November 25, 2025 • 39 mins
For most people, Tylenol is nothing more than an ol' stand-by, over-the-counter pain reliever. Yet, as Ben, Noel and Max learn in today's episode -- this wasn't always the case. Today's episode takes the boys to 1980s Chicago, when a ghoulish series of still-unsolved murders rocked the pharmaceutical industry, and led to the creation of tamper-proof packaging.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man,
the myth legend, our super producer, mister Max over the
Counter Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Max extra Strength Williams because he's strong, still over the counter.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Also sure never seen him under one. Uh that's mister
Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, I've been under a counter or two in my day.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And I know some accountants they call me Ben Bullen.
And 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
(01:16):
thank you, Dylan.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
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,
but 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.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
You know, but at least you're putting up front and
letting the folks do with it what they.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Wilst up front, just like that sign at the entrance
to the city of dis on the edge of Hell
that says, abandon all hope you who enter here. We're
going back to September nineteen eighty two, when our super
(02:19):
producer and perhaps you yourself, mister Brown, were.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Not alive, not quite I was a year. Hence, September
of nineteen eighty two, there had been a string of
fatalities tied to extra strength til and All. Can we
also just say right up front here too, we're not
doing a character assassination piece on til and All. They've
already gotten bad enough as this given some of the
(02:43):
rhetoric coming out of the current administration.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Let's just say it plainly, folks, there is no hard
scientific evidence that thiland All or nor any of the
ingredients included in that brand name over the counter medication
would cause autism.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
But what we do know is that harm was absolutely
caused by Thailand, although 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
(03:21):
in a bit of a panic surrounding these these unfortunate
deaths tied to extra strength til and all 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 adulterance that made their way into the drugs,
(03:42):
the popular drugs, would find their way into their market.
So it was a massive pr scandal, and you know
the kerfuffle for the Tailanol brand.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, and it was indeed a moral panic up there
with the Satanic panic or the sale of witch trials
even and uh, what what authorities quickly figure out is
that the there are lethal doses of Thailanol branded products.
They were consumed by seven victims. But the active ingredient
(04:15):
here was not something that I should say, the fatal
ingredient was not something that Thailanol purposely included. Instead, uh,
the stuff these folks were consuming have been tampered with,
and the capsules the little pills. I like saying capsules
instead of us as, so say we all max get
(04:38):
on board.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So we uh.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So ben I mentioned a little bit about packaging and
chain es that resulted from this formal 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?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, let's get into it. So our story starts with
a manufacturer named McNeil Consumer Products. Their providence is back
in nineteen fifty five. They started as McNeil Laboratories. They'd
later split into McNeil Consumer Products that's their retail sales,
(05:39):
and then McNeil Pharmaceuticals those are their prescription drugs. They
first produced tylotol in nineteen fifty five. And it's the
name that it's the it's the brand name that they
give to the drug, A seed of benefit.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Nowzita ceda methodon seed to minofish. Okay, I'm making fun
of the President. Have you seen that clip where he
couldn't pronounce the word.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I'm not given that guy too much time.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And not trying to be politically here, but the dude's
not great at words. Let's just put it that way.
Ceda minifin indeed an analgesic and fever reducing drug, and
the company then is acquired in nineteen fifty nine, after
you know, having success with someone 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
(06:33):
things to of course deep in the pharmaceutical, prescription and
over the counter industry.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Now I've heard of the first Johnson, but I have
no idea the second.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Second Johnson is a mystery. Nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Maybe it's the Maybe it's the big Johnson from the
T shirts back in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Did kids wear those at your school? I was always
so like made uncomfortable by this.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I always I always felt that that their parents were divorced, yeah,
or just very permissive.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So in nineteen seventy five, 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
tail and all equivalent called Datrill. And if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
at the point we're we're at in history now, Johnson
and Johnson still just doing prescription drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah yeah, they are the ones who when they acquire McNeil,
they say, Okay, this branded Aceeda menifin can only be
prescribed by a doctor, and our buddies Bristol and Myers
say we're going to sell a seed of menifin under
this other name, dat Trill.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
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
Tailan all five hundred milligrams, making it the strongest painter
leaver on the market and just eating up thirty four
(08:06):
percent of the worldwide market share of the industry.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah yeah, and let's hear Max. Can we get a
fast forward? We were the kind of sound cute, great
fast forward. It's early in the morning, September twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty two, Chicago Metro Area specifically a suburb called
Elk Grove Village. There's a twelve year old kid. Her
(08:34):
name is Mary Kellerman. She has been complaining of a
sore throat, a running nose. She's not having the best morning.
