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| CARL VERGARI, Westchester County District Attorney Westchester District Attorney Carl Vergari investigated the 1986 Tylenol tamperings and murder. The 1986 Tylenol Murder Investigation Feb 12, 1986 - Carl Vergari said that the contamination of the capsules "could have happened anywhere" and several theories were being Investigated. He said tampering at the factory had not been ruled out, despite county medical examiner, Dr. Mlllard Hyland's, contention that the cyanide found In the Tylenol would have eaten through the capsules In eight to 10 days. "It might have happened at the factory, it might have happened during shipping, it might have happened at the store," Vergari said.
Feb 16, 1986 - Autorities reversed there earlier statement regarding the time it would take cyanide to degrade gel-based Tylenol capsules. The cyanide found in a Tylenol capsule that killed Diane Elsroth could have been put there months ago, federal authorities said. "The work we did showed no time restrictions such as were previously reported," said FDA Commissioner Dr. Frank Young, referring to statements by Westchester County authorities that the poison would dissolve the capsule's gelatin casing in eight to 10 days. Vergari said he was concerned such statements had created "the false and dangerous impression that people shouldn't worry about the bottles they bought before that time."
J&J CEO James Burke disagreed with Westchester District Attorney Carl Vergari, who said FBI test results led him to believe the capsules were poisoned "at the plant" Vergari said FBI officials told him that tests indicated the seals on both tainted bottles bad not been broken after they left the factory. FBI spokesman Bill Baker would not comment on Vergan's statement. Feb 18, 1986 - Vergari said that federal investigators had ruled out the possibility that the safety seals on the bottles had been broken after the capsules had been put inside. Vergari said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had come to this conclusion after extensive tests of the bottles. Feb 19, 1986 - After a tour at Johnson & Johnsons' McNeil Consumer Products manufacturing facility in Fort Washington, PA, Vergari said: The tour "suggested additional broad areas of inquiries." He added that the case of the poisoned Extra- Strength Tylenol capsules is "still wide open," but refused to elaborate on the inspection tour of the Fort Washington, Pa., manufacturing plant Monday by one of his assistants.
Vergari said that FBI tests on the packaging of both bottles (that contained cyanide laced Tylenol) has shown to "a reasonable certainty" that the tampering occurred at time of manufacture. "We still haven't eliminated anything," Vergari said. "We haven't had evidence to exclude tampering at the factory."
Johnson & Johnson claims the bottle from which Ms. Elsroth took the fatal capsules was manufactured in Pennsylvania while the second was made in Puerto Rico. "That's their defense," Vergari said.
'Their defense," as Vergari called it, wasn't very good. The Tylenol in each bottle may have been manufactured 1,000 miles apart, but the Tylenol found in both bottles had been repackaged at the same distributions facility in Montgomeryville, PA. THE FBI COVER-UP “The bottles were tampered with locally, at the retail store” aspect of the approved theory - the most important component of the cover up - was exposed as a fraud after the 1986 Tylenol murder, and then covered up by the FBI. THE VERGARI PROBLEM The cornerstone of the approved theory of the Tylenol murders deception ran into trouble, thanks to the revelations of Carl Vergari, when on February 18, 1986 he reiterated during a press conference the findings revealed to him by FBI scientists. Vergari said Federal investigators had found no evidence that the triple seals on the bottles of tainted Tylenol had been broken after they left the factory, suggesting that they might have been tampered with there (at the factory). The two bottles that contained contaminated capsules were sent to the FBI labs to determine “to a reasonable degree of certainty” through microscopic examination “whether the metal foil that’s heat-welded to the top of the bottle has been tampered with after it left the factory.” “And they say in both cases that their laboratory examination reveals that it was not,” he said, ”that these bottles were not tampered with after they left the factory; that, ergo, the contamination was done at some time during the manufacturing process before the seal was placed on it.” “What could be clearer than that?” Vergari said.
FBI spokesman, Jack French, declined to confirm or deny Vergari’s assertion, but the fact remained; the FBI’s own evidence didn’t fit the approved theory. If the packaging on the Tylenol bottles hadn’t been tampered with, then the Tylenol capsules had to have been laced with cyanide before the bottles were packaged and before they were placed on the local retail store shelves. (What Vergari didn't know, was that the the Tylenol wasn't packaged at the factory; it was packaged at repackaging facilities.) Still, the FBI refused to deviate from their story. Milt Ahlerich, chief of public affairs for the FBI, said the lack of evidence “does not mean that the tampering did not occur." Here again, despite the FBI’s own evidence that showed otherwise, they publically discounted the findings made in their own lab by their own investigators. Ahlerich's statement that “the lack of evidence does not mean that the tampering did not occur,” was especially ludicrous. Some FBI lab guy had obviously not been brought into the loop regarding the approved theory of the Tylenol murders. The FDA and J&J quickly weighed in on the discussion by making public statements to discredit Vergari. Their erroneous statements were quoted in numerous news articles, and were considered facts in the minds of the media and the public. Officials from the FDA and J&J said, “The weight of evidence suggested that the crime was a local one.” James Burke appeared on "The Donahue Show" and said: “We do not have any proof it didn’t happen in the plant or the warehouse, but all logic tells us it didn’t.” Burke went on to note the ''considerable amount of confusion'' in the case that may have led to an opinion held by Carl Vergari, the Westchester County District Attorney, who has said he believes the pills were probably adulterated at the manufacturing plants.
As Burke certainly knew, there was no confusion on the part of Vergari. If there was any confusion at all, it was the result of the deceptive statements made by Burke, Ahlerich, and FDA Commissioner Frank Young. The all out marketing blitz by J&J and the FDA to deceive the public had not changed the fact that Vergari had spilled the beans. The packaging on the Tylenol bottles had not been tampered with. Evidence from the FBI's own inspection had confirmed this fact.Vergari’s public disclosure of the FBI’s findings created a real problem for proponents of the “approved theory.” That problem needed to be rectified. So the FBI did what any self-respecting government agency would do under similar circumstances. It ordered a bogus second inspection of the tamper-resistant packaging and then fabricated new forensic findings that aligned with the approved theory. For this second inspection, the FBI claimed to have used a sophisticated investigatory technique; the mechanism for which they refused to disclose to the public. In reality, the only tools involved in this second inspection were the pen and paper that the FBI used to write its official press release. FBI spokesperson, Milt Ahlerich, held a news conference on February 26, 1982 “because of the intense national interest in the case.” He made only a brief appearance to read the official FBI statement: "Previously undetected signs of tampering have now been discovered using sophisticated scientific examinations. Our examinations have further determined it was possible to invade the bottles after packaging was complete without detection through conventional means of examination."
Ahlerich provided no explanation of how this “inspection” was conducted and supplied no proof that the packaging had been tampered with or how it could have been done. But the official FBI statement, which in fact revealed no new information at all, did conform to the approved theory. Ahlerich refused to answer any questions, but several “un-named authorities” attending the news conference confirmed that the Bureau’s findings applied to both bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules.
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