March 26, 2022 • 44 mins
On one terrible day in Chicago in 1982, seven people died suddenly and mysteriously. In just a matter of hours, it becomes clear, someone has poisoned bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol, one of the most trusted and widely-used products in America. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen a two parter one of the most baffling
true crime mysteries ever to hit America, the Thailand All Murders. Uh.
In part one, which you're about to hear now, we
introduced the murders, the senseless deaths, and the panic that
gripped America. And then you'll hear from me again for
(00:22):
part two. So in the meantime, enjoy part one and
I'll see you soon. Welcome to Stuff you should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh, not me, Chuck.
(00:48):
Guest producer Josh is back in the house. Yeah, and
there's a little Chuck in your pockets, Remember little Elvis.
I was just about to say that you got that right,
Tony Oh Man, what a great sketch it really was.
That was Nicholas Kane, wasn't it. Yeah? Man, did you
ever see Mandy? Yes? It was terrible. I don't care
what anybody else says. You hate it. Terrible, terrible movie. Yeah,
(01:11):
Nolan I talked about it on movie Crush. He's seen
it like four times thinks it's the best thing ever.
And he was like, people the love it, I hate it.
And I was like, actually, I was kind of in
the middle. Were you really Yeah? I mean I told
him young Chuck, like twenty two year old college Chuck
would have probably liked it a lot more. But today
Chuck was kind of like, I get it. Like, sure,
(01:32):
parts of it, we're fine. Sure to me. Spending an
hour doing character development but not successfully making you care
about the characters, it just really irked me. Wow, you
had structural issues. Yeah, that was really the big thing.
I also thought Lenis Roach was very very odd for casting.
(01:54):
But which one was the main bad guy? That that
was weird, very weird. I don't even know him, but
it's from Law and Order and like some other stuff,
you gotta get into law. See how much you're missing
out on that's becoming a bit. So did we start
recording yet? I think so? Oh, I already welcomed everybody
the podcast. Um so, Chuck, we are this is some
(02:18):
true crime stuff. For getting into here, that's right, But
I feel like we need to set the tone right
because this isn't just didn't happened just yesterday. This happened
way back in two in Chicago, Illinois. And I remember
this and I was like six at the time. It
was one of my favorite years because of this, the
opposite of that, right, mainly because of movies that was
(02:41):
so great about two look it up? Man, Well, I
was kind of hoping, Oh yeah, okay, yeah, that was
Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I
was forty That's not true. Yes, the original, the original
Blade Runner. Did you like it? It was good. I
(03:02):
like the second one too, You're like, but they spent
way too much time on characters. Um. Yeah. And I
just did a little poking around about two and it
was It was a good year for an eleven year old,
but it was an uneasy time in America. Uh well
for a bunch of awful things happened that year. Uh
And I don't know if it was any more or
(03:23):
less than other years, but uh, air Flight nine D
crashed into into the Potomac River, remember that in Washington,
d C. The plane crash in the river. Didn't hit
a bridge, maybe, but there was there was like a
daring icy river rescue. Yeah. Seventy eight people died though.
That same day, a metro train in d c derailed
(03:46):
killed three people. Uh. February was when Wayne Williams was convicted,
and that was just the end of a lot of honeys,
you know, for years. Uh, Klaus Vambu Law was found
guilty of attempted murder of his wife in March. I
didn't make it to the end of reversal of fortune,
so I honestly didn't know what happened to class guilty. Uh.
(04:09):
In June was the murder of Vincent Chen, who was
a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two
men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese and they
were like stealing his their auto work. I know, right, Uh.
And then July nine, pan Am flight seven nine goes
(04:30):
down in Louisiana, Louisiana kills all one forty six people
on board, plus eight more on the ground. And then
in September, early September was when I know, man, remember
planes used to just crash a lot. Yeah that never
happens now, Uh, not as much. But yeah, weird that
we're recording this in the midst of more plane gradges.
(04:50):
And then early September was when that paper boy in Iowa,
Iowa was kidnapped and never seen again. Johnny Gosh, I
don't know that that was a big deal too, because
it was you know, the paper boy, and there was
this false story about a pedophile ring from politicians and
that turned out not to be true, but he was
never found again. So basically everything that's going on today
(05:13):
is just a rehash of two It sounds like I
just remember being about that age, and they're just the
nightly news sort of just being a horror show and
not politically speaking, you know, like real bad incidents is occurring. Well, yeah,
plane crash like just about at any age, like that'll
that'll bring you down if you see that on the
(05:34):
news for sure. Yeah, um, because you know when you
get on a plane, you think maybe this plane will
go down while I'm want it and that would be terrible.
Although I wasn't flying at eleven. So all of those
things you just mentioned sweep them totally off the table,
because come the end of September of that year, nothing
(05:54):
else mattered but what we're about to talk about now,
that's right, nothing nothing came close to taking the over
the national psyche like the deaths of seven people beginning
on September two in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah. And one of
(06:15):
the articles I read about this, I mean, are we
trying to keep it a secret? It's a show title,
right yeah, yeah yeah, I think they're gonna have to
figure it out. So yeah, go ahead, the thailan All murders. Yeah, okay,
you're like, oh no, no, but that's that comes up
in part two. Oh yeah, this is a two parter
ye as well, so Buckle and everybody. Uh So. I
(06:36):
was doing some research though, and I saw one article
that said something about, you know, the first domestic terror
incident United States that nobody has ever heard of. It's like, what,
who hasn't heard of this? A millennial wrote that headline. Well,
I have to say Josh on the way in here, yeah,
I told him Tailttle murders and huh he goes, what's
the title? And all you old kadr, we should say
(07:00):
what Thailand all is? Huh Okay, yeah, I guess just
in case you are a MILLENNI only you've never heard
of Thailand all, but Thailand all was and still is
and over the counter pain reliever. It's like you have
eggs and pains and apparently, what's crazy? People would take
thaile and all whatever was wrong with them, because now
you can go get like you know, aspirin and um
(07:23):
aadville and and a leave. There was no leave back then.
That was the nineties drug There's way more over the
counter pain relievers now than they we're back then. Back then,
Thailand All was basically it. Yeah, it's a set of menafin,
which is different than aspirin, and I think a lot
of people just think those are interchangeable. Right. The reason
I believe Thailand All became so big is because aspirin
(07:47):
upsets a lot of people's stomachs. Thailand All does not,
or it's not supposed to, and that's why it came
out of nowhere and just took over the aspirin market.
I think by two thailand All had thirty seven of
the market. It's pretty good cornered. Yeah, yeah, almost half,
especially since like some of the other like aspirants have
(08:08):
been around since you know, nineteenth century, right, So it
makes sense then that when a little girl named Mary
Anne kellerman Uh complained that she had a sore throat
and wasn't feeling too good at like seven am on Wednesday, September,
her parents said, just take an extra strength title and
(08:28):
all and go back to bed man for sore throat.
You imagine the guilt. Oh no, these parents feel well,
don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to Marianne
Kellerman yet. I think everybody knows. Uh. Yeah, she got up,
said I'm sick. He said, take this. The father said
he heard her go into the bathroom and close the door,
then heard something drop and went to the door, saying,
(08:50):
are you okay, you're okay? Uh? No answer, opened the
door and there she is on the floor. Um. Taken
to the hospital, but died very quickly. Yeah, probably was
dead when she went to the hospital. Was pronounced there
um and she they suspected this is just a little
twelve year old girl of middle school, girl into Jane
Adams Middle School. Um. She they think she died of
(09:14):
a stroke. That's what they thought happened to her. They
were just so baffled that they're like, it had to
have been a stroke. That's the only thing that can
come on like this. Yeah. So that's seven am. Just
the day is just beginning, and one atrocity has already happened. Yeah,
this is a this is a very bad day in
the history of Chicago. September. Yeah, absolutely, and it started
(09:37):
early Adam Janice, who uh will detail his story, but
put a pin in this one too, because he figures
in even more prominently in a minute. But a little
bit later that same morning, Uh, this gentleman, Adam Janese's
twenty seven years old and lived in Arlington Heights, another
Chicago suburb, and he died. Uh, and they think that
(09:59):
this is a heart attack. Uh. He complained of chess
pains after he had driven his daughter's neighbor home from school.
Uh said, I'm gonna take the day off, comes home,
eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength tile and
all that he bought from a local drug store, collapses
in front of his wife, and by you know, a
few minutes later, when the paramedics arrived, he was dead right.
(10:23):
And again, like you said, they said heart attack because
he's been complaining of chess pains, which had nothing to
do with it. But just like Marianne Kellerman took an
extra strength tile and all for a sore throat, he
took some extra strength tile and all for some chest pains.
