Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I've chosen a two parter one of the most baffling
Speaker 1: true crime mysteries ever to hit America, the Thailand All Murders. Uh.
Speaker 1: In part one, which you're about to hear now, we
Speaker 1: introduced the murders, the senseless deaths, and the panic that
Speaker 1: gripped America. And then you'll hear from me again for
Speaker 1: part two. So in the meantime, enjoy part one and
Speaker 1: I'll see you soon. Welcome to Stuff you should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh, not me, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Guest producer Josh is back in the house. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's a little Chuck in your pockets, Remember little Elvis.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say that you got that right,
Speaker 1: Tony Oh Man, what a great sketch it really was.
Speaker 1: That was Nicholas Kane, wasn't it. Yeah? Man, did you
Speaker 1: ever see Mandy? Yes? It was terrible. I don't care
Speaker 1: what anybody else says. You hate it. Terrible, terrible movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Nolan I talked about it on movie Crush. He's seen
Speaker 1: it like four times thinks it's the best thing ever.
Speaker 1: And he was like, people the love it, I hate it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, actually, I was kind of in
Speaker 1: the middle. Were you really Yeah? I mean I told
Speaker 1: him young Chuck, like twenty two year old college Chuck
Speaker 1: would have probably liked it a lot more. But today
Speaker 1: Chuck was kind of like, I get it. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: parts of it, we're fine. Sure to me. Spending an
Speaker 1: hour doing character development but not successfully making you care
Speaker 1: about the characters, it just really irked me. Wow, you
Speaker 1: had structural issues. Yeah, that was really the big thing.
Speaker 1: I also thought Lenis Roach was very very odd for casting.
Speaker 1: But which one was the main bad guy? That that
Speaker 1: was weird, very weird. I don't even know him, but
Speaker 1: it's from Law and Order and like some other stuff,
Speaker 1: you gotta get into law. See how much you're missing
Speaker 1: out on that's becoming a bit. So did we start
Speaker 1: recording yet? I think so? Oh, I already welcomed everybody
Speaker 1: the podcast. Um so, Chuck, we are this is some
Speaker 1: true crime stuff. For getting into here, that's right, But
Speaker 1: I feel like we need to set the tone right
Speaker 1: because this isn't just didn't happened just yesterday. This happened
Speaker 1: way back in two in Chicago, Illinois. And I remember
Speaker 1: this and I was like six at the time. It
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite years because of this, the
Speaker 1: opposite of that, right, mainly because of movies that was
Speaker 1: so great about two look it up? Man, Well, I
Speaker 1: was kind of hoping, Oh yeah, okay, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I
Speaker 1: was forty That's not true. Yes, the original, the original
Speaker 1: Blade Runner. Did you like it? It was good. I
Speaker 1: like the second one too, You're like, but they spent
Speaker 1: way too much time on characters. Um. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: just did a little poking around about two and it
Speaker 1: was It was a good year for an eleven year old,
Speaker 1: but it was an uneasy time in America. Uh well
Speaker 1: for a bunch of awful things happened that year. Uh
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it was any more or
Speaker 1: less than other years, but uh, air Flight nine D
Speaker 1: crashed into into the Potomac River, remember that in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. The plane crash in the river. Didn't hit
Speaker 1: a bridge, maybe, but there was there was like a
Speaker 1: daring icy river rescue. Yeah. Seventy eight people died though.
Speaker 1: That same day, a metro train in d c derailed
Speaker 1: killed three people. Uh. February was when Wayne Williams was convicted,
Speaker 1: and that was just the end of a lot of honeys,
Speaker 1: you know, for years. Uh, Klaus Vambu Law was found
Speaker 1: guilty of attempted murder of his wife in March. I
Speaker 1: didn't make it to the end of reversal of fortune,
Speaker 1: so I honestly didn't know what happened to class guilty. Uh.
Speaker 1: In June was the murder of Vincent Chen, who was
Speaker 1: a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two
Speaker 1: men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese and they
Speaker 1: were like stealing his their auto work. I know, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And then July nine, pan Am flight seven nine goes
Speaker 1: down in Louisiana, Louisiana kills all one forty six people
Speaker 1: on board, plus eight more on the ground. And then
Speaker 1: in September, early September was when I know, man, remember
Speaker 1: planes used to just crash a lot. Yeah that never
Speaker 1: happens now, Uh, not as much. But yeah, weird that
Speaker 1: we're recording this in the midst of more plane gradges.
Speaker 1: And then early September was when that paper boy in Iowa,
Speaker 1: Iowa was kidnapped and never seen again. Johnny Gosh, I
Speaker 1: don't know that that was a big deal too, because
Speaker 1: it was you know, the paper boy, and there was
Speaker 1: this false story about a pedophile ring from politicians and
Speaker 1: that turned out not to be true, but he was
Speaker 1: never found again. So basically everything that's going on today
Speaker 1: is just a rehash of two It sounds like I
Speaker 1: just remember being about that age, and they're just the
Speaker 1: nightly news sort of just being a horror show and
Speaker 1: not politically speaking, you know, like real bad incidents is occurring. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: plane crash like just about at any age, like that'll
Speaker 1: that'll bring you down if you see that on the
Speaker 1: news for sure. Yeah, um, because you know when you
Speaker 1: get on a plane, you think maybe this plane will
Speaker 1: go down while I'm want it and that would be terrible.
