what
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Speaker 2: was it that allowed this suspected individual to gain access
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Speaker 2: to these over the counter drugs and put something dangerous
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Speaker 2: in them?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into it. So our story starts with
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Speaker 1: a manufacturer named McNeil Consumer Products. Their providence is back
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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five. They started as McNeil Laboratories. They'd
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Speaker 1: later split into McNeil Consumer Products that's their retail sales,
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Speaker 1: and then McNeil Pharmaceuticals those are their prescription drugs. They
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Speaker 1: first produced tylotol in nineteen fifty five. And it's the
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Speaker 1: name that it's the it's the brand name that they
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Speaker 1: give to the drug, A seed of benefit.
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Speaker 2: Nowzita ceda methodon seed to minofish. Okay, I'm making fun
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Speaker 2: of the President. Have you seen that clip where he
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Speaker 2: couldn't pronounce the word.
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Speaker 1: I'm not given that guy too much time.
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Speaker 2: And not trying to be politically here, but the dude's
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Speaker 2: not great at words. Let's just put it that way.
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Speaker 2: Ceda minifin indeed an analgesic and fever reducing drug, and
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Speaker 2: the company then is acquired in nineteen fifty nine, after
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Speaker 2: you know, having success with someone with a lot of
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Speaker 2: their pharmaceuticals by Johnson and Johnson, who you may have
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Speaker 2: heard of, has their fingers in a lot of different
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Speaker 2: product pies, from shampoos and baby wipes and diapers and
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Speaker 2: things to of course deep in the pharmaceutical, prescription and
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Speaker 2: over the counter industry.
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Speaker 1: Now I've heard of the first Johnson, but I have
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Speaker 1: no idea the second.
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Speaker 2: Second Johnson is a mystery. Nobody knows.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it's the Maybe it's the big Johnson from the
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Speaker 1: T shirts back in the nineties.
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Speaker 2: Did kids wear those at your school? I was always
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Speaker 2: so like made uncomfortable by this.
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Speaker 1: I always I always felt that that their parents were divorced, yeah,
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Speaker 1: or just very permissive.
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Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventy five, Bristol Myers, who you also
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Speaker 2: they're still around this day they find a great deal
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Speaker 2: of success with an over the counter version of a
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Speaker 2: tail and all equivalent called Datrill. And if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
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Speaker 2: at the point we're we're at in history now, Johnson
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Speaker 2: and Johnson still just doing prescription drugs.
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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, they are the ones who when they acquire McNeil,
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Speaker 1: they say, Okay, this branded Aceeda menifin can only be
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Speaker 1: prescribed by a doctor, and our buddies Bristol and Myers
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Speaker 1: say we're going to sell a seed of menifin under
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Speaker 1: this other name, dat Trill.
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Speaker 2: They say nuts to that, and then they clean up,
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Speaker 2: leaving McNeil consumer products in the dust, eating their lunch basically,
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Speaker 2: which causes a reaction, of course, in the form of
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Speaker 2: them releasing a over the counter version branded extra strength
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Speaker 2: Tailan all five hundred milligrams, making it the strongest painter
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Speaker 2: leaver on the market and just eating up thirty four
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Speaker 2: percent of the worldwide market share of the industry.
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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and let's hear Max. Can we get a
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Speaker 1: fast forward? We were the kind of sound cute, great
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Speaker 1: fast forward. It's early in the morning, September twenty ninth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, Chicago Metro Area specifically a suburb called
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Speaker 1: Elk Grove Village. There's a twelve year old kid. Her
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Speaker 1: name is Mary Kellerman. She has been complaining of a
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Speaker 1: sore throat, a running nose. She's not having the best morning.
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Speaker 1: So she gets one dose of this McNeil created extra
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Speaker 1: strength tile and all, and then her parents say, Okay,
8:51
Speaker 1: take a sick day, go back to bed. Mary rest up,
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Speaker 1: And unfortunately it's seven am. Just a little bit later,
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Speaker 1: her parents come in to check on her and she
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Speaker 1: has passed away. So it's an innocent child deceased on
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Speaker 1: the bathroom floor. This makes national headlines, and this is
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Speaker 1: the origin of a moral panic because later that same day,
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Speaker 1: guys September twenty ninth, same day, twenty seven year old
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Speaker 1: postal worker named Adam Janis over in Arlington Heights, Illinois
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Speaker 1: dies and officially, even though he's just twenty seven, authorities
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Speaker 1: and doctors presume he has had a heart attack, which
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Speaker 1: can happen. It can happen, for sure, Ben.
