WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: The Tylenol Murders 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:17.279 Thinking Sideways. I don't stories of things we simply don't 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:22.480 know the answer too. Hello everyone, and welcome back to 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:27.120 another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. As always, I 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:33.600 am Steve, joined by my favorite hosts. Yea favorite because 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:41.400 there's no other. Okay, well, once again, as always, we 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.879 have another mystery for you today, a really groovy mystery. 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.919 It's a groovy mystery. It's got death and everything. This 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.239 one was sent into us by Terry. She sent it 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.600 to us on the Facebook page, So thank you Terry. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.040 Because what we're going to talk about today is a 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:04.440 series of unsolved murders. Okay, well, the how is solved, 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.560 the who and the why is not. And for anybody 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.440 wasn't read the episode title, what we're gonna be talking 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.440 about today are the Thailand all murders which happened in 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:22.520 late September early October. So here's our story. On the 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:26.520 morning of September twenty nine, twelve year old Mary Kellerman 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.440 complained to her parents that she wasn't feeling so well. 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.720 She had a sore throat. She died later that day. 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:38.119 Sore throat. You're give me a minute, You're a little 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:39.840 out of the game there, sir, I think that's a 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:45.040 drink for all of our listeners who are yeah, you 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.080 know they're blowing it up. Yeah, the okay, back to 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:54.560 the story. Sorry. The same day, Adam Janie or Janis 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.680 are not sure. Janice, who was supposed to worker, died 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.720 of what appeared to be a massive heart attack. And 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:03.960 he was like nine, right, Yeah, he was a young 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:07.480 guy and his family, doing his family's will do they 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.400 circled the wag and everybody gathered at his house for 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:15.480 that that time of grief and go figure. A couple 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.680 of them got headaches because well it's a stressful time. 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.160 His brother and his sister in law both decided that 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:28.520 they take something to take the edge off. Yeah, and 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:33.480 they both died. His brother, whose name was Stanley, died 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.200 that very same day, and his sister in law, Teresa, 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:43.160 died two days later. Several days later, Mary McFarlane, Paula Prince, 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:48.359 and Mary Reiner each died unexpectedly. None of these people 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:53.640 knew each other. They didn't have anything in common. Well, okay, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:58.440 they had one thing in common. They had taken each 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:04.760 prior to their death an extra strength Thailand. All Yeah. 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.480 Mary Kellerman, the twelve year old girl, her parents because 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.800 she had a sore throat, had given her an extra 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.320 strength thailand All. I don't understand what this got to 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.600 do with them dying how to die. No, I don't 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.280 understand why anybody would like, first of all, give a 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.560 twelve year old extra strength anything. But it was for 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:25.280 a sore throat, like I think, I think that that 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.440 wasn't her only symptom. I think that was the main time. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.920 Adam Janice had taken the extra strength thailand All just 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.920 before he died, and his brother and sister in law 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.560 had also taken pills from the same bottle. Turned out, 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:45.680 each of these seven people had unknowingly consumed a pill 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:50.960 that was laced with potassium cyanide. That's not great. It's 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.240 not really something the body craves, not at all. It's 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:59.920 it's extremely toxic to the human body. What potassium cyani 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.600 does is it stops the tissues in your body from 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:07.240 being able to take up the oxygen that's in your bloodstream, 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:14.560 which means that you die from histotoxic hypoxia, which literally 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.920 is your body cannot absorb the oxygen. It's a lethal 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:23.360 dose of potassium cyanide is somewhere between two or three 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:28.640 hundred milligrams, which is a really really small dosage if 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.440 we try and put that into a frame of reference 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.520 for people to you know, think about it an everyday scenario. 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:40.520 Two d milligrams is about three to four grains of sugar. 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.039 That's not a lot, So it doesn't take a lot 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:46.839 of this stuff to kill you. Now, Once it was 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:51.560 determined by the investigators that tailing All was the link 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:57.080 between these people, panic broke out. People were throwing Thailand 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:01.279 all the way, stores were yanking it off of the shelves. 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:04.719 Johnson and Johnson who was the who is the parent 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:09.120 company of McNeil Consumer Products who made tailent All at 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.480 the time, And I honestly don't know if they're still 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:15.680 the ones it well, but I mean McNeil Consumer Products 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:17.640 was one who makes it, but I don't think they 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.680 do it anymore. I'm guessing they were in full blown 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.400 damage control mode trying to figure out what was going 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.000 on and why their product was killing people and how 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:34.159 this poison got into their pills. They quickly Johnson and 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.600 Johnson quickly put out a statement saying that the poison 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.920 could not have been put in the pills in their 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.839 manufacturing process, and it had to have happened somewhere after 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.200 the pills had left their hands. I think that's fair, 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.440 it is, and they but they had they had great 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.600 evidence because what they dis is they tracked the lot 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:03.320 numbers on the medication, the lethal doses of medication, and 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:07.039 they figured out that the lot numbers were from medication 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:10.279 that was produced at two different plants, one in Puerto 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.479 Rico and one in Pennsylvania. That would be really hard 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.520 to have it introduced to the manufacturing level. And besides 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:18.960 which that stuff would have wind up being distributed all 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:23.240 over the place, not just northeast Chicago exactly exactly. Because yeah, 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:25.240 and that's a good point, thank you, Joe. I don't 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.720 know if I specified here that this is all happening 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:33.040 in a suburb or a larger area of Chicago, kind 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.480 of around where the O'Hare airport is now. There's a 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.880 bunch of suburban areas, and that's where this is all happening. 