So she gets one dose of this McNeil created extra
strength tile and all, and then her parents say, Okay,
take a sick day, go back to bed. Mary rest up,
(08:55):
And unfortunately it's seven am. Just a little bit later,
her parents come in to check on her and she
has passed away. So it's an 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,
(09:22):
guys September twenty ninth, same day, twenty seven year old
postal worker named Adam Janis over in Arlington Heights, Illinois
dies and officially, even though he's just twenty seven, authorities
and doctors presume he has had a heart attack, which
(09:45):
can happen. It can happen, for sure, Ben.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
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, you know, for trick or treating, and the
idea of getting poked with needles in movie theaters, you know. Like,
(10:08):
this is a great example of a thing that we
see in history numerous times, where in an isolated event,
then esteem and interpret it as the order of the day.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, launches a thousand ships of paranoia and concern. We
also launches copycats, let's say, launches copycats. That's true, that's
a great point. And we also we don't love the
word hysteria because of the etymology associated dispissive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Right of the people, you know, experiencing genuine trauma.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Right, yeah, and this this leads us to an horrific
chain of events. Our buddy, Adam Janie, has a brother.
His brother is named Stanley. He has a sister in
law named Teresa. Now Stanley is twenty five years old.
His sister in law, Teresa is nineteen. They are also
(11:05):
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 an intensely traumatic situation. So they go to
the home medicine cabinet, and they find a bottle of
(11:28):
tylodol in their dead relatives home in Adam's home. Later
research would verify this was the same bottle of tylodol
Adam Janis used when authorities initially assumed he had a
fatal heart attack.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah. WTTW Chicago reports that there were six capsules missing
and there were three people dead. So Helen Johnson, the
public health nurse investigating and doing the search, basically realized, Okay,
this's got to be something going on with the.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Tilol, right, yeah, Because let's all recall that if you
buy over the counter tilt hall and over the counter
just meaning stuff you can buy without a prescription or
off the shelf, really right, right, Yeah, exactly, the bottle
is going to have a label that tells you how
(12:24):
many capsules or how many doses are in the thing
you're buying. So that's how she did the math. And
then let's fast forward, not too too much, just a
little a little more than two days later, forty eight
hours later.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, we see three more deaths following Tyland All use
from Mary McFarlane thirty one of Elmhurst, Paula prince of
this downtown Chicagogs and Mary Reiner twenty seven of the
suburb of Winfield. Early October of nineteen eighty two, investigators
started connecting the deaths with cyanide poisoning.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, 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 Jannis,
the death of young Mary Kellerman, and they say, hey,
this may have a common cause. You know, it is
(13:24):
relatively unusual, even in the land of Italian beef and
deep dish pizza, for someone to have a heart attack
at twenty seven. So let's test for other stuff. And
this is where they say there is cyanide poisoning, and
everybody involved also took tail.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And all cyanide, by the way, exists as a powdery
substance with the smell of bitter almonds. You often here
referred to in literature like as you know, a sign
that someone's been poisoned, they smell bitter almonds. It's incredibly toxic,
and dose is as small as a fraction of a
teaspoon can cause instant death.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, as little as fifty milligrams. Now police are trying
to figure out a chain of custody for the tilanol,
which is an obvious order of operations for any investigation here.
They say the tampering must have occurred after thailanol left
(14:25):
the factory where it's made. So this logically means the
perpetrator must have taken thilan all packaging from local grocery
and drug stores there in the Chicago metro area and
then lace them with this poison, and then repackage them
and returned them to the store, hoping that someone would
(14:50):
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 pro I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The second Johnson. You must be the second Johnson, the mystery,
the mysterious Johnson.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
You're right back, man two Johnson. Appreciate 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?
Speaker 2 (15:28):
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 twenty four hours a comprehensive guide to
successful crisis communication. The time in All Crisis is, without
a doubt, the most exemplary case ever known in the
(15:49):
history of crisis communications. I guess given them 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 Talent All 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
(16:10):
it under the rug and be making it into a
learning opportunity, you know, 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.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So what did these guys do? Specifically, 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,
(16:51):
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 confer people were dying
from poison Tylan All. He wanted our comment, and it
was the first knowledge we had here in the department.
