>> thank you. >> see you later that's all the time we have for. who said it? nice. nice and just like that, it's time to say good night. i want to say thank you to our guest tonight, jenny hagel kara swisher. thank you all so much thank you to our team captains amber ruffin and michael lee and black few more stories we're watching elevator company has a chance to do the funniest thing ever party sub unless it's this big the rolling kidney stones find a new guitar player you in february, so please hold off on any news until then. i'm roy wood jr. and i'll see you next year for another episode of have i got news for you

horrible horrible, horrible incident. >> there are many unsolved crimes in american history but it is impossible for me to have been the tylenol killer tylenol murderer is still out there really happened. i'm jesse l martin. >> on september 29th, 1982, seven chicago area residents are suddenly stricken with a deadly illness. at first,

doctors are at a loss, but they soon discover a sinister connection, launching an investigation that has lasted more than four decades. now advanced dna testing may be closer than ever to closing this tragic case that changed america forever. this is how it really happened chicago area. >> we had art fairs and street cafes and you felt like you just knew your neighbors and it was just a great place to livea there was fear because people didn't know what was happening or whether they would be next. >> clearly whoever was behind this was intent on creating

fear and panic community about 30 miles outside of chicago on september 29th, 1982, in the morning 12 year old mary kellerman was home. >> she was feeling sick. she wanted to stay home from school and she asked her parents if she could take a tylenol she took it and collapsed on the bathroom floor and died soon after a 27 year old postal worker named adam janis was on his day off. >> he was very very good person, very good family person adam was a very humble man. >> he was such a sweetheart he

went to the store that day picked up some flowers for his wife and a bottle of tylenol. not feeling too great, he took two capsules. >> he came home and told his wife he was going to lie down my aunt theresa noticed something was wrong. >> his breathing and everything and she called 911 and the ambulance came and took him. >> they got him in but he was pronounced dead later on in the emergency room we didn't know what was happening, but everybody thought he died of a heart attack. but he was a very healthy person. you know, aaron. >> so they were all in utter shock wondering why would he even have a heart attack when he was such a young man suburb, a new mom, mary lynn

reiner, had just delivered her fourth baby and was recuperating at home. wasn't feeling so great, so she took some tylenol she collapses and has a seizure and ends up in the hospital. >> she dies shortly thereafter hospital, the whole janis family reconvened. >> back at the house. my uncle stanley and his wife, they met at adam's house they were all gathered at the house and they were all crying. they were all very devastated. they couldn't believe the fact that adam died like i have a headache. >> everybody has headaches.

these people were under tremendous stress going back to to the house, to plan a funeral for a young guy. and then i see my brother stanley coming towards us. he tried to say something you know, to us, and all of a sudden he fell down and he grabbed his heart and he was like, oh, my god, my heart and he fell to the ground and he had like, kind of like a seizure. >> and my aunt immediately, with my dad, they were like hovering over his body. >> i see he's foaming out his mouth when i see that, i say, oh, my god, he's dying ambulance call and gave the same numeric address as the one just before noon there was something really weird about this second call to same address on the same day when i pulled up in front of that building, i could hear

screaming coming out of that house. i went running in there and there was paramedics working on this young guy on the floor, and one of the guys looked at me, a seasoned paramedic and i could see fear in his face. he said lieutenant, this is the same thing as we had this morning, and we lost that guy and we're losing him. >> he was foaming like all this foam started coming out of his mouth and his eyes flipped back stanley's wife was holding on to my shoulder and she's calling to her husband, stanley. >> stanley. and the next thing i heard was a groan, and she collapsed at my feet. and when i turned her over, i could see that her pupils were already fixed and dilated and her breathing had changed to this rapid, shallow breathing stanley passed away at the hospital. theresa, they put on life support, but there was no chance to recover. as soon as they took her off life support, she passed away. i had no idea what we were dealing with. all i know is this is not normal and we can't figure out what's killing these people

