<\/p>\n

A suburban police detective climbs the steps of the main Cook County criminal courthouse in hopes of ending a 40-year-old mystery.<\/p>\n

The Tylenol murders, as they are commonly known, have been his investigation since he assumed responsibility for the cold case more than 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

Now, he and several other law enforcement officials believe they have solved the killings.<\/p>\n

They just need prosecutors to agree with them, to take the risky step of indicting a 76-year-old man in a case built almost entirely on circumstantial evidence. The detective knows the odds are steep as he heads into the January 2022 meeting with top criminal investigators from the Cook County state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

He makes his best pitch anyway.<\/p>\n

His presentation references undercover FBI recordings, a secretly exhumed body and writings discovered during a raid on the suspect\u2019s home, multiple law enforcement sources say. It explains the complicated tests being done to sort out the DNA profiles discovered on several poisoned bottles. And it offers a possible motive never previously disclosed to the public.<\/p>\n

The detective implores the prosecutor\u2019s office to look at the totality of his team\u2019s work. He asks them to set aside the reasons and ways the case has faltered for nearly four decades.<\/p>\n

In months that follow, officials from the Cook and DuPage County state\u2019s attorney\u2019s offices will meet twice with the detective. The head of the Illinois State Police \u2014 a former prosecutor from the St. Louis area \u2014 will attend the meetings, as well.<\/p>\n

They all know that time is running out to solve the Tylenol murders.<\/p>\n

Key sources have died. Memories have deteriorated. And records have been lost.<\/p>\n

The 1982 poisonings left seven people dead and panicked the nation. Widely regarded as an act of domestic terrorism \u2014 a term not in the country\u2019s vernacular at the time \u2014 the murders led to tamper-evident packaging, copycat killings and myths about tainted Halloween candy.<\/p>\n

The Tylenol case is a decadeslong story of heartbreak, anger and frustration. It\u2019s a story without an ending, without closure for those involved.<\/p>\n

And this is how it begins on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 1982:<\/p>\n

Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman woke before sunrise with a nagging head cold that would keep her home from school.<\/p>\n

After persuading her father to let her miss her classes, she went into the bathroom and swallowed an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule that her mother had purchased at the grocery store the previous night.<\/p>\n

Mary Kellerman, 12, was the first of seven victims to die after ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1982. <\/span>(Chicago Tribune archive)<\/p>\n

Seconds later, her father heard coughing and then the sound of something hitting the floor. He called out to Mary.<\/p>\n

When she didn\u2019t respond, he opened the bathroom door and found his daughter \u2014 his only child \u2014 lying on the floor. Her eyes fixed and dilated. Her breathing shallow, as if being suffocated by an invisible force.<\/p>\n

Nothing the paramedics tried seemed to help. Mary was in full cardiac arrest by the time they reached Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, records show. The doctors, in need of a miracle, installed a pacemaker and called a priest to give the child last rites.<\/p>\n

Mary \u2014 who liked making pottery and cooking with her mother, riding her pony, and playing Atari with her dad \u2014 was pronounced dead at 9:56 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember just a very happy-go-lucky person. I remember her crooked teeth because she was always smiling,\u201d her childhood friend Sharon Hogg told the Tribune. \u201cShe was just a very warm and loving person. I was certainly drawn to her because, I think, as kids we kind of have a radar for good people.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sharon Hogg of Fort Lauderdale, a childhood friend of Mary Kellerman’s, remembers her as \u201cjust a very warm and loving person.” <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mourners support Jeanna Kellerman, in the black dress, outside Queen of the Rosary Catholic Church in Elk Grove Village, where the funeral was held for her 12-year-old daughter, Mary. <\/span>(Karen Engstrom \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s death was the start of a chaotic and terrifying 24 hours in the Chicago area that saw six more healthy people perish in horrific fashion, sometimes before their families\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n

Authorities would create the largest police task force in Illinois history to investigate the killings, but first officials needed to figure out that these weren\u2019t isolated deaths.<\/p>\n

In the end, a small group of people solved the shocking medical mystery through experience, intuition and, at times, sheer luck.<\/p>\n

One of those fortuitous moments came when Richard Keyworth, a firefighter in Elk Grove Village, received a call from a friend in neighboring Arlington Heights.<\/p>\n

Phil Cappitelli, a fire lieutenant, was off duty at the time. But he had heard about Mary\u2019s death \u2014 his mother-in-law worked with the girl\u2019s mother at United Airlines \u2014 and he wondered what had happened.<\/p>\n

The health care privacy law known as HIPAA was still 14 years away and Keyworth, who was off work that day, telephoned his fire station for details about Mary. He then shared what he learned with his friend:<\/p>\n