We told him we knew nothing about it. In that
(17:13):
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 twenty four hour cycle
of response for PR. You'll also see that in an
Always Sunny and Philadelphia episode about Wolf Cola Boko Haram.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
You don't have time to hear yes, 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
chair of McNeil, David Collins. And so they form a
(18:07):
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 Tail and all.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
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 you know, 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 thirty one million bottles, which cost
(18:48):
the company around two hundred and forty million dollars. They
decided to pull advertising for a time while they dealt
with this, and they offered a you know, for any
information leading to the apprehension or identification of the individual
or individuals who were tampering with these products. One hundred
(19:10):
thousand dollars was put on the table for that. James
Burke spoke to the public frequently through press conferences. He
went on sixty Minutes and at the time incredibly popular
Phil Donna Hugheship.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
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
(19:48):
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 if we know people like
(20:12):
this exist, One we have to find them. And two
we have to realize that there is still Tilo and
All 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.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
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 tile and All including and this was kind of
a stroke of marketing genius if you think about it,
(20:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, and this is why those bottles are purposely inconvenient
to unscrew. There's a reason it exists. All other manufacturers
started following this queue as a great design. This new
packaging was accompanied by a consumer warning, again another thing
(21:35):
that became an industry standard. The company also offered any
consumer a two dollars and fifty cent coupon toward future
purposes if they had to throw away tilet All previously
because of the recal and unlike today, they didn't have to.
There wasn't a high barrier to proving that they bought
(21:57):
a previous tilet All bottle.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, there'd be no way to do that. I mean,
it was sort of like an honor system thing, and
no questions asked, which you gotta you gotta appreciate, you know.
And then another important outcome here involves the law, because
we know that the gears of you know, the government,
tend to grind pretty painfully slowly. But the fallout and
(22:20):
then crisis management efforts around this whole thing led to
some pretty quick work. When US Congress passed the tail
and All bill, piggybacking off of all of that drive
for public safety, to protect the public, the Johnson and
Johnson did this made it a federal offense to tamper
with consumer products. That was an eighty three just a
(22:41):
year later from from the events of the Thailand All murders.
And then in nineteen eighty nine the FDA followed suit,
making it law that manufacturers make all of their products
tamper proof.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, which is one of the again I call it
the worst best news. It's like when the FD the
FDA or cereal manufacturers say, okay, we've got a new law.
There's going to be only zero point two percent rat
feces maximum in your raisin brand. Hey, you're like, well,
thank you, But also how much rat feces was in
(23:15):
there before?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
No more poisoning the tail and a Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
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 contamony.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
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 probably get noticed and be
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, air tight seal
that needs to make a little tupperware burp sound when
(24:00):
you when you get rid of him.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, the that that seal, you know, 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
(24:27):
at least three suspects. Maybe we start with Kevin Masterson.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, well, we'll breeze through some of these and get
to our prime suspect. Kevin Masterson was thirty five from Lombard, Illinois,
had a grudge against a grocery chain because of a
shoplifting incident that had occurred back in seventy five involving
his ex wife. She was roughed up by store security,
(24:53):
and he blames this event on the dissolution or the
deterioration of their marriage. It seems like, I don't know, man,
that doesn't seem like a cool thing to have happened
to somebody, especially if she was innocent. But he's projecting
there a little bit, I would argue, right. Police ultimately
took a look at Masterson because of his known frustrations
(25:13):
and grudge beef with the grocery chain and the fact
that lethal doses of les talamal were purchased from this
chain of stores.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
From jewel Osco. And keep in mind Vokes for the
context of the day here in the early eighties, the
police are now on the hook of public opinions, so
they have to find 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
(25:44):
four weeks, until he peacefully turns himself in at the
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 know you guys are the FBI.
I heard you were after me, and I said, I'm
(26:05):
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
(26:27):
his cell. He is smearing, he's literally smearing his poop
on the wall.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yikes. Yeah, they put in the hole. Yeah, well, all
of this because he's absolutely sick of being referred to
as the Tail and All Killer by other rights.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right, so they put him in the hole in solitary confinement.
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 ind gelatine
capsules that would be used for making illicit drugs. But
(27:05):
they don't see any Tail and All branding on these
caps which means that ultimately he might be involved with
some nefarious stuff, but he is not our Tail and
All Killer, which brings us to the next suspect on
the list.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
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 forty
eight year old doc worker for Jewel Grocery and Melrose Park,
whose wife was under psychiatric care at Central du Page Hospital,
(27:44):
which also was coincidentally, it would seem, the same hospital
that Mary Reiner gave birth her fourth child just days
before her death, also was located across from Fran Foods,
which is where she purchased her lethal bottle of tonnel.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, and ultimately Arnold gets word that the police are
after him because a bartender bar owner over in Lincoln
Park says, hey, coops, 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
(28:27):
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 were true, we don't know he had been.