>> it's a night that's good for the soul. join anderson cooper and laura coates for cnn heroes, an all star tribute. >> thank you guys. >> meet the honorees and celebrate their life changing achievements. >> they're ordinary people doing extraordinary things. >> then find out who will be named the cnn hero of the year. >> it's really incredible. >> don't miss a special tribute to this year's legacy award honoree, michael j. fox cnn heroes, an all star tribute sunday, december 8th on cnn i'm the team mascot and boy am i running late. but i got lead in my foot and spirit in my fingers woo >> and if you don't have the right auto insurance coverage, the cost to cover that might tank your season so get allstate, save money on auto insurance and be protected from mayhem like me. >> woo woo

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they kept them there. they thought that something horrible happened because three family members died they were running tests because they didn't know what was going on. >> they put me and my sister, emergency room priest came in and gave us last rites. you know and then that's how we stay over there waiting to die when you have multiple deaths inside a building, the most likely thing is that they've been poisoned with carbon monoxide. >> it's very common in the case of a home, it would come from a defective heating system. >> we do get carbon monoxide calls, but those symptoms, we can spot that right away. this was not that we have a health department in arlington heights. helen jensen was our health expert and i called her and i told her, i said helen, i don't know what we're dealing with here but these people are going

>> i went over to the hospital immediately. i saw theresa janis that was adam's wife standing to the side she told me what had happened after adam died. the family had gathered to discuss the funeral and the brother stanley had back pain, chronic back pain so he asked his wife to go get him a couple of tylenol, then a few minutes later, she took two tylenol and he went down and then she went down. both collapsed interviewing these people, and i know they all took tylenol i felt very strongly that i had to go and look at that house. and two police officers and i went out and looked through the house. i went into the bathroom and found a bottle of tylenol, and then i took it out to the

kitchen and emptied the container and counted the pills and there were six pills missing and they were three people dead and i said, it has to be the tylenol something's wrong with the tylenol illinois. >> mary mcfarland's at work and develops a headache. so she takes a break goes into the break room gets some tylenol that she had in her purse, takes two capsules and collapses in front of her coworkers. a few minutes later, she too would die all sudden somebody in your family is is dead. >> why did she die mary's friend had told us she had a headache and mary went downstairs bought tylenol at the walgreens, came back upstairs, took it immediately slumped to the floor the

paramedics and the fire department think there's something wrong with tylenol and they had the container from the janice's residence at the hospital. >> we went back to the hospital and i presented it to the medical examiner and poured the pills out and counted them again in front of him. and i said, there are six capsules missing there are three people dead this is the cause that house is clean. there is nothing in there that could have caused this kind of an instantaneous death except for these pills. we've got to get the tylenol off the shelves in this town. it's poisoned and it could be contaminated in all of the bottles and we said, you know, there's only two poisons that cause rapid demise. >> and that's cyanide and nicotine we decided that we're probably dealing with cyanide officials are now starting to

connect the dots between the similar deaths of the janus family in arlington heights and the death of mary kellerman in elk grove. they have the bottle of tylenol from the janus family. now they need the bottle from the kellerman home they said, have the elk grove village people bring in the other container and call me back when they get there, and they dispatched nick piekos, who was an investigator, one of the interesting things is that cyanide has a smell that it smells like bitter almonds now they've got the bottle of tylenol from the janus home. >> they got the bottle of tylenol from the kellerman home. >> i asked nick to take the caps off the bottles and to smell them, to see if he could smell cyanide and he opened the containers sniffed the contents, and he says, doctor i can smell cyanide in both of these containers. cyanide doesn't end up in pain relief capsules accidentally. it was

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>> it suffocates you. it prevents the hemoglobin in your blood from pouring 100% oxygen in person. it's not going to accept it. so the brain dies. >> so we called the toxicologist and said, we think you'd better come in because we think somebody has put cyanide in tylenol. the toxicologist worked all night analyzing the bottles from the both of those bottles to have a press conference because we have now got cyanide in tylenol from two communities ten miles apart. so we have a public health problem. >> the day began with cook county medical examiners county medical examiners issuing what amounted to a nationwide tylenol alert. deputy chief medical examiner edmund donoghue the only safe course here is that people should refrain from taking extra strength tylenol. >> the