This is just what people did back then. Yeah, and
that's what complicated it a little bit. At first, Um
was that you know, if you take the tile and
all it means you felt bad already, So obviously you
(10:45):
know they're gonna be saying like, wait a minute, chess
pains or some throat like, how does that figure in? Yeah,
and it didn't. Plus, Also, what made this even more
baffling is that Marianne Kellerman was twelve and healthy. Adam
Janis was twenty seven and healthy, and all of a
sudden they just dropped up. People just dropped dead. No
matter what you see on TV or in the movies
or whatever, dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing.
(11:08):
When you're a healthy person, that just doesn't happen. Uh.
Next we have Mary Reiner, same day, same day. This
is still all on the same day. Um, she's twenty
seven years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had
just come home from the hospital, uh, after having given
birth to her fourth kid a couple of days before.
(11:29):
Super super sad. All of these are, obviously, but being
a just a brand new mom for the fourth time,
it's just so tragic. Uh. And then by three five
she was so ill she was rushed back to the
hospital and again died, very very quickly. Yeah, and like
Adam Janis collapsed in front of his wife, she collapsed
in front of her young eight year old daughter. One
(11:50):
of her children sare um and yeah. When she was
taking the hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This
is mid afternoon. Mary mcfar Marland was up next. She
was over in um the suburb of Lombard, and she
worked at the Illinois Bell Phone Center where you remember,
like you go get your phone, like the rotary phone,
(12:13):
you know, you would actually lease your phone. I wasn't
involved in that process, but we had them in our home, okay,
well your parents that stuff. No, there was like a
store where you would go it's like the phone company's
retail store, and you would go and be like that
pink one. It's like smartphones today, kind of same model.
(12:34):
Kind of Um, yeah, I guess so. But this was
with a big, clunky rotary phone and you had to
pay extra for the extra long court. Well. Mary McFarlane
worked in one of these stores, and at about four
o'clock UM at the Illinois Bell Phone Center, she was
she had a massive headache that just came on out
of nowhere, and she went back and got some extra
strength tilent all out of her purse, took a couple
(12:57):
of them, and within minutes collapsed in the door. Yeah
she was young as well. She was thirty one years old,
mother of two. And then remember I was talking about
Adam Janice a few minutes ago. Um, his family goes
to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there, he passes away,
and so the family makes their way home UM to
(13:19):
begin morning and just sort of trying to reconcile what
had just happened. His brother, Stanley, he was only twenty,
and then his wife Teresa, who was only nineteen, are
both just overcome and worn out and have headaches. So
they're at Adam's house. They got his medicine cabinet, get
out the tile on all that he took completely unknowingly obviously,
(13:41):
and uh, Stanley hits the ground. Foam comes from his mouth,
his eyes rolled back in his head. Everyone's freaking out,
and a few minutes later, his wife collapses and they
called the ambulance. By the time and the ambulances get there,
I think Stanley died that day and Teresa somehow managed
(14:01):
to live a couple of days. Yeah, she hung on.
And I don't know if like her dose is lesser
or what. But but she she survived for a couple
of days after that. Yeah, I mean my guess is that, uh,
there just wasn't as much cyanide and the capsule she took.
Did I just give something else away? But the so
Stanley took his tail in all first, and then Teresa's occurs,
(14:24):
and one of the paramedics noted, like Teresa was the
one that called the ambulance out to come out for Stanley.
And when you get there, they're they're both like on
the ground and they're like, what's going on? And one
of the paramedics said, everything that was happening to the
guy happened to the woman like a couple of minutes later,
like she was just following him through this process of
like basically systemic organ failure. And this is the same
(14:47):
day that his brother had passed away. Yep. This is
about five six hours, six hours after Adam Janis had died.
Then finally, I know this is all tough to go through. Everyone.
We almost selected this as our next live show. I'm
really glad we did, because, I mean, can you imagine
trying to liven this up with some jokes? I saw it.
(15:08):
The whole time I was like, no, we can do that.
But yeah, the more I got into it, I was like, yeah,
it's probably not good live material. We should have a
rule of thumb that any story that begins with the
death of a twelve year old girl probably not live
show material. I think you're right. So finally we have
Paula Prince. Paula Jeene Prince. This is a couple of
days later. This is not the same day. This is
(15:29):
on Friday evening. She was a thirty five year old
flight attendant and she was found dead in her apartment
after police responded for a welfare check that her sister
called in saying, hey, you know, I know she's a
flight attendant and all, but no one knows where she is.
Can you go check on her welfare check up? And
they finally found her and she was gone, very very sad.
(15:52):
She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of
extra strength Title and all still open on the counter
and she uh They look into um her receipts and
found that she had purchased it on Wednesday, September that's right.
Uh So, at the end of this very short span
of time in the Chicago area. We have seven people dead,
(16:14):
and I feel like that's a good time to take
a message break. Yeah, yeah, all right, stop you know, stop, okay, Chuck,
(16:44):
So you said cyanide. How did you know that? Because
I was eleven years old and I watch the nightly
news like all eleven year old stad just called it
just me and broke aw Dan Rather, yeah, Copple, who else?
That was it? Peter Jennings He came a little later,
but sure, yeah, yeah, he came after somebody. Well, I
(17:06):
mean Cronkite wasn't still around, was he? Or was he?
I don't know. I don't think so. I was I
was going to be into the news as a kid
a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean that was that
was where you got your news back then. Yeah, you
would watch the evening news. It's very strange to think
about now, with the with the up to the minute
news cycle. So oh yeah, I know how much more
(17:26):
innocent things were back then. Um, So remove yourself from
the benefit of hindsight or the benefit of Dan Rather's insight,
and put yourself in the shoes of the people in Chicago. Right,
these are five These are seven different deaths. Um, I
think from five different townships in the greater Chicago area,
(17:48):
including Chicago. Paula Prince, the last person to die, lived
in Chicago. These people aren't talking. These people have no
idea what's going on. It's just that there were five
seven separate baffling deaths. If you want to if you
were people to be dead, yeah I do. That's good.
My voices aren't working though. Um. It just so happens
(18:11):
that the ambulance paramedics that showed up to attend to
marry Mary Anne Kellerman, the first girl to die. Um,
they were just logging everything because it was such a
baffling thing, and they logged her tile and all, yeah
logged isn't collected, right, Yeah, took it as evidence to
maybe look into who knows, But they took the extra
(18:32):
strength tile and all that she had taken, not thinking
anything of it, but just basically throwing anything at the
wall to see what stopped. Yeah, I'm sure the dad
was like, you know, she went in, took some tile
and on and dropped dead. So it probably made sense,
even though it's just Thailand all to say like, well, hey,
let's at least take this in yes, and that title
and all that, right, you know, because that bottle of
tile and All made its way into the hands of
(18:55):
a medical examiner um whose name was Michael Schaefer, and
Michael Schafer tested the tile in All it was rather
surprised to find that some of the capsules had not
tile in all in it, but sixty five milligrams of
potassium cyanide. And it takes about fifty milligrams to kill
a healthy adult. Yeah, I mean some of them. I
(19:17):
don't think they were all exactly the same, but some
of them had been completely emptied of any staminafin and
completely filled with cyanide. With cyanide right, yeah, I mean
it was it was someone intent on for sure killing people. Yes,
because cyanide is no joke. It's a it's a really
really small molecule um and it normally attaches to metals
(19:41):
outside of the body, which is why you have or
minerals I guess, which why you have potassium cyanide um
when it goes into the body when you ingested, however
you ingested, whether it's from a tile in all capsule
or breathing cyanide gas like they used to use to
execute people with. Like they stopped using it for execution
because it was such a brutal death. Yeah, it's very cruel,
(20:02):
painful way to die. Um in the body. It detaches
from its its mineral or metal, and it attaches to
a protein in the body called UM cytochrome c oxidase,
which doesn't sound like could be a big problem, but
it turns out that that's about the worst protein that
cyanide could attach itself too, because we really need cytochrome
(20:24):
c oxidase to breathe. Yeah, basically it I mean, this
sounds like such a cruel thing because it's just rapid
cell death and it's not like your throat closes up
and you can't breathe, like you're inhaling oxygen and you
you are technically taking breaths, but the oxygen is not
(20:45):
getting in the cells. No, it's not because that c
or that cytochrome c oxidase is what helps transport the
oxygen and get and allows the oxygen to be used
for energy. So if the potassium is clinging to it,
the oxygen can't. It just stays in the bloodstream and
it doesn't get used by the cells. And since your
(21:06):
central nervous system is the most oxygen hungry system in
your entire body. It starts to shut down first, and
when your brain and your spinal cords starts shutting down,
all sorts of things happen. Your long start shutting down.
Your heart, God bless it keeps beating for minutes after
the rest of your body is shut down. Can So
(21:26):
you're not technically dead. And they're not sure exactly how
long the pain and excruciation of dying from cyanide lasts,
but they think you're probably conscious in a way and
freaked out for about a minute at least, and your
heart may continue beating for three or four minutes after that.
