Extra-strength scare

CHICAGO -- The first victim was a 12-year-old girl who sought remedy for a morning headache, followed by a 27-year-old postal worker, his brother and his brother's new wife.

Three more people were found dead as authorities were making the unsettling connection -- all the victims had taken cyanide-laced capsules of Extra Strength Tylenol.

The incident set off a national panic, and created a murder mystery that remains unsolved.

Nearly two decades before the anthrax scare that has killed four people and forever changed the way Americans handle their mail, the country learned that an everyday product could be turned into a killer.

"This was an outbreak of chemical terrorism," says Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue, who investigated the 1982 killings as the office's chief deputy.

Trust or fear

John Fellmann, a captain with the Arlington Heights police in suburban Chicago who helped investigate the Tylenol killings, said the anthrax scare has given him a case of deja vu.

"Something you trust, the mail, is killing you," he said.

Johnson & Johnson, parent company of Tylenol manufacturer McNeil Consumer Products Co., recalled more than 20 million bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol and incinerated them all. In Chicago, Mayor Jane Byrne banned the sale of all Tylenol products in the city and 1,300 volunteers canvassed the city to warn the public about the potential danger.

Across the country everyone from school nurses to housewives rushed to turn in their bottles to authorities. Investigators eventually recovered eight tainted bottles, five related to the deaths, two turned in by consumers and one pulled from a store shelf.

Like the anthrax cases, the Tylenol deaths set off an enormous -- and enormously difficult -- investigation. A task force of some 150 officers from local, state and federal agencies tracked down thousands of leads. No one was ever charged in the killings and officials said the crimes had no known pattern or motive. While there were later copycat cases in Washington state and New York, the Chicago-area deaths ended as abruptly as they began.

Two convictions

Two men were convicted for crimes related to the 1982 poisonings: Roger Arnold of Chicago for killing a man -- the eighth Tylenol victim to some -- he thought had directed investigators his way in the case, and James E. Lewis of Kansas City, who sent an extortion note to Johnson & Johnson threatening to poison bottles of the painkiller unless he got $1 million.

Some investigators believed Lewis was also the killer but it was never proven. Both men have served prison terms and been released.

The FBI says the case remains open, although there haven't been any developments of late. Fellmann said he used to hear from the FBI off and on, but not for about two years now.

While the slayings remain unresolved, the tragedy had at least one far-reaching consequence: the tamper-resistant packaging on most foods and drugs sold today. The deaths also led to tough criminal penalties for illegal tampering with consumer products.

Similarly, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare are expected to forever alter the way Americans fly and handle their mail.