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Speaker 2: But the thing is, you mentioned this idea of a
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Speaker 2: moral panic, and this certainly falls under that in terms
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Speaker 2: of well, everyone's out to kill our children. Now we
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Speaker 2: start to see worries about things like razor blades and
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Speaker 2: candy apples, you know, for trick or treating, and the
10:04
Speaker 2: idea of getting poked with needles in movie theaters, you know. Like,
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Speaker 2: this is a great example of a thing that we
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Speaker 2: see in history numerous times, where in an isolated event,
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Speaker 2: then esteem and interpret it as the order of the day.
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Speaker 1: Right, launches a thousand ships of paranoia and concern. We
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Speaker 1: also launches copycats, let's say, launches copycats. That's true, that's
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Speaker 1: a great point. And we also we don't love the
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Speaker 1: word hysteria because of the etymology associated dispissive.
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Speaker 2: Right of the people, you know, experiencing genuine trauma.
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Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and this this leads us to an horrific
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Speaker 1: chain of events. Our buddy, Adam Janie, has a brother.
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Speaker 1: His brother is named Stanley. He has a sister in
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Speaker 1: law named Teresa. Now Stanley is twenty five years old.
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Speaker 1: His sister in law, Teresa is nineteen. They are also
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Speaker 1: in the Illinois area. They rush home after Adam's death,
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Speaker 1: as you do, to be with the family, and they
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Speaker 1: start getting headaches themselves, Stanley and Teresa. Of course, it's
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Speaker 1: because they're an intensely traumatic situation. So they go to
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Speaker 1: the home medicine cabinet, and they find a bottle of
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Speaker 1: tylodol in their dead relatives home in Adam's home. Later
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Speaker 1: research would verify this was the same bottle of tylodol
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Speaker 1: Adam Janis used when authorities initially assumed he had a
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Speaker 1: fatal heart attack.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. WTTW Chicago reports that there were six capsules missing
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Speaker 2: and there were three people dead. So Helen Johnson, the
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Speaker 2: public health nurse investigating and doing the search, basically realized, Okay,
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Speaker 2: this's got to be something going on with the.
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Speaker 1: Tilol, right, yeah, Because let's all recall that if you
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Speaker 1: buy over the counter tilt hall and over the counter
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Speaker 1: just meaning stuff you can buy without a prescription or
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Speaker 1: off the shelf, really right, right, Yeah, exactly, the bottle
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Speaker 1: is going to have a label that tells you how
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Speaker 1: many capsules or how many doses are in the thing
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Speaker 1: you're buying. So that's how she did the math. And
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Speaker 1: then let's fast forward, not too too much, just a
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Speaker 1: little a little more than two days later, forty eight
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Speaker 1: hours later.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we see three more deaths following Tyland All use
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Speaker 2: from Mary McFarlane thirty one of Elmhurst, Paula prince of
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Speaker 2: this downtown Chicagogs and Mary Reiner twenty seven of the
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Speaker 2: suburb of Winfield. Early October of nineteen eighty two, investigators
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Speaker 2: started connecting the deaths with cyanide poisoning.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we start to see the
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Speaker 1: puzzle pieces come together. So now we look back the authorities,
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Speaker 1: we should say, look back at the death of Adam Jannis,
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Speaker 1: the death of young Mary Kellerman, and they say, hey,
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Speaker 1: this may have a common cause. You know, it is
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Speaker 1: relatively unusual, even in the land of Italian beef and
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Speaker 1: deep dish pizza, for someone to have a heart attack
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Speaker 1: at twenty seven. So let's test for other stuff. And
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Speaker 1: this is where they say there is cyanide poisoning, and
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Speaker 1: everybody involved also took tail.
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Speaker 2: And all cyanide, by the way, exists as a powdery
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Speaker 2: substance with the smell of bitter almonds. You often here
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Speaker 2: referred to in literature like as you know, a sign
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Speaker 2: that someone's been poisoned, they smell bitter almonds. It's incredibly toxic,
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Speaker 2: and dose is as small as a fraction of a
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Speaker 2: teaspoon can cause instant death.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, as little as fifty milligrams. Now police are trying
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Speaker 1: to figure out a chain of custody for the tilanol,
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Speaker 1: which is an obvious order of operations for any investigation here.