So it's not a pleasant death at all. No. I mean,
(21:46):
you're you're gasping for air, You're breathing in air. Nothing's happening,
Like I said, um Stanley Janice. He was foaming at
the mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head
in front of his family. It's just like it's awful,
like writhing on the floor, gasping for air. You're breathing,
but it's not doing anything. It's just I can't imagine
(22:06):
anything more horrifying, right, because your central nervous system has
kind of falling out of its um, out of controller
rhythm convulsions are usually a hallmark of cyanide poisoning. And
then you turn bright red at the end of it. Yeah,
sin a chair, you read, they said, Because when your
body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells and
the oxygen becomes depleted, um, your your skin kind of
(22:30):
turns like a rusty brownish red. But because it can
unload that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red.
And your skin turns bright red. And then the other
real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit
like almonds. Yeah, I mean not a bit. I mean
these bottles supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond, And
(22:51):
unless you know what that means, then you're probably not
clued in, you know, Like I wouldn't I wouldn't have known.
I open the bottle of Thailand on it smelled like
better almen would probably be like, h right, it's a
nice smell. Actually, yeah, I like this tail and all. Yeah,
I guess they have a new almond flavor. Awful. So
Michael Schaefer, that medical examiner has just realized that this
(23:14):
this little girl has been poisoned, but he he knows
nothing about these other deaths. There's nothing like that. Um
It's not entirely clear how everything became connected or who
connected it. But what I find just particularly astonishing is
that within just a few hours, by that evening, by
the evening of September twenty nine, people were saying, there's
(23:37):
something up with the Thailand all in these mysterious deaths
that have been going on all around Chicago. Yeah and not.
I mean, we'll get into the dragnet they cast. But
within a few days they had kind of solved everything.
But who did it and how it may have happened?
Who done it? Who done it? Um? So yeah, very
(23:58):
quickly they figured out the Thailand. On. There are a
couple of different stories, um on, Like you said, on
who who was the first person to point this out? Um?
One story is that a reporter for the City News
Bureau in Chicago was doing the reporter thing and doing
some deep diving and investigating and called up a deputy
corner and said, hey, I think this is what's happening.
(24:19):
They told the police. Another story is that too, people
who didn't know each other kind of came together independently
to um let people know. One was a fire captain
name Philip Capitelli. I knew it. I knew you were
going to do that. There was like a chance, you
know why, because we got a lot of support from
people that wrote in saying I'm Italian and I love it.
(24:41):
Keep doing it. And only one guy who hated it.
But ironically it was fire Captain Philip Capitelli and said
so he uh, here here was his deal. His um
his mother in law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the
victim's mother, the first of the little girl, and she said, hey,
(25:02):
would you mind looking into this because I'm friends with
this little girl's mom and it's weird that she dropped
at at and he's a fire captain and they're all
connected to you know, the police, into the medical community.
Everybody knows you want something done, ask a fire captain, um,
because they'll bust into the room with an ax get
everybody's attention. UM. So he's he's investigating. And then there's this, Uh,
(25:27):
there's a nurse named Helen Jensen and she I don't
do you know why she was so into this case?
Was no, no, no. She was the public health nurse
for Cook County, I believe, Okay, so she had an
official designation to investigate. Yes, but unfortunately no one would
listen to her because this is n two and she
(25:49):
was a nurse. Even though she was like a public
health director, she was still a nurse and people wouldn't
listen to her. And she recalled in an oral history
I read about this that she was stomping her feet
out of frustration, saying like, there's something wrong with the
taile and all, like the tail and all is behind
all this, and people wouldn't listen to her. Supposedly, she
and Philip got together and um joined forces, and I
(26:15):
guess we're able to convince everybody that no, there's something
wrong with the with the taile and all. And by
this time people started talking and you know, the the
idea that Michael Shaffer had identified tail and all. I
don't know if it was the same day or the
day after something like that, but all this is within
a span of thirty six forty eight hours. TOPS said,
(26:36):
all of this is going on, that the dots are
being connected, right, So, uh, then what follows is um
Cook County's Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Edmund Donohue holds
a pressor. I've either watched this one or one of
the other ones, Like I remember specifically seeing this press
conference on the news, probably saw Jane Burns. That would
(26:58):
have been the national wide when I guess yeah, And
I was like, how would that have been nationwide? And
then I looked it up. W g N was a
superstation starting in night. Oh you know it, man, So
everybody saw it because wg N could broadcast nationwide. By
I watched Cubs games Kid just because it was on.
(27:18):
That was it like that embraced games were all you
can So Dr Donohue Um has a pressor a local
pressor Um, of course there is panic initially. Yeah, he
scares the s out of everybody because he comes out
of nowhere and says stop taking the tile and all.
Oh yeah sure, and so anyone, I mean, imagine how
(27:40):
many people in Chicago had taken tile and all within
two hours of that press conference and are thinking like
should I go to the hospital? Right And as a
matter of fact, Um, the poison control lines for basically
every in every city where somebody saw this started to
light up right after that, and people are like, I
just took tile in all my k or gave my kid.
(28:01):
Can you imagine? And the the what came to be.
The pat response was, if you are still standing and
talking to us, you're probably okay, which is sort of
a double edged sword, right, It's like, don't worry, you
die super fast kind of so just relax. So just
hold the line for five minutes and then I'm gonna
come back and check on you. And if you're still talking,
you're fine. Oh man, um, alright, So then the Chicago
(28:24):
Mayor's office gets involved, Like you said, Mayor Jane Byrne,
she gets says, you know, print a bunch of flyers,
print them in a bunch of languages, maybe on Golden
Rod and corn flower blue. Sure, why not really catch
people's attention? Uh? That she had police drive through um
with loudspeakers on their car, basically saying like, don't take
(28:47):
tile in all, re enacting that scene from The Blues Brothers.
Whether I was thinking Slacker and that's funny, two different movies.
But do you remember they're driving through in the police
carver with the loudspeaker talking about their their show. Yeah,
same as like her, I don't remember, I don't. I
guess I didn't make either. The end of slack Er either.
It was in the middle ish there was no, dazed
and confused. H oh, just different movies. Um, so they're
(29:11):
they're posting flyers, cops are driving around blaring it through
neighborhoods uh. And then she has a press conference, she
has all Thailand all removed from the Chicago area. She
calls for it. Well, sure she didn't go around with
her her basket, right, No, I'm not a hundred percent
clear if she was actually able to demand that the
(29:33):
Thailand all be removed. I think she was more warning. Yeah,
I mean I doubt if there was any law she
could invoke. I wonder though, it seems afterward I would
imagine that's you know, we'll talk about that later. So, um,
the TV and the radio. You know, obviously everyone picks
us up, not just in Chicago or the United States.
It goes worldwide, and so you know there's people in
(29:57):
Europe and Asia pulling Thailand all off the shelves. Yeah.
So this is a big deal and there was a
lot of attention lavished on this. There was a poll
that was taken the next month in October that found
that this was in cities all over the country, that
found that respondents were aware of this tail and all
(30:18):
poisoning story. Some some press agency like a news clipping
service said that it's the number of the number of
stories dedicated to it were second only to the number
of stories dedicated the assassination of JFK. That's how big
this story became overnight. And again one of the reasons
(30:39):
why is because everybody took tail and all for everything
all the time. That's just what you did. It was
just something everyone took and that same product was now
killing people. So the most chilling part of all this
to me, and this is all chilling, uh, maybe the
(31:00):
copycat stuff because almost immediately, um, copycat incidents has started
popping up all over the country. Um, there were two
seventy reports a product tampering in the month after thirty
six were quote hardcore true tamperings. And that's what's the
most chilling to me, is like, there were that many people,
(31:22):
at least thirty six, let's go on the low end,
thirty six people across the country that wanted to kill
people and just saw an idea. I'm like, oh, that's
what I'll do now. I should have thought of that myself.
I mean, that's scary, man, Yeah, what's what's scary? But
also infuriating is that there's such terrible self starters that
(31:42):
they had to be a copycat murderer in that, you
know what I'm saying, Like it's bad enough that they're
trying to kill somebody, randomly kill somebody, anonymously kill somebody.
They didn't even think of it themselves. That is a
pathetic murderer right there. It's pretty pathetic. Put down Exceedrin
extra strength eccterrian capsules UM were found poison with mercuric chloride. Uh,
(32:06):
and that almost killed a man in Colorado. His name
was William Sinkovich and he got He had liver and
kidney failure, but he did survive. Uh. This one gets me.
So more than one person thought, Oh, well, you know
people spray and like drop things in their eyes and nose.