In the opinion of the bar folks there, he had
(28:47):
been acting anxious, squarely and strange. So the police still
on this man hunt, they search his apartment. It's October eleventh,
nineteen eighty two, and they fired a bunch of stuff,
pretty much all the guns, all the AMMO tons, knives,
and implements of violence, some of anarchist cookbook type materials. Yeah,
(29:10):
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 just I have a copy, but
just know you're going to get on a list depending
(29:31):
on how you acquire it, because it tells you how
to do very bad things in very easy, step by
step instruction format.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah. He also had a bunch of lab equipment, beakers
and glassware and all that kind of stuff. So after
refusing to take a light detector tests us 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 about seven months later, when
(30:02):
he was charged with the murder of a man in
a Chicago bar who he believed originally is the one
who tipped off the police, saying that he was the
tailant all murderer.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, he came and found the guy that he thought
told law enforcement he was buying a bunch of poison.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So the guy also seemed mentally unwell.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Just gonna say he seems not an honors student. He
gets charged with thirty years in prison, he serves fifteen.
He passes away in two thousand and eight. He has gone.
He is not considered our prime suspect. One of our
(30:46):
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
IOJ Simpson esque I didn't do it, but if I
did kind of vibe.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, 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
would trigger an end to these killings. Right. He's always denied, however,
(31:25):
having any role in the killings and had a real
wacky explanation for why he sent the letter.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
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
(31:53):
for the extortion, which he definitely did, he goes to
the FBI or they come to him in the entil
irrigation 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 tile it all. Guys, I
(32:14):
call this the drill Boyd method.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, I don't. This is 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
(32:37):
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
(32:57):
of the capsules back on, so you would be adding
a layer of the stuff into the kalent all gel
cap Yeah, which is so here's why this is fascinating.
So first off, this is pro level stuff. I'm just
gonna be honest. It's so pro level that to do this,
(33:20):
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 menacent people you want to target if
you're going to put in this amount of effort. So
(33:42):
a lot of investigators, now professional, amateur, private, they see
Lewis 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.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Tony Ann.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
He blamed the company.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
He blames Johnson and Johnson for her death because he
believes that medication the company manufactured caused her expiration, caused
her demise.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Quite the motive, one might argue.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Cinematic, right, but then also, why is that not the
story he gave originally?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, we're talking about the story about the wife, his
wife's company on blast for a bounced check.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
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 pass including attempted murder.
(34:56):
In nineteen sixty six, his own optive mother. He came
at her with an axe in Missouri. They put him
in a mental hospital. This guy was never, you know,
the leader of the Kawanis Club.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Just over a decade later, in nineteen seventy eight, 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.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And so fast forward, as we said, he goes to
prison for extortion. He serves ten years, he's released on
October of nineteen ninety five, and then if we fast
forward a decade later, in two thousand and four, he
is charged with sexual assault, with rape and kidnapping in
(35:46):
a case that's eventually dropped. Yeah, real piece of work.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
He did an interview on CBS in nineteen eighty four
that you can actually find there's a really great piece
that Dylan linked us to a CBS News d dive
I guess based on some of the reporting around the time,
and it has a clip from this interview, and it
has all of the court documents, one hundred and seventy
three pages of them. But the interesting thing that I found,
(36:12):
or a part that I found interesting, is the argument
that Lewis makes is that the letter he sent was
totally fine because it didn't it's not illegal. He says,
to send a letter like this if you don't have intent,
And there is 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
(36:33):
it was a Continental Illinois Bank account that he didn't
have access to anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, but again the issue I go back to is
the drill board method. Totally 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,
(36:58):
that's a very dangerous person.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
And they have.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
They have a dark education, which most people don't possess.
So in two thousand and nine. As we're 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 twenty twenty two, he is interviewed by
(37:24):
the Federal Bureau of Investigation one last time before he
passes away. In twenty twenty three, the Chicago Thailand all
murders remain unsolved. But again, I want to go back
to the silver lining. It led to tamper proof bottles,
(37:44):
which should have already been a thing for everything I
don't want.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
The more you know, I guess, yeah, the more you know.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And this is our episode for today. Thank you as always,
fellow ridiculous historians for two in thanks to our super
producer Max over the Counter Williams, and thanks to our
research associate Dylan Wade Clark.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams who can post our theme.
Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff Cotes here in spirit, Jonas Strickling,
the Quizzer, aj Bahamas Jacobs, the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance our fellow rude dudes over
a 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 twelfth. And if you were feeling kind if you're thinking, oh,
(38:38):
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 five stars if
you're feeling generous, because every time we get a good rating,
our boss text us and says, one more day. I
(39:01):
still don't know what he.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Means by that. I don't either. Yeah, hey, you know
what I man one day at a time. Happy to
be doing it with you, Bud. We'll see you next time.
