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- [00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning. Tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth legend, our super producer, Mr. Max over the Counter Williams.
- [00:41]
B
Max. Extra strength Williams because he's strong.
- [00:45]
A
Still over the counter.
- [00:46]
B
Also true.
- [00:47]
A
Never seen him under one. That's Mr. Noel Brown.
- [00:52]
B
Yeah, I've been under a counter or.
- [00:54]
A
Two in my day and I know some accountants. They call me Ben Bullen. In this neck of the global woods, we've got a story that honestly may not be appropriate for all listeners, but we do find it fascinating and we can't wait to thank our research associate, Dylan for this one. So thank you, Dylan.
- [01:18]
B
Yep, big thanks right up front. And it's true, this one is a little, maybe a little more along the lines of something that you might see us talk about on our sister pod, stuff they don't want you to know. Bit on the true crime side and does involve bad things happening to young people. So if that's triggering for you, maybe skip this one. But we do think it's an interesting history mystery.
- [01:39]
A
And I will note behind the scenes, we earlier had a conversation where I realized every disclaimer in a podcast kind of functions like an invitation.
- [01:51]
B
Yeah, you know, but at least you're putting it up front and letting the.
- [01:55]
A
Folks do with it what they will up front. Just like that sign at the entrance to the city of Dis on the edge of hell that says, abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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C
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [02:12]
A
Guaranteed Human. Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Kalpin.
- [02:16]
B
I'm Ed Helms.
- [02:17]
A
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [02:26]
B
Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.
- [02:35]
A
Listen to Hearsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [02:46]
C
Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest. Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from fires.
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A
Keeping the forest fire resistant, synonymous with keeping a forest healthy. And we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management.
- [03:08]
B
It's a long term commitment.
- [03:10]
C
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- [03:39]
A
Last 250 years ago, a promise was made to connect families and friends near and far.
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B
And during the holidays, that promise is more important than ever.
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A
That's why USPS is building a better network to meet your needs with timely deliveries, easy and affordable ways to ship, and everything you need to make your season full of holiday cheer.
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B
Their purpose is delivering your peace of mind, knowing your love will arrive, bringing.
- [04:06]
A
Joy to all the United States Postal Service.
- [04:10]
B
Learn more@usps.com Holidays this episode of Ridiculous History is brought to you by Granger.
- [04:17]
A
Look, if you are a custodial supervisor at a high school, you know that historically cold and flu season wreaks havoc on campuses not on your watch. That's right, you've got a plan in place and you've got a partner in Granger.
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A
Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop.
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B
By Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [05:00]
A
We're going back to September 1982 when our super producer and perhaps you yourself, Mr. Brown, were not alive.
- [05:09]
B
Not quite. I was a year hence, September of 1982. There had been a string of fatalities tied to extra strength Tylenol. Can we also just say right up front here too, we're not doing a character assassination piece on Tylenol. They've already got it bad enough as it is, given some of the rhetoric coming out of the current administration.
- [05:32]
A
Let's just say it plainly folks. There is no hard scientific evidence that Tylenol nor any of the ingredients included in that brand name over the counter medication would cause autism.
- [05:48]
B
But what we do know is that harm was absolutely caused by Tylenol, though not in the way you might think it was. It was tampered with. And this is also what led to some important regulations around over the counter drug packaging. So Chicago, the Chicago land area as we love to call it, and locals as well, was in a bit of a panic surrounding these. These unfortunate deaths tied to extra strength Tylenol. The rest of the world was paying attention, mind you, in the form of newscasts, trying to see if this was going to be a larger scale issue, if maybe some of this, whatever adulterants that made their way into the drugs, the popular drugs, would find their way into their market. So it was a massive PR scandal and you know, the kerfuffle for the Tylenol brand. Yeah.
- [06:39]
A
And it was indeed a moral panic up there with the satanic panic or the Salem witch trials even. What. What authorities quickly figure out is that there are lethal doses of Tylenol branded products. They were consumed by seven victims. But the active ingredient here was not something that, or I should say the fatal ingredient was not something that Tylenol purposely included. Instead, the stuff these folks were consuming have been tampered with. And the capsules, the little pills. I like saying capsules. Instead of as, do as. So say we all Max, get on board. So what we found is that these capsules were laced with potassium cyanide, which can be incredibly dangerous to human anatomy in a high enough dose.
