A "copycat" inspired by the cyanide-tainted drugs that killed seven people in Chicago may have been responsible for strychnine-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol found in a California drugstore, police said. Authorities in Illinois said they saw no link. The incident in Oroville, Calif., prompted Tylenol's manufacturer to issue an urgent appeal for stores across the nation to withdraw all Tylenol capsule products from sale.

Three Tylenol bottles containing the poison were found in Oroville, one on the shelves of a drugstore.

"It's highly suspected at this point in time that it was a copycat crime," said police Sgt. Jack Lee in Oroville, where a butcher was treated for strychnine poisoning. Lee said the poisoning, revealed Tuesday, was believed to be a "local crime," and Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fanner said there was "no reason to suspect any connection" between the California incident and last week's deaths in Chicago and fou suburbs.

"The strychnine case does not seem to have been inspired by what happened in Chicago," Fanner said. "We see no link. The FBI here is working with the FBI in California."

The police said the same form of cyanide found in the Anacin-3 capsule in the bottle at the home of the dead man, Kenneth Wayne Faries, 24 years old, was traced to the University of Texas laboratory where he worked.

No... Dr. Robert Bayardo determined that the cyanide found in the capsule did not match cyanide from the lab. Now he suddenly changed his mind?

Robert Bayardo, the Travis County Medical Examiner, said the new evidence prompted him to change his ruling from homicide to suicide.

The discovery that cyanide found in Anacin-3 capsules had come from a university laboratory has led the Travis County medical examiner to believe an ex-chemistry student committed suicide.

How did this "new" evidence suddenly appear?

"The evidence is very strong he committed suicide," Medical Examiner Robert Bayardo said Wednesday. The latest evidence was a conclusion by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration lab in Cincinnati that the poison found in a capsule found in the apartment of Kenneth Wayne Faries, 24, came from a University of Texas laboratory to which he had access.

"One of the samples that was gathered from a chemistry lab that the victim had access to as a student was identified as matching the cyanide recovered from the Anacin capsule," said Sgt. David Parkinson of the Austin police department.

Faries was a chemistry student at UT in the fall of 1985 but later dropped out, officials said. His death was ruled a homicide last month after the cyanide was found in the capsules. Bayardo said he made that preliminary ruling to ensure a full investigation.

"I based the preliminary ruling on previous cyanide deaths. At that time, there was no evidence of personality or school problems," said the medical examiner.

He did not elaborate on what personal problems he had uncovered. "He planned it very well," Bayardo said. "He made it appear to look like a homicide."

 And what possible motive would he have to make it "appear to look like a homicide"?

After the death, Anacin-3 capsules were pulled from shelves in many Austin stores, but lab tests on several thousand capsules failed to find any further traces of the poison.

"Our part of the investigation was the search for possible sources of potassium cyanide in the Austin area, especially any to which the victim may have had access. When we found the right sample, the FDA elemental chemistry lab matched it with the sample of poison which had been in the victim's apartment," said Robert Henna, director of the health department's Food and Drug Division.

"Knowing that the victim had access to the poison long before his death is a vital breakthrough in closing our part of this investigation," Henna said.

Kenneth Faries death was ruled a suicide; but there was no note, no witness, and no proof.

 

Though none of the copycats has yet been caught, the phenomenon is chillingly common enough—in the rash of airplane hijackings, for instance—to give psychologists ideas about what kind of personalities are involved. Says Arthur Schueneman, senior clinical psychologist at the Northwestern University Rehabilitation Institute: "These people are often stirred to excitement by news reports. They may have longstanding impulses, barely contained, that are triggered by these events: anger, thrill seeking, retribution against injustice, real or imagined." Helen Morrison, an authority on mass murder, sums up their motives: "Better to be wanted by the police than not to be wanted at all."

Morrison and other psychologists are virtually sure that no copycat is the Tylenol killer.

That killer remained elusive last week. There were no new leads and no real suspects. The major development was a brief flurry about a "mystery woman" who had turned in a bottle of cyanide-poisoned Tylenol to Chicago police on Oct. 14. The mystery, police later confessed, was actually a "clerical error" that had caused them to misidentify which judge of the Du Page County, Ill., circuit court was her husband. The woman turned out to be Linda Morgan, 35, wife of Judge Lewis Morgan.

