INTERESTING PERSONS
Roger Arnold
Roger Arnold shown here leaving court on October 22, 1982, after his appearance on gun charges.
Born May 30, 1920, on a farm in Greene County near Roodhouse, IL, Richard Husted was the son of Lee and Ethel (nee Thompson) Husted. Husted married Isabel C. Sabatini on January 21, 1941, in Bowling Green, Mo., They moved to West Dundee, IL, where they resided for over 40 years. Richard Husted died April 19, 2005.
Husted served in the Army during World War II.
Following the war, he completed law school and set up practice in Roodhouse, IL. He successfully ran and won the office of State's Attorney in Greene County in 1952, but resigned several months before his term expired to accept a position in Decatur, IL.
Husted was the Carpentersville Village Attorney in the 1970s and 80s, during which time the town, under the leadership of radical right-winger Orville Brettman, fought an aggressive legal battle against the federal government regarding the Village Trustee's right to issue permits and set zoning regulations that conflicted with federal law.
Richard's son, Mark Husted, died on September 14, 1982. The death was initially ruled accidental, the result of a cocaine overdose.
Husted apparently urged a re-investigation into the death of his son because of a feeling that his son may have been murdered. The re-examination showed that Husted's body tissues contained a lethal level of cyanide.
Mark Husted did not die from an overdose of cocaine. He died from a lethal dose of cyanide, just 15 days before seven more Chicago area residents would die from cyanide laced Tylenol.
What did Richard Husted know that led him to believe his son had been murdered?
It was reported on Friday, September 17, 1982 that agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) were investigating the September 14 death of Mark Husted in Des Plaines, IL. According to a source from the DEA, Mark A Husted, 32, son of Carpentersville village attorney, Richard Husted, was found dead in the home of a friend who was recently indicted with Husted on drug charges.
Husted was a convicted drug dealer who was to face further drug charges on November 8 in US District court for conspiring to sell cocaine. He'd been indicted on charges of operating a $10-million-a-year cocaine ring from a Florida prison while serving a three year sentence on a marijuana conviction.
The standard sentence for his prior conviction was five years, but Florida Circuit Court Judge Charles Carlton reduced the sentence to three years after receiving letters from then-gubernatorial candidate James R. Thompson, Sen. Charles Percy, R-IL., Rep. Robert McClory, R-13th, and Elgin Mayor Richard Verbic.
Husted was found dead in the home of Louis Tedesco, 33, of 569 S. Anita St., Des Plaines. Tedesco, who was indicted on drug charges with Husted, told police he found Husted slumped over on a back porch. Before the paramedics arrived, Husted woke up and made light conversation but did not make any sense, Tedesco told police (a common symptom of cyanide poisoning is confusion).
The death was believed to have been caused by a drug overdose, but the initial autopsy was inconclusive.
Shortly after the September 29 Tylenol murders, toxicology tests were completed that showed lethal levels of cyanide in Husted's blood. The death, initially classified as an accidental cocaine overdose, was changed to homicide.
Why did officials investigating the Tylenol murders exclude from their investigation the murder of Mark Husted?
Why did Cook County Medical Examiner Robert Stein initially classify the death as a cocaine overdose?
It's interesting that cyanide was used to kill Mark Husted, and that the killer was never found; just like cyanide was used to kill the seven victims officially tied to the Tylenol murders, and the killer was never found.
Two More Cyanide Poisoning Deaths
Mark Husted wasn't the only murder victim whose cause of death was reclassified as a homicide in which cyanide was the murder weapon. Toxicology tests conducted by Cook County Medical Examiners on blood samples from two others who died around the time of the "official" Tylenol murders also found lethal levels of cyanide.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office reopened investigations into the three "cocaine-related" deaths that occurred in the fall of 1982, after cyanide was found in the victims' systems.
Dr Michael Schaffer, chief toxicologist in the medical examiner's office, said officials were checking the deaths of Husted, Galen Parnott, 30, of Skokie and Marie Louise Watkins, 21, of Chicago "because of the close proximity (in time) to the cyanide deaths." After completing toxicology tests, the cause of death for all three was changed to cyanide poisoning.
When cyanide laced Tylenol was linked to deaths in Elkgrove Village and Arlington Heights on Wednesday, September 29, Investigators independently examining some unexplained deaths in two adjacent suburbs were alerted to the Tylenol threat by two firemen who noted that the separate ambulance reports said all the victims had recently taken Extra-Strength Tylenol.
Were the unexplained deaths being investigated in "adjacent suburbs" two of the three deaths initially classified as cocaine related?
Toxicology reports showed each of the three had ingested a lethal dose of cyanide.
Schaffer said Authorities found 3.54 micrograms of cyanide in Husted's system, and officials said 3 to 5 micrograms of cyanide is enough to kill an adult. As a result of that test, toxicologists are testing all suspected victims of cocaine overdoses for cyanide.
"We are continuing these investigations because we are finding now that cyanide is an easy poison to obtain, and we don't want to overlook any possible cyanide poisoning case," said Medical Examiner Robert Stein.
A detective on the task force looking into the Tylenol murders said it would be valuable to know if the cyanide reported to have caused these three deaths was the same type that killed the Tylenol victims, but he said it is impossible to conduct such a test.
The murderers of these three victims were never found; just like the murderers of the seven 1982 cyanide laced Tylenol victims in Chicago, the 1982 Cyanide laced Tylenol victim in Wyoming, the 1982 cyanide laced Tylenol victim in Philadelphia, and the 1986 cyanide laced Tylenol victim in New York were never found.
Also never found was the murderer who in 1975 poisoned 8 victims in Illinois with adulterated drugs, killing three.
Louis Tedesco
Louis Tedesco and fourteen other persons, including Mark Husted, were named in a seventy-nine count indictment charging them with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and other drug related offenses. The indictment was filed December 3, 1980, but numerous delays postponed Tedesco's trial until December 16, 1982. Defendant was convicted and sentenced to two years incarceration and four years probation.