second press conference where we announced that adam and stanley janis and mary kellerman had died of cyanide poisoning. people across the country are being warned not to take it just to be safe until further investigation, until we can perhaps determine where the contamination took place. i if it were me i wouldn't take them. within a day, the confirmation of cyanide found in the tylenol said to everybody. this was a criminal act don't forget this was prior to the kind of protective, tamper proof packaging back in those days. >> take it out of a little cardboard box. you unscrew the plastic top and you dump the pills out. >> it was very clear that there was foul play at work to say the least, and the authorities were intent on making sure that they didn't end up with any more victims. >> five people are dead after taking extra strength tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. a sixth victim is

not expected to survive. >> the public definitely is nervous scared insecure. >> it seems that people don't want capsules of any kind. tablets? they seem to go for, but the capsules they try to stay away from. >> i'm staying away from capsules. >> i'd rather buy the regular pill. >> all of a sudden there's a threat that's coming from the most benign place and really, nobody knew how to handle it. i was horrified by the pure evil that was out there. >> there's a lot of weirdos out. >> are you frightened enough to do anything about it? and if so what just to check when i'm, you know, buying stuff, making sure it hasn't been opened before we were hopeful that since we had gotten the message out and the message was quite clear that maybe there wouldn't be any more deaths. >> we've been receiving calls

about once every 15 seconds. we only have three poison lines and they're lit up constantly, ever since yesterday morning. >> the calls coming in were unbelievable. then people wanted us to come out and check their tylenol if they think they do have cyanide poisoning to go to an emergency room immediately. >> at the city's poison control center at rush-presbyterian-st. luke's hospital. hundreds of calls have come in, not take tylenol until further notice and that's when they started deploying police cars and ambulances in the neighborhoods. >> warning people not to take tylenol. >> police have done everything possible to make sure everyone knows about the tylenol problems. and in chicago, all city ambulances have been equipped with a cyanide antidote kit. >> if you have it in your house, don't take tylenol health officials say their biggest worry now concerns the other over-the-counter capsule drugs still on the market, like tylenol. >> many are in packages that are easy to open and tamper

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and this is cnn welcome back to how it really happened six people in the chicago suburbs are dead after taking extra strength tylenol pain reliever investigators discovered the victims were poisoned by tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. >> now, the hunt is on to find the madman who did this as authorities quickly spread the word not to take tylenol. there is a fear that the killing isn't over for united airlines. >> paula and i met flying together, and it was just one of those things we became instant friends. we both loved to laugh together and just spend lots and lots of time together

had stopped at a walgreens on her way home to pick up some tylenol and then heads up to her high rise apartment on the north side of chicago. by that point, the news had not broken about the tylenol being tainted with cyanide as she's taking off her makeup she takes two tylenol and collapses in her bathroom hallway her next flight, her friends became very concerned. i called carol paula's older sister, and i said, carol, there's something wrong. paula missed her trip yesterday. i said i'm going to go up to her place. and carol said well, wait till i get there we went up to paula's door and i opened the door and paula was lying on the floor and she was orange. we were absolutely hysterical. we just clung to each other.

>> our top story. authorities in chicago have officially confirmed the death of a seventh victim from tylenol capsules laced with deadly cyanide. >> paula prince bought cyanide, loaded extra strength tylenol at a nearby drug store, a tv security camera snapped the picture of her in the checkout line. >> that photo sent a chill up my spine because you saw paula prince, the young flight attendant, standing in line to buy some tylenol. the safest headache remedy you could possibly imagine. not knowing that it would be the thing that would kill her chicago has prompted a nationwide recall of a top selling pain reliever. >> officials do not know how the poison got into the capsules, but they are investigating the case as a possible homicide. >> on october 5th, johnson and johnson recalls all tylenol capsules.