I'll put acid in there. So tampered sin X and
(32:28):
tampered vizine both turned up after they had burned people
with acid. Chemical burn up your nose. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's
a bad one. So food was also on the list
of things being tampered with UM, orange juice, chocolate milk.
Very high profile incident with ballpark hot dogs. They pulled
a million pounds of wieners off the shelves and ran
(32:49):
them through a metal detector. Yeah, because this was a
scare all of you know, the old urban legend of
razor blades and Halloween candy. I don't Did they actually
find pins and needles and things for sure? Yes? Okay,
because I thought that had literally never happened. It hadn't.
It was an urban legend that became true. But nothing
(33:10):
in in the wieners. No, some boys I think in
Detroit claimed to have found razor blades in their ballpark wieners,
and like you said, a million pounds were recalled and
then the boys were like, wow, we were just kidding. Yeah.
And ballpark, well we'll talk about how ballpark was treated
after that. But they were put on shoulders and carried
around for how great they handled everything. Uh. And you know,
(33:34):
there are a lot of hoaxes. There were a lot
of um tips called in about other tampering and it
had to really like it. If the purpose of this
was to induce panic and fear and terror, then it
absolutely worked. Absolutely. Should we take another break? I think so, Man,
we're gonna come back and talk about the investigation. Stop, okay,
(34:18):
chuck um. I also want to point this out Time magazine.
You know how, I'm like super into uh like going
back and reading contemporary news articles about an event this one.
I mean, it's all over the place. But Time wrote
about the copycat incidents back in two and they said
that the copycats were trying to quote emulate their demonic hero.
(34:42):
There's still unknown poisoner their demonic hero. That's what the
journalists from Time decided to go with. That's funny, I guess.
I mean that seems like a very two thousand nineteen
thing to write. That's what I'm saying. I feel like
we're reverting back to two right now. I guess. So
after that intro of yours, I'm now convinced. So everybody's
(35:05):
freaked out there there are whole towns that canceled Halloween
because remember this happened like a month before Halloween, and
everyone was very scared about candy tampering because of the
urban legend in some places that turned out to be true,
a self fulfilling prophecy. There are all these hoaxes, there
are all these actual true product tampering copycats. People were
(35:26):
freaked out and the cops needed to do something, and
initially these seven different deaths in five different towns in
the Chicago area were being treated as five different investigations. Um.
That didn't last for very long. Within two days, by Friday,
by the time Mayor Burne holds her press conference on
(35:48):
w g n UM, what came to be called the
Thailand All Task Force was formed. All five of those
investigations got folded into not just local investigations, the FBI,
the Illinois State Police, UM FDA of course, Yeah, the
FDA was involved that, and then the whole thing was
led by the Illinois District Attorney's office, who was the
(36:11):
nominal head of the investigation. Yeah. So they figured out
pretty quickly that um, you know, like I said earlier,
they cast their drag net. They come up with about
a fifty mile radius of where all this stuff was
bought and sold, and go investigate drug store after drug store,
and they did find more more bad thaile in all that.
(36:33):
I'm still sitting on the shelves thankfully. Yeah, yeah, I don't.
I don't want to skim past that. They found more
talent all waiting to be bought, that's right, like just
sitting there like hey, come by me. Within two days
of of these first deaths, that these first murders, we
keep calling them deaths. These were murders, that's right. Uh.
(36:53):
And they name their their case there's they're always code
names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty low
in my opinion. Timers T Y m U r S
short obviously for Tilent all murders. At the very least,
the should have been a Z timers. Yeah, yeah, let's
(37:14):
give it a little flavor, agreed. Uh. So the cops
are um there. There was some confusion about how this
went down because they're trying to figure out, you know,
did it happen at the factory, did it happen after
the factory, what's the supply chain? Like that's that's huge,
it's like the crux of the investigent. Yeah. Absolutely, Where
did the tainting occur? Yeah, So they found out that
(37:36):
all of the containers were from Lot number MC, which
was pushed out in August. Again, this is the end
of September. Uh, in states east, all states east of
the Mississippi, plus the Dakotas, Nebraska, in a bit of Wyoming,
just a touch of Wyoming for flavor, that's right, for
(37:58):
that mesquite flavor. Uh. However, they were from different production
plants and they were sold in different drug stores, which
is weird. It's tough to wrap your head around that
because it's the same lot, but they came from different plants.
And it turns out Thailand has also a really weird
convoluted distribution network. I think that's every company. I have
(38:20):
a friend that works in supply chain management and I
was like, huh, so supposedly they'll they'll take boxes and
open them up and repackage them in smaller boxes, and
it happens at like different different companies at different points
around the country. It's pretty complicated from from a product
from factory to your mouth, like what happens to kind
of everything. Um, I would think simplicity would be safer much,
(38:45):
you know, probably not cheaper, though you're probably right. So
what they finally figured out was, here's what we think
happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory.
This stuff was not tainted in this supply chain. But
this stuff was tainted it from the store and then
(39:05):
returned back to the store. Right because these pills were
sold in different stores, which is a big one because
not only could it have been like part of the factory,
it could have been one of the local stores distribution
centers where there was somebody messing with it. But since
they were sold in Jewel food stores and Walgreens and
other places to around the Chicago area, that didn't make
(39:28):
any sense. It couldn't have just been like the Jewel
distribution center. And also because they were coming from different
production plants, it really couldn't have been the production plant
or the factory where it came from. It had to be,
like you said, happening at the stores. Yeah, And there
were a lot of initial theories. You know, was it
someone who like a former disgruntled employee of Johnson and Johnson?
(39:52):
Was it someone uh? Was it it just a serial
killer who just picked tail on all and wanted to
randomly kill people, Right, And this is that's weird, that's
a weird idea at the time, like now it just
seems normal, like yeah, probably, but this but this was
two years before the Sanya Cidro McDonald's massacre, which is
one of the very one of the next random killings
(40:17):
of people who just happened to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. This was kind of the
first of that, but it was still so new and
remote an alien that that's that didn't seem like a
realistic idea at the time. Yeah. Some of the other
ideas they thought, um, maybe this was someone that was
targeting a specific person or people and then randomly poisoned
(40:39):
other people to cover their tracks. One of the weird
um one of the weird theories that came out later
after an spoiler alert, we now have tamper proof medicines. Sure,
everyone's noticed. There was one theory that it was someone
who had a financial stake and tamper proof technology. Yeah,
(41:01):
I saw something like that too. I don't think there
was ever a ton of credence put into that one.
But the point is there were a lot. I mean,
they were flying blind basically because it was just such
an unexpected, odd, random thing that we're basically coming up
with kind of any idea they could think of. But
the one that the cops settled on and the one
that Johnson and Johnson also settled on too, because they
went back and tested samples from Lot MC and found
(41:25):
that there was no no, there's no taining of the
of the lot that the their samples were pure. So
the cops and Johnson and Johnson both decided they settled
on what's called the mad poisoner theory. That somebody went
around this fifty mile radius in in the Chicago area,
UM in about seven hours is what the cops calculated.
(41:46):
It would have taken either bought a bunch of tile
and all and then took it back to their house
and poisoned it, repackaged it, and then drove around and
redistributed it, or went from store to store, went in,
bought some tile and all to get out to the car,
poisoned it, and then repackaged it and brought it back in. UM.
But that it was local and it was specific to Chicago.
(42:09):
That was the mad poisoner theory. And again why still
no one has any idea why. Um. It could have
been random, They could have been targeting somebody. It could
have been a disgruntal Johnson and Johnson employee. But the
main theory for the Thaile and all killings in Chicago
is the mad poison er theory. Yeah. And do you
(42:29):
know how they tested that the rest of that lot.
They got Detective John Pinky McFarland who had the best
drug Pinky and all of Illinois, and he went around
and dipped that pinky in touched it to his tongue. Yeah,
he said it's good. He's like, I can't feel my
face right now. The guy's a legend. Yeah, he's his
pinky is his pinky ring is so significant and barely
(42:52):
lift his finger. He only lifts it to test drugs.
I told you we'd find some jokes. So by mid
October this is sort of the final bit of part
one here. Um, there was another bottle that people that
they found another tainted bottle that was purchased on September
twenty nine, so it fit the bill. And it was
(43:13):
a woman who uh was feeling bad and went to
go get that tail and all, and her sister was like, no,
I've got some buffering right here, just go ahead and
take that. And the lady presumably said, well, I really
prefer see a benefit, but I guess I'll take an aspirin.
So yeah, her sister in law saved her by offering
her buffering instead. She was steps away from dropping dead
(43:35):
at a family gathering. Unbelievable. That is a good place
to stop, huh. Yeah, So that's part one of the
Thailand All murders or timer's with an S and we're
gonna come back with Part two after this. If you
want to get in touch with us in in the meantime,
you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links, or you can
send us a good old fashioned email. Version two stuff
(43:59):
podcast at i heart radio dot com. Radio Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
I've chosen a two parter one of the most baffling
true crime mysteries ever to hit America, the Thailand All Murders. Uh.
