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America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
The Tylenol Murders: Why No One Was Ever Charged Pt. 3
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Seven people died after taking Tylenol, and more than 40 years later, no one has ever been charged with their murders. Police and the FBI spent decades chasing two men they believed could be the possible killer. Both looked plausible, both had disturbing connections, and yet neither case ever fully came together. The Tylenol murders didn't just kill seven innocent people. They shattered America's sense of everyday safety. They changed how medicine is sold, how products are packaged, and how this country thinks about trust itself. Today, I'll break down the two suspects investigators chased for years, why neither of them was ever charged with the poisonings, and the lasting fallout from one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in American history. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's get into the final episode on the Tylenol murders, the attempts by the Chicago police and the FBI to crack the case, and the suspects they chase for decades. What they did to your family. You're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock. These men are going to come after me. Taking them out. It's my only chance. Put a bullet in her head. From the co creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs Execution style killing. It's rare for the Keys. Any leads on who they might have been running for? The cartel killed my family. I'm gonna kill them. All of them. MIA Streaming now only on Peacock. This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories. And the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more. Slow burns, second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. On October 13, 1982, Robert and Nancy Richardson's headshots were front and center on the CBS Evening News. The FBI was looking for the Richardsons in connection with the Tylenol murders. They were the first suspects federal investigators had identified since the Deaths occurred on September 29th. Watching TV in Kansas City, Sergeant David Barton saw Robert's face and immediately called the Tylenol task force. He told them he didn't know where the Richardsons were, but he did know one thing. Richardson was not their real name. The man whose face glared at him from the screen was really named James Lewis. And he'd slipped through Barton's fingers not once, but twice. Once, Barton got off the phone, he packed a suitcase for Chicago. He landed the very next day, made his way through the swarm of reporters outside the task force's headquarters, strode into the office and opened up his briefcase. Inside were mountains of documents and evidence that Barton had collected against James Lewis for two separate crimes. Here's what Barton knew. James Lewis was born in 1946 in Memphis, Tennessee. His family was poor and over the course of a few years, his parents abandoned him and his six siblings. When he was 2, Lewis was adopted, but life with his new family was tumultuous to say the least. When Lewis was 19, he allegedly assaulted both of his adoptive parents. He was arrested, but his adoptive mother petitioned to have him sent to a mental institution instead of serving jail time. Because of her intervention, Lewis got another chance at a meaningful life. In his early 20s, he moved to Kansas City for college, but he failed and dropped out. Still, his time in college affected his life in another way. In 1968, he met his future wife, Leann, who would later go on to be known as Nancy Richardson. James and Leann got married after less than a year of dating, and for a while it seemed like they were happy. They started their own tax business called Lewis and Lewis, which soon build up a healthy client list, including a local man named Raymond West. Raymond was well known in the community. He wasn't married and he didn't have any kids, so he had a lot of time to socialize with his neighbors. He was no stranger to the Lewis's when they took him on as a client and he used their services for a few years. But In July of 1978, Raymond called a friend to complain that his taxman was was hanging around too much and acting fishy. That was the last time anyone spoke to Raymond. A few days later, another one of Raymond's friends reported him missing. This friend also described a lot of suspicious encounters with James Lewis in the days after Raymond disappeared. In one instance, the friend decided to change the locks on Raymond's door as he was doing It James Lewis pulled up and started screaming at him. And right around the same time, a $5,000 check was deducted from Raymond's bank account. The check was made out to Lewis and Lewis. This was how Kansas City Sergeant David Barton first heard the name James Lewis when he and his team began investigating Raymond West's disappearance. They quickly learned that Lewis had been spending a lot of time at Raymond's home. So they searched the place twice. And during their second search, on August 14, 1978, they found Raymond West's dismembered body in his attic. Kansas City police charged James Lewis with Raymond's murder four days later. When Sergeant Barton questioned him, Lewis admitted that he'd cashed the $5,000 check. He was Raymond's tax accountant, after all. But Barton knew better. $5,000 was a lot of money in 1978. For reference, that's just under $25,000 today. Definitely a lot more than a regular guy would pay for someone to do his taxes. Barton had looked into Raymond's finances and learned that he had between 40 and $50,000 in savings. As his tax accountant, Lewis would have surely known that and might have decided that he wanted that money for himself. But perhaps even more troubling, Barton