Mary had a cold and took some Tylenol. Otherwise, she was a perfectly healthy seventh grader.<\/p>\n

For Cappitelli, that information would pay off with a piece of crucial insight later in the day, when several members of the same family suddenly collapsed in his town.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Arlington Heights Fire Lt. Philip Cappitelli, left, and Elk Grove Village firefighter Richard Keyworth discuss how they put two and two together in several of the Tylenol deaths. The men were at Keyworth’s home on Sept. 30, 1982. <\/span>(Quentin C. Dodt \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s mother, Jeanna Kellerman, had been at work at United when Mary fell ill. She rushed home in time to see paramedics placing her daughter in an ambulance. She tried to get close, but authorities held her back.<\/p>\n

She and her husband, Dennis, have rarely spoken publicly about their daughter\u2019s death. They declined a request to be interviewed for the 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n

But in a 1991 deposition, part of a lawsuit they filed against Tylenol\u2019s maker, Jeanna Kellerman described Mary as an inquisitive, well-loved child who took guitar lessons and gymnastics.<\/p>\n

At 12, she had just begun babysitting and used the money she earned to buy books for herself and little gifts for her parents. She kept her room clean and happily took care of the family\u2019s three dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t have to ask her to do anything,\u201d Jeanna Kellerman said in the deposition. \u201cShe would just go ahead and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the 1991 transcript, she and her husband still hadn\u2019t talked about her daughter\u2019s final moments in the family\u2019s home, nearly a decade later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him once about it,\u201d she said, \u201cand he just said: \u2018You don\u2019t ever want to know what happened in that room.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Adam Janus, a burly post office supervisor, had the day off work. He\u2019d experienced some chest pains the previous day but felt well enough to spend the morning running errands with his wife and young son.<\/p>\n

After picking up his daughter at a Catholic preschool, he stopped by a local grocery store and purchased several items, including steaks, fresh-cut lilies for his wife and a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol.<\/p>\n

Janus had moved to the leafy bedroom community of Arlington Heights in the late 1970s, around the time the first of his two children was born. For Janus and his wife, Teresa, the small brick bungalow represented a promising future.<\/p>\n

Born on a small farm in southern Poland, Janus came to the United States as a child after his father refused to join the Communist Party. They left their homeland in 1963 and settled on Chicago\u2019s Northwest Side.<\/p>\n

Adam Janus met Teresa on a visit to his old hometown, brought her to the United States and married her in a big, joyful wedding at the same church and reception hall where the Janus brothers celebrated their marriages in America.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Adam Janus, with his wife Teresa on their wedding day, died at 27 after taking poisoned Tylenol. <\/span>(Janus family)<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything my brothers and I did, we did because we were looking to the future,\u201d his oldest brother, Joseph Janus, told the Tribune.<\/p>\n

After his grocery store stop, Janus cheerfully put away his purchases and went into the bathroom, where he apparently swallowed two Tylenol. Teresa Janus told police she did not see her husband take the capsules but he walked out of the bathroom clutching his chest and complaining of pain.<\/p>\n

When she followed him into the bedroom, she saw that his eyes were fixed and dilated, his breathing shallow.<\/p>\n

Teresa Janus looked outside and saw two neighbors talking. She knew one was a nurse who spoke Polish, so she ran and asked for help. The women rushed inside the house, where the nurse tried to resuscitate Adam Janus and the other called for an ambulance.<\/p>\n

At Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, the paramedics trying to revive Janus were met by Dr. Thomas Kim, medical director of the ICU, who had the trust of local first responders. Kim tried to save Janus as well, but his heart never regained a normal, sustained rhythm.<\/p>\n

Adam \u2014 a 27-year-old father who tinkered with clocks in his spare time \u2014 was pronounced dead at 3:15 p.m. There was no immediate way to know what killed him, Kim said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing obvious like a gunshot wound or anything,\u201d Kim said. \u201cIn (Janus\u2019) case, we thought of the heart first. So the diagnosis for him was either a massive heart attack or a massive injury to the brain. We had to wait until the tests came back.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Teresa Janus, Adam’s widow, is helped out of St. Hyacinth Roman Catholic Church with her daughter Kathy in hand on Oct. 5, 1982. <\/span>(Michael Budrys \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Kim had to tell the Janus family the shocking news. Teresa Janus didn\u2019t speak much English at the time, so the doctor spoke directly with Adam\u2019s parents and youngest brother, Stanley, a 25-year-old Lisle resident who ran an auto parts store in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterward, the extended Janus family went to Adam and Teresa\u2019s house to console Teresa and start making funeral plans. Stanley tried to beg off. His back pain had flared up and he wanted to return home to the west suburbs with his wife, also named Theresa.<\/p>\n