>> that's 31 million plus bottles of tylenol. it's the first mass recall in american history. >> johnson and johnson did an unbelievable thing. i understand it cost them $100 million in $1,982. >> johnson and johnson told people that anyone who had tylenol in their home in capsule form, they should get rid of it. the task force was formed very quickly. then the next question is who? what's the reason who was the target? >> we now have over 100 agents and teams out on the street that are investigating leads along the the line from the time that the drugs would hit illinois until they hit the ultimate customer. >> there was a time when we thought that any one of the seven victims could have been targeted. >> we clearly surveilled the the funerals compared photographs of people who there might be a common thread. some stranger who was at a janice

funeral and paula prince funeral. we were able to discount that. i think pretty quickly there are so many theories swirling around maybe tylenol was the target and the victims were just a means to an end could there possibly be an issue with a disgruntled current or angry former employee? could it be somebody who was somehow harmed by some other tylenol product but nothing came of the disgruntled employee theory. >> so my guess is it's not a disgruntled employee. it's just a guess. it's not and my guess is it's somebody who has been harboring sadistic fantasies for many years could it have happened in the manufacturing? >> so that was looked at very carefully. the bottles that were recovered from the victims homes. if you look at a pill bottle that you have even today there's on the bottom of it is often a number. they call it a lot number. and it describes where it was manufactured. >> these pills came from two

different locations in two different states there was no information despite hundreds of interviews and have happened during the distribution and manufacturing process that someone bought tylenol from drugstores, took capsules out of the bottles replaced the tylenol powder with potassium cyanide and returned those bottles to drugstores. >> in 1982, you didn't have surveillance cameras everywhere. you also didn't have any type of packaging protections. it would have been very easy to either purchase or steal a few bottles and then put back on the shelf. >> it wasn't just about tampering, it was about evil. it was about knowing that someone out there would be perfectly willing to hurt a

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>> after a week of chaos and frenzied investigatory efforts investigators got an interesting new lead claimed to be the tylenol killer he writes he doesn't like president reagan's proposed tax laws, and he writes a letter to president reagan saying you heard about those tylenol killings? >> well i have lots of airline tickets. i can go other places and do this, but i won't do that if you change the tax laws and the letter to johnson and johnson demanded $1 million to stop the killings it was huge news when the extortion letter was made public. it's addressed to johnson and johnson, parent of mcneil laboratories, the maker of tylenol gentlemen, as you can see, it is easy to

place cyanide both capsules sitting in store shelves and since the cyanide is inside the gelatin it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill if you don't mind the publicity of these little capsules, then do nothing. if you want to stop the killing, then wire $1 million to a bank account number >> the bank account number led back to a company called lakeside travel. we learned that in minutes, lakeside travel was out of business, but it had been owned by a man named frederick miller mckay shore suburb. >> investigators went to mr. miller mckay and said, do you know anything about this

letter? and he did not. so they asked him do you have any enemies, people who might want law enforcement to be looking at you? and he said, yeah, there actually are a couple of people like that robert and nancy richardson nancy richardson had worked for miller mckay at lakeside travel, his travel agency unfortunately, that agency went right into the ground and went bankrupt. the final paycheck bounced. she and her husband were really angry as were other employees. >> the police put out the word to the public that they were looking for mr. and mrs. richardson at that point, the focus of the tylenol investigation, this information was broadcast nationwide and in kansas city, police sergeant david barton saw the report, saw the picture of the man known as richardson and realized, hey that's james

lewis this is robert richardson and his wife nancy, and this is robert richardson and his wife nancy, known in kansas city as james. >> and leanne lewis. >> we started pursuing the story in kansas city james and leanne lewis had lived there. they had been under investigation for some other scams in missouri we were able to get more information about other things. he was accused of including the murder of raymond west, the man whose body was found dismembered in an attic. he had been a client of james lewis accounting firm lewis made headlines in 1978 when he was arrested for the murder of raymond west. >> the old man's body was found cut up and hidden in the attic of his house

check for $5,000 to james lewis from raymond west on the day that raymond west went missing so they arrested lewis because he was the obvious suspect but they didn't read him his miranda rights before they questioned him. >> and therefore the search everything that came after was thrown out and they just couldn't convict him. >> and he ended up getting away with murder back then. and the authorities figured this guy has got to be a prime suspect at this point in the tylenol killings that was critical to be able to not only have a name, an alias, but an actual identification of who we were looking for there was also a face to this. when the authorities put out a photograph of lewis, it was