Speaker 1: Although I wasn't flying at eleven. So all of those
Speaker 1: things you just mentioned sweep them totally off the table,
Speaker 1: because come the end of September of that year, nothing
Speaker 1: else mattered but what we're about to talk about now,
Speaker 1: that's right, nothing nothing came close to taking the over
Speaker 1: the national psyche like the deaths of seven people beginning
Speaker 1: on September two in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the articles I read about this, I mean, are we
Speaker 1: trying to keep it a secret? It's a show title,
Speaker 1: right yeah, yeah yeah, I think they're gonna have to
Speaker 1: figure it out. So yeah, go ahead, the thailan All murders. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh no, no, but that's that comes up
Speaker 1: in part two. Oh yeah, this is a two parter
Speaker 1: ye as well, so Buckle and everybody. Uh So. I
Speaker 1: was doing some research though, and I saw one article
Speaker 1: that said something about, you know, the first domestic terror
Speaker 1: incident United States that nobody has ever heard of. It's like, what,
Speaker 1: who hasn't heard of this? A millennial wrote that headline. Well,
Speaker 1: I have to say Josh on the way in here, yeah,
Speaker 1: I told him Tailttle murders and huh he goes, what's
Speaker 1: the title? And all you old kadr, we should say
Speaker 1: what Thailand all is? Huh Okay, yeah, I guess just
Speaker 1: in case you are a MILLENNI only you've never heard
Speaker 1: of Thailand all, but Thailand all was and still is
Speaker 1: and over the counter pain reliever. It's like you have
Speaker 1: eggs and pains and apparently, what's crazy? People would take
Speaker 1: thaile and all whatever was wrong with them, because now
Speaker 1: you can go get like you know, aspirin and um
Speaker 1: aadville and and a leave. There was no leave back then.
Speaker 1: That was the nineties drug There's way more over the
Speaker 1: counter pain relievers now than they we're back then. Back then,
Speaker 1: Thailand All was basically it. Yeah, it's a set of menafin,
Speaker 1: which is different than aspirin, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people just think those are interchangeable. Right. The reason
Speaker 1: I believe Thailand All became so big is because aspirin
Speaker 1: upsets a lot of people's stomachs. Thailand All does not,
Speaker 1: or it's not supposed to, and that's why it came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and just took over the aspirin market.
Speaker 1: I think by two thailand All had thirty seven of
Speaker 1: the market. It's pretty good cornered. Yeah, yeah, almost half,
Speaker 1: especially since like some of the other like aspirants have
Speaker 1: been around since you know, nineteenth century, right, So it
Speaker 1: makes sense then that when a little girl named Mary
Speaker 1: Anne kellerman Uh complained that she had a sore throat
Speaker 1: and wasn't feeling too good at like seven am on Wednesday, September,
Speaker 1: her parents said, just take an extra strength title and
Speaker 1: all and go back to bed man for sore throat.
Speaker 1: You imagine the guilt. Oh no, these parents feel well,
Speaker 1: don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to Marianne
Speaker 1: Kellerman yet. I think everybody knows. Uh. Yeah, she got up,
Speaker 1: said I'm sick. He said, take this. The father said
Speaker 1: he heard her go into the bathroom and close the door,
Speaker 1: then heard something drop and went to the door, saying,
Speaker 1: are you okay, you're okay? Uh? No answer, opened the
Speaker 1: door and there she is on the floor. Um. Taken
Speaker 1: to the hospital, but died very quickly. Yeah, probably was
Speaker 1: dead when she went to the hospital. Was pronounced there
Speaker 1: um and she they suspected this is just a little
Speaker 1: twelve year old girl of middle school, girl into Jane
Speaker 1: Adams Middle School. Um. She they think she died of
Speaker 1: a stroke. That's what they thought happened to her. They
Speaker 1: were just so baffled that they're like, it had to
Speaker 1: have been a stroke. That's the only thing that can
Speaker 1: come on like this. Yeah. So that's seven am. Just
Speaker 1: the day is just beginning, and one atrocity has already happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a very bad day in
Speaker 1: the history of Chicago. September. Yeah, absolutely, and it started
Speaker 1: early Adam Janice, who uh will detail his story, but
Speaker 1: put a pin in this one too, because he figures
Speaker 1: in even more prominently in a minute. But a little
Speaker 1: bit later that same morning, Uh, this gentleman, Adam Janese's
Speaker 1: twenty seven years old and lived in Arlington Heights, another
Speaker 1: Chicago suburb, and he died. Uh, and they think that
Speaker 1: this is a heart attack. Uh. He complained of chess
Speaker 1: pains after he had driven his daughter's neighbor home from school.
Speaker 1: Uh said, I'm gonna take the day off, comes home,
Speaker 1: eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength tile and
Speaker 1: all that he bought from a local drug store, collapses
Speaker 1: in front of his wife, and by you know, a
Speaker 1: few minutes later, when the paramedics arrived, he was dead right.
Speaker 1: And again, like you said, they said heart attack because
Speaker 1: he's been complaining of chess pains, which had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. But just like Marianne Kellerman took an
Speaker 1: extra strength tile and all for a sore throat, he
Speaker 1: took some extra strength tile and all for some chest pains.