His mother, Alojza Janus, wouldn\u2019t hear of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother said, \u2018No, you come with us to Adam\u2019s house,\u2019 \u201d Joseph Janus recalled. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to come, but when he got to Adam\u2019s house, he came inside with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

There, Stanley grabbed two Tylenol from the bottle Adam had purchased earlier that day.<\/p>\n

About 30 minutes after Adam Janus died, 27-year-old Mary \u201cLynn\u201d Reiner was preparing to feed her 6-day-old son in the living room. She had a headache, and earlier in the day she\u2019d purchased Tylenol at a grocery store.<\/p>\n

Following her doctor\u2019s advice, Reiner swallowed two capsules and felt dizzy almost immediately. She tried to make her way to the bathroom, but she collapsed onto a kitchen chair and began having seizures.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mary “Lynn” Reiner collapsed after taking two Extra-Strength Tylenol for a headache. <\/span>(Chicago Tribune archive)<\/p>\n

When a police officer arrived at the family\u2019s duplex, summoned by Reiner\u2019s husband, her eyes were fixed and dilated. She experienced one seizure after another while her sobbing mother-in-law held the newborn in her arms.<\/p>\n

One of Reiner\u2019s school-age children was upstairs and could hear all the commotion, former Winfield police Officer Scott Watkins told the Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019re yelling, \u2018Dad! Dad! What\u2019s going on?\u2019 And he\u2019s telling them, \u2018Stay upstairs! Stay upstairs!\u2019 It was just horrible,\u201d Watkins said.<\/p>\n

The Tribune could not locate many of the police records related to Reiner\u2019s death despite Freedom of Information Act requests to multiple agencies. The Winfield Police Department said it provided copies of the case file to the Illinois State Police before losing the originals in a flood.<\/p>\n

A state police spokesperson said all reports related to the Tylenol murders are stored on microfiche and cannot be searched electronically. The agency is gradually turning over more than 30,000 pages in its Tylenol archives, but police reports stemming from the call to the Reiner home haven\u2019t turned up yet.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An April 2022 view of the Winfield town home where Mary “Lynn” Reiner fell ill four decades earlier. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Reiner\u2019s daughter Michelle Rosen has spent more than a decade investigating her mother\u2019s murder. She called on law enforcement agencies to release their investigative records so the victims\u2019 families and, by extension, the public can have answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cReleasing case records would not alter or disrupt the current investigation in any way,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cIt will have the opposite effect. By giving access to all the files, we can examine the available information. Even if nothing comes of unsealing the records, we deserve to see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

DuPage County coroner\u2019s records indicate Reiner was taken to Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield and placed on life support.<\/p>\n

The young mother, who grew up in Villa Park and played softball, died the next day.<\/p>\n

Back at the Janus house, a stunned family gathered to make funeral plans.<\/p>\n

Stanley was there, per his mother\u2019s orders. So was his new wife, 20-year-old Theresa, known as Terri to her friends. Like the Januses, her family emigrated from Poland, and she grew up in a home where Polish was the primary language.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stanley and Theresa “Terri” Janus were married in June 1982, just three months before they fell victim to the Tylenol poisonings. <\/span>(Janus family)<\/p>\n

The two married just three months earlier in a large ceremony held at St. Hyacinth in Chicago, an ornate Catholic church that has served as the heart of the city\u2019s Polish community for generations. Hundreds attended their reception at the White Eagle banquet hall in Niles, the same place where Stanley\u2019s older brothers Joseph and Adam had celebrated their weddings.<\/p>\n

Stanley and Terri were so newly married when they stepped into Adam Janus\u2019 house that day, they hadn\u2019t even received the proofs from their wedding photographer yet. They would never see the images of Terri, wearing a lace gown with a full, tiered skirt, smiling as she looked adoringly at Stanley.<\/p>\n

Or of her father walking her down the aisle.<\/p>\n

Or of Terri with her bridesmaids, dressed in soft lavender.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, she was beautiful,\u201d said her high school friend Sandy Botwinski, one of the six bridesmaids. \u201cIt was just a happy day. \u2026 I thought they would have a long, good life together.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sandy Botwinski visits Lisle High School, where she became friends with Terri Janus. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sandy Botwinski saved photographs from her friend’s wedding to Stanley Janus in June 1982. Botwinski, shown with bride Terri Janus, was one of six bridesmaids. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

And for the first three months after the wedding, life indeed was good. They honeymooned in Hawaii, set up house across the street from her parents in Lisle and embarked on an ambitious remodeling project.<\/p>\n