noted in his records that Lewis treated the whole interrogation like a game. It was almost as if he was enjoying himself. Barton left the interview more suspicious than ever. His team got search warrants for Lewis's station wagon, where they found 34 canceled checks in Raymond's name, Raymond's tax returns, and most importantly, a rope that matched the kind wrapped around Raymond's body when the police found him. Lewis was charged with the murder of Raymond west, and the trial date was set for one year later. But as trial approached, the prosecutor, James Bell, realized that getting a conviction wasn't going to be easy. For one thing, Raymond's body had been too badly decomposed for the coroner to determine an exact cause of death. But that was the least of their problems. Soon, Bell made a devastating discovery. When police first arrested Lewis, they hadn't read him his Miranda rights, and that meant the arrest was invalid. The state had no choice but to drop the case. Just like that, it was over. All of Sergeant Barton's hard work went out the window, and no one was ever tried for the murder of Raymond West. But the cat and mouse game between David Barton and James Lewis was only just beginning. In 1982, Sergeant David Barton went to Chicago to tell the Tylenol task force everything he knew about James Lewis, including how Lewis may have Narrowly gotten away with murder. But Barton's story wasn't over, and what he told them next would lead directly into their investigation. In late 1981, about a year before the Tylenol murders took place, mail carriers in Kansas City noticed something strange. Rural mailboxes were popping up outside of town. The mailboxes had their own addresses, but they weren't assigned to any homes. To the carriers, it was pretty clear what was going on. Someone was using these fake addresses to carry out some kind of fraud. David Barton was assigned to the case. He had a team set up for 24 hour surveillance on one of the main roads the mail carriers had mentioned. And it wasn't long before they came back with a license plate number linked to none other than James Lewis. The cops wasted no time getting a warrant to search Lewis's home. And when they did, they found about as close to a smoking gun as you could get. A binder with step by step instructions on how to use rural mailboxes to commit credit card fraud. Evidence revealed that Lewis had used the mailboxes to scam his tax clients out of more than $17,000, which is over $80,000 today. It wasn't murder, but this time, Barton was ready to finally nail Lewis. He got an arrest warrant and went back to Lewis's home. But when he got there, Lewis and his wife Leanne had vanished without a trace, slipping through Barton's fingers yet again. The next time Barton saw Lewis's face was a year later on tv, under the name Robert Richardson. Once he finished his story, the task force investigators stared at a mountain of documents and photographs Barton had brought them. It painted a picture of a potentially violent repeat offender. Special agent Roy Lane Jr. Felt like he finally understood his suspect. And as the task force dug deeper into Lewis's background, they found something that explained one of the lingering mysteries from Barton's investigation. Back in 1981, when Barton and his detectives searched Lewis home in connection with the mail fraud, they'd found a small black book called the Handbook of poisoning. On page 196, it explained how much potassium cyanide is needed for a fatal dose. And investigators had found Lewis fingerprints on that exact passage. The task force was ready to go public. They believed that James Lewis was the Tylenol killer, but they couldn't take him down for murder just yet. They could, however, arrest him for his mail fraud in Kansas City, as well as his attempted extortion for the letter he'd sent to Johnson and Johnson. But they had to find him first. And just like before it seemed like Lewis enjoyed the cat and mouse game. He dangled a carrot by sending letters to the Chicago Tribune, the Department of justice, and even President Ronald Reagan, denying that he was the killer and taunting the task force's fruitless efforts to find the real culprit. The letters were all postmarked from New York City, so investigators worked with FBI agents there to put the city on alert. They passed out flyers and put up wanted posters. Then, on December 13, 1982, exactly two months since Barton first saw Lewis on TV, a New York Public Library employee spotted a man he thought he recognized. The librarian was on the fourth floor when he noticed the man taking notes from a database of major newspapers. And something about him felt off. The librarian made a beeline for one of the library offices and threw open the door. Plastered on the wall in front of him was an FBI wanted poster. It was James Lewis. The librarian contacted the FBI immediately, and this time, the authorities got there before Lewis could slip away. He. He was arrested, and a judge set his bond at $5 million more than he could afford. His trial for mail fraud in Kansas City was scheduled for May 1983, about five months away. And his trial for attempted extortion wouldn't come until that October. In the meantime, Agent Roy Lane and his colleague, Agent Grace Deed, tried to build a murder case. They knew Lewis would be behind bars, at least until the end of the extortion trial. But if he was found innocent, he'd be right back out in the world again. And he'd vanish. So they got to work. Their biggest obstacle was their inability to place Lewis in Chicago at the time of the Tylenol deaths. In his letter to President Reagan, Lewis had bragged that in the past, he'd used resources from Leann's old travel agency job to book tickets under all sorts of fake names. Agents Lane and Steed wondered if Lewis had done