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Speaker 1: They say the tampering must have occurred after thailanol left
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Speaker 1: the factory where it's made. So this logically means the
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Speaker 1: perpetrator must have taken thilan all packaging from local grocery
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Speaker 1: and drug stores there in the Chicago metro area and
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Speaker 1: then lace them with this poison, and then repackage them
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Speaker 1: and returned them to the store, hoping that someone would
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Speaker 1: buy them, knowing that someone would buy them honestly. So
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Speaker 1: this leads us to another thing, like, Okay, let's say
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Speaker 1: this way, ridiculous historians, Noel Max, we are Johnson and
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Speaker 1: Johnson and McNeil Consumer pro I mean.
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Speaker 2: The second Johnson. You must be the second Johnson, the mystery,
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Speaker 2: the mysterious Johnson.
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Speaker 1: You're right back, man two Johnson. Appreciate So McNeil Consumer
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Speaker 1: Products and Johnson and Johnson. We know we're in the boardroom.
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Speaker 1: It's a crisis. We know that we don't purposely put
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Speaker 1: cyanide in any of our stuff. How do we respond
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Speaker 1: to this public crisis?
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Speaker 2: Timing was of the essence which comes to play in
15:32
Speaker 2: the title of a pretty important resource on crisis management
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Speaker 2: that had this to say about the title, by the way,
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Speaker 2: is the first twenty four hours a comprehensive guide to
15:43
Speaker 2: successful crisis communication. The time in All Crisis is, without
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Speaker 2: a doubt, the most exemplary case ever known in the
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Speaker 2: history of crisis communications. I guess given them their pats
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Speaker 2: on the back, and any business executive who has ever
15:56
Speaker 2: stumbled into a public relation ambush ought to appreciate the
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Speaker 2: way Johnson and Johnson responded to the Talent All poisonings.
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Speaker 2: They have effectively demonstrated how major business has to handle
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Speaker 2: a disaster. And I would imagine Ben a lot of
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Speaker 2: this has to do with a not trying to sweep
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Speaker 2: it under the rug and be making it into a
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Speaker 2: learning opportunity, you know, and saying, well, okay, this is
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Speaker 2: an industry issue as well. It's not deflecting, but saying
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Speaker 2: this is a matter of these products being too easily
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Speaker 2: tampered with.
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Speaker 1: So what did these guys do? Specifically, Let's give you
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Speaker 1: an anecdote from public relations assistant director for Johnson and Johnson,
16:44
Speaker 1: Robert Andrews. Here's how the entire company learns about this,
16:51
Speaker 1: As Andrews says, quote, we got a call from a
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Speaker 1: Chicago news reporter. He told us that the medical examiner
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Speaker 1: there had just given a press confer people were dying
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Speaker 1: from poison Tylan All. He wanted our comment, and it
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Speaker 1: was the first knowledge we had here in the department.
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Speaker 1: We told him we knew nothing about it. In that
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Speaker 1: first call, we learned more from the reporter than he
17:17
Speaker 1: did from us. And this goes back to again the
17:21
Speaker 1: Berg book. We're talking about the twenty four hour cycle
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Speaker 1: of response for PR. You'll also see that in an
17:28
Speaker 1: Always Sunny and Philadelphia episode about Wolf Cola Boko Haram.
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Speaker 2: This is also not a spot that any PR manager
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Speaker 2: wants to be put in like this is literally, not
17:42
Speaker 2: literally figuratively getting caught with your pants down.
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Speaker 1: You don't have time to hear yes, time to earn
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Speaker 1: that paycheck, my guy, You know what I mean. That's
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Speaker 1: that's crisis management. So this goes straight to the chairman
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Speaker 1: James Burke of Johnson and Johnson as well as the
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Speaker 1: chair of McNeil, David Collins. And so they form a
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Speaker 1: I would say, they form a special operations team of
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Speaker 1: crisis management. Seven members of what they call a strategy team,
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Speaker 1: and their first focus is, as you said, protecting the public.
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Speaker 1: Their second focus as a for profit company is saving
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Speaker 1: the reputation of Tail and all.