But now, the newlyweds were sitting in Adam\u2019s kitchen, planning a funeral at the same church in which they had just married.<\/p>\n

Stanley, suffering from chronic back pain and a headache born of the day\u2019s sorrow, said he needed to take a couple of Tylenol. He asked if anyone else wanted some, and his mother shook her head. She had pain reliever in her purse and had already taken two pills at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Terri, however, had a headache that showed no signs of abating. She grabbed a glass of water and followed her husband into the bathroom.<\/p>\n

Moments later, Stanley emerged clutching his chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy God, I feel bad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He started to collapse, but his brother Joseph caught him and eased him to the floor. Terri Janus complained her chest hurt too.<\/p>\n

While a family member called for an ambulance, Teresa Janus rushed her two young children out of the house and brought them to a neighbor. She had seen these symptoms just hours earlier and wanted to shield them from the horror.<\/p>\n

The firefighters and paramedics at Arlington Heights Station 3 were making dinner when the call came in about \u201ca man down.\u201d When the dispatcher gave the address \u2014 1262 S. Mitchell Ave. \u2014 they looked at one another in disbelief.<\/p>\n

The station\u2019s paramedics had just been there a few hours ago for a man down. And that man had died.<\/p>\n

Fire Lt. Chuck Kramer ordered an engine to follow the ambulance to the house. It was unusual for the bigger vehicles to respond to a medical emergency, but two calls to the same address in less than six hours was alarming.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we were coming down the street \u2026 there were crowds of people,\u201d said Kramer, who was in the trailing firetruck. \u201cAnd as we pulled up in front, I started to go up to the house and I can hear screaming come out of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chuck Kramer, a former Arlington Heights firefighter, responded to the house of Adam Janus in 1982, after paramedics were called to that address for the second time in six hours. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Inside, paramedics were trying to revive Stanley as he lay on the floor. One of the medics looked at Kramer with fear in his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the exact same thing that happened to the man this morning,\u201d he told his lieutenant. \u201cAnd we lost him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terri grabbed Kramer\u2019s shoulder for support.<\/p>\n

\u201cStanley! Stanley!\u201d she yelled to her unconscious husband.<\/p>\n

Then she groaned and fell to the floor. Kramer assumed she had fainted, but when he turned her over, he knew it was something far more serious.<\/p>\n

Her breaths were shallow. Her eyes were fixed and dilated.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now I\u2019ve got six paramedics working on two people,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m looking at what\u2019s going on. I said, \u2018Guys, this isn\u2019t heart attacks. There\u2019s something wrong.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The paramedics loaded the couple into separate ambulances and headed to Northwest Community Hospital. Concerned that some kind of airborne contagion or other deadly environmental poison was in the house, Kramer put the entire Janus family in police cars and sent them to the hospital too.<\/p>\n

He radioed ahead to the hospital staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou better find a place for us,\u201d he recalled telling them. \u201cI\u2019ve got 14 people who need to be isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the ambulances raced toward the hospital, Dr. Kim was about to leave after a long shift. But a nurse stopped him to say that two people had collapsed at the Janus house and were on their way.<\/p>\n

He assumed it was Adam\u2019s parents, overcome with grief. The nurse said no, it\u2019s his brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo then I said, \u2018Well, maybe he fainted,\u2019\u201d Kim recalled. \u201cThen she said his wife also collapsed. So I threw my jacket off \u2026 and told the ICU nurses I was staying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim mobilized the emergency department and began treating Stanley and Terri as soon as they arrived. The rest of the Janus family was quarantined in a hospital meeting room with the police, firefighters and paramedics who had responded to the call.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in shock so bad that I didn\u2019t know what was going on,\u201d Joseph Janus said.<\/p>\n

Kim still didn\u2019t know why Adam Janus was dead or why two relatives were critically ill. He didn\u2019t know two other people had been stricken in the same way.<\/p>\n

Or that more deaths were yet to come.<\/p>\n

An hour later in a town 20 miles away, Mary McFarland, a single mother with two young boys, took her dinner break at the Yorktown Shopping Center. After going through a divorce two years earlier, her life seemed to be steadying a bit.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old Elmhurst woman had a good job at the Illinois Bell Telephone store in the mall, where the union wages and flexible hours were ideal for someone with small children. She also had started dating someone.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mary McFarland, shown in her April 1974 wedding photo, died from taking Tylenol capsules tainted with cyanide in 1982. <\/span>(Family photo)<\/p>\n