In part one, which you're about to hear now, we
introduced the murders, the senseless deaths, and the panic that
gripped America. And then you'll hear from me again for
(00:22):
part two. So in the meantime, enjoy part one and
I'll see you soon. Welcome to Stuff you should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh, not me, Chuck.
(00:48):
Guest producer Josh is back in the house. Yeah, and
there's a little Chuck in your pockets, Remember little Elvis.
I was just about to say that you got that right,
Tony Oh Man, what a great sketch it really was.
That was Nicholas Kane, wasn't it. Yeah? Man, did you
ever see Mandy? Yes? It was terrible. I don't care
what anybody else says. You hate it. Terrible, terrible movie. Yeah,
(01:11):
Nolan I talked about it on movie Crush. He's seen
it like four times thinks it's the best thing ever.
And he was like, people the love it, I hate it.
And I was like, actually, I was kind of in
the middle. Were you really Yeah? I mean I told
him young Chuck, like twenty two year old college Chuck
would have probably liked it a lot more. But today
Chuck was kind of like, I get it. Like, sure,
(01:32):
parts of it, we're fine. Sure to me. Spending an
hour doing character development but not successfully making you care
about the characters, it just really irked me. Wow, you
had structural issues. Yeah, that was really the big thing.
I also thought Lenis Roach was very very odd for casting.
(01:54):
But which one was the main bad guy? That that
was weird, very weird. I don't even know him, but
it's from Law and Order and like some other stuff,
you gotta get into law. See how much you're missing
out on that's becoming a bit. So did we start
recording yet? I think so? Oh, I already welcomed everybody
the podcast. Um so, Chuck, we are this is some
(02:18):
true crime stuff. For getting into here, that's right, But
I feel like we need to set the tone right
because this isn't just didn't happened just yesterday. This happened
way back in two in Chicago, Illinois. And I remember
this and I was like six at the time. It
was one of my favorite years because of this, the
opposite of that, right, mainly because of movies that was
(02:41):
so great about two look it up? Man, Well, I
was kind of hoping, Oh yeah, okay, yeah, that was
Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I
was forty That's not true. Yes, the original, the original
Blade Runner. Did you like it? It was good. I
(03:02):
like the second one too, You're like, but they spent
way too much time on characters. Um. Yeah. And I
just did a little poking around about two and it
was It was a good year for an eleven year old,
but it was an uneasy time in America. Uh well
for a bunch of awful things happened that year. Uh
And I don't know if it was any more or
(03:23):
less than other years, but uh, air Flight nine D
crashed into into the Potomac River, remember that in Washington,
d C. The plane crash in the river. Didn't hit
a bridge, maybe, but there was there was like a
daring icy river rescue. Yeah. Seventy eight people died though.
That same day, a metro train in d c derailed
(03:46):
killed three people. Uh. February was when Wayne Williams was convicted,
and that was just the end of a lot of honeys,
you know, for years. Uh, Klaus Vambu Law was found
guilty of attempted murder of his wife in March. I
didn't make it to the end of reversal of fortune,
so I honestly didn't know what happened to class guilty. Uh.
(04:09):
In June was the murder of Vincent Chen, who was
a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two
men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese and they
were like stealing his their auto work. I know, right, Uh.
And then July nine, pan Am flight seven nine goes
(04:30):
down in Louisiana, Louisiana kills all one forty six people
on board, plus eight more on the ground. And then
in September, early September was when I know, man, remember
planes used to just crash a lot. Yeah that never
happens now, Uh, not as much. But yeah, weird that
we're recording this in the midst of more plane gradges.
(04:50):
And then early September was when that paper boy in Iowa,
Iowa was kidnapped and never seen again. Johnny Gosh, I
don't know that that was a big deal too, because
it was you know, the paper boy, and there was
this false story about a pedophile ring from politicians and
that turned out not to be true, but he was
never found again. So basically everything that's going on today
(05:13):
is just a rehash of two It sounds like I
just remember being about that age, and they're just the
nightly news sort of just being a horror show and
not politically speaking, you know, like real bad incidents is occurring. Well, yeah,
plane crash like just about at any age, like that'll
that'll bring you down if you see that on the
(05:34):
news for sure. Yeah, um, because you know when you
get on a plane, you think maybe this plane will
go down while I'm want it and that would be terrible.
Although I wasn't flying at eleven. So all of those
things you just mentioned sweep them totally off the table,
because come the end of September of that year, nothing
(05:54):
else mattered but what we're about to talk about now,
that's right, nothing nothing came close to taking the over
the national psyche like the deaths of seven people beginning
on September two in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah. And one of
(06:15):
the articles I read about this, I mean, are we
trying to keep it a secret? It's a show title,
right yeah, yeah yeah, I think they're gonna have to
figure it out. So yeah, go ahead, the thailan All murders. Yeah, okay,
you're like, oh no, no, but that's that comes up
in part two. Oh yeah, this is a two parter
ye as well, so Buckle and everybody. Uh So. I
(06:36):
was doing some research though, and I saw one article
that said something about, you know, the first domestic terror
incident United States that nobody has ever heard of. It's like, what,
who hasn't heard of this? A millennial wrote that headline. Well,
I have to say Josh on the way in here, yeah,
I told him Tailttle murders and huh he goes, what's
the title? And all you old kadr, we should say
(07:00):
what Thailand all is? Huh Okay, yeah, I guess just
in case you are a MILLENNI only you've never heard
of Thailand all, but Thailand all was and still is
and over the counter pain reliever. It's like you have
eggs and pains and apparently, what's crazy? People would take
thaile and all whatever was wrong with them, because now
you can go get like you know, aspirin and um
(07:23):
aadville and and a leave. There was no leave back then.
That was the nineties drug There's way more over the
counter pain relievers now than they we're back then. Back then,
Thailand All was basically it. Yeah, it's a set of menafin,
which is different than aspirin, and I think a lot
of people just think those are interchangeable. Right. The reason
I believe Thailand All became so big is because aspirin
(07:47):
upsets a lot of people's stomachs. Thailand All does not,
or it's not supposed to, and that's why it came
out of nowhere and just took over the aspirin market.
I think by two thailand All had thirty seven of
the market. It's pretty good cornered. Yeah, yeah, almost half,
especially since like some of the other like aspirants have
(08:08):
been around since you know, nineteenth century, right, So it
makes sense then that when a little girl named Mary
Anne kellerman Uh complained that she had a sore throat
and wasn't feeling too good at like seven am on Wednesday, September,
her parents said, just take an extra strength title and
(08:28):
all and go back to bed man for sore throat.
You imagine the guilt. Oh no, these parents feel well,
don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to Marianne
Kellerman yet. I think everybody knows. Uh. Yeah, she got up,
said I'm sick. He said, take this. The father said
he heard her go into the bathroom and close the door,
then heard something drop and went to the door, saying,
(08:50):
are you okay, you're okay? Uh? No answer, opened the
door and there she is on the floor. Um. Taken
to the hospital, but died very quickly. Yeah, probably was
dead when she went to the hospital. Was pronounced there
um and she they suspected this is just a little
twelve year old girl of middle school, girl into Jane
Adams Middle School. Um. She they think she died of
(09:14):
a stroke. That's what they thought happened to her. They
were just so baffled that they're like, it had to
have been a stroke. That's the only thing that can
come on like this. Yeah. So that's seven am. Just
the day is just beginning, and one atrocity has already happened. Yeah,
this is a this is a very bad day in
the history of Chicago. September. Yeah, absolutely, and it started
(09:37):
early Adam Janice, who uh will detail his story, but
put a pin in this one too, because he figures
in even more prominently in a minute. But a little
bit later that same morning, Uh, this gentleman, Adam Janese's
twenty seven years old and lived in Arlington Heights, another
Chicago suburb, and he died. Uh, and they think that
(09:59):
this is a heart attack. Uh. He complained of chess
pains after he had driven his daughter's neighbor home from school.
Uh said, I'm gonna take the day off, comes home,
eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength tile and
all that he bought from a local drug store, collapses
in front of his wife, and by you know, a
few minutes later, when the paramedics arrived, he was dead right.
(10:23):
And again, like you said, they said heart attack because
he's been complaining of chess pains, which had nothing to
do with it. But just like Marianne Kellerman took an
extra strength tile and all for a sore throat, he
took some extra strength tile and all for some chest pains.