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Speaker 2: That's right. I guess a lot of times when we
18:29
Speaker 2: think of PR or crisis management, we think of spin
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Speaker 2: and like, how do we you know, kind of deflect
18:36
Speaker 2: a little bit, But that's not what they do. They
18:38
Speaker 2: notify the US FDA immediately and they then undertake a
18:44
Speaker 2: herculean recall of around thirty one million bottles, which cost
18:48
Speaker 2: the company around two hundred and forty million dollars. They
18:52
Speaker 2: decided to pull advertising for a time while they dealt
18:56
Speaker 2: with this, and they offered a you know, for any
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Speaker 2: information leading to the apprehension or identification of the individual
19:06
Speaker 2: or individuals who were tampering with these products. One hundred
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Speaker 2: thousand dollars was put on the table for that. James
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Speaker 2: Burke spoke to the public frequently through press conferences. He
19:17
Speaker 2: went on sixty Minutes and at the time incredibly popular
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Speaker 2: Phil Donna Hugheship.
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Speaker 1: And again that's James Burke, the chairman of Johnson and Johnson.
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Speaker 1: They also established a call in line, a toll free
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Speaker 1: line for any new companies to receive daily updates on
19:38
Speaker 1: the state of affairs, and they were helping law enforcement
19:42
Speaker 1: try to hunt down the perpetrator because increasingly, as this
19:48
Speaker 1: PR crisis is occurring, increasingly private companies and public investigators
19:56
Speaker 1: are convinced that someone was someone was homicidal, that there
20:04
Speaker 1: was a murderer out in the loose. And so the
20:08
Speaker 1: next question is if we if we know people like
20:12
Speaker 1: this exist, One we have to find them. And two
20:16
Speaker 1: we have to realize that there is still Tilo and
20:20
Speaker 1: All with its original packaging, even despite the recall. It's
20:25
Speaker 1: still out there somewhere. So we have to make sure
20:28
Speaker 1: this cannot happen again. And this is sort of the
20:31
Speaker 1: silver lining of the story.
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Speaker 2: So the ultimate outcome of this drive from Johnson and
20:39
Speaker 2: Johnson to protect the public and also protect their you know, shareholders,
20:43
Speaker 2: And the bottom line was a successful remarketing of extra
20:49
Speaker 2: strength tile and All including and this was kind of
20:53
Speaker 2: a stroke of marketing genius if you think about it,
20:55
Speaker 2: because it ticked both boxes. It protected the public, made
20:58
Speaker 2: that a feature, and it also showed how much they
21:01
Speaker 2: cared and kind of set a new precedent for packaging
21:05
Speaker 2: of pharmaceuticals moving forward, in the tamper proof triple seal
21:10
Speaker 2: packaging that they put front and center in their new marketing.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is why those bottles are purposely inconvenient
21:20
Speaker 1: to unscrew. There's a reason it exists. All other manufacturers
21:25
Speaker 1: started following this queue as a great design. This new
21:29
Speaker 1: packaging was accompanied by a consumer warning, again another thing
21:35
Speaker 1: that became an industry standard. The company also offered any
21:40
Speaker 1: consumer a two dollars and fifty cent coupon toward future
21:45
Speaker 1: purposes if they had to throw away tilet All previously
21:49
Speaker 1: because of the recal and unlike today, they didn't have to.
21:54
Speaker 1: There wasn't a high barrier to proving that they bought
21:57
Speaker 1: a previous tilet All bottle.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there'd be no way to do that. I mean,
22:00
Speaker 2: it was sort of like an honor system thing, and
22:03
Speaker 2: no questions asked, which you gotta you gotta appreciate, you know.
22:06
Speaker 2: And then another important outcome here involves the law, because
22:12
Speaker 2: we know that the gears of you know, the government,
22:15
Speaker 2: tend to grind pretty painfully slowly. But the fallout and
22:20
Speaker 2: then crisis management efforts around this whole thing led to
22:25
Speaker 2: some pretty quick work. When US Congress passed the tail
22:28
Speaker 2: and All bill, piggybacking off of all of that drive
22:32
Speaker 2: for public safety, to protect the public, the Johnson and
22:35
Speaker 2: Johnson did this made it a federal offense to tamper
22:38
Speaker 2: with consumer products. That was an eighty three just a
22:41
Speaker 2: year later from from the events of the Thailand All murders.
