| RICHARD BRZECZEK, CHICAGO POLICE SUPERINTENDANT The Tylenol Investigation - October 22, 1982 CHICAGO (AP) — Police Superintendent Richard J. Brzeczek announced Thursday that the bottle - one among hundreds of thousands turned in by customers - or swept from store shelves after seven deaths from cyanide-tainted Extra-Strength Tylenol - contained more than a dozen capsules laced with the poison. He said the 50-capsule bottle had been turned in to Dominick's Finer Foods in Chicago, just several hundred feet from the Walgreen's drug store where the seventh victim, Paula Prince, purchased her 24-capsule bottle. Investigators hope to identify the customer who returned the bottle, which was turned in without its usual box, said Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fahner. Brzeczek said a "peculiar thing" about the newly discovered bottle was that its lot number — MC2880 — was the same as the medication taken by four victims, who lived in the suburbs. He did not elaborate on what he meant by "peculiar." The number of tainted capsules — which Brzeczek said was"about 13" — was larger than in any other previously found bottle. The bottle was sent to the FBI in Washington, where it will be subjected to "the most sophisticated" tests available in hopes of finding fingerprints that might help solve the case, he said. Thursday's discovery was made by a lab testing the capsules under contract to McNeil Consumer Products Co., the maker of Tylenol. McNeil officials said they had no comment on the latest discovery. Brzeczek's Final word on the Tylenol Murders Brzeczek resigned on April 29, 1993, inauguration day for Mayor Harold Washington. Washington had promised to fire the police superintendent if elected and charged the department under Brzeczek underreported crime, insufficiently investigated charges of police brutality and had become politicized. After Brzeczek told a columnist Chicago streets would be unsafe under Washington's administration, Washington called him "hysterical". Before leaving the department Brzeczek made a bizzare statement regarding the inability to convict the Tylenol Killer even if someone confessed. Brzeczek said he didn't think the Tylenol murders would ever be solved: "The thing is, if someone walked in and said 'I am the cyanide killer, I did all of these things, other than the admission on that person's part, there is no tangible evidence to tie someone to it. It's all uncorroborated, and that doesn't hold up in court. "Now if someone came in, and said; 'Here's the remainder of the cyanide I used,' and through forensic chemistry they (investigators) can demonstrate it's the same that was in the capsules or taken from the hot bottles, then that's something more."
Kind of ironic that 16 years later the public would learn that officers who worked for Brzeczek routinely used torture to gain confessions. Brzeczek knew about the torture, but did nothing to stop it. However, Brzeczek has consistently stated that he's seen no evidence to tie James Lewis to the murders. Brzeczek was recently interviewed after the Tylenol murder case was reopened. He knows the case first hand and was outspoken. "I know back in '82 a lot of people thought he was the person who had contaminated the Tylenol, I never saw any evidence hooking him to the contamination," said Brzeczek. And, even though federal agents raided Lewis' Cambridge condo Wednesday, Brzeczek's opinion has not changed. He says it's easy to focus on the person - but it could be the wrong person. And, only hard evidence can move this case forward. "If you don't have that kind of evidence, you're not going any place," said Brzeczek. In February of 1982, three policemen were killed in shootings by civilians, prompting an unprecedented man hunt and repressive crackdown on young black men in Chicago. Burge’s unit apprehended Andrew Wilson, a suspect in one of the shootings that killed an officer. When they attempted to transfer him to county jail, Wilson had been so badly beaten, with evidence of radiator and electrical burns all over his body (including genitalia), that the county jail authorities refused to admit him without first being examined by a doctor.- Jon Burge and Torture By 1999, it was "common knowledge," according to U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur, "that in the early to mid-1980s, (Jon Burge) and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis."
The massive scandal began to unravel in 1989, when convicted cop killer Andrew Wilson launched a very public federal civil rights suit against the Chicago Police Department. Seven years before, Wilson had been beaten, shocked in the testicles and burned on the face, chest and thigh by Area 2 detectives working under Burge. What caught the eye of Chief Medical Examiner of Cermak Medical Services John Raba, however, were the small markings on his ears that he couldn't explain away. Wilson told him the markings were from alligator clips used to electrocute him, and Raba believed him. He notified then-Superintendent of Police Richard Brzeczek, who wrote a letter to then-State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, "seeking direction" on how to proceed. Daley, who is now Chicago's mayor, never responded. Letter to Brzeczek regarding Doctor's examination of Andrew Wilson on Feb. 14 & 15, 1982 
Wilson was later granted a new trial and sentenced to natural life, without his illegally obtained confession. His case, however, set off a chain of events that would eventually expose the widespread, systematic use of torture within certain South Side units of the Chicago Police Department.
