The Other Tylenol Murders
Contrary to the statements of authorities involved in the investigation; the 1982 Tylenol murders were not confined to the Chicago area, nor were they limited to that one horrific day on September 29, 1982.
Officials in charge of the Tylenol murders investigation suppressed evidence about the July 26, 1982* Tylenol murder in Big Horn, Wyoming.
* Suspect Roger Arnold, a Jewel Foods warehouse worker, received a shipment of cyanide at his home in July 1982. He'd "discarded" the cyanide sometime before his home was searched on October 11, 1982.
Sheridan, Wyoming
Reporters learned on October 9, 1982 that Chicago police detectives had been dispatched to Sheridan, Wyoming over the weekend to help decide if the July 26 death of Jay Adam Mitchell was linked to the seven Tylenol murders in the Chicago area.
Mitchell, 19, from the town of Big Horn, failed to turn off the alarm clock that he had set to buzz at 6:30 a.m. on July 26; his father tried to awaken him, but Mitchell was dead. An older brother told the Chicago detectives that he thinks Mitchell took Tylenol from a bottle in the kitchen four hours before the unanswered alarm buzzed. The family long ago discarded the Tylenol bottle and the two or three capsules it contained.
Dr. William E. Doughty, a pathologist at the Sheridan County Memorial Hospital who was familiar with the case, became suspicious after the Chicago cyanide deaths. Dr. Doughty said in a telephone interview that he asked the youth's mother Thursday (October 1), if her son had taken any medication before his death. Doughty said she replied, "'Nothing, just a headache pill, some Extra-Strength Tylenol.' She said she thought she had purchased it at Buttrey-Osco, a local food & drug store, but she had since destroyed the bottle."
Doughty asked the local store where the Extra-Strength Tylenol came from and was told that since March 1982 the store purchased its Tylenol from the Jewel Tea Company of Chicago (Jewel Foods).
Jane Armstrong, speaking for the Jewel Companies, said that she was uncertain how its subsidiary Buttrey-Osco in Sheridan receives its supplies of Tylenol, but she said Jewel stores near Chicago take shipments directly from the manufacturer, the McNeil Consumer Products Company, in Fort Washington, PA.*
*That's not accurate. J&J shipped the Tylenol to the Jewel Foods Repackaging and Distribution facility in Franklin Park, IL. From there it was distributed to Jewel and Osco stores east of the Mississippi river and in Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Furthermore, Armstrong's statement that she was "uncertain how its subsidiary Buttrey-Osco in Sheridan receives its supplies of Tylenol" is not only unbelievable, it shows that executives suppressed even the most basic information pertinent to the Tylenol murders investigation.
After talking to Mitchell's mother, Doughty called the toxicologist in Salt Lake City who originally found the cyanide and kept the blood, urine and stomach contents from Mitchell. That doctor, Bryan S. Finkle, director of the Center for Human Toxicology, tested the contents for Tylenol; the results were negative.* * Obviously the test results were negative. The capsule was filled completely with cyanide. It never contained any Tylenol.
Dr. Finkle then conferred with Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County Medical Examiner, who quoted the dose of cyanide found in the stomachs of the Chicago area victims. Dr. Doughty said, ''It was exactly the same as the Mitchell dosage. It's a very tight link. It would be very difficult for these different people to take exactly the same dosage of cyanide without having taken the same-sized capsule with the same-sized dosage.''
The Evidence
Sheridan County Coroner Jim Kane also confirmed that Mitchell had the same level of cyanide in his body as the Chicago victims.
Finkle compared the Wyoming death with those in Chicago. ''It turned out,'' he said, ''there were a lot of similarities toxicologically.'' The evidence ''as it stands in no way makes a case.'' But he said considerable further research was necessary in this case and others (There was, unfortunately, no further research done in this case or others).
''If the deaths were not clustered,'' said Dr. Finkle, ''there is every reason to believe they would all have been signed out as cyanide deaths and there would have been no connection made, meaning the method, modus operandi.''
Jay Adam Mitchell died after ingesting cyanide laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that went through the same distribution center as the cyanide laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules found in the Chicago area stores. The amount of cyanide in Mitchell's stomach exactly matched the amount of cyanide in the stomachs of the Chicago area victims, and when Mitchell's toxicology tests, which had been completed by a world renowned toxicologist, were compared to those of the seven Chicago area victims ''there were a lot of similarities toxicologically."