\u201cHer kids were everything to her,\u201d said Jan Hoffman, a friend and co-worker. \u201cHer divorce was difficult and she had just started dating a guy and she seemed happy. \u2026 I don\u2019t know if it was anything serious, but she was having a good time and she needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After eating dinner with Hoffman, McFarland returned to the store floor. It wasn\u2019t long before she slipped into the break room to deal with a headache.<\/p>\n

Migraines were common at the store, thanks to the flickering fluorescent lights and constantly complaining customers. Illinois Bell even provided a jar of generic pain pills for the workers to take as needed. The staff called them \u201cgreenies\u201d because of their mossy hue.<\/p>\n

McFarland, however, preferred her own medication. Shaking two Tylenol capsules from their container for herself, she offered some to co-worker Diana Hilderbrand, also in the break room.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jan Hoffman, in South Elgin in July, worked with Mary McFarland in 1982. \u201cHer kids were everything to her,\u201d Hoffman said. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018No, I just took some greenies.\u2019 I\u2019d had a rough day,\u201d Hilderbrand said. \u201cThen she walked back on the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

But McFarland quickly returned to the break room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it was even 10 minutes later,\u201d Hilderbrand said. \u201cShe said, \u2018I don\u2019t feel good,\u2019 and she just collapsed. \u2026 We\u2019re all trying to do CPR and call 911 and all that kind of thing. The paramedics got there and they said, \u2018Do you know if she took anything?\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, yeah, she took Tylenol.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

McFarland was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, where doctors told her family she suffered a catastrophic stroke.<\/p>\n

She never regained consciousness.<\/p>\n

With Stanley and Terri Janus\u2019 conditions dire, it was obvious to Chuck Kramer that someone needed to call a public health expert. He knew only one person who would qualify: his friend Helen Jensen, the Arlington Heights village nurse.<\/p>\n

As the town\u2019s only public health official, Jensen did everything from flu shots for firefighters to home health care for cancer patients. She also never backed down from a challenge.<\/p>\n

The fire lieutenant, who was still at the hospital, called her at home and said he needed help figuring out how three young, healthy people from the same family were so suddenly stricken. Jensen, who had been making dinner for her family, grabbed her car keys and rushed out of the house, still wearing shorts and a T-shirt.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Helen Jensen, shown at home in February in Arlington Heights, was the village nurse in 1982. She was the first person to intuit that Tylenol was to blame for deaths in the Janus family. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Jensen arrived at the hospital 15 minutes later and walked into the quarantine room. The people inside marveled at her courage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought she would go and talk to the doctors, but no. She came directly into the room and I couldn\u2019t believe that,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cBut that\u2019s just Helen. She is brave. She sees it as just doing her job, but I really admired her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen asked to speak with Adam\u2019s widow, Teresa, who was standing by herself across the room and looking undeniably lost.<\/p>\n

With a relative interpreting, Teresa walked Jensen through Adam\u2019s morning and the family gathering later that afternoon. In her retelling, Jensen noticed, all three people who got sick had taken Tylenol.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A warning seal from the Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office is taped to the front door of the Janus house in Arlington Heights on Oct. 2, 1982. <\/span>(Karen Engstrom \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Jensen asked Teresa for a key to the house and told a village police officer to take her there immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to go out,\u201d she recalled telling the patrolman. \u201cI want to take a look for myself to see what I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen entered the tidy bungalow around 8 p.m. and gathered a few things she thought all three people could have come in contact with: a pot of black coffee, used coffee grounds, home-jarred fruits, cherry juice, a pound cake, prescription medicines, the fresh flowers from the store.<\/p>\n

She found the Tylenol bottle on the bathroom counter and the receipt in the trash can.<\/p>\n

How a single bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol killed three members of a close-knit Polish clan. >>> View the timeline here<\/p>\n

Jensen poured out the capsules and counted them repeatedly. There were only 44 capsules in the 50-count bottle. She could easily do the math: three people, each taking the recommended two capsules. Three people, dead or dying.<\/p>\n

She returned to the hospital, where she found a representative from the Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office in a conference room. She placed the white plastic bottle on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to be the Tylenol,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Her declaration was met with skepticism, she said. So, she repeated it, this time stamping her foot and raising her voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something in the Tylenol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Same response.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Helen Jensen outside the home in Arlington Heights where she found the Tylenol bottle that was to blame for deaths in the Janus family. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Feeling frustrated and unheard, she went home and poured herself a Scotch on the rocks. She told her husband that lives were potentially still at risk and she couldn\u2019t get the right people to believe her.<\/p>\n

She cried herself to sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a woman and a nurse,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one was going to listen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Jensen searched the Janus home, United flight attendant Paula Prince landed at O\u2019Hare following a long day in which she worked a return trip from Las Vegas and then an out-and-back to Hartford, Connecticut.<\/p>\n