22:44
Speaker 2: And then in nineteen eighty nine the FDA followed suit,
22:47
Speaker 2: making it law that manufacturers make all of their products
22:51
Speaker 2: tamper proof.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, which is one of the again I call it
22:55
Speaker 1: the worst best news. It's like when the FD the
22:59
Speaker 1: FDA or cereal manufacturers say, okay, we've got a new law.
23:04
Speaker 1: There's going to be only zero point two percent rat
23:07
Speaker 1: feces maximum in your raisin brand. Hey, you're like, well,
23:11
Speaker 1: thank you, But also how much rat feces was in
23:15
Speaker 1: there before?
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Speaker 2: No more poisoning the tail and a Yes.
23:19
Speaker 1: New announcement over the counter pain relievers are no longer
23:25
Speaker 1: going to murder you. We've decided. We've also made the
23:29
Speaker 1: bottles the kind of things that you know, hopefully make
23:35
Speaker 1: it difficult for poisoners to contamony.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well to do it quickly and effectively. And I
23:40
Speaker 2: mean even if you were to get the top off
23:44
Speaker 2: it's so fiddly that you probably get noticed and be
23:47
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be able to do it at scale with
23:49
Speaker 2: any kind of precision, and then the consumer would always be,
23:52
Speaker 2: you know, clued in that someone had messed with it
23:55
Speaker 2: by that sort of aluminum you know, air tight seal
23:58
Speaker 2: that needs to make a little tupperware burp sound when
24:00
Speaker 2: you when you get rid of him.
24:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, the that that seal, you know, that pop we're
24:06
Speaker 1: talking about is arguably even more important than the tamper
24:10
Speaker 1: proof cap. So at this point we already shared that
24:16
Speaker 1: there has been no one officially convicted of these seven
24:21
Speaker 1: heinous murders. However, as our pal Dylan found, there are
24:27
Speaker 1: at least three suspects. Maybe we start with Kevin Masterson.
24:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we'll breeze through some of these and get
24:35
Speaker 2: to our prime suspect. Kevin Masterson was thirty five from Lombard, Illinois,
24:41
Speaker 2: had a grudge against a grocery chain because of a
24:45
Speaker 2: shoplifting incident that had occurred back in seventy five involving
24:48
Speaker 2: his ex wife. She was roughed up by store security,
24:53
Speaker 2: and he blames this event on the dissolution or the
24:57
Speaker 2: deterioration of their marriage. It seems like, I don't know, man,
25:00
Speaker 2: that doesn't seem like a cool thing to have happened
25:03
Speaker 2: to somebody, especially if she was innocent. But he's projecting
25:06
Speaker 2: there a little bit, I would argue, right. Police ultimately
25:09
Speaker 2: took a look at Masterson because of his known frustrations
25:13
Speaker 2: and grudge beef with the grocery chain and the fact
25:16
Speaker 2: that lethal doses of les talamal were purchased from this
25:20
Speaker 2: chain of stores.
25:21
Speaker 1: From jewel Osco. And keep in mind Vokes for the
25:24
Speaker 1: context of the day here in the early eighties, the
25:28
Speaker 1: police are now on the hook of public opinions, so
25:31
Speaker 1: they have to find find someone. Yeah, and there's this
25:35
Speaker 1: nationwide manhunt, very expensive one as a result, to find
25:40
Speaker 1: Kevin Masterson. It lasts for about a month, for about
25:44
Speaker 1: four weeks, until he peacefully turns himself in at the
25:49
Speaker 1: an FBI office in Los Angeles, and they say, well,
25:53
Speaker 1: where the heck were you for a month, And he says,
25:57
Speaker 1: I got super frightened. You know you guys are the FBI.
26:02
Speaker 1: I heard you were after me, and I said, I'm
26:05
Speaker 1: gonna go off the grid, so I've been living in
26:07
Speaker 1: my car in the desert. They take him in right,
26:12
Speaker 1: and he is incarcerated briefly and he has a huge breakdown.
26:17
Speaker 1: This is the worst moment of his life, even after
26:20
Speaker 1: his you know, divorce, which is a horrible time for
26:23
Speaker 1: a lot of people. He is throwing stuff around in
26:27
Speaker 1: his cell. He is smearing, he's literally smearing his poop
26:32
Speaker 1: on the wall.