At least eight deaths in 1982, not seven, are linked to cyanide laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. In every case, the Tylenol had been processed at the same Jewel Foods warehouse.
How many unexplained deaths in 1982 were actually murders; the handiwork of the Tylenol killer(s)?
The Tylenol Task Force Assessment of the Wyoming Murder
Members of the Tylenol task force refused to acknowledge any possible connection between the Chicago Tylenol poisonings and Tylenol poisonings in other parts of the country. Chicago Police Sargeant Michael Invergo said a detective turned up nothing new after traveling to Sheridan, Wyoming, where authorities had reopened an investigation of the cyanide-related death in July of 19-year-old Jay Adam Mitchell. The Wyoming death was one of three poisonings with some connection to Tylenol that authorities determined had no bearing on the Chicago deaths.
Soures: New York Times, 1982; AP-Oct. 9, 1982; UPI-Oct. 9, 1982; AP-Oct. 11, 1982
In fact, the Tylenol killer may have struck at least once before the Wyoming murder.....
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 6 (UPI) -The wife of William Pascual said today that she never believed her husband had committed suicide. Kathleen Burkhalter Pascual said her husband had no motive for suicide.
''He was not depressed,'' she said. ''They could interview all of Pennsylvania and they would just say we were a happy couple and everything was going well for him.''
Mrs. Pascual said she never saw the suicide note that the police said her husband had written but only heard of it from the police. Mrs. Pascual, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, said the police ignored her questions after her husband's death. She said she and her husband had bought the Tylenol, which they took frequently, at a local supermarket. She also said they had never spent time in Chicago and had no friends in Chicago.
Mrs. Pascual said she and her husband were returning home from a party April 3 when he ''said he wasn't feeling well and then he brought me back to the party.
''When I came back he was dead on the living-room floor,'' she said.
CYANIDE IS DISCOVERED IN TYLENOL IN AN APRIL DEATH IN PHILADELPHIA , October 7, 1982 Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules discovered in the Philadelphia apartment of a student whose death six months ago was ruled a suicide have been found to contain cyanide, the police in Philadelphia said yesterday.
William Pascual
But they emphasized that there were no indications of a link to the seven deaths in the Chicago area traced to cyanide-tainted Tylenol. In Chicago, Attorney General Tyrone Fahner of Illinois, who is leading the investigation into the Chicago deaths, also urged caution over reports that the Philadelphia police had reopened the suicide case.
Tylenol Found in a Shoe
When the Philadelphia student died April 3, his body was found to contain cyanide, but a test then of the Tylenol capsules found in a shoe in a closet showed no indication of the poison, according to Chief Inspector Frank Scafidi of the Philadelphia police homicide squad.
The deaths in Chicago, however, led the police to re-examine the capsules this week, and this time they were found to contain cyanide, the chief said at a news conference last night.
The student was identified as William Pascual, 26 years old, who was doing graduate work at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The police said he had left a note, which they characterized as a suicide message.
At a news conference in Chicago last night, Attorney General Fahner said the Philadelphia report ''does offer promise.'' But he cited a long list of other false leads that had appeared credible in recent days and had then dissolved under examination.
Mr. Fahner said the best leads for the investigation by a task force of Federal, state and local police officials remained in the Illinois area for now. He said this could change if the Philadelphia suicide was shown to be a homicide. ''And that hasn't been shown yet,'' he said.
He said reports that a friend of the dead student had traveled to Chicago were ''unsubstantiated information.'' Chicago medical examiners have been asked to re-examine any unexplained deaths as far back as Aug. 1. And plainclothes detectives continued 24-hour surveillance on a handful of ''potential suspects'' in the Tylenol deaths. More than 100 other agents investigated personnel records, interviewed employees and tracked down scores of tips received on a telephone hotline.
Those involved in the joint investigation, one of the largest in Illinois history, were also playing down a statement by a man in Oroville, Calif., that he had been poisoned with strychnine in Tylenol capsules. Speaking before the Philadelphia announcement, Mr. Fahner said, ''As far as we are concerned, there is still no connection here with California.''