- [07:41]
B
100%. So, Ben, I mentioned a little bit about packaging and changes that resulted from this horrible event. So what was it that allowed this suspected individual to gain access to these over the counter drugs and put something dangerous in them?
- [08:02]
A
Yeah, let's get into it. So our story starts with a manufacturer named McNeil Consumer Products. Their provenance is back in 1955. They started as McNeil Laboratories. They later split into McNeil Consumer Products. That's their retail sales, and then McNeil Pharmaceuticals. Those are their prescription drugs. They first produced Tylenol in 1955. And it's the name that. It's the. It's the brand name that they give to the drug. Acetaminophen.
- [08:44]
B
Now acetamin, Acetamef.
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A
Acetaminophen.
- [08:50]
B
Okay, sorry, I'm making fun of the president. Have you seen that clip where he couldn't pronounce the word?
- [08:54]
A
I'm not giving that guy too much time.
- [08:56]
C
Fair.
- [08:57]
B
And not trying to be political here, but the dude's not great at words, let's just put it that way. Acetaminophen, indeed, an analgesic and fever reducing drug. And the company then is acquired in 1959 after having success with a lot of their pharmaceuticals by Johnson and Johnson, who you may have heard of, has their fingers in a lot of different product pies from shampoos and baby Wipes and diapers and things to of course deep in the pharmaceutical prescription and over the counter industry.
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A
Now I've heard of the first Johnson, but I have no idea the second Johnson.
- [09:29]
B
Second Johnson's a mystery. Nobody knows.
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A
Maybe it's the, maybe it's the big Johnson from the T shirts back in the 90s. Those are so crass.
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B
Did kids wear those at your school? I was always so like made uncomfortable by this.
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A
I always, I always felt that meant their parents were divorced.
- [09:45]
B
Yeah. Or is very permissive. So in 1975, Bristol Myers, who you also, they're still around this day. They find a great deal of success with an over the counter version of a Tylenol equivalent called Datril. And if I'm not mistaken, Ben, at the point where at in history now Johnson and Johnson still just doing prescription drugs.
- [10:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. They are the ones who, when they acquire McNeil and they say, okay, this branded acetaminophen can only be prescribed by a doctor. And our buddies Bristol and Myers say we're going to sell acetaminophen under this other name, datural.
- [10:30]
B
They say nuts to that. And then they clean up, leaving McNeil Consumer Products in the dust, eating their lunch basically. Which causes a reaction of course in the form of them releasing a over the counter version branded extra strength Tylenol, 500 milligrams, making it the strongest pain reliever on the market and just eating up 34% of the worldwide market share of the industry.
- [10:56]
A
Yeah, yeah. And let's hear. Max, can we get a fast forward kind of sound cue? Great. Fast forward. It's early in the morning, September 29, 1982, Chicago metro area, specifically a suburb called Elk Grove village. There's a 12 year old kid, her name is Mary Kellerman. She has been complaining of a sore throat, a runny nose. She's not having the best morning. So she gets one dose of this McNeil created extra strength Tylenol and then her parents say, okay, take a sick day, go back to bed, Mary, rest up. And unfortunately it's 7am just a little bit later her parents come in to check on her and she has passed away. So it's innocent child deceased on the bathroom floor. This makes national headlines and this is the origin of a moral panic. Because later that Same day, guys, September 29th, same day a 27 year old postal worker named Adam Janis over in Arlington Heights, Illinois dies. And officially, even though he's just 27, authorities and doctors presume he has had a heart attack. Which can happen, it can Happen for sure, Ben.
- [12:34]
B
But the thing is, you mentioned this idea of a moral panic, and this certainly falls under that in terms of, well, everyone's out to kill our children. Now we start to see worries about things like razor blades and candy apples for trick or treating and the idea of getting poked with needles in movie theaters. This is a great example of a thing that we see in history numerous times, wherein an isolated event then is seen and interpreted as the order of the day. Right.
- [13:07]
A
Launches a thousand ships of paranoia and concern.
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B
Launches copycats.
- [13:13]
A
It launches copycats. That's true. That's a great point. No, we also, we don't love the word hysteria because of the etymology associated with dismissive. Right.
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B
Of the people, you know, experiencing genuine trauma.