In 1990, a CPD Office of Professional Standards investigation, prompted by Wilson's story and the physical evidence backing it up, found that abuse at Areas 2 and 3 "was not limited to the usual beatings, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture." "Particular command members were aware of the systematic abuse and perpetuated it, either by actively participating in some or failing to take any action to bring it to an end," the report concluded. Subsequent OPS investigations found Detectives John Byrne, Peter Dignan and John Yucaitis, all involved in Michael Tillman's interrogation, to be "players" repeatedly named as abusers in Area 2 and 3 torture allegations. During Wilson's civil trial, his attorneys at the People's Law Office began receiving anonymous letters tipping them off to other victims of police torture. Eventually, PLO lawyers compiled testimony in 107 Burge-connected torture cases. Nevertheless, almost 20 years later, not a single police officer has been made to face charges in the massive scandal. They were all let off the hook, first by a succession of judges and legal professionals who looked the other way, and later by a statute of limitations that expired before the Illinois state attorney considered filing charges. Many of the co-conspirators who helped conceal the abuse are today Chicago's political elite. They include prominent Cook County and Illinois Appellate Court judges (including one of the prosecutors in Tillman's case), Illinois State's Attorney Richard Devine and Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was the state's attorney when many of the cases were tried and would have been responsible for bringing official charges against the abusive officers, but chose instead to look the other way. Devine was Daley's first assistant when he served as a "tough-on-crime" state's attorney from 1980 to 1989, a period that saw 55 allegations of confessions elicited through torture. He later went into private practice (before assuming his current role of state's attorney), where he was paid more than $1 million by the City of Chicago for defending Burge and the other officers involved in Wilson's civil suit. He then represented Burge in proceedings before the Police Board. Later, as state's attorney of Cook County, Devine discouraged investigations of Area 2 torture and continued to uphold confessions obtained by that means. Because of this conflict of interest, in 2002, at the request of a coalition of civil rights attorneys and activists, Circuit Judge Paul Biebel transferred jurisdiction over all torture-related cases to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. They have sat idle on her desk ever since.
The 10 cases that have been resolved have been done in spite of, rather than with the help of, Madigan or Devine. Since the first reports of Chicago police torture surfaced a quarter century ago the list has swelled to nearly 200 cases involving dozens of public employees—and still no one has been prosecuted. Now, with the results of a four-year, multimillion dollar investigation due any day, here’s a guide by staff reporter John Conroy to the key figures in the scandal. Some of them may look familiar.
1. The Ringleader
JON BURGEBurge, a south-side native, may have learned to torture in Vietnam, where he served in 1968 and ’69. Veterans of his company have reported that they participated in the electrical torture of Vietcong suspects, shocking them using hand-cranked field telephones. A similar device was used to shock suspects at Area Two. Both places, the torturers often targeted the genitals. (For more detail, see the Reader’s “Tools of Torture,” February 4, 2005.) Burge became a police officer in March 1970. Promoted to detective at age 24 in 1972, he was assigned to Area Two, his old neighborhood and an area experiencing rapid racial change: whites were fleeing as African-Americans moved in. The first publicly known complaint of electric shock interrogation at Area Two dates from 1973. In the years that followed Burge was promoted and served in other locations, then returned to Area Two in 1981 as commanding officer of the Violent Crimes unit.
Burge’s slow undoing can be traced to the 1982 arrest of Andrew Wilson for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Wilson’s account of electric shock, some of it aimed at his genitals, didn’t provoke a response from the Cook County state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley (“Deaf to the Screams,” August 1, 2003), but in 1987 the Illinois Supreme Court, suspicious of Wilson’s many injuries, granted him a new trial. He was convicted a second time without the use of his confession and sentenced to natural life. (See “House of Screams,” January 26, 1990, and “The Shocking Truth,” January 10, 1997.)