Speaker 1: This is just what people did back then. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's what complicated it a little bit. At first, Um
Speaker 1: was that you know, if you take the tile and
Speaker 1: all it means you felt bad already, So obviously you
Speaker 1: know they're gonna be saying like, wait a minute, chess
Speaker 1: pains or some throat like, how does that figure in? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it didn't. Plus, Also, what made this even more
Speaker 1: baffling is that Marianne Kellerman was twelve and healthy. Adam
Speaker 1: Janis was twenty seven and healthy, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they just dropped up. People just dropped dead. No
Speaker 1: matter what you see on TV or in the movies
Speaker 1: or whatever, dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing.
Speaker 1: When you're a healthy person, that just doesn't happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: Next we have Mary Reiner, same day, same day. This
Speaker 1: is still all on the same day. Um, she's twenty
Speaker 1: seven years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had
Speaker 1: just come home from the hospital, uh, after having given
Speaker 1: birth to her fourth kid a couple of days before.
Speaker 1: Super super sad. All of these are, obviously, but being
Speaker 1: a just a brand new mom for the fourth time,
Speaker 1: it's just so tragic. Uh. And then by three five
Speaker 1: she was so ill she was rushed back to the
Speaker 1: hospital and again died, very very quickly. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: Adam Janis collapsed in front of his wife, she collapsed
Speaker 1: in front of her young eight year old daughter. One
Speaker 1: of her children sare um and yeah. When she was
Speaker 1: taking the hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This
Speaker 1: is mid afternoon. Mary mcfar Marland was up next. She
Speaker 1: was over in um the suburb of Lombard, and she
Speaker 1: worked at the Illinois Bell Phone Center where you remember,
Speaker 1: like you go get your phone, like the rotary phone,
Speaker 1: you know, you would actually lease your phone. I wasn't
Speaker 1: involved in that process, but we had them in our home, okay,
Speaker 1: well your parents that stuff. No, there was like a
Speaker 1: store where you would go it's like the phone company's
Speaker 1: retail store, and you would go and be like that
Speaker 1: pink one. It's like smartphones today, kind of same model.
Speaker 1: Kind of Um, yeah, I guess so. But this was
Speaker 1: with a big, clunky rotary phone and you had to
Speaker 1: pay extra for the extra long court. Well. Mary McFarlane
Speaker 1: worked in one of these stores, and at about four
Speaker 1: o'clock UM at the Illinois Bell Phone Center, she was
Speaker 1: she had a massive headache that just came on out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, and she went back and got some extra
Speaker 1: strength tilent all out of her purse, took a couple
Speaker 1: of them, and within minutes collapsed in the door. Yeah
Speaker 1: she was young as well. She was thirty one years old,
Speaker 1: mother of two. And then remember I was talking about
Speaker 1: Adam Janice a few minutes ago. Um, his family goes
Speaker 1: to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there, he passes away,
Speaker 1: and so the family makes their way home UM to
Speaker 1: begin morning and just sort of trying to reconcile what
Speaker 1: had just happened. His brother, Stanley, he was only twenty,
Speaker 1: and then his wife Teresa, who was only nineteen, are
Speaker 1: both just overcome and worn out and have headaches. So
Speaker 1: they're at Adam's house. They got his medicine cabinet, get
Speaker 1: out the tile on all that he took completely unknowingly obviously,
Speaker 1: and uh, Stanley hits the ground. Foam comes from his mouth,
Speaker 1: his eyes rolled back in his head. Everyone's freaking out,
Speaker 1: and a few minutes later, his wife collapses and they
Speaker 1: called the ambulance. By the time and the ambulances get there,
Speaker 1: I think Stanley died that day and Teresa somehow managed
Speaker 1: to live a couple of days. Yeah, she hung on.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if like her dose is lesser
Speaker 1: or what. But but she she survived for a couple
Speaker 1: of days after that. Yeah, I mean my guess is that, uh,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't as much cyanide and the capsule she took.
Speaker 1: Did I just give something else away? But the so
Speaker 1: Stanley took his tail in all first, and then Teresa's occurs,
Speaker 1: and one of the paramedics noted, like Teresa was the
Speaker 1: one that called the ambulance out to come out for Stanley.
Speaker 1: And when you get there, they're they're both like on
Speaker 1: the ground and they're like, what's going on? And one
Speaker 1: of the paramedics said, everything that was happening to the
Speaker 1: guy happened to the woman like a couple of minutes later,
Speaker 1: like she was just following him through this process of
Speaker 1: like basically systemic organ failure. And this is the same
Speaker 1: day that his brother had passed away. Yep. This is
Speaker 1: about five six hours, six hours after Adam Janis had died.
Speaker 1: Then finally, I know this is all tough to go through. Everyone.
Speaker 1: We almost selected this as our next live show. I'm
Speaker 1: really glad we did, because, I mean, can you imagine
Speaker 1: trying to liven this up with some jokes? I saw it.
Speaker 1: The whole time I was like, no, we can do that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the more I got into it, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably not good live material. We should have a
Speaker 1: rule of thumb that any story that begins with the
Speaker 1: death of a twelve year old girl probably not live
Speaker 1: show material. I think you're right. So finally we have
Speaker 1: Paula Prince. Paula Jeene Prince. This is a couple of
Speaker 1: days later. This is not the same day. This is
Speaker 1: on Friday evening. She was a thirty five year old
Speaker 1: flight attendant and she was found dead in her apartment
Speaker 1: after police responded for a welfare check that her sister
Speaker 1: called in saying, hey, you know, I know she's a
Speaker 1: flight attendant and all, but no one knows where she is.
Speaker 1: Can you go check on her welfare check up? And
Speaker 1: they finally found her and she was gone, very very sad.
