Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills multiple people - September 29th, 1982

On this day in 1982, four people in the greater Chicago area died after unknowingly ingesting Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcomed. This Day in History Class,
a show that shines a light on the ups and
downs of everyday history. I'm Gay, Bluesier, and today we're
revisiting the time when poison tainted medication claimed multiple lives

(00:25):
in Illinois and ignited a nationwide panic. The day was
September nine. Four people in the Greater Chicago area died

(00:46):
after unknowingly ingesting thailan All that had been laced with cyanide.
Over the next few days, three more deaths occurred under
the same mysterious circumstances. The track and he terrified the
entire nation and ultimately changed the way non prescription medications
were sold. The first victim of the tainted thailan All

(01:10):
was a twelve year old girl named Mary Kellerman. In
the early morning of September twenty nine, she awoke with
a sore throat and runny nose, so her parents gave
her one capsule of extra strength thailan All, which unbeknownst
to them, had been laced with a lethal dose of cyanide.

(01:30):
The poison took effect quickly, and by seven am, Mary
was dead. Later that day, a twenty seven year old
postal worker named Adam Janis died of what also turned
out to be cyanide poisoning. His brother, Stanley and sister
in law Teresa, came to his house to console his family.

(01:52):
The stress of losing a loved one so unexpectedly had
left both of them with severe headaches, so they each
took a thailan All capsule from the same bottle as Adam.
Stanley died later that day and Teresa two days later.
Before the week was out, the poison capsules had claimed

(02:13):
the lives of three more people, Mary McFarland, Paula Prince,
and Mary Weiner, all of whom had taken thailan All
shortly before they died. By this time in early October,
investigators had identified thailan All as the common link between
the poisoning deaths. This prompted a swift response from Johnson

(02:36):
and Johnson, the parent company of McNeil Consumer Products, which
manufactured thailan All. The company removed its commercials from the
airwaves and worked hand in hand with the media to
issue mass warnings to the public. It also ordered an
immediate nationwide recall of more than thirty one million bottles

(02:56):
of thailan all. Despite the fact that the only taminated
capsules had been found in Illinois, the public danger had
been mitigated, but how the poison got into the capsules
in the first place was still a mystery. Johnson and
Johnson quickly confirmed that the cyanide had been added after
the product had left its factory. This led police to

(03:20):
hypothesize that someone had taken bottles off store shelves in
the Chicago area, laced the capsules with poison, and then
returned the bottles to shelves for unsuspecting strangers to buy. Unfortunately,
with little evidence to go on, the person responsible for
these murders was never found. Several copycat poisonings involving similar

(03:45):
products occurred now and then throughout the nineteen eighties and
early nineteen nineties, but thankfully, these incidents were far less
deadly than what had happened in two This was thanks
in part to a series of crucial changes that helped
make over the counter medications safer and less prone to tampering.

(04:06):
For instance, just six weeks after the Chicago area crisis,
Johnson and Johnson unveiled a new bottle design featuring many
of the safety elements were familiar with today, including a
child proof cap, a foil seal, and a lot of
cotton stuffed between the lid and the capsules. At first,

(04:27):
these changes did little to soothe the public's anxiety. Before
the murders, thailan All was the best selling non prescription
pain reliever in the United States, with control of thirty
five percent of the market. Just a few weeks after
the first deaths were reported. That number sank to less
than eight percent. Over time, though thailand All's one hundred

(04:51):
million dollar investment in new safety features paid off by
the brand was America's pain reliever of choice once again.
That same year, Congress passed the so called thailand All Bill,
which made it a federal crime to tamper with consumer products.

(05:11):
Six years later, in the f d A established manufacturing
guidelines to make all over the counter medications tamper proof.
I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you
liked what you heard, why not follow us on Twitter, Facebook,

(05:34):
and Instagram at t d i h C Show And
if you have any feedback for the show, you can
send it my way at this day at i heeart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in history class. Yeah. For

(06:03):
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