Books For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man,
the myth legend, our super producer, mister Max over the
Counter Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Max extra Strength Williams because he's strong, still over the counter.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Also sure never seen him under one. Uh that's mister
Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, I've been under a counter or two in my day.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And I know some accountants they call me Ben Bullen.
And 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
(01:16):
thank you, Dylan.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
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,
but 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.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
You know, but at least you're putting up front and
letting the folks do with it what they.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Wilst up front, just like that sign at the entrance
to the city of dis on the edge of Hell
that says, abandon all hope you who enter here. We're
going back to September nineteen eighty two, when our super
(02:19):
producer and perhaps you yourself, mister Brown, were.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Not alive, not quite I was a year. Hence, September
of nineteen eighty two, there had been a string of
fatalities tied to extra strength til and All. Can we
also just say right up front here too, we're not
doing a character assassination piece on til and All. They've
already gotten bad enough as this given some of the
(02:43):
rhetoric coming out of the current administration.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Let's just say it plainly, folks, there is no hard
scientific evidence that thiland All or nor any of the
ingredients included in that brand name over the counter medication
would cause autism.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
But what we do know is that harm was absolutely
caused by Thailand, although 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
(03:21):
in a bit of a panic surrounding these these unfortunate
deaths tied to extra strength til and all 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 adulterance that made their way into the drugs,
(03:42):
the popular drugs, would find their way into their market.
So it was a massive pr scandal, and you know
the kerfuffle for the Tailanol brand.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, and it was indeed a moral panic up there
with the Satanic panic or the sale of witch trials
even and uh, what what authorities quickly figure out is
that the there are lethal doses of Thailanol branded products.
They were consumed by seven victims. But the active ingredient
(04:15):
here was not something that I should say, the fatal
ingredient was not something that Thailanol purposely included. Instead, uh,
the stuff these folks were consuming have been tampered with,
and the capsules the little pills. I like saying capsules
instead of us as, so say we all max get
(04:38):
on board.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So we uh.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So ben I mentioned a little bit about packaging and
chain es that resulted from this formal 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?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, let's get into it. So our story starts with
a manufacturer named McNeil Consumer Products. Their providence is back
in nineteen fifty five. They started as McNeil Laboratories. They'd
later split into McNeil Consumer Products that's their retail sales,
(05:39):
and then McNeil Pharmaceuticals those are their prescription drugs. They
first produced tylotol in nineteen fifty five. And it's the
name that it's the it's the brand name that they
give to the drug, A seed of benefit.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Nowzita ceda methodon seed to minofish. Okay, I'm making fun
of the President. Have you seen that clip where he
couldn't pronounce the word.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I'm not given that guy too much time.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
And not trying to be politically here, but the dude's
not great at words. Let's just put it that way.
Ceda minifin indeed an analgesic and fever reducing drug, and
the company then is acquired in nineteen fifty nine, after
you know, having success with someone 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
(06:33):
things to of course deep in the pharmaceutical, prescription and
over the counter industry.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Now I've heard of the first Johnson, but I have
no idea the second.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Second Johnson is a mystery. Nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Maybe it's the Maybe it's the big Johnson from the
T shirts back in the nineties.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Did kids wear those at your school? I was always
so like made uncomfortable by this.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I always I always felt that that their parents were divorced, yeah,
or just very permissive.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So in nineteen seventy five, 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
tail and all equivalent called Datrill. And if I'm not mistaken, Ben,
at the point we're we're at in history now, Johnson
and Johnson still just doing prescription drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah yeah, they are the ones who when they acquire McNeil,
they say, Okay, this branded Aceeda menifin can only be
prescribed by a doctor, and our buddies Bristol and Myers
say we're going to sell a seed of menifin under
this other name, dat Trill.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
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
Tailan all five hundred milligrams, making it the strongest painter
leaver on the market and just eating up thirty four
(08:06):
percent of the worldwide market share of the industry.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah yeah, and let's hear Max. Can we get a
fast forward? We were the kind of sound cute, great
fast forward. It's early in the morning, September twenty ninth,
nineteen eighty two, Chicago Metro Area specifically a suburb called
Elk Grove Village. There's a twelve year old kid. Her
(08:34):
name is Mary Kellerman. She has been complaining of a
sore throat, a running nose. She's not having the best morning.