Speaker 1: She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of
Speaker 1: extra strength Title and all still open on the counter
Speaker 1: and she uh They look into um her receipts and
Speaker 1: found that she had purchased it on Wednesday, September that's right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, at the end of this very short span
Speaker 1: of time in the Chicago area. We have seven people dead,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's a good time to take
Speaker 1: a message break. Yeah, yeah, all right, stop you know, stop, okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: So you said cyanide. How did you know that? Because
Speaker 1: I was eleven years old and I watch the nightly
Speaker 1: news like all eleven year old stad just called it
Speaker 1: just me and broke aw Dan Rather, yeah, Copple, who else?
Speaker 1: That was it? Peter Jennings He came a little later,
Speaker 1: but sure, yeah, yeah, he came after somebody. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean Cronkite wasn't still around, was he? Or was he?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so. I was I
Speaker 1: was going to be into the news as a kid
Speaker 1: a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean that was that
Speaker 1: was where you got your news back then. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would watch the evening news. It's very strange to think
Speaker 1: about now, with the with the up to the minute
Speaker 1: news cycle. So oh yeah, I know how much more
Speaker 1: innocent things were back then. Um, So remove yourself from
Speaker 1: the benefit of hindsight or the benefit of Dan Rather's insight,
Speaker 1: and put yourself in the shoes of the people in Chicago. Right,
Speaker 1: these are five These are seven different deaths. Um, I
Speaker 1: think from five different townships in the greater Chicago area,
Speaker 1: including Chicago. Paula Prince, the last person to die, lived
Speaker 1: in Chicago. These people aren't talking. These people have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on. It's just that there were five
Speaker 1: seven separate baffling deaths. If you want to if you
Speaker 1: were people to be dead, yeah I do. That's good.
Speaker 1: My voices aren't working though. Um. It just so happens
Speaker 1: that the ambulance paramedics that showed up to attend to
Speaker 1: marry Mary Anne Kellerman, the first girl to die. Um,
Speaker 1: they were just logging everything because it was such a
Speaker 1: baffling thing, and they logged her tile and all, yeah
Speaker 1: logged isn't collected, right, Yeah, took it as evidence to
Speaker 1: maybe look into who knows, But they took the extra
Speaker 1: strength tile and all that she had taken, not thinking
Speaker 1: anything of it, but just basically throwing anything at the
Speaker 1: wall to see what stopped. Yeah, I'm sure the dad
Speaker 1: was like, you know, she went in, took some tile
Speaker 1: and on and dropped dead. So it probably made sense,
Speaker 1: even though it's just Thailand all to say like, well, hey,
Speaker 1: let's at least take this in yes, and that title
Speaker 1: and all that, right, you know, because that bottle of
Speaker 1: tile and All made its way into the hands of
Speaker 1: a medical examiner um whose name was Michael Schaefer, and
Speaker 1: Michael Schafer tested the tile in All it was rather
Speaker 1: surprised to find that some of the capsules had not
Speaker 1: tile in all in it, but sixty five milligrams of
Speaker 1: potassium cyanide. And it takes about fifty milligrams to kill
Speaker 1: a healthy adult. Yeah, I mean some of them. I
Speaker 1: don't think they were all exactly the same, but some
Speaker 1: of them had been completely emptied of any staminafin and
Speaker 1: completely filled with cyanide. With cyanide right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was someone intent on for sure killing people. Yes,
Speaker 1: because cyanide is no joke. It's a it's a really
Speaker 1: really small molecule um and it normally attaches to metals
Speaker 1: outside of the body, which is why you have or
Speaker 1: minerals I guess, which why you have potassium cyanide um
Speaker 1: when it goes into the body when you ingested, however
Speaker 1: you ingested, whether it's from a tile in all capsule
Speaker 1: or breathing cyanide gas like they used to use to
Speaker 1: execute people with. Like they stopped using it for execution
Speaker 1: because it was such a brutal death. Yeah, it's very cruel,
Speaker 1: painful way to die. Um in the body. It detaches
Speaker 1: from its its mineral or metal, and it attaches to
Speaker 1: a protein in the body called UM cytochrome c oxidase,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like could be a big problem, but
Speaker 1: it turns out that that's about the worst protein that
Speaker 1: cyanide could attach itself too, because we really need cytochrome
Speaker 1: c oxidase to breathe. Yeah, basically it I mean, this
Speaker 1: sounds like such a cruel thing because it's just rapid
Speaker 1: cell death and it's not like your throat closes up
Speaker 1: and you can't breathe, like you're inhaling oxygen and you
Speaker 1: you are technically taking breaths, but the oxygen is not
Speaker 1: getting in the cells. No, it's not because that c
Speaker 1: or that cytochrome c oxidase is what helps transport the
Speaker 1: oxygen and get and allows the oxygen to be used
Speaker 1: for energy. So if the potassium is clinging to it,
Speaker 1: the oxygen can't. It just stays in the bloodstream and
Speaker 1: it doesn't get used by the cells. And since your
Speaker 1: central nervous system is the most oxygen hungry system in
Speaker 1: your entire body. It starts to shut down first, and
Speaker 1: when your brain and your spinal cords starts shutting down,
Speaker 1: all sorts of things happen. Your long start shutting down.