- [13:27]
A
Right. Yeah. And this, this leads us to an horrific chain of events. Our buddy, Adam Janis has a brother. His brother is named Stanley. He has a sister in law named Teresa. Now, Stanley is 25 years old. His sister in law, Teresa, is 19. They are also in the Illinois area. They rush home after Adam's death, as you do, to be with the family, and they start getting headaches themselves, Stanley and Teresa, of course, it's because they're in an intensely traumatic situation. So they go to the home medicine cabinet and they find a bottle of Tylenol in their dead relative's home, in Adam's home. Later research would verify this was the same bottle of Tylenol Adam Janis used when authorities initially assumed he had a fatal heart attack.
- [14:34]
B
Yeah. WTTW Chicago reports that there were six capsules missing and there were three people dead. So Helen Johnson, the public health nurse investigating, doing the search, basically realized, okay, there's gotta be something going on with the Tylenol.
- [14:51]
A
Right? Yeah. Because let's all recall that if you buy over the counter Tylenol and over the counter just meaning stuff you can buy without a prescription.
- [15:01]
B
More off the shelf, really. Right, Right.
- [15:03]
A
Yeah, exactly. The bottle is going to have a. A label that tells you how many capsules or how many doses are in the thing you're buying. So that's how she did the ma. Fast forward. Not too, too much. Just a little more than two days later, 48 hours later. Yeah.
- [15:28]
B
We see three more deaths following Tylenol use from Mary McFarland, 31, of Elmhurst, Paula Prince of downtown Chicago, and Mary Reiner, 27, of the suburb of Winfield. Early October of 1982, investigators started connecting these deaths with cyanide poisoning. Yeah.
- [15:50]
A
And this is where we start to see the puzzle pieces come together. So now we look Back the authorities, we should say, look back at the death of Adam Janice, the death of young Mary Kellerman, and they say, hey, this may have a common cause. You know, it is relatively unusual, even in the land of Italian beef and deep dis pizza for someone to have a heart attack at 27. So let's test for other stuff. And this is where they say there is cyanide poisoning. And everybody involved also took Tylenol.
- [16:33]
B
Cyanide, by the way, exists as a powdery substance with the smell of bitter almonds. You'll often hear referred to in literature, like as a sign that someone's been poisoned. They smell bitter almonds, it's incredibly toxic. And doses as small as a fraction, fraction of a teaspoon can cause instant death.
- [16:52]
A
Yeah, as little as 50 milligrams. Now, police are trying to figure out a chain of custody for the Tylenol, which is obvious order of operations for any investigation here. They say the tampering must have occurred after Tylenol left the factory where it's made. So this logically means the perpetrator must have taken Tylenol packaging from local grocery and drugstores there in the Chicago metro area and then lace them with this poison and then repackaged them and returned them to the store, hoping that someone would buy them, Knowing that someone would buy them, honestly. So this leads us to another thing like, okay, let's say this way, ridiculous. Historians. Noel, Max. We are Johnson And Johnson and McNeil Consumer Products.
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B
Johnson.
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A
You must be the second Johnson.
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B
The mysterious Johnson.
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A
You're my Pac man. Second Johnson. I appreciate that. So McNeil Consumer Products and Johnson and Johnson. We know we're in the boardroom. It's a crisis. We know that. We don't purposely put cyanide in any of our stuff. How do we respond to this public crisis?
- [18:15]
B
Timing was of the essence, which comes to play in the title of a pretty important resource on crisis management that had this to say about the title, by the way, is the first 24 hours a comprehensive Guide to Successful Crisis Communication. The Tylenol crisis is without a doubt the most exemplary case ever known in the history of crisis communications. I guess given their pats on the back. And any business executive who has ever stumbled into a public relation ambush ought to appreciate the way Johnson and Johnson responded to the Tylenol poisonings. They have effectively demonstrated how major business has to handle a disaster. And I would imagine, Ben, a lot of this has to do with A, not trying to sweep it under the rug and B, making it into a learning opportunity, you know, and, and and saying, well okay, this is an industry issue as well. It's not deflecting but saying this is a matter of these products being too easily tampered with.
- [19:14]
A
So what did these guys do? Specifically?