Mrs. Morgan said she had bought the Tylenol on Sept. 29, the day before the first deaths were reported, and that very day wanted to take some at a family gathering. Her sister offered Bufferin, she said, and she decided to take that instead. She escaped death, she says, by "blind luck."

For three weeks, the police have been searching for Chicago Con Man James Lewis, also known as Robert Richardson, who is accused of trying to extort $ 1 million from the makers of Tylenol in the wake of the killings. The Chicago Tribune received a letter, postmarked from New York City last Wednesday, that apparently came from the fugitive. "My wife and I have not committed the Chicago area Tylenol murders," the author wrote. "We do not go around killing people."

Efforts to protect the public from the Tylenol killer and his imitators are lumbering along. The FDA last week submitted a proposed regulation on tamper-resistant packaging of over-the-counter drugs to the Office of Management and Budget for approval. The regulation would not specify which of many types of packaging the industry should adopt; it would set a standard for the industry to meet in any way that companies might choose. Estimates are that new packaging will cost the industry between $20 million and $30-million a year and will add anything from a penny to a dime to the price of nonprescription drugs.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, wrote off $50 million (net after taxes) as the expense of recalling all Tylenol capsules. J&J nonetheless resumed advertising of Tylenol, which is currently available only in tablet and liquid forms, and promised to have repackaged capsules back on the market soon.

NEW YORK

One bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol purchased at the Bronxville, NY A&P store was responsible for the death of Diane Elsroth.

WASHINGTON

Cyanide laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were responsible for the death of one Pullman, WA woman.

One 60-count bottle of cyanide laced Extra-Strength Excedrin believed to have been purchased at Pay 'N Save in Auburn.

One of two 40-count bottles of cyanide laced Extra-Strength Excedrin purchased at Albertson's was responsible for Bruce Nickell's death.

One bottle of cyanide laced Extra-Strength Excedrin was removed from Johnny’s Market in Kent.

One bottle of cyanide laced Anacin-3 that was taken unopened from a Pay 'N Save store in Auburn on Tuesday, June 24, by the FDA as part of a random check of capsule products still on the market. An Associated Grocers sticker was on the bottle. Gil Harding, an Associated Grocers spokesman, said his Company does not distribute products to Pay 'N Save.

A spokesman for the FDA, Ellen Miller, said the presence of cyanide in the bottle was detected by a fluoroscope examination, similar to an X-ray. She said the bottle was given to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for chemical analysis.

The FDA had already screened more than 150,000 capsules of Excedrin for signs of tampering before the discovery of the tainted Anacln bottle.

Pay 'N Save was founded by Retail magnate M. Lamont Bean

American Stores and Osco

In 1979 Skaggs Drug Centers acquired American Stores, which had owned Alpha Beta since 1961, and would assume the American Stores name. The company located its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Combined food and drug stores in Alpha Beta territory were re-branded Skaggs Alpha Beta. In 1984, American Stores would buy Jewel, which had owned Osco Drug since 1961.

Osco Drug also traces its history back to 1915 by S.M. Skaggs in American Falls, Idaho as a cash and carry store. His son Lorenzo L. Skaggs, who had been involved in the predecessor to Safeway, founded the Pay-Less chain in 1937 in Rochester, Minnesota. In 1942, these chains merged with others and formed the Owners Service Company, shortened to Osco. In 1961, The Jewel Companies, Inc. acquired Osco Drug Stores. (It has since merged with Albertsons, and then been acquried by CVS/pharmacy.)

For two weeks, Jewel Companies, Inc. management refused all comment on the offer, maintaining its silence even at a stormy shareholder's meeting before which Jewel shareholder groups controlling 20 percent of the company's stock had come out in favor of negotiating with American Stores. Finally, on June 14, Sam Skaggs and Jewel president Richard Cline reached an agreement after an all-night bargaining session. American Stores raised its bid for Jewel's preferred stock, increasing the total bid to $1.15 billion in cash and securities. In return, Jewel dropped plans for a defensive acquisition of Household International Inc. and accepted American Stores' offer.

To help raise cash for the deal, American Stores sold its Rea and Derick, Inc. subsidiary comprising 134 drugstores in December 1984 to People's Drug, a division of Imasco Limited. 33 Alpha Beta grocery stores in Arizona sold to ABCO Foods, 22 Alpha Beta grocery stores and support facilities in northern California were also sold.