This is just what people did back then. Yeah, and
that's what complicated it a little bit. At first, Um
was that you know, if you take the tile and
all it means you felt bad already, So obviously you
(10:45):
know they're gonna be saying like, wait a minute, chess
pains or some throat like, how does that figure in? Yeah,
and it didn't. Plus, Also, what made this even more
baffling is that Marianne Kellerman was twelve and healthy. Adam
Janis was twenty seven and healthy, and all of a
sudden they just dropped up. People just dropped dead. No
matter what you see on TV or in the movies
or whatever, dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing.
(11:08):
When you're a healthy person, that just doesn't happen. Uh.
Next we have Mary Reiner, same day, same day. This
is still all on the same day. Um, she's twenty
seven years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had
just come home from the hospital, uh, after having given
birth to her fourth kid a couple of days before.
(11:29):
Super super sad. All of these are, obviously, but being
a just a brand new mom for the fourth time,
it's just so tragic. Uh. And then by three five
she was so ill she was rushed back to the
hospital and again died, very very quickly. Yeah, and like
Adam Janis collapsed in front of his wife, she collapsed
in front of her young eight year old daughter. One
(11:50):
of her children sare um and yeah. When she was
taking the hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This
is mid afternoon. Mary mcfar Marland was up next. She
was over in um the suburb of Lombard, and she
worked at the Illinois Bell Phone Center where you remember,
like you go get your phone, like the rotary phone,
(12:13):
you know, you would actually lease your phone. I wasn't
involved in that process, but we had them in our home, okay,
well your parents that stuff. No, there was like a
store where you would go it's like the phone company's
retail store, and you would go and be like that
pink one. It's like smartphones today, kind of same model.
(12:34):
Kind of Um, yeah, I guess so. But this was
with a big, clunky rotary phone and you had to
pay extra for the extra long court. Well. Mary McFarlane
worked in one of these stores, and at about four
o'clock UM at the Illinois Bell Phone Center, she was
she had a massive headache that just came on out
of nowhere, and she went back and got some extra
strength tilent all out of her purse, took a couple
(12:57):
of them, and within minutes collapsed in the door. Yeah
she was young as well. She was thirty one years old,
mother of two. And then remember I was talking about
Adam Janice a few minutes ago. Um, his family goes
to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there, he passes away,
and so the family makes their way home UM to
(13:19):
begin morning and just sort of trying to reconcile what
had just happened. His brother, Stanley, he was only twenty,
and then his wife Teresa, who was only nineteen, are
both just overcome and worn out and have headaches. So
they're at Adam's house. They got his medicine cabinet, get
out the tile on all that he took completely unknowingly obviously,
(13:41):
and uh, Stanley hits the ground. Foam comes from his mouth,
his eyes rolled back in his head. Everyone's freaking out,
and a few minutes later, his wife collapses and they
called the ambulance. By the time and the ambulances get there,
I think Stanley died that day and Teresa somehow managed
(14:01):
to live a couple of days. Yeah, she hung on.
And I don't know if like her dose is lesser
or what. But but she she survived for a couple
of days after that. Yeah, I mean my guess is that, uh,
there just wasn't as much cyanide and the capsule she took.
Did I just give something else away? But the so
Stanley took his tail in all first, and then Teresa's occurs,
(14:24):
and one of the paramedics noted, like Teresa was the
one that called the ambulance out to come out for Stanley.
And when you get there, they're they're both like on
the ground and they're like, what's going on? And one
of the paramedics said, everything that was happening to the
guy happened to the woman like a couple of minutes later,
like she was just following him through this process of
like basically systemic organ failure. And this is the same
(14:47):
day that his brother had passed away. Yep. This is
about five six hours, six hours after Adam Janis had died.
Then finally, I know this is all tough to go through. Everyone.
We almost selected this as our next live show. I'm
really glad we did, because, I mean, can you imagine
trying to liven this up with some jokes? I saw it.
(15:08):
The whole time I was like, no, we can do that.
But yeah, the more I got into it, I was like, yeah,
it's probably not good live material. We should have a
rule of thumb that any story that begins with the
death of a twelve year old girl probably not live
show material. I think you're right. So finally we have
Paula Prince. Paula Jeene Prince. This is a couple of
days later. This is not the same day. This is
(15:29):
on Friday evening. She was a thirty five year old
flight attendant and she was found dead in her apartment
after police responded for a welfare check that her sister
called in saying, hey, you know, I know she's a
flight attendant and all, but no one knows where she is.
Can you go check on her welfare check up? And
they finally found her and she was gone, very very sad.
(15:52):
She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of
extra strength Title and all still open on the counter
and she uh They look into um her receipts and
found that she had purchased it on Wednesday, September that's right.
Uh So, at the end of this very short span
of time in the Chicago area. We have seven people dead,
(16:14):
and I feel like that's a good time to take
a message break. Yeah, yeah, all right, stop you know, stop, okay, Chuck,
(16:44):
So you said cyanide. How did you know that? Because
I was eleven years old and I watch the nightly
news like all eleven year old stad just called it
just me and broke aw Dan Rather, yeah, Copple, who else?
That was it? Peter Jennings He came a little later,
but sure, yeah, yeah, he came after somebody. Well, I
(17:06):
mean Cronkite wasn't still around, was he? Or was he?
I don't know. I don't think so. I was I
was going to be into the news as a kid
a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean that was that
was where you got your news back then. Yeah, you
would watch the evening news. It's very strange to think
about now, with the with the up to the minute
news cycle. So oh yeah, I know how much more
(17:26):
innocent things were back then. Um, So remove yourself from
the benefit of hindsight or the benefit of Dan Rather's insight,
and put yourself in the shoes of the people in Chicago. Right,
these are five These are seven different deaths. Um, I
think from five different townships in the greater Chicago area,
(17:48):
including Chicago. Paula Prince, the last person to die, lived
in Chicago. These people aren't talking. These people have no
idea what's going on. It's just that there were five
seven separate baffling deaths. If you want to if you
were people to be dead, yeah I do. That's good.
My voices aren't working though. Um. It just so happens
(18:11):
that the ambulance paramedics that showed up to attend to
marry Mary Anne Kellerman, the first girl to die. Um,
they were just logging everything because it was such a
baffling thing, and they logged her tile and all, yeah
logged isn't collected, right, Yeah, took it as evidence to
maybe look into who knows, But they took the extra
(18:32):
strength tile and all that she had taken, not thinking
anything of it, but just basically throwing anything at the
wall to see what stopped. Yeah, I'm sure the dad
was like, you know, she went in, took some tile
and on and dropped dead. So it probably made sense,
even though it's just Thailand all to say like, well, hey,
let's at least take this in yes, and that title
and all that, right, you know, because that bottle of
tile and All made its way into the hands of
(18:55):
a medical examiner um whose name was Michael Schaefer, and
Michael Schafer tested the tile in All it was rather
surprised to find that some of the capsules had not
tile in all in it, but sixty five milligrams of
potassium cyanide. And it takes about fifty milligrams to kill
a healthy adult. Yeah, I mean some of them. I
(19:17):
don't think they were all exactly the same, but some
of them had been completely emptied of any staminafin and
completely filled with cyanide. With cyanide right, yeah, I mean
it was it was someone intent on for sure killing people. Yes,
because cyanide is no joke. It's a it's a really
really small molecule um and it normally attaches to metals
(19:41):
outside of the body, which is why you have or
minerals I guess, which why you have potassium cyanide um
when it goes into the body when you ingested, however
you ingested, whether it's from a tile in all capsule
or breathing cyanide gas like they used to use to
execute people with. Like they stopped using it for execution
because it was such a brutal death. Yeah, it's very cruel,
(20:02):
painful way to die. Um in the body. It detaches
from its its mineral or metal, and it attaches to
a protein in the body called UM cytochrome c oxidase,
which doesn't sound like could be a big problem, but
it turns out that that's about the worst protein that
cyanide could attach itself too, because we really need cytochrome
(20:24):
c oxidase to breathe. Yeah, basically it I mean, this
sounds like such a cruel thing because it's just rapid
cell death and it's not like your throat closes up
and you can't breathe, like you're inhaling oxygen and you
you are technically taking breaths, but the oxygen is not
(20:45):
getting in the cells. No, it's not because that c
or that cytochrome c oxidase is what helps transport the
oxygen and get and allows the oxygen to be used
for energy. So if the potassium is clinging to it,
the oxygen can't. It just stays in the bloodstream and
it doesn't get used by the cells. And since your
(21:06):
central nervous system is the most oxygen hungry system in
your entire body. It starts to shut down first, and
when your brain and your spinal cords starts shutting down,
all sorts of things happen. Your long start shutting down.
Your heart, God bless it keeps beating for minutes after
the rest of your body is shut down. Can So
(21:26):
you're not technically dead. And they're not sure exactly how
long the pain and excruciation of dying from cyanide lasts,
but they think you're probably conscious in a way and
freaked out for about a minute at least, and your
heart may continue beating for three or four minutes after that.