heavy manpower. it was a really laborous kind of operation for the fbi. while the fbi is investigating the original two letters, james lewis mails letters to the chicago tribune to try to communicate through the tribune to the fbi chicago tribune helped us in the sense of communicating with lewis and keeping him writing letters well, lewis engaged in a letter war. he liked the attention, but he also kept trying to defer the fact that he was being wrongly accused, slammed the fbi for labeling him as the tylenol killer we knew that the letters had been postmarked in new york, and so we targeted and focused on every single location in new york city, where you could either buy or read a chicago tribune we were eventually led to lewis, who was identified to us as sitting

in a newark library reading a chicago tribune, an fbi manhunt bears fruit. >> james lewis is arrested in new york. he's wanted on a fugitive warrant for allegedly trying to extort a million dollars from the makers of tylenol chicago. investigators also want to question both lewis and his wife in connection with seven tylenol poisoning deaths, so when the police arrested james lewis for the extortion letter, naturally he was considered among their suspects for the actual murders as well. >> james lewis never denied writing the extortion letter i had nothing to do with the tylenol murders. his alibi was he was in new york city from early september until he was arrested in december the murders happened at the end of september, and james lewis said, hey i was in new york city. the whole time. >> it is not physically possible to be in same instance. they're too far apart and i'm not possessed of

magic or i can't fly like superman since you didn't have to show identification to travel on train travel on a plane. >> we were never able to prove that he'd come back to the chicago area at the time that the pills had been planted letter to johnson and johnson the makers of tylenol, demanding $1 million be deposited in an account at chicago's continental bank in order to quote, stop the killings. >> i prosecuted james lewis for the crime of sending extortionist letters through the united states mail jurors hurried out of the court building after the verdict that took them less than three hours to reach judge frank mcguire read their decision. >> guilty of attempted extortion, and the judge sentenced him to ten years in prison earlier, u.s. attorney dan webb had called him vicious, mean, evil depraved, a premeditated manipulator and

opportunist after lewis conviction, he made arrangements to be interviewed by roy lane, the fbi richie teteak of the state police, and me for hours and hours on multiple occasions to assist us in solving the tylenol killing, and he started offering his various theories as to how it could have been done even drew out a device that could have been used to fill the capsules with cyanide created manuscripts and drew pen and ink drawings, and speculated about how the tylenol killer might have done what he did, who the tylenol killer might have been what the motivations and motives might have been. you made the point. i think that private citizen, you felt compelled to try and help in any way, but you didn't have any involvement in it. why would you try to help in such a way the same reason that if i were going down the street and your house was on fire not my problem, but i

would stop and try to help if you were out in lake michigan and crying for help, and i'm walking along the beach, not my problem but i would try to jump in the water and help you. >> and i think there was four, maybe five interviews and a massive amount of written detail that lewis provided speculating on every aspect of the tylenol killings, never admitting that he was the one. >> james lewis does his time for extortion. he is released from federal prison on october 13th, 1995. that's when he and his wife leanne moved to massachusetts. but it's certainly not the last time that the fbi hears from james lewis >> tomorrow at nine on cnn i feel like new sunglasses like a brand new pair of jeans

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spice, the great houses would feed me to the worm the troubles are far us read the imperium of these witches forever stop doom prophecy. >> streaming exclusively on max started to look at other suspects for the tylenol murders chicago police were very interested in a man named roger arnold. >> he's kind of a local barfly in chicago who has talked about having cyanide in his home for some kind of a project, but he's never arrested for any of these crimes. the fbi even considered ted kaczynski the unabomber. it's one of the fbi's most notorious unsolved cases the 1982 tylenol murders seven people in the chicago area died after taking tylenol laced with potassium cyanide. now, the bureau is hinting at a

possible link to one of america's most feared domestic terrorists. ted kaczynski, the unabomber. ultimately, there was no evidence ever linking the unabomber to any of the tylenol murders after 25 years. >> the fbi is again investigating a man who's already served years behind bars in connection with the 1982 tylenol poisoning case. >> the initial task force simply stopped functioning because there was no more credible leads. years later, a second task force was established and actively pursued the investigation. >> the fbi isn't really saying much about this, only that tips they received last year on the 25th anniversary of the killing and new technology prompted them to gather possible new evidence. >> when police reignited the tylenol investigation and revisited james lewis doing a whole new search of his house in 2009, when he was living in cambridge, massachusetts, it