In 1989, during Wilson’s federal civil rights suit against Burge and the city, anonymous letters addressed to Wilson’s attorneys at the People’s Law Office said that he wasn’t the first person to be shocked at Area Two. Eventually the PLO compiled a list of 105 African-American men who told not only of being shocked but of suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers and other forms of torture and abuse inflicted by Burge and detectives under him at Areas Two and Three. Instruments they described included a handcranked electrical device, a cattle prod, and a violet ray machine (also known as a shock wand), a medical instrument now sold as a sex toy. (See “Tools of Torture” and “The Mysterious Third Device,” February 4, 2005.)
Dismissed from the police force in 1993 but never charged with any crime, Burge lives in Florida, collecting a police pension.
2. Other Accused Officers
JOHN BYRNE
Has known Burge since childhood and admitted to being his “right-hand man” at Area Two. Accused of cattle prod torture and numerous attacks aimed at genitals. Left CPD after he got his law degree but subsequently disbarred for taking money from clients—including police officers and firefighters—for whom he did no work, an ethical lapse he attributes to clinical depression. He collects a police pension and works as a private investigator.
PETER DIGNAN
Accused of torture, often with John Byrne. Named in 17 of the PLO’s list of 105 cases, accused of mock execution, electrical torture, suffocation, and beatings with flashlights and phone books. Promoted to lieutenant by Superintendent Terry Hillard in 1998 despite being named a “player” in an internal police investigation of torture in 1990. Retired, pension intact, from the force, he now works for the Cook County sheriff. (For more on Dignan see “Shot in the Dark,” November 6, 1998.)
MICHAEL HOKE
Burge’s partner in the early 1970s, and named as a participant in the first publicly known use of electric shock in 1973. Commander of Internal Affairs when data on police personnel gathered by software program Brainmaker—in order to identify problem officers—was erased. Later became assistant deputy superintendent, now retired. Granted immunity from prosecution in Burge scandal by special prosecutor Edward Egan.
3. Knew About ItFRED RICE
As police superintendent in 1984 received report from the Office of Professional Standards (OPS) on allegations of electrical torture made within the previous 12 months. The document, compiled by OPS supervisors, mentioned Burge and three incidents from Area Two—not including the Andrew Wilson case and others that occurred earlier—in addition to allegations of electric shock in Districts 1, 9, 11, 14, 19, and 20. Subsequently gave Burge a double promotion—from lieutenant, skipping the rank of captain—to deputy commander. In 1992 testified as character witness for Burge at Police Board hearings, saying he had no regrets about the promotion.
LEROY MARTIN
Burge’s supervisor as commander of Area Two in 1983, during which time torture continued. As superintendent of police in 1990 received two OPS reports on torture at Area Two: one concluded that Wilson had indeed been tortured with electric shock, the other stated that physical abuse was “systematic” at Area Two under Burge’s command and that it “included psychological techniques and planned torture.” Sat on these reports for more than a year, finally ordering administrative hearings, which resulted in Burge’s dismissal in February 1993. Now chief of investigations for Cook County medical examiner.
LAWRENCE HYMAN
As high-ranking assistant state’s attorney failed to ask brothers Andrew and Jackie Wilson if their confessions had been given voluntarily, a highly unusual mistake for any experienced prosecutor but particularly one interviewing a cop killer. Did he have evidence of torture in February 1982? If he did and if he’d exposed it then, would the torture have ceased? Took the Fifth before the Burge grand jury. May be the John Doe now asking the Illinois Supreme Court to block publication of the special prosecutor’s report. (See “What Does John Doe Know,” June 9, 2006.)
RICHARD M. DALEY
More than 50 men alleged that they were tortured by Burge and his detectives during Daley’s term as Cook County state’s attorney, from 1981 to 1989. He was put on notice several times, most dramatically in the case of Andrew Wilson. Photographs of Wilson’s stitches, burns, and alligator- clip wounds made compelling evidence in court, underlined by Hyman’s failure to ask if Wilson had given his statement voluntarily. Received copy of letter from Dr. John Raba, who as medical director of Cermak Hospital examined Wilson’s injuries, urging police superintendent Richard Brzeczek to investigate. Brzeczek told Daley he had promised to investigate all cases of police brutality but did not want to jeopardize Wilson’s prosecution and asked for guidance. Daley sent no reply. Mayor of Chicago since 1989.
JACK O’MALLEY
As Cook County state’s attorney from December 1990 to December 1996 had far more information than Daley that a torture ring had been in operation at Areas Two and Three, and on his watch torture continued at Area Three. By March 1994 even the city’s own lawyers had admitted that torture had taken place at Area Two. Prosecuted no one. Currently serving on the Illinois Appellate Court.