26:33
Speaker 2: Yikes. Yeah, they put in the hole. Yeah, well, all
26:36
Speaker 2: of this because he's absolutely sick of being referred to
26:40
Speaker 2: as the Tail and All Killer by other rights.
26:42
Speaker 1: Right, so they put him in the hole in solitary confinement.
26:47
Speaker 1: He's having this meltdown because everybody is treating him like
26:51
Speaker 1: he did this, And ultimately police go through his apartment.
26:56
Speaker 1: They find what they describe as disturbing letters ind gelatine
27:01
Speaker 1: capsules that would be used for making illicit drugs. But
27:05
Speaker 1: they don't see any Tail and All branding on these
27:09
Speaker 1: caps which means that ultimately he might be involved with
27:14
Speaker 1: some nefarious stuff, but he is not our Tail and
27:17
Speaker 1: All Killer, which brings us to the next suspect on
27:21
Speaker 1: the list.
27:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy Masterson seemed like a dude struggling with
27:25
Speaker 2: some mental health issues and having a bit of a crisis,
27:28
Speaker 2: and he got swept up In this Roger Arnold is
27:31
Speaker 2: our next potential suspect. Even more interesting, actually, the forty
27:35
Speaker 2: eight year old doc worker for Jewel Grocery and Melrose Park,
27:40
Speaker 2: whose wife was under psychiatric care at Central du Page Hospital,
27:44
Speaker 2: which also was coincidentally, it would seem, the same hospital
27:49
Speaker 2: that Mary Reiner gave birth her fourth child just days
27:52
Speaker 2: before her death, also was located across from Fran Foods,
27:57
Speaker 2: which is where she purchased her lethal bottle of tonnel.
28:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and ultimately Arnold gets word that the police are
28:07
Speaker 1: after him because a bartender bar owner over in Lincoln
28:12
Speaker 1: Park says, hey, coops, Arnold has openly or Roger, who
28:19
Speaker 1: must have been a regular there, has openly told other
28:22
Speaker 1: patrons that he bought a bunch of cyanide just six
28:27
Speaker 1: months earlier. Like he was hanging out with his pals
28:31
Speaker 1: at the joint and he was saying, you guys know
28:34
Speaker 1: what I buy cyanide. And ever since he told that story,
28:40
Speaker 1: tall tale were true, we don't know he had been.
28:44
Speaker 1: In the opinion of the bar folks there, he had
28:47
Speaker 1: been acting anxious, squarely and strange. So the police still
28:51
Speaker 1: on this man hunt, they search his apartment. It's October eleventh,
28:55
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and they fired a bunch of stuff,
29:00
Speaker 1: pretty much all the guns, all the AMMO tons, knives,
29:04
Speaker 1: and implements of violence, some of anarchist cookbook type materials. Yeah,
29:10
Speaker 1: books on various nefarious activities. I was also going to
29:14
Speaker 1: mention anarchist cookbook. I don't want to loop it in
29:17
Speaker 1: too much with this, but yeah, it's on the money.
29:21
Speaker 1: One of the books in particular was called The poor
29:23
Speaker 1: Man's James Bond, which just I have a copy, but
29:29
Speaker 1: just know you're going to get on a list depending
29:31
Speaker 1: on how you acquire it, because it tells you how
29:34
Speaker 1: to do very bad things in very easy, step by
29:39
Speaker 1: step instruction format.
29:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also had a bunch of lab equipment, beakers
29:45
Speaker 2: and glassware and all that kind of stuff. So after
29:47
Speaker 2: refusing to take a light detector tests us and aggressively
29:50
Speaker 2: maintaining his innocence, he was, however, able to escape conviction
29:54
Speaker 2: on these charges, only to get swept up in some
29:58
Speaker 2: other chaos of his own about seven months later, when
30:02
Speaker 2: he was charged with the murder of a man in
30:04
Speaker 2: a Chicago bar who he believed originally is the one
30:07
Speaker 2: who tipped off the police, saying that he was the
30:12
Speaker 2: tailant all murderer.
30:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, he came and found the guy that he thought
30:17
Speaker 1: told law enforcement he was buying a bunch of poison.
30:21
Speaker 2: So the guy also seemed mentally unwell.
30:23
Speaker 1: Just gonna say he seems not an honors student. He
30:28
Speaker 1: gets charged with thirty years in prison, he serves fifteen.
30:33
Speaker 1: He passes away in two thousand and eight. He has gone.