So it's not a pleasant death at all. No. I mean,
(21:46):
you're you're gasping for air, You're breathing in air. Nothing's happening,
Like I said, um Stanley Janice. He was foaming at
the mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head
in front of his family. It's just like it's awful,
like writhing on the floor, gasping for air. You're breathing,
but it's not doing anything. It's just I can't imagine
(22:06):
anything more horrifying, right, because your central nervous system has
kind of falling out of its um, out of controller
rhythm convulsions are usually a hallmark of cyanide poisoning. And
then you turn bright red at the end of it. Yeah,
sin a chair, you read, they said, Because when your
body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells and
the oxygen becomes depleted, um, your your skin kind of
(22:30):
turns like a rusty brownish red. But because it can
unload that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red.
And your skin turns bright red. And then the other
real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit
like almonds. Yeah, I mean not a bit. I mean
these bottles supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond, And
(22:51):
unless you know what that means, then you're probably not
clued in, you know, Like I wouldn't I wouldn't have known.
I open the bottle of Thailand on it smelled like
better almen would probably be like, h right, it's a
nice smell. Actually, yeah, I like this tail and all. Yeah,
I guess they have a new almond flavor. Awful. So
Michael Schaefer, that medical examiner has just realized that this
(23:14):
this little girl has been poisoned, but he he knows
nothing about these other deaths. There's nothing like that. Um
It's not entirely clear how everything became connected or who
connected it. But what I find just particularly astonishing is
that within just a few hours, by that evening, by
the evening of September twenty nine, people were saying, there's
(23:37):
something up with the Thailand all in these mysterious deaths
that have been going on all around Chicago. Yeah and not.
I mean, we'll get into the dragnet they cast. But
within a few days they had kind of solved everything.
But who did it and how it may have happened?
Who done it? Who done it? Um? So yeah, very
(23:58):
quickly they figured out the Thailand. On. There are a
couple of different stories, um on, Like you said, on
who who was the first person to point this out? Um?
One story is that a reporter for the City News
Bureau in Chicago was doing the reporter thing and doing
some deep diving and investigating and called up a deputy
corner and said, hey, I think this is what's happening.
(24:19):
They told the police. Another story is that too, people
who didn't know each other kind of came together independently
to um let people know. One was a fire captain
name Philip Capitelli. I knew it. I knew you were
going to do that. There was like a chance, you
know why, because we got a lot of support from
people that wrote in saying I'm Italian and I love it.
(24:41):
Keep doing it. And only one guy who hated it.
But ironically it was fire Captain Philip Capitelli and said
so he uh, here here was his deal. His um
his mother in law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the
victim's mother, the first of the little girl, and she said, hey,
(25:02):
would you mind looking into this because I'm friends with
this little girl's mom and it's weird that she dropped
at at and he's a fire captain and they're all
connected to you know, the police, into the medical community.
Everybody knows you want something done, ask a fire captain, um,
because they'll bust into the room with an ax get
everybody's attention. UM. So he's he's investigating. And then there's this, Uh,
(25:27):
there's a nurse named Helen Jensen and she I don't
do you know why she was so into this case?
Was no, no, no. She was the public health nurse
for Cook County, I believe, Okay, so she had an
official designation to investigate. Yes, but unfortunately no one would
listen to her because this is n two and she
(25:49):
was a nurse. Even though she was like a public
health director, she was still a nurse and people wouldn't
listen to her. And she recalled in an oral history
I read about this that she was stomping her feet
out of frustration, saying like, there's something wrong with the
taile and all, like the tail and all is behind
all this, and people wouldn't listen to her. Supposedly, she
and Philip got together and um joined forces, and I
(26:15):
guess we're able to convince everybody that no, there's something
wrong with the with the taile and all. And by
this time people started talking and you know, the the
idea that Michael Shaffer had identified tail and all. I
don't know if it was the same day or the
day after something like that, but all this is within
a span of thirty six forty eight hours. TOPS said,
(26:36):
all of this is going on, that the dots are
being connected, right, So, uh, then what follows is um
Cook County's Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Edmund Donohue holds
a pressor. I've either watched this one or one of
the other ones, Like I remember specifically seeing this press
conference on the news, probably saw Jane Burns. That would
(26:58):
have been the national wide when I guess yeah, And
I was like, how would that have been nationwide? And
then I looked it up. W g N was a
superstation starting in night. Oh you know it, man, So
everybody saw it because wg N could broadcast nationwide. By
I watched Cubs games Kid just because it was on.
(27:18):
That was it like that embraced games were all you
can So Dr Donohue Um has a pressor a local
pressor Um, of course there is panic initially. Yeah, he
scares the s out of everybody because he comes out
of nowhere and says stop taking the tile and all.
Oh yeah sure, and so anyone, I mean, imagine how
(27:40):
many people in Chicago had taken tile and all within
two hours of that press conference and are thinking like
should I go to the hospital? Right And as a
matter of fact, Um, the poison control lines for basically
every in every city where somebody saw this started to
light up right after that, and people are like, I
just took tile in all my k or gave my kid.
(28:01):
Can you imagine? And the the what came to be.
The pat response was, if you are still standing and
talking to us, you're probably okay, which is sort of
a double edged sword, right, It's like, don't worry, you
die super fast kind of so just relax. So just
hold the line for five minutes and then I'm gonna
come back and check on you. And if you're still talking,
you're fine. Oh man, um, alright, So then the Chicago
(28:24):
Mayor's office gets involved, Like you said, Mayor Jane Byrne,
she gets says, you know, print a bunch of flyers,
print them in a bunch of languages, maybe on Golden
Rod and corn flower blue. Sure, why not really catch
people's attention? Uh? That she had police drive through um
with loudspeakers on their car, basically saying like, don't take
(28:47):
tile in all, re enacting that scene from The Blues Brothers.
Whether I was thinking Slacker and that's funny, two different movies.
But do you remember they're driving through in the police
carver with the loudspeaker talking about their their show. Yeah,
same as like her, I don't remember, I don't. I
guess I didn't make either. The end of slack Er either.
It was in the middle ish there was no, dazed
and confused. H oh, just different movies. Um, so they're
(29:11):
they're posting flyers, cops are driving around blaring it through
neighborhoods uh. And then she has a press conference, she
has all Thailand all removed from the Chicago area. She
calls for it. Well, sure she didn't go around with
her her basket, right, No, I'm not a hundred percent
clear if she was actually able to demand that the
(29:33):
Thailand all be removed. I think she was more warning. Yeah,
I mean I doubt if there was any law she
could invoke. I wonder though, it seems afterward I would
imagine that's you know, we'll talk about that later. So, um,
the TV and the radio. You know, obviously everyone picks
us up, not just in Chicago or the United States.
It goes worldwide, and so you know there's people in
(29:57):
Europe and Asia pulling Thailand all off the shelves. Yeah.
So this is a big deal and there was a
lot of attention lavished on this. There was a poll
that was taken the next month in October that found
that this was in cities all over the country, that
found that respondents were aware of this tail and all
(30:18):
poisoning story. Some some press agency like a news clipping
service said that it's the number of the number of
stories dedicated to it were second only to the number
of stories dedicated the assassination of JFK. That's how big
this story became overnight. And again one of the reasons
(30:39):
why is because everybody took tail and all for everything
all the time. That's just what you did. It was
just something everyone took and that same product was now
killing people. So the most chilling part of all this
to me, and this is all chilling, uh, maybe the
(31:00):
copycat stuff because almost immediately, um, copycat incidents has started
popping up all over the country. Um, there were two
seventy reports a product tampering in the month after thirty
six were quote hardcore true tamperings. And that's what's the
most chilling to me, is like, there were that many people,
(31:22):
at least thirty six, let's go on the low end,
thirty six people across the country that wanted to kill
people and just saw an idea. I'm like, oh, that's
what I'll do now. I should have thought of that myself.
I mean, that's scary, man, Yeah, what's what's scary? But
also infuriating is that there's such terrible self starters that
(31:42):
they had to be a copycat murderer in that, you
know what I'm saying, Like it's bad enough that they're
trying to kill somebody, randomly kill somebody, anonymously kill somebody.
They didn't even think of it themselves. That is a
pathetic murderer right there. It's pretty pathetic. Put down Exceedrin
extra strength eccterrian capsules UM were found poison with mercuric chloride. Uh,
(32:06):
and that almost killed a man in Colorado. His name
was William Sinkovich and he got He had liver and
kidney failure, but he did survive. Uh. This one gets me.
So more than one person thought, Oh, well, you know
people spray and like drop things in their eyes and nose.
I'll put acid in there. So tampered sin X and
(32:28):
tampered vizine both turned up after they had burned people
with acid. Chemical burn up your nose. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's
a bad one. So food was also on the list
of things being tampered with UM, orange juice, chocolate milk.