The acquisition of Jewel Companies, Inc.  consisted of the Melrose Park, Illinois based Jewel Food Stores supermarket chain; Oak Brook, Illinois based Osco Drug, Inc.; Cambridge, Massachusetts based Star Market; Anaheim, California based Sav-on Drugs, Buttrey and White Hen. This acquisition also returned L. L. Skaggs's Osco Drug chain to the Skaggs family ownership. And Sav-on Drugs, another Jewel Companies subsidiary, had been founded by C.J. Call, who had once been a business partner of another of Sam Skaggs's uncles, O.P. Skaggs.

This merger added 193 supermarkets, 358 drugstores, 140 combination food and drug stores, 301 convenience stores, and 132 discount stores to American Stores' holdings. But in 1985, the company found itself in legal trouble through its new subsidiary. A salmonella food-poisoning outbreak affecting some 20,000 people in the Midwest was traced to Jewel's Melrose Park, Illinois Hillfarm Dairy that had supplied tainted milk to Jewel stores in March and April 1985. In 1987, Jewel was found not liable for Punitive damages in Illinois Cook County Circuit Court but agreed to pay compensatory damages estimated at $35 to $40 million.

In 1985 American Stores sold the White Hen chain, since convenience stores did not fit into the company’s plans. Buttrey and Star Market were put up for sale in order to raise capital and pay down debt. Although the company continued to operate these subsidiaries, investment in remodeling and new construction for these stores and for Acme Markets was minimal throughout the 1980s

In 1985 Associated Grocers purchased 25 stores located in Washington from Lucky Food Stores, a retail chain operating in 30 states. Lucky had been unable to efficiently operate the stores from its distribution and manufacturing centers in California, so the cooperative purchased the 23 supermarkets and two discount outlets and sold the stores to independent grocers in an effort to increase the number of stores under its purview. The addition of the Lucky stores, as well as an agreement with Pacific Gamble Robinson to supply 88 grocery stores, gave Associated Grocers 406 stores. Largely due to the association with Pacific Gamble, revenues had increased by 20 percent since 1984 to reach approximately $900 million.

Food Services of America, Inc. operates as a foodservice distributor in the United States. It offers beverages, dry groceries, frozen and refrigerated foods, disposables, janitorial supplies, and equipment, as well as pies, appetizers, meats, peaches, cereals, juices, apples, sauces, dressings, and gravy mixes.

The company also offers healthcare foodservice products, software, and training services for healthcare facilities. It has distribution centers in Anchorage, Alaska; Billings, Montana; Meridian, Idaho; Fargo and Minot, North Dakota; Woodburn, Oregon; and Spokane, Kent, and Everett, Washington.

Food Services of America was formerly known as Pacific Gamble Robinson Company and changed its name to Food Services of America, Inc. in 1987. The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Food Services of America, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Services Group of America, Inc.  - Branch Locations

Product Tampering

By Park Dietz, M.D., Ph.D., MPH

Posted April 23, 1999; Revised Feb. 14, 2000

(Dr. Dietz is a forensic psychiatrist and expert on criminal behavior. He writes and teaches about product tampering, consults major companies and law enforcement agencies on the issue, and has testified in lawsuits involving tampering deaths.)

The Proliferation of Product Tampering

In 1982, the Tylenol tampering incident received more television news air time than any incident since the assassination of President Kennedy. This saturation news coverage sowed the seed of product tampering. Since then the nation has witnessed recurrent outbreaks of copycat tamperings in which news accounts have stimulated people to tamper with products in a manner similar to the publicized incident.

Contrary to popular perception, complaints of product tampering have not been limited to the small number of nationally publicized true tamperings since 1982. Rather, consumer concerns with tampering have led to thousands of complaints to the FDA about possible tampering. A decade of experience teaches that the gamut of tampering crimes and scares is interactive with the media. Tampering news, whether based on true hazards to the public or the far more common false alarms, is the principal cause of a wide array of tampering crimes and scares.

Tampering Crimes and Scares Increase

True tamperings are those in which an offender places a contaminated product or package into distribution beyond his or her household, so that random consumers may unsuspectingly purchase and consume the adulterated product. Five incidents of true tamperings have resulted in death. As far as can be determined, five involved cyanide-laced capsules placed in packages of the following over-the-counter drugs: Tylenol in 1982 and 1986, Excedrin in 1986, Sudafed in 1991, and Goody's Headache Powder in 1992. In one additional 1986 case, cyanide added to Lipton Cup-A-Soup resulted in one death.