30:37
Speaker 1: He is not considered our prime suspect. One of our
30:46
Speaker 1: long standing prime suspects. As we're wrapping up the show
30:49
Speaker 1: here today is a guy named James Lewis, and our
30:53
Speaker 1: research associate Dylan points out that this guy has the
30:58
Speaker 1: IOJ Simpson esque I didn't do it, but if I
31:01
Speaker 1: did kind of vibe.
31:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you'll see why. First came onto law enforcement's
31:08
Speaker 2: radar after sending a ransom letter asking for a million
31:13
Speaker 2: bucks extorting Johnson and Johnson, claiming that this payoff would
31:18
Speaker 2: would trigger an end to these killings. Right. He's always denied, however,
31:25
Speaker 2: having any role in the killings and had a real
31:28
Speaker 2: wacky explanation for why he sent the letter.
31:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so walk with us here. This is a
31:35
Speaker 1: little bit Rube Goldberg esque. He says he committed extortion
31:41
Speaker 1: against Johnson and Johnson to get back at his wife's employer,
31:47
Speaker 1: Lakeside Travel, because her paycheck bounced. When he gets incarcerated
31:53
Speaker 1: for the extortion, which he definitely did, he goes to
31:57
Speaker 1: the FBI or they come to him in the entil
32:00
Speaker 1: irrigation room and he says, look, I didn't do it,
32:05
Speaker 1: but if I were to do it, here's how I
32:09
Speaker 1: would tamper with extra strength tile it all. Guys, I
32:14
Speaker 1: call this the drill Boyd method.
32:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. This is this is a This is
32:18
Speaker 2: a tricky one. I'm trying to fully wrap my head
32:21
Speaker 2: around this. I'm looking at an image. Okay, I do see.
32:25
Speaker 2: Now this requires taking the pills home and doing this,
32:29
Speaker 2: like you know, under controlled circumstances. Right. He made a
32:34
Speaker 2: drawing where he demonstrated that someone could drill holes into
32:37
Speaker 2: a piece of plywood a bit of a contraption, is
32:40
Speaker 2: what Jeremy Margolis referred to it as, putting the bottom
32:42
Speaker 2: capsules into the holes, putting cyanide on the top, scraping
32:48
Speaker 2: it across to make clean up, make it a clean line,
32:51
Speaker 2: I guess, with the bread knife with a bread knife,
32:54
Speaker 2: and then removing any excess and then putting the tops
32:57
Speaker 2: of the capsules back on, so you would be adding
33:00
Speaker 2: a layer of the stuff into the kalent all gel
33:04
Speaker 2: cap Yeah, which is so here's why this is fascinating.
33:09
Speaker 2: So first off, this is pro level stuff. I'm just
33:13
Speaker 2: gonna be honest. It's so pro level that to do this,
33:20
Speaker 2: most people would not go to the trouble unless they
33:23
Speaker 2: were specifically targeting someone, right, a particular individual, as Idiocracy says.
33:31
Speaker 2: So this is a lot of work for the idea
33:34
Speaker 2: of killing random menacent people you want to target if
33:40
Speaker 2: you're going to put in this amount of effort. So
33:42
Speaker 2: a lot of investigators, now professional, amateur, private, they see
33:48
Speaker 2: Lewis as the prime suspect because of his criminal past,
33:52
Speaker 2: because of his explanation, and also because of the death
33:57
Speaker 2: of his five year old daughter.
34:00
Speaker 1: Tony Ann.
34:01
Speaker 2: He blamed the company.
34:04
Speaker 1: He blames Johnson and Johnson for her death because he
34:08
Speaker 1: believes that medication the company manufactured caused her expiration, caused
34:15
Speaker 1: her demise.
34:16
Speaker 2: Quite the motive, one might argue.
34:18
Speaker 1: Cinematic, right, but then also, why is that not the
34:22
Speaker 1: story he gave originally?
34:25
Speaker 2: Well, we're talking about the story about the wife, his
34:28
Speaker 2: wife's company on blast for a bounced check.
34:32
Speaker 1: Right, So also law enforcement. It's clear we've all seen
34:38
Speaker 1: things like law and order authorities here in the United
34:42
Speaker 1: States are going to treat you very differently if you
34:45
Speaker 1: have priors, if you have what we call a jacket.