At the Philadelphia news session, Chief Inspector Scadifi said that the death of Mr. Pascual might still have been a suicide, since he had a history of suicide threats, but that the police were less certain now. He said a new investigation into the death was just beginning.
Mr. Pascual, a Filipino, was found by his 25-year-old wife, Kathleen, at 4 A.M. April 3, one hour after he was last seen. ''He's all right when he goes home and he's last seen, but less than one hour later he was dead,'' Chief Scafidi said. The Philadelphia Medical Examiner said Mr. Pascual had died from ingesting cyanide, which was found in his stomach and blood. But it was not known for certain that he had taken any Tylenol capsules from the bottle found in his closet, the chief inspector said.
He said that in addition to leaving what the chief called a suicide note, Mr. Pascual had emptied out his bank accounts.
The note, addressed to Mr. Pascual's mother, Detty, of Arlington, Va., said: ''Dear Mom, it wasn't your fault, it was mine, all mine. Love, your son.'' Initials were scrawled at the bottom.
A bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol, Lot No. FE7603 with an expiration date of June 1983, was found in the closet of the room where the body was found, Chief Scafidi said. He said that in the initial tests on the pills in April, which were negative, only three were tested. When re-examined after the Chicago cyanide deaths, the capsules had deteriorated into a ''powdery mass'' and were found to have traces of cyanide, the chief inspector said.
Because the capsules had decomposed, the authorities could not determine how many of the original nine capsules left in the bottle contained cyanide, he said.
Philadelphia police ruled that University of Pennsylvania graduate student William Pascual, 26, committed suicide In April by swallowing a Tylenol capsule containing cyanide.
Now the death toll in the 1982 cyanide laced Tylenol murders stands at nine, not seven as the Tylenol task force concluded. The true death toll is probably much higher.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office has reopened investigations into three cocaine-related deaths that occurred this fall after cyanide also was found in the victims' systems.
One of the overdose victims, convicted drug dealer Mark A. Husted, 32, died Sept. 14 at the home of a friend in Des Plaines, two months before he was to face additional drug charges. His father, Carpentersville Village Attorney Richard Husted, apparently urged the re-investigation into the death because of a feeling that his son may have been murdered.
The original cause of death for Husted was listed as a massive overdose of cocaine But the re-examination showed that Husted's body tissues contained a lethal level of cyanide. Seven Chicago-area people died between Sept 29 and Oct. 1 after unknowingly taking cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules.
Dr Michael Schaffer, chief toxicologist in the medical examiner's office said on January 13, 1983 that officials were checking the deaths of Husted, Galen Parriott, 30, of Skokie, and Marie Louise Watkins, 21, of Chicago "because of the close proximity (in time) to the cyanide deaths."
Toxicology reports showed each of the three had ingested lethal doses 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.
Now the cyanide laced Tylenol death toll stands at between nine and twelve; not seven as officials insist.
OTHER CAPSULE POISONINGS
In Oroville, Calif., Greg Blagg, 27, a butcher in a meat market owned by his father, told a strange story. He said that on Sept. 30, the same day that the first Chicago-area poisonings became public knowledge, he had taken three capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol from a bottle that his wife Terry had bought two weeks earlier. "Everything became very blurry," he related. "I'm told I passed out and became real rigid."
Terry got him to a hospital, where he was treated for four hours and then released at his own request. Back home, Blagg related, he switched on the TV and caught reports of the Tylenol deaths near Chicago. He took apart some capsules from his own bottle, found pink flecks in the powder, and the next morning turned the bottle over to his physician, John Clay, for analysis. That evening, Greg and Terry returned to the drugstore where the first purchase had been made, found Tylenol still on sale and bought two more bottles; they discovered more pink flecks in the capsules. Last week word came back from laboratories in Rockville, Md., and San Francisco: strychnine, commonly sold as a rat poison, was found in the capsules, though in quantities too small to kill a human.
By week's end strychnine had been found in one more Tylenol bottle still in stock in the Oroville drugstore but nowhere else in the country. Investigators were wondering about the wild coincidences involved in Blagg's story. If it is true, he and his wife had bought the only bottles of strychnine-poisoned Tylenol purchased by anyone. Investigators doubted there had been either an attempt at a copycat murder or any link to the Chicago poisonings.