the same thing to sneak back into Chicago and. And commit the murders without anyone being the wiser. But even with this lead, they never found any hard evidence that Lewis was in Chicago when the bottles were poisoned. They had to look for other ways to build an indictment. And then the agents caught a break. On May 26, 1983, Lewis was convicted of mail fraud and later sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. That bought the FBI more time to build a murder case, even though they still couldn't be 100% sure they were looking at the right guy. Because there was still another suspect in the Tylenol murders. Roger Arnold, the bar regular who Chicago detectives Charlie Ford and Jimmy Gilday believed was guilty. Back In October of 1982, Ford and Gilday had arrested Arnold on gun charges before he was released on bond. To be clear, Arnold hadn't been charged with the Tylenol murders. But word of his arrest had spread, and the accusations stuck. The news called him a psychopath, and people vandalized his home. He couldn't shake the rumors and suspicious glares, and it made him angry, bitter, and fixated on the man he blamed for all of it. Marty Sinclair, the bar owner who'd called Ford and Gilday with the original tip. Arnold felt like Marty had ruined his life, and he wanted him to pay. So on the night of June 18, 1983, Arnold went out drinking. But he wasn't just having a night out on the town. He was on the lookout for Marty. And eventually, Arnold spotted him leaving a bar with a couple of friends. Arnold made his way toward them. He called out to Marty, and before anyone could say anything, Arnold pulled out a gun, fired it, and fled as Marty's body hit the ground. The next day, after speaking with his lawyer, a sober Arnold turned himself in. He was brought to an interrogation room, and a few minutes later, Jimmy Gilday walked through the door. Before asking Arnold any questions, Gilday pulled out a wallet and removed a driver's license. Arnold looked at it, but he was confused because he didn't recognize the man in the photo. And he didn't recognize his name, either. John Stanishaw. Arnold looked up at Gilday, and the detective waited to see if things would click. But when Arnold clearly didn't understand, Gilday told him, you just killed that man the night before. Arnold, enraged and probably intoxicated, thought he saw Marty Sinclair leaving the bar. But it wasn't Marty. It was just a man who resembled him. That man was John Stanishaw, and he had nothing to do with the Tylenol murders. Arnold had shot the wrong guy in cold blood. He broke down, confessed to the murder of John Stanishaw, and awaited trial at a maximum security prison in Illinois. Detectives Ford and Gilday saw an opportunity. Despite the investigation into James Lewis, they still believed Arnold was the Tylenol killer. And in their eyes, the harsh conditions at the prison gave them leverage. Maybe if they offered to get him transferred, Arnold would be willing to tell them more about the Tylenol murders. But the state's attorney wouldn't allow it. Because the FBI wouldn't allow it. They already had a suspect in custody. James Lewis. Detective Ford was enraged, but Agent Lane responded with an even temper. He claimed that the task force did in fact investigate possible suspects outside of James Lewis, but they had to follow the evidence and they were certain Lewis was their man. That was the end of Ford and Gilday's investigation into Roger Arnold. The man who shot and killed John Stanashaw would never face charges for the Tylenol murders. But on January 11, 1984, Arnold was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. A few months later, James Lewis faced punishment of his own. He was convicted in his extortion case, with sentencing set for June 1984. But before that date arrived, he reached out to Agent Roy Lane and offered to help Lane solve the Tylenol murders. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking Eglis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.
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Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit eglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. Agent Roy Lane was initially surprised when James Lewis offered to help solve the Tylenol murders. Surprised and suspicious, he figured Lewis didn't just enjoy the attention, he wanted to learn more about the case so he could deflect suspicion away from himself. So Lane flipped the script. He wanted to make Lewis think he was accepting his help while actually trying to get a confession. To put his plan into action, Lane enlisted Jeremy Margolis, the assistant US Attorney on the task Force. They called Lewis and said they'd love to talk. Over the course of a few meetings, investigators asked Lewis seemingly endless questions about the Tylenol murders. In one instance, Lane and Margolis asked Lewis how the killer would have poisoned the capsules. In return, Lewis created seven pages of detailed sketches outlining different potential techniques. Lane and Margolis were trying to elicit something they called a psychotic leak. Essentially, they believe that Lewis still felt fantasized about the murders. And by making triggering comments, they might get him to accidentally let something slip. Something only the killer would know. But in the end, Lane and Margolis didn't get anything out of Lewis that would give them grounds to charge him with murder. He ended up serving only 13 years, and in 1995, he was released from prison and moved to Massachusetts with Leanne. By 2007, Lewis was still a free man, and Roy Lane Jr. Had been retired for about 10 years. The Tylenol murders were considered a cold case, but thanks to new DNA testing technology, the case was reopened, and Task Force 2 was born. Agent Lane was back. One of their major