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Police are using advanced DNA technology to find the killer of seven people murdered in Chicago in 1982 who unknowingly took Tylenol pills laced with a lethal dose of cyanide.
DNA evidence is being collected by several sources, including relatives of the victims and a family that survived the deadly attack that changed the way in which over-the-counter drugs are manufactured.
Specialized technology that extracts trace amounts of human DNA from items to analyze them, even if they’re old or degraded, is being used in the fresh probe.
Records obtained by CBS Chicago’s Dave Savini, Samah Assad, and Rebecca McCann show that law enforcement has retained a multitude of evidence, including the 40-year-old bottles and contaminated pills. But it remains unclear what specifically is being tested.
The Morgan family is among those who have been approached to help in the investigation.
Laura Morgan was three in 1982 when her mother Linda bought a tampered bottle of Tylenol from her local grocery store to ease the pain of an aching leg and by chance survived.
‘Now that I’m old enough to understand, I have a child of my own, knowing that my life could have been forever altered without my mom or dad,’ Laura told the outlet.
‘I don’t know why we were spared, but we were.’
Linda who had been 35 at the time said she had sensed something was off and chose an alternative for her pain.
‘I had the bottle open. I looked at one of the capsules,’ Linda, now 75, told Savini in her first interview since the events.
‘Then I thought, no, I’ll just take aspirin instead. I could have been the eighth victim.’
At the time of the murders that remain shrouded in mystery, it was determined that Linda and her husband DuPage County Judge Lewis Morgan, who died in 2018, both touched the bottle of Tylenol.
‘I don’t think it’s really hit yet how fortunate we were,’ Judge Morgan said to CBS Chicago’s Terry Anzur at the time.
‘I think the first feeling we both have is a feeling of extreme sympathy, now that it’s touched us so closely, for the people that weren’t so fortunate as we.’
New documents obtained by CBS Chicago reveal that an intense effort to use advanced DNA technology to identify the killer is underway.
The Arlington Heights Illinois Police Department (AHPD) is spurring the efforts as it continues to investigate the deaths of three members of the same family – Adam Janus, Teresa Janus, and Stanley Janus. They all were killed in Arlington Heights after taking poisoned Tylenol.
Joe Janus, who lost his two brothers and sister-in-law, said he hopes DNA will help police arrest the killer. It’s something he wants to see before he dies.
‘He’s an animal,’ Janus said. ‘He kills people with no fear.’
Employees of the Chicago City Health Department continue to test Tylenol medication for the presence of deadly cyanide at the Department’s lab on Oct 7, 1982 following the murders
DNA evidence is being collected by several sources, including relatives of the victims and a family that survived the deadly attack that changed the way in which over-the-counter drugs are manufactured
Meanwhile, the police department has also collected a swab of DNA from Laura and her late father, from his smoking pipes, on Jan 14, 2020, 38 years after the murders.
‘I’m assuming there’s got to be some other DNA on that bottle,’ Laura said of the bottle her mother purchased in 1982.
‘They have something. If they need DNA if they need my cheek swabbed, if they need evidence from the past people, from the past DNA, they must have something that they are running or retesting.’
AHPD told CBS in a statement that the recent DNA testing done on the Morgan family was to eliminate their DNA, and officials continue to review and submit elimination prints for people they know handled evidence.
The agency would not comment on what specifically prompted investigators to take another look at their DNA, and why it wasn’t until 2020 that they took Laura’s DNA, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.
‘Elimination prints and/or DNA elimination of those individuals who are known to have been in possession of contaminated bottles has been an ongoing and important effort,’ the statement said.
‘The department was able to conduct this necessary process in 2020.’
Authorities also started working with Houston-based company Othram to solve the case
Othram uses specialized technology to extract trace amounts of human DNA from items and analyze them even if they’re old or degraded.
Othram’s Chief development officer, Kristen Mittelman, said the company has managed to solve some of the most notorious cases.
‘There are cases that we’ve completely solved, notorious cases we’ve completely solved, that we cannot speak of until law enforcement comes out and speaks of them or announces it themselves,’ Mittelman said.
Othram can analyze DNA smaller than the top of a pin needle and the goal is to find distant relationships to the person police are trying to identify, such as a victim or a killer, through thousands of markers in the human genome.
The process, which can cost between $6,000 and $10,000, is less about identifying and more about excluding other possibilities.
‘When we look at all these markers, we’re able to get really distant relationships,’ she said.
The Morgan family are among those who have been approached to help in the investigation
At the time of the murders that remain shrouded in mystery, it was determined that Linda and her husband DuPage County Judge Lewis Morgan, who died in 2018, both touched the bottle of Tylenol
Laura Morgan (center) was three in 1982 when her mother Linda (right) bought a tampered bottle of Tylenol from her local grocery store to ease the pain of an aching leg and by chance survived
‘Then you can figure out how far this piece of the puzzle is from all these relationships and fit it onto a family tree exactly where it belongs.’
Mittelman said the company has returned investigative leads in thousands of cases, including identifying a murder victim from 1881.
The technology has also helped produce leads for cases in Illinois. In 2021, the Will County Coroner’s office sent Othram a young woman’s remains that were found in New Lenox in 1981.
Othram’s DNA analysis also helped lead to the identification of a suspect in the murder of Carla Walker, who was 17 when she was abducted in Fort Worth, Texas.