She checked the flight board after landing and saw that her friend Jean Regula Leavengood \u2014 a fellow flight attendant who lived in the same Old Town condo building and shared Prince\u2019s passion for travel and fun \u2014 would not be arriving for another hour or so.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jean Regula Leavengood was close friends with Paula Prince before Prince’s death in 1982. Both were flight attendants who lived in the same Old Town condo building. <\/span>(E. Jason Wambsgans \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Prince scribbled a note to her friend, explaining that she had left for home and she would talk to her soon. Prince left it in her friend\u2019s airport mailbox.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s meet for a drink later,\u201d Prince wrote. \u201cI have exciting news to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the way home, Prince stopped at a Walgreens near her building. A security camera snapped an image of Prince at the cash register, still dressed in a United Airlines uniform consisting of a navy pantsuit, neck scarf and high-heeled shoes.<\/p>\n

The photo captured the exact moment the 35-year-old Nebraska native unwittingly purchased her own death.<\/p>\n

At 9:16 p.m., she paid $2.39 for a 24-count bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A photograph from a drugstore camera shows Paula Prince, dressed in her United Airlines uniform, buying a bottle of tainted Tylenol in 1982. <\/span>(Chicago Tribune archive)<\/p>\n

Once home, Prince put on a flowery nightgown and began taking off her makeup with a cotton ball. She paused to swallow a single capsule from her new purchase, seemingly forgetting that she already had an open bottle of Tylenol in her travel bag.<\/p>\n

Regula Leavengood and Prince\u2019s sister would find her lifeless body two days later, looking nothing like the striking blond woman they knew.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a bombshell, you know,\u201d said Regula Leavengood. \u201cShe was pretty, she was vivacious. Always laughing. Always laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jean Regula Leavengood has kept photos showing her friend Paula Prince as she remembers her: always laughing. <\/span>(E. Jason Wambsgans \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

At Prince\u2019s funeral, a man approached Regula Leavengood and introduced himself. He said he had met Prince during a recent layover in Las Vegas and they had fallen immediately, madly in love. He said they planned to marry.<\/p>\n

He was Paula Prince\u2019s exciting news.<\/p>\n

After hours in quarantine, firefighter Kramer heard from Dr. Kim that Stanley Janus had been pronounced dead and Terri was on life support with no chance of recovery.<\/p>\n

Kim said he didn\u2019t think the deaths had been caused by anything environmental, but rather something they all ingested. He was trying to find a poison expert to help him make a diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The first responders were released from quarantine with instructions to decontaminate at their home stations, just to be on the safe side. Doctors admitted all the Januses to the hospital for overnight observation for that same cautious reason.<\/p>\n

Joseph Janus shared a room with his sister, Sophia. The siblings passed a sleepless night, afraid they wouldn\u2019t wake up if they fell asleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just looking at my sister and she was looking at me to see if we were still alive,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought we were going to die too.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Joseph Janus, shown in June in the Wisconsin Dells, was quarantined at a suburban hospital after two of his brothers and a sister-in-law were stricken with a mysterious illness in 1982. It turned out to be cyanide poisoning. <\/span>(E. Jason Wambsgans \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

At home, Joseph Janus\u2019 wife, Elizabeth, pulled their two young children into a bedroom and told them to pray harder than they had ever prayed. She also called her family in Poland and asked them to go to nearby Czestochowa, a religious site where Catholics have long asked for miracles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember my (4-year-old) brother holding a statue of Jesus and just holding it really tight,\u201d recalled Joseph Janus\u2019 daughter, Monica, who was 8. \u201cWe\u2019re all sitting there and praying together, hoping that my dad would come home because everyone\u2019s dying in our family.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Janus family prayed, Kramer and his crew headed back to the firehouse. On the way there, Kramer got on the radio and notified emergency dispatchers that his trucks would be out of commission until further notice.<\/p>\n

Minutes after he returned to the station, his phone rang.<\/p>\n

It was his close friend and fellow Arlington Heights fire lieutenant, Phil Cappitelli. Always one to keep a scanner nearby on his days off, Cappitelli wanted to know what possibly could have happened to shut down the entire station.<\/p>\n

Kramer, who had listened to Jensen\u2019s conversation with Adam Janus\u2019 widow, told him about the family and their mysterious illness. They didn\u2019t have anything in common, Kramer told his colleague, except that they each took Tylenol.<\/p>\n