- [19:20]
B
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- [20:52]
A
Hey audiobook lovers. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with musician, producer and walking encyclopedia Questlove. We're talking about Mark Ronson's memoir Night how to be a DJ in 90s New York City. All right, like we talked about before, Mark Ronson Foundation Sanctuary in the DJ booth what's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio or on stage that gives you the most control?
- [21:15]
B
So I have two microphones on stage. We have the microphone that you hear as the audience. Then we have a second microphone in which we communicate with each other. I feel like that second microphone kind of saved all of our friendships. No band likes each other after 20 years or 25 years. The Beatles broke up in seven and a half years and we're going on 35.
- [21:40]
A
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:53]
C
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- [22:35]
A
Keeping the forest fire resistant, synonymous with keeping the forest healthy. And we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management.
- [22:45]
B
It's a long term commitment.
- [22:47]
C
Visit workingforestsinitiative.com to learn more.
- [22:56]
A
Let's give you an anecdote from Public Relations Assistant director for Johnson and Johnson Robert Andrews. Here's how the entire company learns about this. As Andrews says, quote, we got a call from a Chicago news reporter. He told us that the medical examiner there had just given a press conference. People were dying from poison Tylenol. He wanted our comment and it was the knowledge we had here in the department. We told him we knew nothing about it. In that first call, we learned more from the reporter than he did from us. And this goes back to again, the Berg book. We're talking about the 24 hour cycle of response for PR. You'll also see that in an Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode about Wolf Cola.
- [23:51]
B
For sure.
- [23:52]
A
Bogo Haram.
- [23:53]
B
This is also not a spot that any PR manager wants to be put in. Like this is literally, not literally, figuratively getting caught with your pants down.
- [24:03]
A
You don't have time. Yes, yeah, time to earn that paycheck, my guy. You know what I mean? That's, that's crisis management. So this goes straight to the chairman, James Burke of Johnson and Johnson, as well as the chairman of McNeil, David Collins. And so they form a, I would say they form a special operations team of crisis management. Seven members of what they call a strategy team. And their first focus is, as you said, protecting the public. Their second focus as a for profit company is saving the reputation of Thailand.
- [24:46]
B
That's right. I guess a lot of times when we think of PR or crisis management, we think of spin and like, how do we kind of deflect a little bit. But that's not what they do. They notify the US FDA immediately and they then undertake a herculean recall of around 31 million bottles, which cost the company around $240 million. They decided to pull advertising for a time while they dealt with this. And they offered a reward for any information leading to the apprehension or identification of the individual or individuals who were tampering with these products. $100,000 was put on the table for that. James Burke spoke to the public frequently through press conferences. He went on 60 Minutes and the at the time incredibly popular Phil Donahue show.
- [25:42]
A
And again, that's James Burke, the chairman of Johnson and Johnson. They also established a call in line, a toll free line for any new companies to receive daily updates on the state of affairs. And they were helping law enforcement try to hunt down the perpetrator. Because increasingly, as this PR crisis is occurring, increasingly private companies and public investigators are convinced that someone was, someone was homicidal, that there was a murderer out in the loose. And so the next question is, if we know people like this exist, one, we have to find them and two, we have to realize that there is still Tylenol with its original packaging, even despite the recall, it's still out there somewhere. So we have to make sure this cannot happen again. And this is sort of the silver lining of the story.
- [26:52]
B
So the ultimate outcome of this drive from Johnson and Johnson to protect the public and also protect their, you know, shareholders, and the bottom line was a successful remarketing of extra strength Tylenol, including and this was kind of stroke of marketing genius if you think about it, because it ticked both boxes, it protected the public, made that a feature. And it also showed how much they cared and kind of set a new precedent for packaging of pharmaceuticals moving forward in the tamper proof, triple seal packaging that they put front and center in their new marketing.
- [27:33]
A
Yeah, and this is why those bottles are purposefully inconvenient to unscrew. There's a reason it exists. All other manufacturers started following this cue. It was a great design. This new packaging was accompanied by a consumer warning. Again, another thing that became an industry standard. The company also offer any consumer a $2.50 coupon toward future purposes. If they had to throw away Tylenol previously because of the recall, and unlike today, they didn't have to. There wasn't a high barrier to proving that they bought a previous Tylenol bottle.