efforts was to find a match for DNA samples found on the poison pill bottles. They tested samples from both James Lewis and Roger Arnold, but neither man matched the DNA found on the bottles. That should have been the end of it. But Agent Lane wasn't ready to give up. He enlisted a fellow agent to pose as an author who was writing a book about the Tylenol murders. Lane reached out to Lewis and told him the author wanted his help. For the next year and a half, Lane and his colleague met with Lewis. They probed his memory a lot like Lane and Margolis had done back in 1983. And eventually it paid off. Up to this point, Lewis had always claimed that it took him three days to write the extortion letter to Johnson and Johnson, which makes sense, considering how detailed the letter was. If Lewis wasn't the killer, he would have had to do his research. But during one of their meetings, Lane asked Lewis again how long it took him to write the letter. Lewis gave his usual three days. Then Lane pulled out a calendar. He reminded Lewis that the letter arrived at JJ on October 5, 1982, back when the letter was first recovered. Investigators couldn't make out the postmark date because it was smudged, but now new technology allowed them to read it clearly. October 1st. Lane pointed to October 1st on the calendar. Then he counted back three days. He landed on September 29th, the same day the first victim died. Lewis shrugged. So what then? Lane explained news of the deaths didn't break until September 30th. So how could Lewis have known about them? A full day earlier, Lewis squirmed in his seat and admitted that Lane had a point. He didn't admit to anything else, but it did give Lane some leverage. In 2009, Task Force 2 raided James Lewis home. They collected boxes of evidence and confiscated his computer. But prosecutors in DuPage and Cook counties where the Tylenol deaths took place, still weren't willing to roll the dice on whether a jury would convict. And of course, the raids made Lewis realize that the so called author's book was a ruse. For the second time, he realized that Agent Lane was never actually on his side. Lewis was done talking. And once again, the case went cold. In 2022, the bureau made one last attempt to solve it. They put together a PowerPoint presentation with arguments and evidence that James Lewis was the Tylenol Killer. They laid out everything from Lewis rough upbringing to his violent criminal past to the damning evidence tying him to the crime, and insisted that a jury could be persuaded. But it all came too late. On July 9, 2023, James Lewis was found dead in his home. An autopsy determined that he died of natural causes. And that was it. James Lewis was dead. Roger Arnold had passed away years earlier and neither of them was ever charged with the deaths of seven innocent people. To this day, no one else has been either. Following Lewis death, Helen Jensen, the nurse who first figured out that the victims were poisoned with the Tylenol capsules, said that the murders led to the American people's loss of innocence. Joe Janis, the brother of Adam and Stanley and brother in law to Terri, said his loved ones have never gone away from him. And Monica Janis, Adam, Stanley and Terry's niece, said in 2023 that she still can't look at a Tylenol bottle without going back to the most tragic moment in her family's life. What happened to the Janis family and the other victims was a horrible tragedy. If there's any comfort here, it's that safety measures have been put in place to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Think plastic wrap, tamper proof seals and solid capsules. Nothing can bring the victims back or ease their loved one's heartache. But at least these steps can make sure that someone like the Tylenol killer, whoever it may be, will never be able to inflict that kind of pain on innocent people ever again. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below. Do we think the evidence pointed more strongly to Lewis or Arnold in the end or neither? Personally, I think James Lewis is the one who did it. I watched the Netflix documentary and not only is that guy super creepy, he clearly enjoys the attention and kind of the cat and mouse game as agent Roy Lane said. And one thing that stuck with me is that the producer said they witnessed a dark side to Lewis that haunts them. At first he was this kind of odd but sweet man. But as they got further into the interviews and ended up catching him in some lies, they saw him snap for a few minutes right in front of their eyes and they described it as scary and an insight into how this man really had a dark side to him and could actually be capable of these bad things. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence in this case, so everything is circumstantial. But one of the biggest revelations that stuck out to me was that he lost his five year old daughter a few years before these murders. And as I said in the first episode, this is kind of my thinking in a motivation someone may have for these murders. But according to the Chicago Tribune, the sutures usufix his daughter Tony's congenital heart defects tor and they were made by Ethicon, which is a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson. In the documentary, Lewis said that his daughter had a patch on her atrial wall that pulled loose, which could be the same thing. It sounds a little different than sutures, but either way they both involved Johnson and Johnson. In the documentary he also said that he had no intention of revenge. And that quote, if I tried to sit down and think of a revenge, I could not think of anything that would be useful or sensible. What's it going to do, Rich? Coming from a man who spent 12 years in prison because he wanted to get revenge on his wife's former boss. This is a guy who