The information clicked with Cappitelli. He told Kramer about his inquiry into Mary Kellerman\u2019s sudden death and that she also had taken Tylenol moments before collapsing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my God, it just hits you,\u201d Kramer recalled. \u201cSomeone is out there indiscriminately poisoning people.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Arlington Heights Fire Department Lts. Chuck Kramer, left, and Phil Cappitelli, right, and Elk Grove firefighter Richard Keyworth in 1982. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Kramer immediately called the Elk Grove Village Fire Department and spoke with the paramedic who had treated Mary Kellerman. Were her eyes fixed and dilated? Was her breathing rapid and shallow? Were her symptoms resistant to medical intervention?<\/p>\n

Yes, the paramedic said. Yes. Yes.<\/p>\n

Kramer called the hospital to relay what he found out \u2014 what Jensen already knew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something wrong with the Tylenol,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kim was told about the Tylenol connection, but it didn\u2019t completely solve the medical mystery. The doctor had treated cases of acetaminophen poisoning previously, and this wasn\u2019t that.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Januses all took Tylenol before falling into respiratory distress. But Kim needed to know what substance caused them to suffer sudden cardiac arrest. He consulted with several poisoning experts and scoured his old medical school textbooks. He paced back and forth in his office, thinking and ruling out various causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t just say, \u2018Oh, I tried my best,\u2019 \u201d Kim said. \u201cI had to find an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dr. Thomas Kim, medical director of the ICU at Northwest Community Hospital, recounts at a Sept. 30, 1982, news conference how three members of the same family had ingested cyanide as a result of taking Tylenol. <\/span>(Karen Engstrom \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

In the end, there was only one substance that he could think of that killed people so rapidly after being ingested: cyanide.<\/p>\n

It was a wild thought, but it was the best explanation he could offer. His hospital couldn\u2019t test for cyanide at the time, so he found a 24-hour lab in Highland Park. He put two vials of blood \u2014 one belonging to Stanley, the other to Terri \u2014 in a cab and gave the driver instructions on where to take them.<\/p>\n

As he watched the taxi pull away, he hoped that none of his colleagues would see the Januses\u2019 charts and think he was being foolish.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy back was against the wall,\u201d Kim said. \u201cI mean, I had nothing else to offer, so I ordered the test.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, an Elk Grove Village police officer brought the Tylenol bottle from the Kellerman home to the hospital and gave it to Nicholas Pishos, an investigator with the Cook County medical examiner\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Pishos already had the bottle left by Jensen. Both bottles had the same lot number.<\/p>\n

Pishos called his boss, Dr. Edmund Donoghue, deputy chief medical examiner for Cook County. Donoghue, who was at home, told him to open one of the bottles and smell inside.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dr. Edmund Donoghue, shown earlier this year, was deputy chief medical examiner in 1982. He knew Tylenol had been tainted with cyanide when one of his investigators opened a bottle and smelled the chemical’s almond-like odor. <\/span>(Stacey Wescott \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

When Pishos poured out the capsules, he caught a strong almond scent. The second bottle produced the same bitter smell.<\/p>\n

Donoghue\u2019s suspicion was confirmed. He knew instantly the odor was cyanide, a notorious and rapid-acting poison that cuts off oxygen to red blood cells. The almond odor isn\u2019t always present, and even when it exists, it\u2019s discernible by only about 60% of the population.<\/p>\n

Pishos apparently was among them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I popped the top, I could smell the cyanide,\u201d Pishos said in an interview. \u201cI remember it smells like burnt almond from my chemistry classes in college.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue called Michael Schaffer, the county\u2019s chief toxicologist, and asked him to come to the morgue and run tests on the confiscated Tylenol capsules. It was the first time Donoghue could ever recall asking the toxicology department to work through the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a crazy idea, that there might be something in Tylenol,\u201d Donoghue said in an interview. \u201cI mean, this was the world\u2019s most common analgesic.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dr. Edmund Donoghue, right, then the deputy chief medical examiner in Cook County, discusses the cyanide-laced Tylenol on Sept. 30, 1982. At left are Michael Schaffer, the toxicologist who tested the capsules, and Dr. Barry Lifschultz. <\/span>(Charles Osgood \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Tests would show that four of the 44 remaining capsules in the Januses\u2019 bottle contained cyanide. Records indicate each capsule had between 550 and 610 milligrams of poison \u2014 nearly three times the amount needed to kill someone.<\/p>\n

In the early morning hours of Sept. 30, a technician from the Highland Park lab called to notify Dr. Kim that her tests had found massive amounts of cyanide in the newlyweds\u2019 blood.<\/p>\n

She also told him she had never run a cyanide test before, but she assured him she had followed the screening protocols.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just so much cyanide,\u201d Kim recalled her saying. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s just too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Testing of blood samples taken from Stanley and Terri Janus, shown here on their honeymoon, showed high levels of cyanide. <\/span>(Janus family)<\/p>\n