baffled me. i said, what are they looking for? >> the fbi removed several boxes from his apartment and an old macintosh computer. the fbi just isn't talking about this, but they say they have this new technology which may make them able to better examine this evidence but it's strange that there would still be evidence in this man's apartment after all these years by 2010, james and leanne lewis had been on the radar of investigators for close to 30 years. >> and they said here take our dna. we didn't do this. and so the fbi has been in possession of a full dna profile of both of them since 2010. >> after the case was reexamined in 2009, no one was charged. so ultimately the second tylenol task force was dissolved in 2013. the arlington heights police department, that's where three of the victims died. they assumed primary responsibility for the case

police begins a coordinated effort with othram labs. that's a small biotech company in texas in the hopes that some new dna technology can help. in this case there is no case that is too cold or no piece of dna that is unusable. >> if you've touched something, you've left dna it's on your body, it's on your sweat it's very difficult to commit a crime and not leave dna. >> othram specialty is extracting small and degraded pieces of dna from samples. >> we get the question of how old can the dna be? >> we've been able to identify victims from 1881. >> i call our dna sequencing forensic grade genome sequencing. >> we extract the degraded dna. >> so we take all of the information that you can get. we get a really detailed biogeographical ancestry of the person that left the dna at the crime scene. >> and so you can go back to the investigators and give them very clear information that

could help them exclude suspects on their list and it leads to that one person that actually left the dna at that crime scene there is more advanced, much more profound dna technology and matching capability today there's a hope that science will provide an answer. >> i'm optimistic that it'll be solved. >> and then on july 9th, 2023, something very unexpected happens james lewis suddenly dies at his home in cambridge massachusetts. he's found unresponsive there. the cause of death was later determined to be a pulmonary embolism. he was 76 years old. >> well, it's extremely difficult. it's extremely frustrating. people die and take the secret to their grave one month after his death, the fbi releases multiple hours of taped interviews that it had conducted with james lewis. >> these interviews were

2009. lewis discussed how the tylenol capsules could have been tainted. >> it sounds to me like somebody did a premix next shelf to the next door, or whatever i still believe james lewis did it and it's based upon what i saw in the way of evidence, what i saw in the way of his past history, the cooperation and things that he said to roy lane and others in the cold case. >> and i think he got away with something that was a horrendous crime murders, we are still somewhat in the same position as we were in 1982, 1983.

>> there's a cadre of investigators that think james lewis is their man and yet charges haven't been brought. this case file remains closed it's an open investigation which means family members media, private investigators cannot get their hands on the records. so we don't know what's been missed and what's been done. and that's really the crime at this point i do believe that it's a matter of time before all these cases get solved that have dna. >> the science here at rotherham is getting better at assessing information from the evidence every single day and i feel like when something seems hopeless, it's not that take tylenol until further notice september 29th, 1982 is a day that really changed history and represents a real loss of innocence for people. >> i think about how big of an

impact that day made on the entire planet. we lived in a lot of fear we were scared to take any type of medication and because of our family the three members that passed away the world is now in a better and safer environment starting on november 11th, 1982, tamper resistant packaging was in effect for all tylenol bottles, capsule concern aside, it's virtually impossible to get to the new tylenol capsules without anybody noticing the box is sealed the bottle top is sealed, and the bottle itself is sealed, and that has made a difference to many tylenol users i remember i was so surprised at how hard it was to open the package. >> now we're so used to it every package is like that. >> an entire industry of tamper

resistant and tamper evident packaging rose up in the wake of these poisonings, and today, you know, we don't have to fear this kind of contamination able to catch this person in some sense, the perfect crime there are. >> i suppose, many unsolved crimes in history, and i'm not smart enough to solve those, let alone this one. i think the tylenol murderer is still out there dancing in the streets the tylenol murders, and in that span of time several suspects and investigators close to the case have died, leaving many to wonder if time has run out on solving this mystery. >> but one thing is certain time stopped on september 29th, 1982 for the victims and their families. i'm jesse l martin.