On September 29, 1982, and during the week after, seven people died in Chicago after unknowingly ingesting Tylenol pills that had been laced with cyanide by a killer. Investigators are reviving the case and ordering new DNA tests done on evidence as they try to solve the mystery again. They hope to eliminate from suspicion every person who touched the Tylenol bottles, hoping to eventually find the DNA of the killer.
Investigators are collecting DNA evidence from several sources, including the victim’s relatives and family members who survived the attack, which forever changed how over-the-counter drugs are manufactured, packaged, and sold.
With the remarkable technological advances today, detectives think they have a good shot at solving the case. They are using specialized technology that retrieves human DNA from objects, no matter their condition, to analyze it.
Records obtained by reporters show police kept the contaminated bottles and pills from 40 years ago for testing.
The Morgan family is one of the families approached by police to aid in the investigations.
Laura Morgan was just a child when her mother, Linda Morgan, bought a laced bottle of Tylenol from a nearby grocery store after she started feeling pain in her leg. Linda did not know the bottle she bought contained deadly pills.
When she opened the bottle, Linda, 35 at the time, said something in her gut told her not to take the pills, so she didn’t.
At the time of the incident, both Linda and her husband, Judge Lewis Morgan of DuPage County, touched the bottle. Investigators took the judge’s fingerprints to eliminate him as a suspect.
Joe Janus, whose sister-in-law and two brothers died after taking the pills, said he hoped the police would find the killer using DNA.
The police department, using DNA to eliminate people who came into contact with the bottles, collected DNA samples from Laura and the late Judge Morgan’s smoking pipes in 2020, almost 40 years after the murders.
According to a statement by the police department, they will continue eliminating DNA from everyone they know that handled the bottles.
They are working with Othram, a Houston-based company that uses technology to extract DNA from old and degraded items, to solve the case. Othram feels very confident they can find the killer.
A man named James Lewis was a suspect and he was arrested for extortion. He sent a letter to the makers of Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to stop the killings. Lewis went to jail for extortion, but police could never prove he was the killer, only that he was a con-man. He received a ten-year sentence which was to run consecutively to two concurrent ten-year sentences that he received for other federal crimes, hence 20 years. He was released in 1995 after serving 13 years.
No one has ever been arrested for the murders of the seven people who ingested the cyanide-laced pills.