Speaker 1: Your heart, God bless it keeps beating for minutes after
Speaker 1: the rest of your body is shut down. Can So
Speaker 1: you're not technically dead. And they're not sure exactly how
Speaker 1: long the pain and excruciation of dying from cyanide lasts,
Speaker 1: but they think you're probably conscious in a way and
Speaker 1: freaked out for about a minute at least, and your
Speaker 1: heart may continue beating for three or four minutes after that.
Speaker 1: So it's not a pleasant death at all. No. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're gasping for air, You're breathing in air. Nothing's happening,
Speaker 1: Like I said, um Stanley Janice. He was foaming at
Speaker 1: the mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head
Speaker 1: in front of his family. It's just like it's awful,
Speaker 1: like writhing on the floor, gasping for air. You're breathing,
Speaker 1: but it's not doing anything. It's just I can't imagine
Speaker 1: anything more horrifying, right, because your central nervous system has
Speaker 1: kind of falling out of its um, out of controller
Speaker 1: rhythm convulsions are usually a hallmark of cyanide poisoning. And
Speaker 1: then you turn bright red at the end of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sin a chair, you read, they said, Because when your
Speaker 1: body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells and
Speaker 1: the oxygen becomes depleted, um, your your skin kind of
Speaker 1: turns like a rusty brownish red. But because it can
Speaker 1: unload that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red.
Speaker 1: And your skin turns bright red. And then the other
Speaker 1: real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit
Speaker 1: like almonds. Yeah, I mean not a bit. I mean
Speaker 1: these bottles supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond, And
Speaker 1: unless you know what that means, then you're probably not
Speaker 1: clued in, you know, Like I wouldn't I wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1: I open the bottle of Thailand on it smelled like
Speaker 1: better almen would probably be like, h right, it's a
Speaker 1: nice smell. Actually, yeah, I like this tail and all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they have a new almond flavor. Awful. So
Speaker 1: Michael Schaefer, that medical examiner has just realized that this
Speaker 1: this little girl has been poisoned, but he he knows
Speaker 1: nothing about these other deaths. There's nothing like that. Um
Speaker 1: It's not entirely clear how everything became connected or who
Speaker 1: connected it. But what I find just particularly astonishing is
Speaker 1: that within just a few hours, by that evening, by
Speaker 1: the evening of September twenty nine, people were saying, there's
Speaker 1: something up with the Thailand all in these mysterious deaths
Speaker 1: that have been going on all around Chicago. Yeah and not.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll get into the dragnet they cast. But
Speaker 1: within a few days they had kind of solved everything.
Speaker 1: But who did it and how it may have happened?
Speaker 1: Who done it? Who done it? Um? So yeah, very
Speaker 1: quickly they figured out the Thailand. On. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of different stories, um on, Like you said, on
Speaker 1: who who was the first person to point this out? Um?
Speaker 1: One story is that a reporter for the City News
Speaker 1: Bureau in Chicago was doing the reporter thing and doing
Speaker 1: some deep diving and investigating and called up a deputy
Speaker 1: corner and said, hey, I think this is what's happening.
Speaker 1: They told the police. Another story is that too, people
Speaker 1: who didn't know each other kind of came together independently
Speaker 1: to um let people know. One was a fire captain
Speaker 1: name Philip Capitelli. I knew it. I knew you were
Speaker 1: going to do that. There was like a chance, you
Speaker 1: know why, because we got a lot of support from
Speaker 1: people that wrote in saying I'm Italian and I love it.
Speaker 1: Keep doing it. And only one guy who hated it.
Speaker 1: But ironically it was fire Captain Philip Capitelli and said
Speaker 1: so he uh, here here was his deal. His um
Speaker 1: his mother in law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the
Speaker 1: victim's mother, the first of the little girl, and she said, hey,
Speaker 1: would you mind looking into this because I'm friends with
Speaker 1: this little girl's mom and it's weird that she dropped
Speaker 1: at at and he's a fire captain and they're all
Speaker 1: connected to you know, the police, into the medical community.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows you want something done, ask a fire captain, um,
Speaker 1: because they'll bust into the room with an ax get
Speaker 1: everybody's attention. UM. So he's he's investigating. And then there's this, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a nurse named Helen Jensen and she I don't
Speaker 1: do you know why she was so into this case?
Speaker 1: Was no, no, no. She was the public health nurse
Speaker 1: for Cook County, I believe, Okay, so she had an
Speaker 1: official designation to investigate. Yes, but unfortunately no one would
Speaker 1: listen to her because this is n two and she
Speaker 1: was a nurse. Even though she was like a public
Speaker 1: health director, she was still a nurse and people wouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to her. And she recalled in an oral history
Speaker 1: I read about this that she was stomping her feet
Speaker 1: out of frustration, saying like, there's something wrong with the
Speaker 1: taile and all, like the tail and all is behind
Speaker 1: all this, and people wouldn't listen to her. Supposedly, she
Speaker 1: and Philip got together and um joined forces, and I
Speaker 1: guess we're able to convince everybody that no, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with the with the taile and all. And by
Speaker 1: this time people started talking and you know, the the
Speaker 1: idea that Michael Shaffer had identified tail and all. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was the same day or the
Speaker 1: day after something like that, but all this is within
Speaker 1: a span of thirty six forty eight hours. TOPS said,
Speaker 1: all of this is going on, that the dots are
Speaker 1: being connected, right, So, uh, then what follows is um
Speaker 1: Cook County's Deputy Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Edmund Donohue holds
Speaker 1: a pressor. I've either watched this one or one of
Speaker 1: the other ones, Like I remember specifically seeing this press
Speaker 1: conference on the news, probably saw Jane Burns. That would
Speaker 1: have been the national wide when I guess yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was like, how would that have been nationwide? And
Speaker 1: then I looked it up. W g N was a
Speaker 1: superstation starting in night. Oh you know it, man, So
Speaker 1: everybody saw it because wg N could broadcast nationwide. By
Speaker 1: I watched Cubs games Kid just because it was on.
