Was James Lewis The Tylenol Killer? The Chilling True Story Behind Netflix's Docuseries
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders
Four decades after the Tylenol murders caused mass panic in Chicago and across the country, Netflix's new docuseries Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is revisiting the unsolved case. What happened in one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history, and why has justice never been served?
In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died under the same mysterious circumstances: they had all taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. After testing, each of the capsules was found to be laced with potassium cyanide at toxic levels high enough to provide 'thousands of fatal doses,' Time Magazine reported.
News of the poisoned capsules sparked fear among the six million residents of the Chicago area. Health officials quickly advised the public to stop using the over-the-counter medication, and authorities went door-to-door warning residents of the potential danger.
From directors Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines, Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders dives into the 'shocking theories and evidence, looks at new testimonies, and even gets inside the mind of a key suspect,' according to Netflix's Tudum.
Read on for a deeper dive into the Tylenol Murders, including who the victims were, the main person of interest James Lewis, and what happened to Johnson & Johnson during the investigation.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders
The first victim was 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, whose parents gave her Tylenol after she complained of a cold. She died just hours later. Postal worker Adam Janus died later that morning after taking the pills for chest pain. While mourning his death, Adam's brother, Stanley, and Stanley's wife, Theresa, who were both suffering from headaches, also took Tylenol and died later that day.
Another victim was 27-year-old Mary Reiner, who had just returned home after giving birth to her first child. Paula Prince, a 35-year-old United Airlines flight attendant, was also found dead in her apartment with an open Tylenol bottle nearby. Paramedics said there was so much cyanide on her lips that anyone who tried to resuscitate her might have been poisoned as well.
The seventh victim was 31-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, who collapsed at work after taking Tylenol for a headache. A pathologist's test found cyanide in her blood, the New York Times reported at the time.
The Netflix documentary notes that there could be more victims, as cyanide tests are rarely included in a standard autopsy toxicology screen unless there is a specific reason to suspect poisoning. For example, if an elderly person had ingested cyanide, the cause of death might have been harder to detect.
American businessman and CEO of Johnson and Johnson, James Burke, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1981. ... More (Photo by Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images)
In the early days of the investigation, Johnson & Johnson executives feared they might bear some responsibility for the murders, according to the Netflix docuseries. At the time, Tylenol was the pharmaceutical company's most profitable product. Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fahner, who was interviewed in the series, recalled telling Johnson & Johnson to stop selling Tylenol – prompting what would become the largest product recall in history.
While testing the contents of the Tylenol bottles, investigators noticed that some capsules had brown rings forming at the ends, evidence of cyanide corrosion. It became clear that the capsules had been pulled apart, emptied of their medicine, and refilled with cyanide.
It was also revealed that the contaminated pills came from two different manufacturing plants, one in suburban Philadelphia and the other in Texas. After both facilities showed no evidence of cyanide tampering, investigators began to suspect that someone had tampered with the capsules after they reached store shelves. The tainted Tylenol bottles had been sold at various drugstores across the Chicago area.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders
Police had no major investigative leads, no connections between the victims, no witnesses, and no clear motive until October 6, 1982. Seven days after the murders, Johnson & Johnson received an extortion letter threatening that more people would be poisoned if certain demands were not met. The letter demanded that $1 million be deposited into an account at Chicago's Continental Bank or a second wave of killings would follow.
Investigators believed the person who wrote the letter was likely involved, as he demonstrated specific knowledge about poison and how it works. The bank account was linked to a travel agency called Lakeside Travel, owned by Fred Miller McCahey, a wealthy businessman. McCahey told authorities he had recently gotten into a dispute with a volatile man named Robert Richardson, the husband of one of his employees, Nancy Richardson.
Employees at the travel agency noted that the handwriting on the extortion letter resembled Robert's. Handwriting experts later confirmed that it was identical. After Robert and Nancy fled, authorities attempted to track him down using a photo published alongside an article he had written for the Chicago Tribune. Investigators also noted that he resembled the man seen in surveillance footage from the store where Mary McFarland had purchased the lethal Tylenol, per Cold Case.
James Lewis in "Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders."
David Barton, a former sergeant with the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department, recalled seeing a photo of Richardson on the news and immediately sensing something was off. 'I looked at the picture, and I immediately recognized him, jumped up off the couch and said, 'Goddam it, that's not Robert Richardson,'' Barton told Netflix. 'That's not Robert Richardson… that's James Lewis.'