In a very small number of other cases, contaminated drugs and foods that were potentially injurious or lethal have been identified before being consumed, or people have become seriously ill after consuming contaminated products. In quite a few cases, small quantities of food have been contaminated with foreign objects or nonlethal contaminants. In a small proportion of these cases there has been minor injury or illness.

In faked or staged tamperings, which are far more common than true tampering, someone contaminates a product to give the appearance that his or her household has been the victim of a random tampering. Cases have included children and adults imitating news stories or desperately seeking attention; criminals scheming to defraud pharmaceutical companies; food processors, or insurance companies' security guards seeking to impress their supervisors with their vigilance; and several suicides in which people hoped to gain money for their estates and conceal the true manner of death. Faked tampering has even been used to cover up at least one murder and a murder attempt. Both of the criminals were spouses who contaminated medications. Some of these staged incidents resulted in consumer warnings and product withdrawal before they were determined to be fakes.

In product extortion cases, an offender threatens to tamper with a product if his demands (usually for a large sum of money) are not met. More than 20 product extortionists have been arrested in the U.S., in each case after a major effort by law enforcement and corporate officials. None of the product extortion cases has been associated with injury to consumers by an extortionist carrying out his threats. The 1982 Chicago Tylenol tamperings were followed by an unsuccessful extortion attempt for which the offender remains in prison.

Bogus claims of tampering are those in which offenders alert the media, industry, law enforcement, or others to a non-existent tampering. Many of the alerts directed at grocery stores or reported directly to the media have been bogus threats made to provide amusement for jail inmates with telephone privileges!

More common than any of these crimes are suspected tamperings, in which a consumer complains that packaging has been compromised, that a product appears unusual, or that some symptom appeared after a product was consumed. Common irregularities in packaging or product appearance often underlie these complaints. After press reports suggest that a serious incident has occurred, tampering is often suspected in unrelated illnesses and deaths, and many complaints are received about irregularities that would ordinarily go unreported. This occurs whether the original press report is based on a true tampering or represents a false alarm.

One of the most frustrating phenomena for the food industry has been the occasional epidemic of tampering hysteria. Notable examples include the waves of purported tampering with Girl Scout Cookies, baby food and Halloween candy. In each instance, there were widespread fears and reports of sightings of foreign objects in food products marketed for children. Confirmation of actual contamination was minimal or nonexistent. Instead, the sightings have proved to be unconfirmed, false alarms from anxious consumers, or "me, too' faked tamperings. What might have been isolated incidents were transformed into regional or national epidemics by unnecessarily widespread dissemination of sometimes sensational news stories.

The Marketing of Product Tampering

Prior to the seminal 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders, the phenomenon now known as product tampering was virtually unknown. Before 1982, there had been no homicides as a result of product tampering. In 1982, however, the massive publicity surrounding these unprecedented tampering incidents brought into the national consciousness for the first time the concept of altering an ingestible consumer product in a manner calculated to injure random victims.

Since the FDA began compiling such data in 1984, the monthly rate of tampering complaints has varied markedly.

Each of several sharp increases in the monthly rate of complaints has occurred in the wake of high-intensity news coverage about tampering. For example, after news coverage of some isolated cases of pins and needles found in Girl Scout Cookies in early 1984, the rate of tampering complaints rose from fewer than 20 to more than 200 in a single month. The rate then fell to about 10 a month. Following press coverage of the fatal Tylenol tampering in Westchester County, New York, in February 1986, the rate rocketed to 326 a month. Late in the same month there were nationally publicized reports of glass being found in baby food jars.

In the following month (March 1986) tampering complaints reached an all-time high of 456. The rate of tampering complaints declined for a few months, but peaked again after publicized tampering fatalities in the summer of 1987. In 1987 and 1988, when there were no nationally publicized tampering stories, the complaint rate fell to approximately 25 per month. Another increase occurred in March 1989 corresponding to the Chilean fruit incident. Each peak in the rate of complaints is therefore readily explained by national news stories inspiring imitators and generating fears.