34:48
Speaker 1: So he has a complicated criminal pass including attempted murder.
34:56
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty six, his own optive mother. He came
35:01
Speaker 1: at her with an axe in Missouri. They put him
35:04
Speaker 1: in a mental hospital. This guy was never, you know,
35:10
Speaker 1: the leader of the Kawanis Club.
35:12
Speaker 2: Just over a decade later, in nineteen seventy eight, he
35:15
Speaker 2: was accused of an actual murder and dismemberment of an
35:18
Speaker 2: elderly man that he suspected of having defrauded him in
35:21
Speaker 2: some way in Kansas City.
35:24
Speaker 1: And so fast forward, as we said, he goes to
35:26
Speaker 1: prison for extortion. He serves ten years, he's released on
35:31
Speaker 1: October of nineteen ninety five, and then if we fast
35:36
Speaker 1: forward a decade later, in two thousand and four, he
35:40
Speaker 1: is charged with sexual assault, with rape and kidnapping in
35:46
Speaker 1: a case that's eventually dropped. Yeah, real piece of work.
35:51
Speaker 2: He did an interview on CBS in nineteen eighty four
35:54
Speaker 2: that you can actually find there's a really great piece
35:57
Speaker 2: that Dylan linked us to a CBS News d dive
36:00
Speaker 2: I guess based on some of the reporting around the time,
36:03
Speaker 2: and it has a clip from this interview, and it
36:06
Speaker 2: has all of the court documents, one hundred and seventy
36:09
Speaker 2: three pages of them. But the interesting thing that I found,
36:12
Speaker 2: or a part that I found interesting, is the argument
36:15
Speaker 2: that Lewis makes is that the letter he sent was
36:17
Speaker 2: totally fine because it didn't it's not illegal. He says,
36:22
Speaker 2: to send a letter like this if you don't have intent,
36:25
Speaker 2: And there is no way that he could have had
36:26
Speaker 2: any intent because the bank account he was requesting the
36:29
Speaker 2: payment be placed in was a closed bank account and
36:33
Speaker 2: it was a Continental Illinois Bank account that he didn't
36:35
Speaker 2: have access to anymore.
36:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again the issue I go back to is
36:40
Speaker 1: the drill board method. Totally that's not public knowledge. So
36:44
Speaker 1: if it's possible that interrogators were prompting him and sort
36:50
Speaker 1: of guiding him to say those things, but if he
36:52
Speaker 1: says that unprompted, if he already knows how it works,
36:58
Speaker 1: that's a very dangerous person.
37:00
Speaker 2: And they have.
37:03
Speaker 1: They have a dark education, which most people don't possess.
37:07
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and nine. As we're saying, the
37:10
Speaker 1: FBI is still interested in this guy. They go back
37:14
Speaker 1: to his domicile, they get more boxes of evidence, and
37:19
Speaker 1: in September of twenty twenty two, he is interviewed by
37:24
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Investigation one last time before he
37:28
Speaker 1: passes away. In twenty twenty three, the Chicago Thailand all
37:34
Speaker 1: murders remain unsolved. But again, I want to go back
37:38
Speaker 1: to the silver lining. It led to tamper proof bottles,
37:44
Speaker 1: which should have already been a thing for everything I
37:48
Speaker 1: don't want.
37:49
Speaker 2: The more you know, I guess, yeah, the more you know.
37:53
Speaker 1: And this is our episode for today. Thank you as always,
37:58
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians for two in thanks to our super
38:01
Speaker 1: producer Max over the Counter Williams, and thanks to our
38:05
Speaker 1: research associate Dylan Wade Clark.
38:08
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to Alex Williams who can post our theme.
38:11
Speaker 2: Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff Cotes here in spirit, Jonas Strickling,
38:14
Speaker 2: the Quizzer, aj Bahamas Jacobs, the Puzzler.
38:16
Speaker 1: Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance our fellow rude dudes over
38:21
Speaker 1: a Ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them.
38:25
Speaker 1: And also, just by the way, folks, recently we learned
38:30
Speaker 1: it was World Kindness Day. I want to say on
38:33
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38:38
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Speaker 1: our boss text us and says, one more day. I
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Speaker 1: still don't know what he.
39:01
Speaker 2: Means by that. I don't either. Yeah, hey, you know
39:04
Speaker 2: what I man one day at a time. Happy to
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