DICK DEVINE
First assistant state’s attorney under Daley when Wilson and more than 20 others were tortured. Went into private practice in 1983, and in 1989 briefly represented Burge in Wilson’s civil suit. Also profited from his firm’s million-dollar defense of Burge and fellow detectives, paid for by the city. After taking the office of state’s attorney in December 1996 he fought victims’ appeals relentlessly and moved to quash the petition to appoint a special prosecutor despite clear conflict of interest. Before clearing death row in 2003, Governor George Ryan pardoned four Burge victims, saying not only that they had been tortured but that they were innocent, a clear rebuke to Devine and other prosecutors. Devine denounced the pardoned men as “evil.”
4. Buried ItTERRY HILLARD, THOMAS NEEDHAM, and GAYLE SHINES
In 1998, while serving as general counsel to police superintendent Terry Hillard, Needham learned that outgoing Office of Professional Standards chief Gayle Shines had reopened nine investigations into the Burge gang’s torture of suspects, that charges had been sustained in some of those cases, and that after Shines left her post the documents, critical to the defense of some men sentenced to death, had been found boxed up in her office, gathering dust.
In a 1999 deposition, Needham said he didn’t read the files but instead looked at the names of the accused, the findings, and the dates of the investigators’ activity. On August 31, 1998, he issued a memo saying that all the charges in all the cases would be regarded as “not sustained,” a move supported by Superintendent Hillard. In his deposition Needham said it wasn’t fair to the police department to do otherwise. “No organization can operate effectively if they’re continually looking back,” he said. “Healthy organizations have to move forward.” Those particular files were later released as a result of a federal lawsuit in which the Reader intervened.
Hillard, also deposed in 1999, was asked about the Goldston report, the 1990 OPS report that concluded that torture was a regular occurrence at Area Two and named “players.” Hillard replied, “I don’t know nothing about the Goldston report.”
Needham is now an attorney in private practice. Shines heads an investigations and internal audits department at Chicago City Colleges. Hillard retired as superintendent in August 2005.
5. Took the Fifth (Or Intend To)
Three officers are known to have been granted immunity from prosecution by the special prosecutor: MICHAEL HOKE, Commander PATRICK GARRITY, and former detective DANIEL MCWEENY. Garrity is not considered a regular member of the Burge gang but does figure prominently in the case of Madison Hobley, one of four victims pardoned by Governor Ryan. McWeeny appears more regularly, sometimes as the detective who comes in after the torture to take the victim’s confession.
The names of other officers who have testified before the Burge grand jury have not been revealed, but court records list the names of police officers who participated in arrests and interrogations. Many have been deposed in the last few years in active civil suits and other proceedings related to the torture of suspects. Under questioning, the vast majority took the Fifth. They’ve likely also been subpoenaed to appear before the special prosecutor’s grand jury. The 26 officers and former officers listed below have either invoked their Fifth Amendment privileges when questioned about the torture or declared their intention to do so in documents related to ongoing civil suits. According to People’s Law Office attorney Flint Taylor, nine more officers have taken the Fifth, but their depositions are under seal.
Former assistant deputy superintendent Michael Hoke
Former commander Jon Burge
Commander Patrick Garrity (granted immunity)
Former lieutenant Peter Dignan
Former lieutenant Dennis McGuire
Former sergeant John Byrne
Sergeant Raymond Madigan
Detective Robert Dwyer
Detective Edmund Leracz
Former detective Leonard Bajenski
Former detective Ronald Boffo
Former detective Michael Bosco
Former detective Joseph Danzl
Former detective Joseph DiGiacomo
Former detective David Dioguardi
Former detective Robert Flood
Former detective Fred Hill
Former detective Anthony Katalinic
Former detective James Lotito
Former detective William Marley
Former detective Thomas McKenna
Former detective Raymond McNally
Former detective Daniel McWeeny (granted immunity)
Former detective John Paladino
Former detective William Pedersen
Former detective James Pienta
6. Didn't Take the Fifth
RICHARD BRZECZEK, police superintendent when Andrew Wilson was tortured, freely answered the special prosecutor’s questions. The rest of the officers listed here are African-Americans who in depositions have said they suspected torture but were not part of the circle that was inflicting it.
Former superintendent Richard Brzeczek
Former sergeant Doris Byrd
Former detective Melvin Duncan
Former detective William Lacey
Former detective Bill Parker
Former detective Walter Young
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