The Tylenol Scare of 1982
On September 29, 1982, a twelve year-old girl by the name of Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove, Illinois woke up with a sore throat and runny nose. By 7 a.m., she was dead.
Later that day, a twenty-seven year-old postal worker named Adam Janus from Arlington Heights, Illinois also died. His brother Stanley, 25, and sister-in-law Theresa, 19, of Lisle, rushed to his home to comfort his grieving family. Stanley died later that day and Theresa, two days later.
Within the next few days, Mary McFarland of Elmhurst; Paula Prince of Chicago; and Mary Reiner of Winfield all died in similar incidents.
Unexpected. Unexplained. Unnerving.
The deaths, although seemingly unrelated, were all similar, with the victims mimicking symptoms of a heart attack. But Kellerman, for one, was only 12 years old. Was there some kind of new virulent pandemic on the horizon? Paramedics who had responded to the Janus incident, disturbing in its multiple deaths within the same home within a matter of hours, were quarantined out of caution.
An off-duty fireman, Lieutenant Cappitelli, was listening to a police radio in his home and immediately became concerned, especially when his mother-in-law, a friend of the Kellermans, came home in tears over the death of Mary. He phoned another fireman, Mr. Keyworth, who was also listening to a police radio from his own home in Elk Grove, Village. Both firemen called their stations, where colleagues read them reports of the deaths. They were flabbergasted by the only common word within each report:
Mary’s father Dennis had given her Tylenol at 6:30 a.m. By 7 a.m., she was unconscious on the floor of her bathroom. Paramedics were unable to revive her.
Adam Janus had stayed home from work because he had felt like he was getting a cold. When he went to pick up his kids from preschool, he stopped to get some Tylenol. He came home, they had some lunch, after which he said he was going to take two Tylenol and lie down. A couple of minutes later, he came staggering into the kitchen and collapsed. He, too, was unable to be revived. Later that day, as his family grieved together back at Adam’s house, his brother Stanley, who suffered from chronic back pain, and his wife Theresa, who was fighting a headache, both took Tylenol from the same bottle. They, two, both collapsed and died.
At an Illinois Bell store in Lombard, Mary McFarland told her coworkers she had a bad headache. She retreated to the break room, took two Tylenol, and collapsed within minutes.
After landing at O’Hare from Las Vegas, Paula Prince, a flight attendant with United Airlines, stopped at a Walgreens to buy some Tylenol. Her body was discovered in her apartment two days later.
Mary Reiner had recently given birth to her fourth child. Fighting pain and feeling unwell, she took some Tylenol and collapsed, dying just hours later.
Tylenol. Tylenol. Tylenol. Tylenol. Tylenol. Tylenol. Tylenol.
Seven people with unexplained death. The only thread tying them together? The most common and widely used pain reliever on the market.
It couldn’t be the Tylenol.
Could it?
Thomas Kim, medical director of Northwest Community Hospital’s intensive care unit, who had been present to assist with the Janus deaths, was puzzled. The only thing he could come up with for the symptoms he had witnessed was cyanide. But it was both improbably and unlikely. How would a postal worker and his brother come in contact cyanide? Even though he didn’t really expect it to yield any answers, he had the victim’s bloods tested for cyanide. When he got the reports back, he could hardly believe it: Janus’s blood revealed a massive amount of cyanide. Over 1,000 times more than a lethal dose.
Meanwhile, investigators, grasping for straws, gathered up all the other over-the-counter medication in the Janus and Kellerman homes. Although nothing looked out the ordinary, Investigator Nick Pishos with the Cook County medical examiner’s office noticed that the control numbers on the bottles of Tylenol were the same. He called Deputy Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue, who told him to open the bottles and smell them. Again, nothing looked out of the ordinary. However, Pishos did notice one peculiar thing. Both bottles of pills smelled like almonds.
It was in that moment that both Pishos and Donoghue knew.
The source of the cyanide was Tylenol.
Warnings were then issued via the media and patrols using loudspeakers, warning residents throughout the Chicago metropolitan area to discontinue use of Tylenol products, of which there were currently over 31 million units on shelves. Because the tainted capsules were found to have been manufactured at two different locations – Pennsylvania and Texas – police believed the capsules were tampered with after the product had been placed on store shelves for sale.
Someone was deliberately trying to poison people.
Contaminated containers were eventually discovered in several more stores throughout the great Chicago area, although all had–thankfully–been unpurchased and unconsumed. Unfortunately, copycat attacks erupted across the United States in the months that followed, resulting in the deaths of several more people. A few of these cases were solved. The Chicago murders, however, despite several possible suspects, were not. The murders remain some of the most senseless, cruel, and terrifying in history.
There were, however, several positive changes to come about because of these heinous crimes. Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, introduced new tamper-proof packaging, which included foil seals and other features that made it obvious to a consumer if the bottle had been altered. These packaging protections soon became the industry standard for all over-the-counter medications. The company also did away with capsules, which were easy to contaminate as a foreign substance could be placed inside without obvious signs of tampering, and replaced them with “caplets” — a tablet coated with slick, easy-to-swallow gelatin but far harder to tamper with.
In 1983, Congress passed what was called “the Tylenol bill,” making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. In 1989, the FDA established federal guidelines for manufacturers to make all such products tamper-proof.
None of these changes or regulations could bring back the lives of victims. But they could ensure that such a senseless, evil crime would never happen again.