- [28:17]
B
Yeah, there'd be no way to do that. I mean it was sort of like a honor system thing and no questions asked, which you gotta you gotta appreciate, you know. And another important outcome here involves the law because we know that the gears of the government tend to grind pretty painfully slowly. But the fallout and then crisis management efforts around this whole thing led to some pretty quick work. When U.S. congress passed the Tylenol bill, piggybacking off of all of that drive for public safety to protect the public that Johnson and Johnson did, this made it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. That was in 83, just a year later from, from the events of the Tylenol murders. And then in 1989, the FDA followed suit, making it law that manufacturers make all of their products tamper proof.
- [29:10]
A
Yeah. Which is one of the, again, I call it the worst best news. It's like when the fd, the FDA or serial manufacturers say, okay, we've got a new law. There's going to be only 0.2% rat feces maximum in your raisin brand. And you're like, well, thank you. But also, how much rat feces was in there before?
- [29:34]
B
No more poisoning the Tylenol.
- [29:37]
A
Yes. New announcement over the counter. Pain relievers are no longer going to murder you. We've decided. We've also made the bottles the kind of things that, you know, hopefully make it difficult for poisoners to contaminate.
- [29:57]
B
Yeah, well, to do it quickly and effectively and I mean, even if you were to get the top off, it's so fiddly that you'd probably get noticed and B, you wouldn't be able to do it at scale with any kind of precision. And then the consumer would always be, you know, clued in that someone had messed with it by that sort of aluminum, you know, airtight seal that needs to make a little Tupperware burp sound when you, when you get rid of it.
- [30:21]
A
Yeah. That seal that pop we're talking about is arguably even more important than the tamper proof cap. So at this point we already shared that there has been no one officially convicted of these seven heinous murders. However, as our pal Dylan found, there are at least three suspects. Maybe we start with Kevin Masterson.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll breeze through some of these and get to our prime suspect. Kevin Masterson was 35, from Lombard, Illinois, had a grudge against a grocery chain because of a shoplifting incident that had occurred back in 75 involving his ex wife. She was roughed up by store security and he blames this event on the dissolution or the deterioration of their marriage. Seems like. I don't know, man, that's, that doesn't seem like a cool thing to have happened to somebody, especially if she was innocent. But it's projecting there a little bit, I would argue. Right. Police ultimately took a look at Masterson because of his known frustrations and grudge beef with the grocery chain and the fact that lethal doses of Lace Tylenol were purchased from this chain of stores from Jewel Osco.
- [31:41]
A
And keep in mind, folks, for the context of the day here in the early 80s, the police are now on the hook of public opinion. So they have to find someone. Yeah. And there's this nationwide manhunt, very expensive one, as a result, to find Kevin Masterson. It lasts for about a month, for about four weeks, until he peacefully turns himself in at an FBI office in Los Angeles. And they say, well, where the heck were you for a month? And he says, I got super frightened. You guys are the FBI. I heard you were after me and I said, I'm gonna go off the grid. So I've been living in my car in the desert. They take him in, right? And he is incarcerated briefly and he has a huge breakdown. This is the worst moment of his life. Even after his, you know, divorce, which is a horrible time for a lot of people. He is throwing stuff around in his cell. He is smearing, he's literally smearing his poop on the wall.
- [32:52]
B
Yikes.
- [32:53]
A
Yeah, they put him in the hole.
- [32:54]
B
Yeah, well, all this because he's absolutely sick of being referred to as the Tylenol killer by other means.
- [33:01]
A
Right. So they put him in the hole, in solitary confinement. He, he's having this meltdown because everybody is treating him like he did this. And ultimately, police go through his apartment. They find what they describe as disturbing letters, empty gelatin capsules that would be used for making illicit drugs. But they don't see any Tylenol branding on these caps, which means that ultimately he might be involved with some nefarious stuff, but he is not our Tylenol killer. Which brings us to the next suspect on the list.
- [33:40]
B
Yeah, this guy Masterson seemed like a dude struggling with some mental health issues and having a bit of a crisis, and he got swept up in this. Roger Arnold is our next potential suspect. Even more interesting, actually, the 48 year old dock worker for Jewel Grocery in Melrose park, whose wife was under psychiatric care at Central DuPage Hospital, which also was, coincidentally, it would seem, the same hospital that Mary Reiner gave birth to her fourth child just days before her death, also is located across from Fran Foods, which is where she purchased her lethal bottle of Tylenol Yeah.