‘People think they got away with it,’ Mittelman said. ‘And every time we catch one of those perpetrators, they’re living a normal life.’
The Tylenol murder investigation has primarily centered around suspect James Lewis.
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Lewis was arrested, charged, and convicted for writing extortion letters in which he threatened the killings would continue unless $1 million was wired to a bank account.
DNA samples from Lewis were collected by investigators in 2010, the Chicago Tribune reported.
In September, law enforcement investigating the case went to Lewis’ home to question him.
AHPD Sergeant Joe Murphy said the agency believes following the evidence is key to making an arrest.
‘The technology is here,’ Murphy said. ‘DNA technology has advanced … to the point where we’re confident that this technology will assist this investigation moving forward.’
Records show law enforcement has retained a multitude of evidence, including the 40-year-old bottles and contaminated pills.
But it remains unclear what pieces of evidence in the Tylenol case are specifically being tested.
Evidence in the Tylenol murders is decades old and has been tested for DNA and fingerprints multiple times since 1982 – repeatedly testing evidence can cause it to degrade over time – which Mittelman said wouldn’t hurt the process with their technology.
Authorities also started to work with Houston-based company, Othram, to solve the case. They use specialized technology to extract trace amounts of human DNA from items and analyze them even if they’re old or degraded
Othram’s Chief development officer, Kristen Mittelman, said the company has managed to solve some of the most notorious cases
Before the 1982 crisis, Tylenol controlled more than 35 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever market, only a few weeks after the murders, that number plummeted to less than 8 percent
‘If there is DNA that is found, then we’re likely to identify you,’ she said.
‘Even if it was degraded, even if it was mixed. Even if there were contaminations, even if you tried to wash it off.’
In September of 2020, Othram submitted a document called a genotype kit report to the AHPD.
An assessment appears to have been done on some evidence, CBS Chicago reported of the investigation adding that the documents they obtained were nearly fully redacted.
In 2007 the FBI launched a second taskforce to revisit the case to create timelines for key evidence, like bottle and capsules purchased by victims.
Over the past four decades, Tylenol bottles, their boxes, and pills were shipped and handled by at least a dozen different governmental agencies, police departments, and private labs.
That included the state police, the Federal Drug Administration, and a private lab called Bode Technology.
In 2007, all the evidence was sent to and re-examined by the FBI in Quantico, Virginia.
And as recently as September of 2022, records reveal, investigators submitted something to the state crime lab for testing, these results obtained by the outlet were also redacted.
Seven people, four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl, died in 1982 after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that had been purchased from drug stores and groceries in the Chicago area.
Someone had opened the capsules and replaced some of the acetaminophen with cyanide and returned them to the shelves.
The first to die was 12-year-old Mary Kellerman from Elk Grove Village. Her parents gave her one capsule and by the next morning she was dead.
The same day, Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, 27, also mysteriously passed away after taking a Tylenol pill.
When going to mourn the 27-year-old, his brother Stanley, 25, and sister-in-law Theresa, 19, took tablets from the same bottle. Stanley died that day, and Theresa two days later.
The Tylenol murder investigation has primarily centered around suspect James Lewis. Lewis was arrested, charged, and convicted for writing extortion letters in which he threatened the killings would continue unless $1 million was wired to a bank account
The Arlington Heights Illinois Police Department (AHPD) is spurring the efforts as it continues to investigate the deaths of three members of the same family – Adam Janus, Teresa Janus, and Stanley Janus. They all were killed in Arlington Heights after taking poisoned Tylenol
Records obtained by CBS Chicago’s Dave Savini, Samah Assad and Rebecca McCann show that law enforcement has retained a multitude of evidence, including the 40-year-old bottles and contaminated pills, but it remains unclear what specifically is being tested
After that, three others lost their lives – 35-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner of Winfield, Illinois.
It was at this point, early October of 1982, that investigators made the connection between the poisoning deaths and Tylenol, the best-selling, non-prescription pain reliever sold in the United States at that time.
McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of the health care giant, Johnson & Johnson, manufactured Tylenol.
The company took an active role with the media in issuing mass warning communications and immediately called for a massive recall of the more than 31 million bottles of Tylenol in circulation.
The tampered bottles came from different factories so sabotage in production was ruled out.
Instead, it is thought someone must have gone around drug stores, opening bottles and adding a lethal potassium cyanide compound.
McNeill and Johnson & Johnson offered replacement capsules to those who turned in pills already purchased and a reward of $100,000 for anyone with information leading to the apprehension of the individual or people involved in these random murders.
Other ‘copy-cat’ poisonings, involving Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications, cropped up again in the 1980s and early 1990s but these events were never as dramatic or as deadly as the 1982 Chicago-area deaths.
Before the 1982 crisis, Tylenol controlled more than 35 percent of the over-the-counter pain reliever market, only a few weeks after the murders, that number plummeted to less than 8 percent.
The case led to reforms in how over-the-counter medicines are packaged. Working with the FDA they introduced new tamper-proof packaging, which included foil seals and other features consumers are familiar with now.
A new version of the pill was also introduced, known as the caplet, in which a tablet was coated with easy-to-swallow gelatin.
Within a year, and after an investment of more than $100 million, Tylenol’s sales rebounded, and it had a renaissance as the nation’s favorite over-the-counter pain reliever.
In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed what was called ‘the Tylenol bill,’ making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products. In 1989, the FDA established federal guidelines for manufacturers to make all such products tamper-proof.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