Kim asked for the lab director\u2019s home phone number so he could call and discuss the results. When the technician hesitated, Kim told her she could either give it to him or give it to Arlington Heights police when he sent them to the laboratory.<\/p>\n

She gave Kim the number.<\/p>\n

Kim called and woke up the director, who assured the doctor he was confident the test had been run correctly. The tech, he said, was one of his best.<\/p>\n

The results were indisputable: Stanley and Terri Janus died from acute cyanide poisoning.<\/p>\n

The first news related to the Tylenol poisonings broke when a reporter for the City News Bureau \u2014 a famed Chicago news organization that operated 24 hours a day \u2014 published a bulletin.<\/p>\n

City News reporter John Flynn Rooney wrote that authorities were looking into the sudden deaths of Adam Janus and his brother Stanley. The information was attributed to a hospital spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The item, based on a tip received by overnight editor Rick Baert, didn\u2019t mention Tylenol. Rooney couldn\u2019t get someone to confirm that part of the story right away.<\/p>\n

But Baert told the Tribune that he recognized the potential danger to the public and urged Rooney to keep digging.<\/p>\n

Baert also called his best friend in the middle of the night because he knew the man took Tylenol for his knee each morning. He warned his buddy to skip the pills when he woke up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I could think of was how many more people could be at risk if this news didn\u2019t get out by morning,\u201d Baert said.<\/p>\n

Shortly before sunrise, Rooney \u2014 who died in 2016 of complications from ALS \u2014 nailed down the story. Around 5:30 a.m., City News reported that the medical examiner\u2019s office was attributing three deaths to an unnamed \u201cheadache remedy\u201d and a news conference would be held later that morning.<\/p>\n

The story was immediately picked up by local radio stations, including the one Helen Jensen\u2019s husband listened to before work. When he heard the news, he woke up his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were right,\u201d he told her. \u201cIt\u2019s on the radio. It\u2019s the Tylenol.\u201d<\/p>\n

In less than 24 hours, a group of first responders and medical experts had solved a critical piece of a heartbreaking puzzle.<\/p>\n

Although autopsies would have detected the cyanide eventually, according to Donoghue, that process would have taken another 18 hours \u2014 and, in this case, every minute counted.<\/p>\n

The same morning the news broke, stores began pulling the pain reliever from their shelves and public health departments went door-to-door with flyers warning people about potentially poisonous capsules in the medicine cabinets. Police officers drove through streets, using bullhorns to order people to throw out their Tylenol.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pharmacist Dennis Jordan, right, checks lot codes on bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol at the Westmont Pharmacy as he removes them from the shelves on Sept. 30, 1982. <\/span>(John Dziekan \/ Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

And these efforts almost certainly saved lives, as testing turned up three other tainted Tylenol bottles and no other deaths occurred after those first 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Kramer said he often wonders what would have happened if just one small thing about that day had been different.<\/p>\n

What if Cappitelli\u2019s mother-in-law hadn\u2019t worked with a woman whose little girl had mysteriously died? What if Keyworth, the Elk Grove Village firefighter, hadn\u2019t been around when Cappitelli called him for information about Mary Kellerman? What if Kramer hadn\u2019t called in nurse Helen Jensen, who interviewed Teresa Janus and retrieved the poisoned bottle? What if Dr. Kim hadn\u2019t acted on his cyanide hunch, sending blood samples to the lab?<\/p>\n

What if Cappitelli hadn\u2019t heard something puzzling on his scanner and learned about the Januses from his friend Kramer?<\/p>\n

What if Kramer hadn\u2019t overheard Jensen discussing Tylenol with Teresa Janus and relayed that detail to Cappitelli?<\/p>\n

What if Nick Pishos couldn\u2019t smell cyanide\u2019s distinctive almond odor?<\/p>\n

Remove any of these people and their efforts that night, and the public wouldn\u2019t have known about the poisoned capsules as quickly as they did.<\/p>\n

Remove any of these people and their efforts that night, and more people likely would have died.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all came together,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cWe were lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The massive police task force assigned to find the culprit, however, would not be as fast in its mission.<\/p>\n

Or as fortunate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A suburban police detective climbs the steps of the main Cook County criminal courthouse in hopes of ending a 40-year-old mystery. The Tylenol murders, as they are commonly known, have been his investigation since he assumed responsibility for the cold case more than 15 years ago. Now, he and several other law enforcement officials believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-3479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dolor-de-espalda","8":"tag-dolor-de-espalda"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3481,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions\/3481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanchiropractors.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}