So she gets one dose of this McNeil created extra
strength tile and all, and then her parents say, Okay,
take a sick day, go back to bed. Mary rest up,
(08:55):
And unfortunately it's seven am. Just a little bit later,
her parents come in to check on her and she
has passed away. So it's an 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,
(09:22):
guys September twenty ninth, same day, twenty seven year old
postal worker named Adam Janis over in Arlington Heights, Illinois
dies and officially, even though he's just twenty seven, authorities
and doctors presume he has had a heart attack, which
(09:45):
can happen. It can happen, for sure, Ben.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
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, you know, for trick or treating, and the
idea of getting poked with needles in movie theaters, you know. Like,
(10:08):
this is a great example of a thing that we
see in history numerous times, where in an isolated event,
then esteem and interpret it as the order of the day.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, launches a thousand ships of paranoia and concern. We
also launches copycats, let's say, launches copycats. That's true, that's
a great point. And we also we don't love the
word hysteria because of the etymology associated dispissive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Right of the people, you know, experiencing genuine trauma.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Right, yeah, and this this leads us to an horrific
chain of events. Our buddy, Adam Janie, has a brother.
His brother is named Stanley. He has a sister in
law named Teresa. Now Stanley is twenty five years old.
His sister in law, Teresa is nineteen. They are also
(11:05):
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 an intensely traumatic situation. So they go to
the home medicine cabinet, and they find a bottle of
(11:28):
tylodol in their dead relatives home in Adam's home. Later
research would verify this was the same bottle of tylodol
Adam Janis used when authorities initially assumed he had a
fatal heart attack.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah. WTTW Chicago reports that there were six capsules missing
and there were three people dead. So Helen Johnson, the
public health nurse investigating and doing the search, basically realized, Okay,
this's got to be something going on with the.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Tilol, right, yeah, Because let's all recall that if you
buy over the counter tilt hall and over the counter
just meaning stuff you can buy without a prescription or
off the shelf, really right, right, Yeah, exactly, the bottle
is going to have a label that tells you how
(12:24):
many capsules or how many doses are in the thing
you're buying. So that's how she did the math. And
then let's fast forward, not too too much, just a
little a little more than two days later, forty eight
hours later.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, we see three more deaths following Tyland All use
from Mary McFarlane thirty one of Elmhurst, Paula prince of
this downtown Chicagogs and Mary Reiner twenty seven of the
suburb of Winfield. Early October of nineteen eighty two, investigators
started connecting the deaths with cyanide poisoning.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, 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 Jannis,
the death of young Mary Kellerman, and they say, hey,
this may have a common cause. You know, it is
(13:24):
relatively unusual, even in the land of Italian beef and
deep dish pizza, for someone to have a heart attack
at twenty seven. So let's test for other stuff. And
this is where they say there is cyanide poisoning, and
everybody involved also took tail.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And all cyanide, by the way, exists as a powdery
substance with the smell of bitter almonds. You often here
referred to in literature like as you know, a sign
that someone's been poisoned, they smell bitter almonds. It's incredibly toxic,
and dose is as small as a fraction of a
teaspoon can cause instant death.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, as little as fifty milligrams. Now police are trying
to figure out a chain of custody for the tilanol,
which is an obvious order of operations for any investigation here.
They say the tampering must have occurred after thailanol left
(14:25):
the factory where it's made. So this logically means the
perpetrator must have taken thilan all packaging from local grocery
and drug stores there in the Chicago metro area and
then lace them with this poison, and then repackage them
and returned them to the store, hoping that someone would
(14:50):
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 pro I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The second Johnson. You must be the second Johnson, the mystery,
the mysterious Johnson.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
You're right back, man two Johnson. Appreciate 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?
Speaker 2 (15:28):
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 twenty four hours a comprehensive guide to
successful crisis communication. The time in All Crisis is, without
a doubt, the most exemplary case ever known in the
(15:49):
history of crisis communications. I guess given them 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 Talent All 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
(16:10):
it under the rug and be making it into a
learning opportunity, you know, 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.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So what did these guys do? Specifically, 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,
(16:51):
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 confer people were dying
from poison Tylan All. He wanted our comment, and it
was the first knowledge we had here in the department.