Very high profile incident with ballpark hot dogs. They pulled
a million pounds of wieners off the shelves and ran
(32:49):
them through a metal detector. Yeah, because this was a
scare all of you know, the old urban legend of
razor blades and Halloween candy. I don't Did they actually
find pins and needles and things for sure? Yes? Okay,
because I thought that had literally never happened. It hadn't.
It was an urban legend that became true. But nothing
(33:10):
in in the wieners. No, some boys I think in
Detroit claimed to have found razor blades in their ballpark wieners,
and like you said, a million pounds were recalled and
then the boys were like, wow, we were just kidding. Yeah.
And ballpark, well we'll talk about how ballpark was treated
after that. But they were put on shoulders and carried
around for how great they handled everything. Uh. And you know,
(33:34):
there are a lot of hoaxes. There were a lot
of um tips called in about other tampering and it
had to really like it. If the purpose of this
was to induce panic and fear and terror, then it
absolutely worked. Absolutely. Should we take another break? I think so, Man,
we're gonna come back and talk about the investigation. Stop, okay,
(34:18):
chuck um. I also want to point this out Time magazine.
You know how, I'm like super into uh like going
back and reading contemporary news articles about an event this one.
I mean, it's all over the place. But Time wrote
about the copycat incidents back in two and they said
that the copycats were trying to quote emulate their demonic hero.
(34:42):
There's still unknown poisoner their demonic hero. That's what the
journalists from Time decided to go with. That's funny, I guess.
I mean that seems like a very two thousand nineteen
thing to write. That's what I'm saying. I feel like
we're reverting back to two right now. I guess. So
after that intro of yours, I'm now convinced. So everybody's
(35:05):
freaked out there there are whole towns that canceled Halloween
because remember this happened like a month before Halloween, and
everyone was very scared about candy tampering because of the
urban legend in some places that turned out to be true,
a self fulfilling prophecy. There are all these hoaxes, there
are all these actual true product tampering copycats. People were
(35:26):
freaked out and the cops needed to do something, and
initially these seven different deaths in five different towns in
the Chicago area were being treated as five different investigations. Um.
That didn't last for very long. Within two days, by Friday,
by the time Mayor Burne holds her press conference on
(35:48):
w g n UM, what came to be called the
Thailand All Task Force was formed. All five of those
investigations got folded into not just local investigations, the FBI,
the Illinois State Police, UM FDA of course, Yeah, the
FDA was involved that, and then the whole thing was
led by the Illinois District Attorney's office, who was the
(36:11):
nominal head of the investigation. Yeah. So they figured out
pretty quickly that um, you know, like I said earlier,
they cast their drag net. They come up with about
a fifty mile radius of where all this stuff was
bought and sold, and go investigate drug store after drug store,
and they did find more more bad thaile in all that.
(36:33):
I'm still sitting on the shelves thankfully. Yeah, yeah, I don't.
I don't want to skim past that. They found more
talent all waiting to be bought, that's right, like just
sitting there like hey, come by me. Within two days
of of these first deaths, that these first murders, we
keep calling them deaths. These were murders, that's right. Uh.
(36:53):
And they name their their case there's they're always code
names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty low
in my opinion. Timers T Y m U r S
short obviously for Tilent all murders. At the very least,
the should have been a Z timers. Yeah, yeah, let's
(37:14):
give it a little flavor, agreed. Uh. So the cops
are um there. There was some confusion about how this
went down because they're trying to figure out, you know,
did it happen at the factory, did it happen after
the factory, what's the supply chain? Like that's that's huge,
it's like the crux of the investigent. Yeah. Absolutely, Where
did the tainting occur? Yeah, So they found out that
(37:36):
all of the containers were from Lot number MC, which
was pushed out in August. Again, this is the end
of September. Uh, in states east, all states east of
the Mississippi, plus the Dakotas, Nebraska, in a bit of Wyoming,
just a touch of Wyoming for flavor, that's right, for
(37:58):
that mesquite flavor. Uh. However, they were from different production
plants and they were sold in different drug stores, which
is weird. It's tough to wrap your head around that
because it's the same lot, but they came from different plants.
And it turns out Thailand has also a really weird
convoluted distribution network. I think that's every company. I have
(38:20):
a friend that works in supply chain management and I
was like, huh, so supposedly they'll they'll take boxes and
open them up and repackage them in smaller boxes, and
it happens at like different different companies at different points
around the country. It's pretty complicated from from a product
from factory to your mouth, like what happens to kind
of everything. Um, I would think simplicity would be safer much,
(38:45):
you know, probably not cheaper, though you're probably right. So
what they finally figured out was, here's what we think
happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory.
This stuff was not tainted in this supply chain. But
this stuff was tainted it from the store and then
(39:05):
returned back to the store. Right because these pills were
sold in different stores, which is a big one because
not only could it have been like part of the factory,
it could have been one of the local stores distribution
centers where there was somebody messing with it. But since
they were sold in Jewel food stores and Walgreens and
other places to around the Chicago area, that didn't make
(39:28):
any sense. It couldn't have just been like the Jewel
distribution center. And also because they were coming from different
production plants, it really couldn't have been the production plant
or the factory where it came from. It had to be,
like you said, happening at the stores. Yeah, And there
were a lot of initial theories. You know, was it
someone who like a former disgruntled employee of Johnson and Johnson?
(39:52):
Was it someone uh? Was it it just a serial
killer who just picked tail on all and wanted to
randomly kill people, Right, And this is that's weird, that's
a weird idea at the time, like now it just
seems normal, like yeah, probably, but this but this was
two years before the Sanya Cidro McDonald's massacre, which is
one of the very one of the next random killings
(40:17):
of people who just happened to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. This was kind of the
first of that, but it was still so new and
remote an alien that that's that didn't seem like a
realistic idea at the time. Yeah. Some of the other
ideas they thought, um, maybe this was someone that was
targeting a specific person or people and then randomly poisoned
(40:39):
other people to cover their tracks. One of the weird
um one of the weird theories that came out later
after an spoiler alert, we now have tamper proof medicines. Sure,
everyone's noticed. There was one theory that it was someone
who had a financial stake and tamper proof technology. Yeah,
(41:01):
I saw something like that too. I don't think there
was ever a ton of credence put into that one.
But the point is there were a lot. I mean,
they were flying blind basically because it was just such
an unexpected, odd, random thing that we're basically coming up
with kind of any idea they could think of. But
the one that the cops settled on and the one
that Johnson and Johnson also settled on too, because they
went back and tested samples from Lot MC and found
(41:25):
that there was no no, there's no taining of the
of the lot that the their samples were pure. So
the cops and Johnson and Johnson both decided they settled
on what's called the mad poisoner theory. That somebody went
around this fifty mile radius in in the Chicago area,
UM in about seven hours is what the cops calculated.
(41:46):
It would have taken either bought a bunch of tile
and all and then took it back to their house
and poisoned it, repackaged it, and then drove around and
redistributed it, or went from store to store, went in,
bought some tile and all to get out to the car,
poisoned it, and then repackaged it and brought it back in. UM.
But that it was local and it was specific to Chicago.
(42:09):
That was the mad poisoner theory. And again why still
no one has any idea why. Um. It could have
been random, They could have been targeting somebody. It could
have been a disgruntal Johnson and Johnson employee. But the
main theory for the Thaile and all killings in Chicago
is the mad poison er theory. Yeah. And do you
(42:29):
know how they tested that the rest of that lot.
They got Detective John Pinky McFarland who had the best
drug Pinky and all of Illinois, and he went around
and dipped that pinky in touched it to his tongue. Yeah,
he said it's good. He's like, I can't feel my
face right now. The guy's a legend. Yeah, he's his
pinky is his pinky ring is so significant and barely
(42:52):
lift his finger. He only lifts it to test drugs.
I told you we'd find some jokes. So by mid
October this is sort of the final bit of part
one here. Um, there was another bottle that people that
they found another tainted bottle that was purchased on September
twenty nine, so it fit the bill. And it was
(43:13):
a woman who uh was feeling bad and went to
go get that tail and all, and her sister was like, no,
I've got some buffering right here, just go ahead and
take that. And the lady presumably said, well, I really
prefer see a benefit, but I guess I'll take an aspirin.
So yeah, her sister in law saved her by offering
her buffering instead. She was steps away from dropping dead
(43:35):
at a family gathering. Unbelievable. That is a good place
to stop, huh. Yeah, So that's part one of the
Thailand All murders or timer's with an S and we're
gonna come back with Part two after this. If you
want to get in touch with us in in the meantime,
you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
com and check out our social links, or you can
send us a good old fashioned email. Version two stuff
(43:59):
podcast at i heart radio dot com. Radio Stuff you
Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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