Speaker 1: That was it like that embraced games were all you
Speaker 1: can So Dr Donohue Um has a pressor a local
Speaker 1: pressor Um, of course there is panic initially. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: scares the s out of everybody because he comes out
Speaker 1: of nowhere and says stop taking the tile and all.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah sure, and so anyone, I mean, imagine how
Speaker 1: many people in Chicago had taken tile and all within
Speaker 1: two hours of that press conference and are thinking like
Speaker 1: should I go to the hospital? Right And as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, Um, the poison control lines for basically
Speaker 1: every in every city where somebody saw this started to
Speaker 1: light up right after that, and people are like, I
Speaker 1: just took tile in all my k or gave my kid.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? And the the what came to be.
Speaker 1: The pat response was, if you are still standing and
Speaker 1: talking to us, you're probably okay, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a double edged sword, right, It's like, don't worry, you
Speaker 1: die super fast kind of so just relax. So just
Speaker 1: hold the line for five minutes and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come back and check on you. And if you're still talking,
Speaker 1: you're fine. Oh man, um, alright, So then the Chicago
Speaker 1: Mayor's office gets involved, Like you said, Mayor Jane Byrne,
Speaker 1: she gets says, you know, print a bunch of flyers,
Speaker 1: print them in a bunch of languages, maybe on Golden
Speaker 1: Rod and corn flower blue. Sure, why not really catch
Speaker 1: people's attention? Uh? That she had police drive through um
Speaker 1: with loudspeakers on their car, basically saying like, don't take
Speaker 1: tile in all, re enacting that scene from The Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1: Whether I was thinking Slacker and that's funny, two different movies.
Speaker 1: But do you remember they're driving through in the police
Speaker 1: carver with the loudspeaker talking about their their show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same as like her, I don't remember, I don't. I
Speaker 1: guess I didn't make either. The end of slack Er either.
Speaker 1: It was in the middle ish there was no, dazed
Speaker 1: and confused. H oh, just different movies. Um, so they're
Speaker 1: they're posting flyers, cops are driving around blaring it through
Speaker 1: neighborhoods uh. And then she has a press conference, she
Speaker 1: has all Thailand all removed from the Chicago area. She
Speaker 1: calls for it. Well, sure she didn't go around with
Speaker 1: her her basket, right, No, I'm not a hundred percent
Speaker 1: clear if she was actually able to demand that the
Speaker 1: Thailand all be removed. I think she was more warning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I doubt if there was any law she
Speaker 1: could invoke. I wonder though, it seems afterward I would
Speaker 1: imagine that's you know, we'll talk about that later. So, um,
Speaker 1: the TV and the radio. You know, obviously everyone picks
Speaker 1: us up, not just in Chicago or the United States.
Speaker 1: It goes worldwide, and so you know there's people in
Speaker 1: Europe and Asia pulling Thailand all off the shelves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a big deal and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of attention lavished on this. There was a poll
Speaker 1: that was taken the next month in October that found
Speaker 1: that this was in cities all over the country, that
Speaker 1: found that respondents were aware of this tail and all
Speaker 1: poisoning story. Some some press agency like a news clipping
Speaker 1: service said that it's the number of the number of
Speaker 1: stories dedicated to it were second only to the number
Speaker 1: of stories dedicated the assassination of JFK. That's how big
Speaker 1: this story became overnight. And again one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why is because everybody took tail and all for everything
Speaker 1: all the time. That's just what you did. It was
Speaker 1: just something everyone took and that same product was now
Speaker 1: killing people. So the most chilling part of all this
Speaker 1: to me, and this is all chilling, uh, maybe the
Speaker 1: copycat stuff because almost immediately, um, copycat incidents has started
Speaker 1: popping up all over the country. Um, there were two
Speaker 1: seventy reports a product tampering in the month after thirty
Speaker 1: six were quote hardcore true tamperings. And that's what's the
Speaker 1: most chilling to me, is like, there were that many people,
Speaker 1: at least thirty six, let's go on the low end,
Speaker 1: thirty six people across the country that wanted to kill
Speaker 1: people and just saw an idea. I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: what I'll do now. I should have thought of that myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's scary, man, Yeah, what's what's scary? But
Speaker 1: also infuriating is that there's such terrible self starters that
Speaker 1: they had to be a copycat murderer in that, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like it's bad enough that they're
Speaker 1: trying to kill somebody, randomly kill somebody, anonymously kill somebody.
Speaker 1: They didn't even think of it themselves. That is a
Speaker 1: pathetic murderer right there. It's pretty pathetic. Put down Exceedrin
Speaker 1: extra strength eccterrian capsules UM were found poison with mercuric chloride. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that almost killed a man in Colorado. His name
Speaker 1: was William Sinkovich and he got He had liver and
Speaker 1: kidney failure, but he did survive. Uh. This one gets me.
Speaker 1: So more than one person thought, Oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: people spray and like drop things in their eyes and nose.