There is an obvious correlation between monthly complaint rates and nationally publicized tampering stories. The relationship between the publicity and the peaks in complaint rates in each instance suggests that national publicity concerning tampering causes an increase in the number of tampering complaints received by the FDA. The magnitude of this change cannot be estimated precisely, but appears to be on the order of an additional 50-250 cases per month for the duration of the publicity.

There appear to be several explanations for increased tampering complaints following widespread publicity. The FDAUs analysis indicated that a large fraction of the increase reflects legitimate complaints about product defects that do not concern tampering. These complaints involve cuts in packaging caused by careless opening of cartons in retail stores, burns on package seals created by the packaging machinery, or packages containing too little of the product. There is no reason to believe that the true rate of product defects of this sort bears any relationship to news stories about tampering. Although these complaints are legitimate, it is also true that increased reporting reflects heightened consumer anxiety.

Tampering offenses impose mental health costs on consumers by creating a climate of fear, arousing suspicions, and decreasing the subjective sense of personal security. The low objective probability of harm is no comfort to consumers; the invisibility of the hazard, the apparent randomness of victimization, and the perception that they are not in control of the risk all lead consumers to grossly overestimate their risk.

The mental health costs of tampering news are entirely a function of the amount and nature of the publicity. We know that some people are adversely affected by such news. During a labor strike in which there were bogus claims of tampering and empty threats to tamper, three hundred people who feared they might have been poisoned by tainted food contacted a hotline. Many people reportedly call poison control centers to express concerns about product tampering. Unfounded complaints and poison control center calls received in the aftermath of a highly publicized incident are the tip of the iceberg of public fear.

Intense publicity about product tampering causes a resurgence of consumer anxiety about product tampering. The result is a marked increase in the number of complaints of suspected tampering. There is also an increased risk of psychogenic illness in susceptible individuals and groups.

Effect of Publicity on Tampering

Tampering publicity causes an increase in the number of faked or staged tamperings. Many people have fabricated complaints about tampering, particularly following widespread publicity. In some instances the primary motive was to gain notoriety in the local press or to try to sue a manufacturer. That was a significant component of the 1986 incidents involving glass in baby food. Sadly, in a number of those cases, it appears that parents went so far as to injure their children to strengthen their stories and their product liability claims.

Similarly, people about to commit suicide have been known to stage it to look like the result of an adulterated product, in the hope of passing on to their families an heirloom in the form of a potential tampering lawsuit.

Some incidents that arise as a result of tampering publicity generate their own media attention, with the predictable result of a spiral of concern and complaints.

In the most dangerous copycat tamperings, people are stimulated to tamper with products in a manner similar to what they have been exposed to in the news. Those engaging in copycat crimes, including tamperings, often seize upon a widely publicized idea as a way of exacting revenge or expressing anger against an employer, spouse, or rival. Some suspect that the 1991 Sudafed-related murders in Washington state reflected the killer's exposure to a February 1991 Reader's Digest story that described Stella Nickell's murders through tampering as nearly a "perfect crime."

Tampering crimes, complaints, and fears resulting from publicity involve both food products and drug products. A compilation of FDA data for October 1, 1983 through July 11, 1989, reveals that the majority (54.2%) of the tampering complaints received by the agency during the period involved food and not drugs. Indeed, virtually any ingestible food or drug product sitting on supermarket shelves throughout the nation is susceptible to tampering. When the FDA responded to the 1982 Chicago Tylenol poisonings by promulgating tamper-resistant packaging regulations for over the counter drugs, it recognized that there is no such thing as tamper-proof packaging. Subsequent over-the-counter drug tampering fatalities have confirmed that reality.

The large number of copycat crimes at that time reflect the heightened awareness created by intense news coverage. We now know that each instance of widespread publicity of a purported tampering causes dozens of new crimes, much consumer anxiety and challenges to companies struggling to sort the many false alarms from true risks to the public. By limiting product withdrawals and publicity to the affected populations however, these damages can be minimized. The food and drug industries have become better prepared to respond to these crises. In the final analysis, the extent of damage in new crimes, public anxiety, and direct costs is largely a function of news handling of each situation.

The Foundation for American Communications has conducted educational workshops for the press and for news sources, such as industry executives and law enforcement officials, in order to find ways to best protect the public from both true risks and unnecessary panic. One principle to emerge from these meetings is that tampering news should be limited to the population affected. That minimizes the number of copycat crimes and unnecessary fear.