- [34:22]
A
And ultimately Arnold gets word that the police are after him because a bartender, bar owner over in Lincoln park says, hey, cops. Arnold has openly. Or Roger, who must have been a regular there, has openly told other patrons that he bought a bunch of cyanide just six months earlier. Like he was hanging out with his pals at the joint and he was saying, you guys know what I buy? Cyanide. And ever since he told that story, tall tale or true, we don't know. He had been, in the opinion of the bar folks there, he had been acting anxious and squirrely and strange. So the police, still on this manhunt, they search his apartment. It's October 11, 1982, and they find a bunch of stuff. Pretty much all the guns, all the ammo, tons, knives and implements of violence.
- [35:25]
B
Some Anarchist Cookbook type materials.
- [35:28]
A
Yeah, Books on various nefarious activities. I was also going to mention Anarchist Cookbook. I don't want to loop it in too much with this, but yeah, it's on the money. One of the books in particular was called the Poor Man's James Bond, which I have a copy, but just know you're going to get on a list depending on how you acquire it because it tells you how to do very bad things in very easy, step by step instruction format.
- [35:59]
B
Yeah, he also had a bunch of of lab equipment, beakers and glassware and all that kind of stuff. So after refusing to take a lie detector test and aggressively maintaining his innocence, he was, however, able to escape conviction on these charges, only to get swept up in some other chaos of his own making about seven months later when he was charged with the murder of a man at a Chicago bar who he believed originally is the one who tipped off off the police saying that he was the Tylenol murderer.
- [36:32]
A
Yeah, he came and found the guy that he thought told law enforcement he was buying a bunch of poison. Damn.
- [36:40]
B
This guy also seemed mentally unwell.
- [36:42]
A
Just gonna say, he seems not an honors student. He gets charged with 30 years in prison. He serves 15. He passes away in 2008. He is gone. He is not considered our prime suspect.
- [37:00]
B
You want the hottest Black Friday savings and Lowes has them. Shop amazing deals like up to 50% off select major appliances plus get up to an extra 25% off when you bundle select major appliances and save $80 on your choice of a DeWalt 20 volt max drill or impact driver kit. Now just $99. Shop Lowe's Black Friday savings before they're gone. Valid through December 3, 2025. Selection varies by location. Select locations only while supplies last. See Lowes.com for more details.
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C
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- [38:32]
A
Hey audiobook lovers. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with musician, producer and walking encyclopedia Questlove, we're talking about Mark Ronson's memoir Night how to be a DJ in 90s New York City. All right, like we talked about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth. What's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio or on stage that gives you the most control?
- [38:55]
B
So I have two microphones on stage. We have the microphone that you hear as the audience. Then we have a second microphone in which we communicate with other each each other. I feel like that second microphone kind of saved all of our friendships. No, no band likes each other after 20 years or 25 years. Like the Beatles broke up in seven and a half years and we're going on 35.
- [39:20]
A
Listen to earsay the Audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheartradio app or wherever you get your podcast.
- [39:33]
C
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more@applecard.com Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest. Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from fires.
- [40:15]
A
Keeping the forest fire resistant, synonymous with keeping the forest healthy. And we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management.
- [40:25]
B
It's a long term commitment.
- [40:27]
C
Visit workingforestsinitiative.com to learn more.
- [40:36]
A
One of our long standing prime suspects as we're wrapping up the show here today is a guy named James Lewis. And our research associate Dylan points out that this guy has the OJ Simpson esque. I didn't do it, but if I did, kind of vi. Yeah.
- [40:54]
B
And you'll see why. First came onto law enforcement's radar after sending a ransom letter asking for a million bucks, extorting Johnson. And Johnson claiming that this payoff would trigger an end to these killings. Right. He's always denied, however, having any role in the killings and had a real wacky explanation for why he sent the letter.
- [41:22]
A
Yeah. Okay, so walk with us here. This is a little bit Rube Goldberg esque. He says he committed extortion against Johnson and Johnson to get back at his wife's employer, Lakeside Travel, because her paycheck bounced. When he gets incarcerated for the extortion, which he definitely did, he goes to the FBI or they come to him in the interrogation room and he says, look, I didn't do it, but if I were to do it, here's how I would tamper with extra strength Tylenol. Guys, I call this the drill board method. Yeah.