Speaker 1: I'll put acid in there. So tampered sin X and
Speaker 1: tampered vizine both turned up after they had burned people
Speaker 1: with acid. Chemical burn up your nose. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a bad one. So food was also on the list
Speaker 1: of things being tampered with UM, orange juice, chocolate milk.
Speaker 1: Very high profile incident with ballpark hot dogs. They pulled
Speaker 1: a million pounds of wieners off the shelves and ran
Speaker 1: them through a metal detector. Yeah, because this was a
Speaker 1: scare all of you know, the old urban legend of
Speaker 1: razor blades and Halloween candy. I don't Did they actually
Speaker 1: find pins and needles and things for sure? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: because I thought that had literally never happened. It hadn't.
Speaker 1: It was an urban legend that became true. But nothing
Speaker 1: in in the wieners. No, some boys I think in
Speaker 1: Detroit claimed to have found razor blades in their ballpark wieners,
Speaker 1: and like you said, a million pounds were recalled and
Speaker 1: then the boys were like, wow, we were just kidding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And ballpark, well we'll talk about how ballpark was treated
Speaker 1: after that. But they were put on shoulders and carried
Speaker 1: around for how great they handled everything. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of hoaxes. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of um tips called in about other tampering and it
Speaker 1: had to really like it. If the purpose of this
Speaker 1: was to induce panic and fear and terror, then it
Speaker 1: absolutely worked. Absolutely. Should we take another break? I think so, Man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and talk about the investigation. Stop, okay,
Speaker 1: chuck um. I also want to point this out Time magazine.
Speaker 1: You know how, I'm like super into uh like going
Speaker 1: back and reading contemporary news articles about an event this one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all over the place. But Time wrote
Speaker 1: about the copycat incidents back in two and they said
Speaker 1: that the copycats were trying to quote emulate their demonic hero.
Speaker 1: There's still unknown poisoner their demonic hero. That's what the
Speaker 1: journalists from Time decided to go with. That's funny, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean that seems like a very two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: thing to write. That's what I'm saying. I feel like
Speaker 1: we're reverting back to two right now. I guess. So
Speaker 1: after that intro of yours, I'm now convinced. So everybody's
Speaker 1: freaked out there there are whole towns that canceled Halloween
Speaker 1: because remember this happened like a month before Halloween, and
Speaker 1: everyone was very scared about candy tampering because of the
Speaker 1: urban legend in some places that turned out to be true,
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy. There are all these hoaxes, there
Speaker 1: are all these actual true product tampering copycats. People were
Speaker 1: freaked out and the cops needed to do something, and
Speaker 1: initially these seven different deaths in five different towns in
Speaker 1: the Chicago area were being treated as five different investigations. Um.
Speaker 1: That didn't last for very long. Within two days, by Friday,
Speaker 1: by the time Mayor Burne holds her press conference on
Speaker 1: w g n UM, what came to be called the
Speaker 1: Thailand All Task Force was formed. All five of those
Speaker 1: investigations got folded into not just local investigations, the FBI,
Speaker 1: the Illinois State Police, UM FDA of course, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: FDA was involved that, and then the whole thing was
Speaker 1: led by the Illinois District Attorney's office, who was the
Speaker 1: nominal head of the investigation. Yeah. So they figured out
Speaker 1: pretty quickly that um, you know, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: they cast their drag net. They come up with about
Speaker 1: a fifty mile radius of where all this stuff was
Speaker 1: bought and sold, and go investigate drug store after drug store,
Speaker 1: and they did find more more bad thaile in all that.
Speaker 1: I'm still sitting on the shelves thankfully. Yeah, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to skim past that. They found more
Speaker 1: talent all waiting to be bought, that's right, like just
Speaker 1: sitting there like hey, come by me. Within two days
Speaker 1: of of these first deaths, that these first murders, we
Speaker 1: keep calling them deaths. These were murders, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they name their their case there's they're always code
Speaker 1: names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty low
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Timers T Y m U r S
Speaker 1: short obviously for Tilent all murders. At the very least,
Speaker 1: the should have been a Z timers. Yeah, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: give it a little flavor, agreed. Uh. So the cops
Speaker 1: are um there. There was some confusion about how this
Speaker 1: went down because they're trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: did it happen at the factory, did it happen after
Speaker 1: the factory, what's the supply chain? Like that's that's huge,
Speaker 1: it's like the crux of the investigent. Yeah. Absolutely, Where
Speaker 1: did the tainting occur? Yeah, So they found out that
Speaker 1: all of the containers were from Lot number MC, which
Speaker 1: was pushed out in August. Again, this is the end
Speaker 1: of September. Uh, in states east, all states east of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi, plus the Dakotas, Nebraska, in a bit of Wyoming,
Speaker 1: just a touch of Wyoming for flavor, that's right, for
Speaker 1: that mesquite flavor. Uh. However, they were from different production
Speaker 1: plants and they were sold in different drug stores, which
Speaker 1: is weird. It's tough to wrap your head around that
Speaker 1: because it's the same lot, but they came from different plants.
Speaker 1: And it turns out Thailand has also a really weird
Speaker 1: convoluted distribution network. I think that's every company. I have
Speaker 1: a friend that works in supply chain management and I
Speaker 1: was like, huh, so supposedly they'll they'll take boxes and
Speaker 1: open them up and repackage them in smaller boxes, and
Speaker 1: it happens at like different different companies at different points
Speaker 1: around the country. It's pretty complicated from from a product
Speaker 1: from factory to your mouth, like what happens to kind
Speaker 1: of everything. Um, I would think simplicity would be safer much,
Speaker 1: you know, probably not cheaper, though you're probably right. So
Speaker 1: what they finally figured out was, here's what we think
Speaker 1: happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory.