Lewis, a tax consultant, became the police's prime suspect in the Tylenol murders. He also had a criminal history. In 1978, Lewis was charged with murder in Kansas City after police discovered the dismembered remains of one of his former clients, Raymond West, in bags in his attic.
Authorities also found a forged check that Lewis tried to cash from West's account. However, charges were dropped after a judge ruled that the search of Lewis' home was illegal, according to Time.com. In 2004, he was charged with rape and kidnapping, but the case was dropped.
Lewis was interviewed for Netflix's docuseries, where he denied any involvement in the crimes. "They make it look like I'm the world's most horrible, dangerous person ever... and I wouldn't hurt anybody," Lewis said.
Lewis was convicted of extortion for the letter and spent more than 12 years in federal prison. 'I did not consider it an extortion letter because I did not actually have access to making any money from that letter,' he told Netflix.
Although officials found drafts of extortion letters in James Lewis's home, along with a book about poisonings, tying him directly to the Tylenol murders was difficult. He was never charged with the killings because authorities could not confirm that he was in the Chicago area during the murders. He had reportedly taken an Amtrak train to New York City and was staying in a hotel there, but police couldn't prove that he returned to Chicago.
The FBI reopened the investigation in early 2009 and continued to focus on Lewis. They searched his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a nearby storage unit he had rented. According to CBS News, in September 2022, members of the task force returned to Boston to re-interview him.
Lewis passed away in 2023.
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 17: The Johnson & Johnson logo is displayed at company offices on ... More October 17, 2023 in Irvine, California. Johnson & Johnson beat Wall Street's quarterly revenue and earnings estimates as sales in its pharmaceutical and medical devices businesses grew. (Photo by)
Johnson & Johnson has denied that there was any chance their pills could have been tampered with at their factories, claiming that no cyanide was used in their facilities. However, as the documentary reveals, that turned out to be false.
'Cyanide is present and is used in crucial tests of the Tylenol,' former New York Times pharmaceutical reporter Gardiner Harris said in the series. He also pointed out that the company did most of the investigating themselves, even though they seemed to have 'every season to hide the extent of the contamination problems.'
The documentary reveals that potassium cyanide was used it a quality control tests of Tylenol and was found in the vicinity of where the pills were assembled.
In 1988, a court ruled that Johnson & Johnson wasn't liable for Diane Elsroth's death. The families of the Chicago victims also sued the company in 1983, claiming that the Johnson & Johnson knew that their bottles ould be tampered with. Johnson & Johnson settled the suit in 1991 and agreed to pay an undisclosed sum without admitting liability.
"Though there is no way we could have anticipated a criminal tampering with our product or prevented it, we wanted to do something for the families and finally get this tragic event behind us," Robert Kniffin, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said at the time.
Bruce Pfaff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the agreement 'a very favorable settlement for my clients.' Several of the families were seeking between $10 million and $15 million for wrongful death, pain and suffering, and funeral expenses, according to The New York Times.
A worker checks the newly implemented safety seals on Tylenol bottles shortly after the company's ... More re-release of Tylenol capsules in 1982. A few months earlier, a Chicago man poisoned Tylenol with cyanide, killing several people. | Location: Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, USA. (Photo by �� Leif Skoogfors/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Johnson & Johnson was ultimately able to successfully re-launch Tylenol after the scare. The company overhauled its manufacturing process and introduced three separate safety seals to Tylenol packaging. First was an outer box with glued flaps. Second, a tight plastic neck seal covering the cap and neck of the bottle. And finally, a strong inner foil seal placed over the mouth of the bottle.
Four years after the original murders, on February 8, 1986, Diane Elsroth of Yonkers, New York, died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that were found to contain cyanide, even though the bottle had a triple safety seal. Johnson & Johnson claimed at the time that someone had penetrated all the seals, resecured them, and returned the bottles to the shelf.
The Netflix documentary reported that two additional triple-sealed bottles of Tylenol were also found to contain the poison. Ultimately, the Westchester District Attorney was able to determine where the pills had been tampered with.
In the aftermath of the Tylenol poisonings, other pharmaceutical and food companies began implementing tamper-proof seals and safety indicators during the manufacturing process. These changes significantly reduced the number of copycat incidents.
'Before 1982, nobody thought twice about opening a bottle of painkillers,' Guendelman and Pines told Tudum. 'Today, every tamper-proof seal is a reminder of that dark moment — when cyanide-laced capsules transformed an everyday medicine into a murder weapon, permanently reshaping consumer industries."
Watch the official trailer for Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders below.
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