Tylenol Crisis Recalled 38 Years Later Amid New Halloween In Flux

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL — The coronavirus pandemic was 38 years into the future in 1982, when public fear enveloped the Halloween season, much as it has this year.

Like now, communities across the country banned trick-or-treating in 1982 but for a much different reason: the Tylenol killings, a spree of poisonings that left seven people in the Chicago area dead.

The three-day span from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 marks the 38th anniversary of the Tylenol case, which has been called one of the world’s most puzzling unsolved crimes.

As cities and towns across the country ban trick-or treating and others debate whether to move forward amid the coronavirus pandemic, a local Patch editor recalls another time when Halloween was in jeopardy due to fears surrounding current events.

Caren Lissner, now an editor for the Hoboken, New Jersey Patch, remembers surviving the “sugarless Halloween” of 1982.

“I remember a chilling sign on a door saying ‘Sorry, too dangerous” with a sad face in the ‘O’ in sorry,” Lissner said. “Other houses kept all their lights off.”

The killer removed bottles of Tylenol capsules from store shelves, filled them with cyanide and placed the tampered bottles back on the shelves. The cyanide-laced capsules caused the deaths of 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Mary Reiner of Winfield, Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Paula Prince of Chicago, and Adam, Stanley and Teresa Janus of Arlington Heights.

The case led to required, widespread tamper-proof packaging on retail products. No one was ever charged with the crime.

The JFK assassination, 9/11, the Kent State Massacre and maybe a handful of other major events in American history have been mentioned as times when the country itself “lost its innocence.”

The Tylenol case had the same effect.

“It was when we lost our innocence,” Helen Jensen, a retired nurse who responded to three of the 1982 poisoning deaths, told Patch on the 35th anniversary of the case in 2017. “The first act of terrorism.”

Jensen was the first person to suspect tainted Tylenol bottles were to blame for the deaths of the three members of the Janus family in Arlington Heights, a suburb about 25 miles northwest of Chicago.

Johnson & Johnson, maker of Tylenol, has received praise for its handling of the public relations crisis behind the poisonings. The company’s response has been referred to as the “gold standard” of the industry.

Executives for the drug company had immediately issued a national recall of about 31 million bottles of the over-the-counter pain reliever and went on the offensive to inform the public of the deaths.

PRweek.com has called it the “perfect crisis response.” The response is still taught at colleges and universities nationwide as an example of how best to handle a public relations crisis.

Johnson & Johnson has not returned requests from Patch for comment on the case.

The Tylenol case remains an open investigation at the Arlington Heights Police Department. The FBI had been the major investigating body for several years, only recently transferring it to the local police department.

"This is an open, active investigation," Miguel Hernandez, Arlington Heights’ former deputy police chief, told Patch in 2016. “There are suspects.”

James Lewis, the man who served 12 years in prison for extortion in connection with the case, has long been investigated in the case. He was convicted for writing a letter to Johnson & Johnson claiming he was the Tylenol killer and demanding $1 million in exchange for not poisoning anyone else.

In 2009, Lewis’ Massachusetts home was raided by FBI agents in connection with the case. A year later, Lewis denied being the Tylenol killer in an ABC News interview, saying he feels for the victims “every day.”

Another name that has come up in the investigation is Ted Kaczynski, known widely as “The Unabomber.” Kaczynski, convicted in a series of bombings that killed three people over a 10-year period, offered to provide a DNA sample to FBI agents working the Tylenol case in 2011, but only if the FBI canceled an auction they had planned involving Kaczynski’s items.

The FBI went through with the auction and Kaczynski’s DNA was not turned over.

“There wasn’t any evidence to pin it on anyone then, and there still hasn’t been any evidence to pin it on anyone,” Richard Brzeczek, Chicago Police Department superintendent in 1982, said in a Retro Report video.

“It was the perfect crime.”

Still, police in Arlington Heights are hopeful the Tylenol killings won’t go unsolved forever.

"The case is still open," Nathan Hayes, Arlington Heights’ deputy police chief in 2018, told Patch. "We are hoping to make an arrest and bring justice to the victims and their families"

The commander working the case in 2020 was not available for comment on the 38th anniversary of the killings. Other Arlington Heights police officials were reached, but unable to provide an update on the case.