wouldn't get revenge for anything cause he's super peaceful. Another big piece of evidence for me was that Agent Lane later caught Lewis in that story that we talked about earlier and his version where it took him three days, but if it took him three days, that meant he wrote it before the murders were ever announced. Speaking of Agent Lane, what must it be like for an FBI agent to chase a suspect for decades and still never get enough evidence to even charge them? I think knowing but not being able to charge someone would actually drive me crazy. Many Chicago police officers still think that Roger Arnold is guilty to this day. But most of the FBI agents Believe it was Lewis. One of the things about James Lewis that would make me so mad is that he slipped through the cracks so many times, and if he was actually charged, lives could have been saved. This was a man who committed multiple crimes and got away with most of them. First, he committed the mail fraud, which he did get charged for, but disappeared before he could get arrested. Then the biggest one was he was accused and from what I've seen, most likely murdered his neighbor and his client, then transferred funds from the dead neighbors account into his account, but got off because they didn't read him his Miranda rights. Then he got caught for the extortion letter, which thank God, he was charged for. But the last one that makes me so mad is that when they moved to Massachusetts, they moved to a new apartment building. And one of the neighbors, she said that he sprayed something in her face, pulled her into his apartment, force fed her some liquid that made her mouth go numb and made her go in and out of consciousness, got on top of her, held her down, assaulted her, and then told her he was going to wrap her in a plastic bag, take her to the forest and let the animals eat her. At least. He was in jail for three years awaiting trial. But once the trial came, she found out that he was the number one suspect in the Tylenol murders and was too afraid to testify. So he ended up getting off of that crime scot free. On top of that, a jail informant later came forward and said that he would brag about not being caught for most of his crimes, especially the Tylenol murders. And he said, because the cops were idiots and you have to take everything a jail informant says with a grain of salt. But hearing that would definitely piss me off. The last thing about Lewis that made me really frustrated when I watched the documentary was that some people were talking about how they have a theory that Johnson and Johnson was actually responsible for these deaths and that they just had to find a scapegoat and, you know, this crazy but, like, innocent man to frame so that they didn't have any of the responsibility. But regardless of whether he was responsible for the Tylenol murders, this man wasn't just a creepy, weirdo, innocent man who was framed. This guy was a terrible person and a criminal who, in my opinion, deserved life in prison. What are your thoughts on Johnson and Johnson's involvement? This was talked a lot about in the third episode of the Netflix documentary on the Tylenol murders. And if the contamination did come from two different plants, I think it's not likely that the cyanide was the responsibility of Johnson and Johnson. I also think the fact that the cases were concentrated in Chicago is another strong argument against it being Johnson and Johnson. But some of the things I do think are sketchy are and don't agree with is one how fast the FDA cleared Johnson and Johnson of any fault. They cleared them in weeks and to test that many pills should have taken months, not just weeks. I also think it's sketchy and a bit of a conflict of interest that J and J was responsible for most of their own internal testing because they obviously had reason not to disclose if they did find that they were at fault in any way. I also don't like that they lied about not having cyanide in their facilities but later had to come clean and admit that they do use potassium cyanide in the testing and quality control of their acetaminophen. I think if I was playing devil's advocate for this theory that the two most convincing points would be the fact that some of the capsules had nearly three times the lethal dose and that the level of concentration is more consistent with an industrial quantity of the chemical being used than someone carefully measuring out doses at home. The second thing was that there was another case of cyanide poisoning in the Tylenol Extra Strength after all of the tamper evident measures were in place and that was about five levels of measures in this case. The Westchester DA who is investigating the fatal poisoning of 23 year old Diane Ellsworth on February 8, 1986 said that after extensive tests, officials from the FBI believe that the seals on both of the tainted bottles were not broken after they left the factory. So that kind of excludes someone tampering them after the fact. But overall I think you can't rule out any possibility of something happening during manufacturing or Johnson and Johnson not being involved in any way. But I think it's less likely than someone tampering with it. What do we do with cold cases like this? How do we begin to process that there are some evils that we'll never get justice for? Cold cases are so hard because the families never really get closure and the answers that they so desperately want. I truly wish every cold case could have closure, but with this one, unfortunately, I don't know if it will ever happen. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's most Infamous crimes so we can keep building this community together and to get all episodes at once. Ad free subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Thank you for supporting the show.