- [42:07]
B
I don't.
- [42:08]
A
This is.
- [42:08]
B
This is a. This is a tricky one. I'm trying to fully wrap my head around this. I'm looking at an image. Okay. I do see. Now this requires taking the pills home and doing this like, you know, under controlled circumstances. Right. He made a drawing where he demonstrated that someone could drill holes into a piece of plywood. A bit of a contraption is what Jeremy Margolis referred to it as putting the bottom capsules into the holes, putting cyanide on the top, scraping it across to make clean up, make it a clean line, I guess. With the bread knife. With a bread knife. And then removing any excess and then putting the tops of the capsules back on. So you would be adding like a layer of this stuff into the Tylenol gel cap.
- [42:55]
A
Yeah. Which is. So here's why this is fascinating. So first off, this is pro level stuff. I'm just going to be honest. It's so pro level that to do this, most people would not go to the trouble unless they were specifically targeting someone. Right. A particular individual, as Idiocracy says. So this is a lot of work. For the idea of killing random innocent people you want to target if you're going to put in this amount of effort. So a lot of investigators now, professional, amateur, private, they see Louis as the prime suspect because of his criminal past, because of his explanation and also because of the death of his five year old daughter, Tony Ann. He blames the company, he blames Johnson and Johnson for her death because he believes that medication the company manufactured caused her expiration, caused her demise.
- [44:06]
B
Quite the motive, one might argue.
- [44:09]
A
Cinematic. Right? But then also, why is that not the story he gave originally?
- [44:15]
B
Well, we're talking about the story about the wife, his wife's company on blast for a bounce check.
- [44:22]
A
Right. So also law enforcement, it's clear we've all seen things like law and order. Authorities here in the United States are going to treat you very differently if you have priors, if you have what we call a jacket. So he has a complicated criminal past, including attempted murder in 1966. His own adoptive mother, he came at her with an ax in Missouri. They put him in a mental hospital. This guy was never the leader of the Kiwanis Club.
- [45:02]
B
Just over a Decade later, in 1978, he was accused of an actual murder and dismemberment of an elderly man that he suspected of having defrauded him in some way in Kansas City.
- [45:14]
A
And so fast forward, as we said, he goes to prison for extortion. He serves 10 years. He's released on October of 1995. And then if we fast forward a Decade later, in 2004, he is charged with sexual assault with rape and kidnapping in a case that's eventually dropped. Yeah, real piece of work.
- [45:41]
B
He did an interview on CBS in 1984 that you can actually find. There's a really great piece that Dylan linked us to, a CBS News deep dive, I guess, based on some of the reporting around the time. And it has clips from this interview and it has all of the court documents, 173 pages of them. But the interesting thing that I found, or the part that I found interesting is the argument that Louis makes is that the letter he sent was totally fine because it didn't, you're not, it's not illegal, he says, to send a letter like this if you don't have intent. And there was no way that he could have had any intent because the bank account he was requesting the payment be placed in was a closed bank account and it was a Continental Illinois bank account that he didn't have access to anymore.
- [46:27]
A
Yeah. But again, the issue, I go back to Is that drill board method?
- [46:32]
B
Totally.
- [46:32]
A
That's not public knowledge. So if it's possible that interrogators were prompting him and sort of guiding him to say those things, but if he says that unprompted, if he already knows how it works, that's a very dangerous person. And they have. They have a dark education, which most people don't possess. So in 2009, as we were saying, the FBI is still interested in this guy. They go back to his domicile, they get more boxes of evidence, and In September of 2022, he is interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation one last time before he passes away in 2023. The Chicago Tylenol murders remain unsolved. But again, I want to go back to the silver lining. It led to tamper proof bottles, which should have already been a thing for everything. I don't know.
- [47:39]
B
The more you know, I guess.
- [47:41]
A
Yeah, the more you know. And this is our episode for today. Thank you as always, fellow ridiculous historians, for tuning in. Thanks to our super producer, Max over the Counter Williams, and thanks to our research associate, Dylan Wade Clark.
- [47:58]
B
Huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Christopher Oiotis and Eve Jeffcoats here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter, AJ Bahamas Jacobs.
