1982 — Sep 29, Tylenol Tampering deaths start (laced with cyanide), Chicago, IL — 7
— 7 Fletcher, Dan. “A Brief History of the Tylenol Poisonings.” Time, 2-9-2009.
— 7 History.com. “1982. The Tylenol murders.” Sep 29 — This Day in History.
— 7 Markel, H. “How the Tylenol murders of 1982 changed the way…” PBS, 9-29-2014.[1]
— 7 Wilkerson. “Tylenol Maker Settles in Tampering Deaths.” New York Times, 5-14-1991.
Narrative Information
History.com, Sep 29: “On this day in 1982, a sick 12-year-old girl in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, unwittingly takes an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule laced with cyanide poison and dies later that day. She would be one of seven people to die suddenly after taking the popular over-the-counter medication, as the so-called Tylenol murders spread fear across America. The victims, all from the Chicago area, ranged in age from 12 to 35 and included three members of the same family. Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, launched a massive recall of its product and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible.
“Investigators soon determined that the tainted Tylenol capsules hadn’t been tampered with at the factories where they were produced. This meant that someone had taken the bottles from store shelves, laced them with poison and then returned them to grocery stores and pharmacies, where the victims later purchased the tampered bottles….”[2] (History.com. “1982. The Tylenol murders.” Sep 29 — This Day in History.)
Markel: “Early on the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, a tragic, medical mystery began with a sore throat and a runny nose. It was then that Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, told her mother and father about her symptoms. They gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule that, unbeknownst to them, was laced with the highly poisonous potassium cyanide. Mary was dead by 7 a.m. Within a week, her death would panic the entire nation. And only months later, it changed the way we purchase and consume over-the-counter medications.
“That same day, a 27-year-old postal worker named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died of what was initially thought to be a massive heart attack but turned out to be cyanide poisoning as well. His brother and sister-in-law, Stanley, 25, and Theresa, 19, of Lisle, Illinois, rushed to his home to console their loved ones. Both experienced throbbing headaches, a not uncommon response to a death in the family and each took a Tylenol extra-strength capsule or two from the same bottle Adam had used earlier in the day. Stanley died that very day and Theresa died two days later. Over the next few days, three more strange deaths occurred: 35-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois, 35-year-old Paula Prince of Chicago, and 27-year-old Mary Weiner[3] of Winfield, Illinois. All of them, it turned out, took Tylenol shortly before they died….
“To this day…the perpetrators of these murders have never been found.” (Markel, Howard (MD). “How the Tylenol murders of 1982 changed the way we consume medication.” PBS, 9-29-2014.)
Sources
Fletcher, Dan. “A Brief History of the Tylenol Poisonings.” Time, 2-9-2009. Accessed 4-19-2017 at: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1878063,00.html
History.com. “1982. The Tylenol murders.” Sep 29 — This Day in History (General Interest). Accessed 4-18-2017 at: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-tylenol-murders
Markel, Howard (MD). “How the Tylenol murders of 1982 changed the way we consume medication.” PBS, 9-29-2014. Accessed 4-18-2017 at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/tylenol-murders-1982/
Wilkerson. “Tylenol Maker Settles in Tampering Deaths.” New York Times, 5-14-1991. Accessed 4-19-2017 at: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/14/us/tylenol-maker-settles-in-tampering-deaths.html
[1] PBS notes that three people died on September 29, one person two days later, and three more “over the next few days.” A comment to the article notes that all seven deaths “happened on the same day,” September 29.
[2] In the comment section to the Markel article one commenter wrote that the contaminated bottles came from the same distribution warehouse, and thus could have been tampered with there.
[3] Comment to the article states that the name was Mary Reiner.