We told him we knew nothing about it. In that
(17:13):
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 twenty four hour cycle
of response for PR. You'll also see that in an
Always Sunny and Philadelphia episode about Wolf Cola Boko Haram.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
You don't have time to hear yes, 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
chair of McNeil, David Collins. And so they form a
(18:07):
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 Tail and all.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
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 you know, 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 thirty one million bottles, which cost
(18:48):
the company around two hundred and forty million dollars. They
decided to pull advertising for a time while they dealt
with this, and they offered a you know, for any
information leading to the apprehension or identification of the individual
or individuals who were tampering with these products. One hundred
(19:10):
thousand dollars was put on the table for that. James
Burke spoke to the public frequently through press conferences. He
went on sixty Minutes and at the time incredibly popular
Phil Donna Hugheship.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
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
(19:48):
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 if we know people like
(20:12):
this exist, One we have to find them. And two
we have to realize that there is still Tilo and
All 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.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
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 tile and All including and this was kind of
a stroke of marketing genius if you think about it,
(20:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, and this is why those bottles are purposely inconvenient
to unscrew. There's a reason it exists. All other manufacturers
started following this queue as a great design. This new
packaging was accompanied by a consumer warning, again another thing
(21:35):
that became an industry standard. The company also offered any
consumer a two dollars and fifty cent coupon toward future
purposes if they had to throw away tilet All previously
because of the recal and unlike today, they didn't have to.
There wasn't a high barrier to proving that they bought
(21:57):
a previous tilet All bottle.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, there'd be no way to do that. I mean,
it was sort of like an honor system thing, and
no questions asked, which you gotta you gotta appreciate, you know.
And then another important outcome here involves the law, because
we know that the gears of you know, the government,
tend to grind pretty painfully slowly. But the fallout and
(22:20):
then crisis management efforts around this whole thing led to
some pretty quick work. When US Congress passed the tail
and All bill, piggybacking off of all of that drive
for public safety, to protect the public, the Johnson and
Johnson did this made it a federal offense to tamper
with consumer products. That was an eighty three just a
(22:41):
year later from from the events of the Thailand All murders.
And then in nineteen eighty nine the FDA followed suit,
making it law that manufacturers make all of their products
tamper proof.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, which is one of the again I call it
the worst best news. It's like when the FD the
FDA or cereal manufacturers say, okay, we've got a new law.
There's going to be only zero point two percent rat
feces maximum in your raisin brand. Hey, you're like, well,
thank you, But also how much rat feces was in
(23:15):
there before?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
No more poisoning the tail and a Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
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 contamony.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
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 probably get noticed and be
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, air tight seal
that needs to make a little tupperware burp sound when
(24:00):
you when you get rid of him.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, the that that seal, you know, 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
(24:27):
at least three suspects. Maybe we start with Kevin Masterson.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, well, we'll breeze through some of these and get
to our prime suspect. Kevin Masterson was thirty five from Lombard, Illinois,
had a grudge against a grocery chain because of a
shoplifting incident that had occurred back in seventy five involving
his ex wife. She was roughed up by store security,
(24:53):
and he blames this event on the dissolution or the
deterioration of their marriage. It seems like, I don't know, man,
that doesn't seem like a cool thing to have happened
to somebody, especially if she was innocent. But he's projecting
there a little bit, I would argue, right. Police ultimately
took a look at Masterson because of his known frustrations
(25:13):
and grudge beef with the grocery chain and the fact
that lethal doses of les talamal were purchased from this
chain of stores.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
From jewel Osco. And keep in mind Vokes for the
context of the day here in the early eighties, the
police are now on the hook of public opinions, so
they have to find 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
(25:44):
four weeks, until he peacefully turns himself in at the
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 know you guys are the FBI.
I heard you were after me, and I said, I'm
(26:05):
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
(26:27):
his cell. He is smearing, he's literally smearing his poop
on the wall.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yikes. Yeah, they put in the hole. Yeah, well, all
of this because he's absolutely sick of being referred to
as the Tail and All Killer by other rights.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Right, so they put him in the hole in solitary confinement.
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 ind gelatine
capsules that would be used for making illicit drugs. But
(27:05):
they don't see any Tail and All branding on these
caps which means that ultimately he might be involved with
some nefarious stuff, but he is not our Tail and
All Killer, which brings us to the next suspect on
the list.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
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 forty
eight year old doc worker for Jewel Grocery and Melrose Park,
whose wife was under psychiatric care at Central du Page Hospital,
(27:44):
which also was coincidentally, it would seem, the same hospital
that Mary Reiner gave birth her fourth child just days
before her death, also was located across from Fran Foods,
which is where she purchased her lethal bottle of tonnel.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, and ultimately Arnold gets word that the police are
after him because a bartender bar owner over in Lincoln
Park says, hey, coops, 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
(28:27):
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 were true, we don't know he had been.