- [48:06]
A
The Puzzler, Dr. Richard Big Spinach Lance, our fellow rude dudes over at Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us, you'll love them. And also, just by the way, folks, recently we learned it was World Kindness Day, I want to say, on November 12th. And if you were feeling kind or if you're thinking, oh, I like this show, I'd love to do something nice for the gang. Well, if we may be so bold, you can always get to your podcast platform of choice and give us a rating we like. 5 stars if you're feeling generous. Because every time we get a good rating, our boss texts us and says, one more day. I still don't know what he means by that.
- [48:52]
B
I don't either. Yeah. Hey, you know what, man? One day at a time. Happy to be doing it with you, bud. Well, see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Honestly, Honestly, Honestly, no one wants to think about hiv, but there are things that everyone can do to help prevent it. Things like prep. Prep stands for pre exposure prophylaxis. And it means routinely taking pictures prescription medicine before you're exposed to HIV to help reduce your chances of getting it. Prep can be about 99% effective when taken as prescribed. It doesn't protect against other STIs, though, so be sure to use condoms and other healthy sex practices. Ask a healthcare provider about all your prevention Options and visit findoutaboutprep.com to learn more. Sponsored by Gilead.
- [49:43]
A
Hey, audiobook lovers. I'm Kalpen.
- [49:46]
B
I'm Ed Helms.
- [49:47]
A
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Hearsay. The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [49:56]
B
Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks.
- [50:04]
A
From Audible, listen to Hearsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [50:14]
B
So usually on OK Storytime, our audience will send in their relationship problems, and the OK Storytime squad gives some good advice. Goofily.
- [50:21]
C
But.
- [50:21]
A
But today we're not giving out our usual advice.
- [50:24]
B
Our producer Riley says we're giving something else. So what are we doing today, Riley? Today we're playing a little game. Oh, I love games. Says the man. I bought special gifts for you guys from ebay. Each one picked with one of you in mind. Yeah, Dakota, if you want to guess. All right. There is a gift at my feet. Open that thing. And now it is in my hands. I feel like it's got to be.
- [50:45]
A
Our resident gamer key.
- [50:46]
B
This is the resident rectangle of childhood. It's a portable game console. I used to have this as a kid. This game console I used to play all the time. And you know when your mom came into the room when you're a kid and like you're pretending to sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Riley, what a thoughtful gift.
- [51:01]
A
Yeah, right.
- [51:01]
B
Thank you so much, Riley. You're crushing it. But we have one more gift.
- [51:05]
A
Yeah. Open it.
- [51:07]
C
Boom.
- [51:07]
A
Oh, camera. Yeah, an old timey camera. That's right.
- [51:11]
B
Classic. This is awesome because you know how I love to take pictures of my travels. Yeah, you're always somewhere, whether it's in Kyrgyzstan with some nomads or just New.
- [51:20]
A
York, you know, with a nice little.
- [51:22]
B
A piece of trash or a rat little. Nice picture. Taking pictures with the birds. So, Riley, you got all of this.
- [51:28]
A
From ebay, dude, ebay.
- [51:30]
B
It was really fun finding it with you guys. Like, I had very specific things for each one of you. Yeah, it was all there. Thanks, Riley. And thank you, eBay. And guys shop ebay for millions of fine each with a story. EBay things people love. Black Friday is here.
- [51:44]
C
And Pandora Jewelry is offering up to 40% off storewide and site wide. Now through December 2nd, Explore Jewelry designed to last beyond the season, from classic charms to modern rings, bracelets, earrings and more. Whether you're holiday shopping or treating yourself, now's the perfect time to find something Special. Shop@pandora.net or your local Pandora store. Exclusions apply.
- [52:07]
B
This episode is brought to you by.
- [52:09]
A
Pbs, home of Ken Burns.
- [52:11]
B
His newest film, the American Revolution, reveals untold stories of people, some familiar, many forgotten, who risked everything to change the course of history. It's the story of a war that was bloody, complex and profoundly consequential. Ken Burns and his co directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt shine a light on how this historic fight for independence lit the spark for freedom that still burns today.
- [52:35]
A
The American Revolution premieres Sunday, November 16.
- [52:38]
B
At 8, 7 Central on PBS and the PBS app Don't miss it.
- [52:42]
C
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.