On September 29, 1982, two people died in Illinois hospitals after mysteriously collapsing in their homes. Paramedics in both cases were taken aback at the utter ineffectiveness of their reviving drugs and techniques, and physicians found the deaths of 12 year-old Mary Kellerman and 27 year-old Adam Janus to be strange and yet largely inexplicable. Two tragic and untimely deaths were not enough to spark suspicion among doctors, but when Adam Janus’ brother and his wife Theresa were brought into the hospital by ambulance just a couple of hours after Adam had died of the same symptoms, the circumstances were too strange to ignore. All three had taken Tylenol just minutes before falling to the ground, and their deaths, along with four others, would spark the Chicago Tylenol Crisis of 1982.
Within 24 hours of Mary Kellerman’s death, investigators had confirmed that all four of the dead had consumed Tylenol from the same manufacturing batch immediately before falling ill. It had not been difficult to identify Tylenol as the common element in the murders, as the poison that had been placed within the capsules was concentrated enough to be over 100 times the necessary dose to kill a man. Kellerman, who had stayed home sick from school, had gone into the bathroom to take some Tylenol and fell to the floor within seconds of ingesting it. When investigators noticed the strong smell of almonds emanating from both Kellerman’s and Janus’ Tylenol bottles, they knew they were dealing with cyanide, and they could rule out an industrial accident.
On the morning of September 30, officials began warning the public not to take Tylenol. Johnson & Johnson, the makers of the drug, would end up recalling and destroying nearly $100 million worth of inventory. A team of hundreds of investigators chased down every lead possible, but nothing led them closer to a conclusion. The bottles were all purchased at different stores throughout the Chicago area, and aside from the Janus family all ingesting from the same bottle, there was no connection between any of the victims. The prevailing theory, one that stands today as nothing more than conjecture as the culprit has never been identified or caught, is that the murderer took Tylenol from the shelves of drug stores, opened the capsules within and added cyanide, and then replaced them in the stores. This would have been easy work due to the lack of seals or tamper-resistant features on the bottles.
Within a week, Chicago passed an ordinance requiring tamper resistant features on all drugs, and pharmaceutical companies quickly introduced compliant packaging throughout the United States. America had endured what may be considered its first true terrorist crisis. A madman, with no known motive other than destruction and fear mongering, had violated societal trust and sought to kill anyone who happened into his path. While the weapon may have been quiet, it was more destructive to human life than a bullet or a bomb, and didn’t necessitate a direct confrontation between victim and murderer. Anyone could fall prey to this terrorist without straying from their ordinary routine. For a time in September and October of 1982, fear reigned in America and forced a nation to become more vigilant against a faceless predator.