In the opinion of the bar folks there, he had
(28:47):
been acting anxious, squarely and strange. So the police still
on this man hunt, they search his apartment. It's October eleventh,
nineteen eighty two, and they fired a bunch of stuff,
pretty much all the guns, all the AMMO tons, knives,
and implements of violence, some of anarchist cookbook type materials. Yeah,
(29:10):
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 just I have a copy, but
just know you're going to get on a list depending
(29:31):
on how you acquire it, because it tells you how
to do very bad things in very easy, step by
step instruction format.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah. He also had a bunch of lab equipment, beakers
and glassware and all that kind of stuff. So after
refusing to take a light detector tests us 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 about seven months later, when
(30:02):
he was charged with the murder of a man in
a Chicago bar who he believed originally is the one
who tipped off the police, saying that he was the
tailant all murderer.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, he came and found the guy that he thought
told law enforcement he was buying a bunch of poison.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
So the guy also seemed mentally unwell.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Just gonna say he seems not an honors student. He
gets charged with thirty years in prison, he serves fifteen.
He passes away in two thousand and eight. He has gone.
He is not considered our prime suspect. One of our
(30:46):
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
IOJ Simpson esque I didn't do it, but if I
did kind of vibe.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, 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
would trigger an end to these killings. Right. He's always denied, however,
(31:25):
having any role in the killings and had a real
wacky explanation for why he sent the letter.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
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
(31:53):
for the extortion, which he definitely did, he goes to
the FBI or they come to him in the entil
irrigation 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 tile it all. Guys, I
(32:14):
call this the drill Boyd method.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, I don't. This is 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
(32:37):
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
(32:57):
of the capsules back on, so you would be adding
a layer of the stuff into the kalent all gel
cap Yeah, which is so here's why this is fascinating.
So first off, this is pro level stuff. I'm just
gonna be honest. It's so pro level that to do this,
(33:20):
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 menacent people you want to target if
you're going to put in this amount of effort. So
(33:42):
a lot of investigators, now professional, amateur, private, they see
Lewis 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.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Tony Ann.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
He blamed the company.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
He blames Johnson and Johnson for her death because he
believes that medication the company manufactured caused her expiration, caused
her demise.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Quite the motive, one might argue.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Cinematic, right, but then also, why is that not the
story he gave originally?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, we're talking about the story about the wife, his
wife's company on blast for a bounced check.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
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 pass including attempted murder.
(34:56):
In nineteen sixty six, his own optive mother. He came
at her with an axe in Missouri. They put him
in a mental hospital. This guy was never, you know,
the leader of the Kawanis Club.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Just over a decade later, in nineteen seventy eight, 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.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And so fast forward, as we said, he goes to
prison for extortion. He serves ten years, he's released on
October of nineteen ninety five, and then if we fast
forward a decade later, in two thousand and four, he
is charged with sexual assault, with rape and kidnapping in
(35:46):
a case that's eventually dropped. Yeah, real piece of work.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
He did an interview on CBS in nineteen eighty four
that you can actually find there's a really great piece
that Dylan linked us to a CBS News d dive
I guess based on some of the reporting around the time,
and it has a clip from this interview, and it
has all of the court documents, one hundred and seventy
three pages of them. But the interesting thing that I found,
(36:12):
or a part that I found interesting, is the argument
that Lewis makes is that the letter he sent was
totally fine because it didn't it's not illegal. He says,
to send a letter like this if you don't have intent,
And there is 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
(36:33):
it was a Continental Illinois Bank account that he didn't
have access to anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, but again the issue I go back to is
the drill board method. Totally 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,
(36:58):
that's a very dangerous person.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
And they have.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
They have a dark education, which most people don't possess.
So in two thousand and nine. As we're 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 twenty twenty two, he is interviewed by
(37:24):
the Federal Bureau of Investigation one last time before he
passes away. In twenty twenty three, the Chicago Thailand all
murders remain unsolved. But again, I want to go back
to the silver lining. It led to tamper proof bottles,
(37:44):
which should have already been a thing for everything I
don't want.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
The more you know, I guess, yeah, the more you know.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And this is our episode for today. Thank you as always,
fellow ridiculous historians for two in thanks to our super
producer Max over the Counter Williams, and thanks to our
research associate Dylan Wade Clark.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams who can post our theme.
Chris Frosciotis and he's Jeff Cotes here in spirit, Jonas Strickling,
the Quizzer, aj Bahamas Jacobs, the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance our fellow rude dudes over
a 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 twelfth. And if you were feeling kind if you're thinking, oh,
(38:38):
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 five stars if
you're feeling generous, because every time we get a good rating,
our boss text us and says, one more day. I
(39:01):
still don't know what he.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Means by that. I don't either. Yeah, hey, you know
what I man one day at a time. Happy to
be doing it with you, Bud. We'll see you next time.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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