Speaker 1: This stuff was not tainted in this supply chain. But
Speaker 1: this stuff was tainted it from the store and then
Speaker 1: returned back to the store. Right because these pills were
Speaker 1: sold in different stores, which is a big one because
Speaker 1: not only could it have been like part of the factory,
Speaker 1: it could have been one of the local stores distribution
Speaker 1: centers where there was somebody messing with it. But since
Speaker 1: they were sold in Jewel food stores and Walgreens and
Speaker 1: other places to around the Chicago area, that didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. It couldn't have just been like the Jewel
Speaker 1: distribution center. And also because they were coming from different
Speaker 1: production plants, it really couldn't have been the production plant
Speaker 1: or the factory where it came from. It had to be,
Speaker 1: like you said, happening at the stores. Yeah, And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of initial theories. You know, was it
Speaker 1: someone who like a former disgruntled employee of Johnson and Johnson?
Speaker 1: Was it someone uh? Was it it just a serial
Speaker 1: killer who just picked tail on all and wanted to
Speaker 1: randomly kill people, Right, And this is that's weird, that's
Speaker 1: a weird idea at the time, like now it just
Speaker 1: seems normal, like yeah, probably, but this but this was
Speaker 1: two years before the Sanya Cidro McDonald's massacre, which is
Speaker 1: one of the very one of the next random killings
Speaker 1: of people who just happened to be in the wrong
Speaker 1: place at the wrong time. This was kind of the
Speaker 1: first of that, but it was still so new and
Speaker 1: remote an alien that that's that didn't seem like a
Speaker 1: realistic idea at the time. Yeah. Some of the other
Speaker 1: ideas they thought, um, maybe this was someone that was
Speaker 1: targeting a specific person or people and then randomly poisoned
Speaker 1: other people to cover their tracks. One of the weird
Speaker 1: um one of the weird theories that came out later
Speaker 1: after an spoiler alert, we now have tamper proof medicines. Sure,
Speaker 1: everyone's noticed. There was one theory that it was someone
Speaker 1: who had a financial stake and tamper proof technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw something like that too. I don't think there
Speaker 1: was ever a ton of credence put into that one.
Speaker 1: But the point is there were a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were flying blind basically because it was just such
Speaker 1: an unexpected, odd, random thing that we're basically coming up
Speaker 1: with kind of any idea they could think of. But
Speaker 1: the one that the cops settled on and the one
Speaker 1: that Johnson and Johnson also settled on too, because they
Speaker 1: went back and tested samples from Lot MC and found
Speaker 1: that there was no no, there's no taining of the
Speaker 1: of the lot that the their samples were pure. So
Speaker 1: the cops and Johnson and Johnson both decided they settled
Speaker 1: on what's called the mad poisoner theory. That somebody went
Speaker 1: around this fifty mile radius in in the Chicago area,
Speaker 1: UM in about seven hours is what the cops calculated.
Speaker 1: It would have taken either bought a bunch of tile
Speaker 1: and all and then took it back to their house
Speaker 1: and poisoned it, repackaged it, and then drove around and
Speaker 1: redistributed it, or went from store to store, went in,
Speaker 1: bought some tile and all to get out to the car,
Speaker 1: poisoned it, and then repackaged it and brought it back in. UM.
Speaker 1: But that it was local and it was specific to Chicago.
Speaker 1: That was the mad poisoner theory. And again why still
Speaker 1: no one has any idea why. Um. It could have
Speaker 1: been random, They could have been targeting somebody. It could
Speaker 1: have been a disgruntal Johnson and Johnson employee. But the
Speaker 1: main theory for the Thaile and all killings in Chicago
Speaker 1: is the mad poison er theory. Yeah. And do you
Speaker 1: know how they tested that the rest of that lot.
Speaker 1: They got Detective John Pinky McFarland who had the best
Speaker 1: drug Pinky and all of Illinois, and he went around
Speaker 1: and dipped that pinky in touched it to his tongue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said it's good. He's like, I can't feel my
Speaker 1: face right now. The guy's a legend. Yeah, he's his
Speaker 1: pinky is his pinky ring is so significant and barely
Speaker 1: lift his finger. He only lifts it to test drugs.
Speaker 1: I told you we'd find some jokes. So by mid
Speaker 1: October this is sort of the final bit of part
Speaker 1: one here. Um, there was another bottle that people that
Speaker 1: they found another tainted bottle that was purchased on September
Speaker 1: twenty nine, so it fit the bill. And it was
Speaker 1: a woman who uh was feeling bad and went to
Speaker 1: go get that tail and all, and her sister was like, no,
Speaker 1: I've got some buffering right here, just go ahead and
Speaker 1: take that. And the lady presumably said, well, I really
Speaker 1: prefer see a benefit, but I guess I'll take an aspirin.
Speaker 1: So yeah, her sister in law saved her by offering
Speaker 1: her buffering instead. She was steps away from dropping dead
Speaker 1: at a family gathering. Unbelievable. That is a good place
Speaker 1: to stop, huh. Yeah, So that's part one of the
Speaker 1: Thailand All murders or timer's with an S and we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back with Part two after this. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us in in the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com and check out our social links, or you can
Speaker 1: send us a good old fashioned email. Version two stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com. Radio Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For
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