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:44.039 This is probably a good point to stop the story 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.440 and explain something about Thailand. All for any of our 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.880 listeners who aren't young enough to know this, like me, 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:53.880 it's not just Thailand, all right, it's pills. Well, it's 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:56.400 pills yes, it's pills in general, but this a lot 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:00.080 of this is related to Thailand all a specific the 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.960 theres seed a menafin is what they were using. Is 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.839 there seeda menafin tablets or cablets I should say capsules 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.880 capsules capsules. Today, when you go into the store and 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.160 you buy any medicine and you look at the bottle, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:20.440 there's usually a couple of seals on the bottle. We're 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.120 talking about over the counter medica. Over the counter medication 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.200 usually usually the bottles in a box that's sealed, and 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.920 then there's a right well and and and the I 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.520 looked at the regulations on what has to have what, 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:34.840 and it's really too boring to go into. But typically 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:39.200 there's one to two layers of protection before you get 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:43.760 to the box. But the point is when you buy 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.320 over the counter medication now, typically there's some kind of 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:52.000 plastic shrink wrap seal on the lid. Maybe it's got 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.400 printing on it or perforations, so it's very obvious if 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:57.440 it's been removed or messed with. And then when you 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.320 open up the lid, there's some kind kind of seal 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.040 on the top of the bottle which he has to 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:08.120 get off, but it's you know, it's plastic or it's 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:12.720 foil or paper or something like that. That is what 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.760 we are used to. Didn't used to be that way 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.120 because in the up until that point, a bottle of 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:26.480 pills was sealed with the lid and you opened the 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.280 lid and there's that silly piece of cottony material and 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:36.160 that was it. Yeah, yeah, that sounds safe back in 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.200 the days when they were it's psychos poisoning your pills. Yeah. 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.120 I think it speaks to some of the how naive 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.439 industries were about people wanting to do harm to others 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.560 via their products. People just didn't think it would would 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.840 ever happen. People didn't do that kind of crap. Yeah, 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.360 until this this came along, and now that now it happens. 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.360 As we all know, there are copycats of this happens 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:04.560 all the It's hard not the ideas out there. You 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.440 pretty much have to seal everything you have to and 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.640 and all of the products that we get now that 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.920 are sealed they were. There was laws passed, ironically enough, 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.800 called the Thailand All Bill, which requires that be put 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:22.920 into place. We should also while we're talking about the medication, 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:27.440 we should probably talk about the pills themselves. As we 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.719 alluded to a little bit earlier, extra Strength Thailand all 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.360 and a lot of other over the counter medication came 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:37.080 in a capsule. It's not a solid pill, it's not 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.680 a gel coded pill. It's not what we're used to now. 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.120 It's like it's more like what you get vitamins, like 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:49.000 specific vitamins and the days yea, and lots of stuff 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.920 that comes in capsules. Still. Yeah, but it's it's not 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.520 nearly as common as it is. But for anybody who 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.560 doesn't know, it's it's two pieces that go together, almost 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:02.440 like a Russian nesting doll. They fit together and they seal. 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:07.160 I guess it's one inside the other the ends. They're 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:08.880 very easy to pull open. And you guys know what 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.880 these things are, yes, everybody, Yeah, well it They became 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:15.240 super popular because they were easy to swallow, unlike like 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.080 a dry as bird. Yeah. They're also you can a 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.000 lot of help nuts these days. You know, you can 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.240 fill your own capsules. You can just get whatever you want. 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.080 And that is the achilles heel of the capsule when 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.280 it comes to medication, is it can be opened in 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:32.920 the medicine can be taken out or in this case 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:39.320 added to exactly, which is a big problem. And that's 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.800 the reason that a lot of things now or gel 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.000 coats or whatever they are, so that these over the 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.959 counter medications can't easily be tampered with. I think it 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.520 also is worth noting that John's the way that Johnson 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:54.080 and Johnson handled this whole thing. I don't know if 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:55.360 we were going to talk about this or not, but 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.200 it's been praised as pretty much one of the best 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:02.080 corporation handlings of a huge disaster like this at all times, 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:04.800 and so I think that's probably worth mentioning a little bit. 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:10.200 Hill went really well, we will talk about it was 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.240 kind of disaster to them. Oh yeah, you're at the 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:15.720 same time. I mean, you know, I would I would 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.080 be looking at this and they'd be saying, Okay, I'm 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.440 pitching up my taile and all. And then and then 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:21.320 I go to the store to buy some other pain reliever, 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.120 and and I would say, no, Johnson and Johnson, But 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:27.400 then I think to myself, well, what about the other manufacturers. 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:31.320 I mean, it's just exactly that's and that's that's the 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.960 issue that we'll talk about in a bit here, because 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.040 we're gonna get into some of that copycat stuff. But 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.240 back to the story. So at this point in the 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.000 story they figured out that thailand All is the culprit, 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:47.640 and what we think is going was going on was 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.079 someone was taking the bottles of extra strength thailand All, 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:54.959 taking him out of the store, opening the capsules, adding 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:59.839 the potassium cyanide to them on the order of magnitude 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.040 of thousands of times a lethal dose. So this person 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.960 was dumping a lot of that stuff in there, then 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.880 putting them back together, putting them back in the bottle, 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:15.440 and somehow getting the bottle back on the shelf for 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:19.720 some other unsuspecting person to buy and consume. It wasn't 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.880 just pills, for it wasn't just a capsule full of that. 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.120 It also had a scene metaphine in it. I believe 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:28.120 that based on the fact that it was you know, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:33.199 two is enough to kill you, and it was up 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:37.000 to ten thousand times required dose, I have a feeling 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.640 that it was probably no medication at all. Sides That 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:42.360 would be my guest too, because I think a scene 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.000 of meta few tailen All specifically is typically five hundred 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.839 milligrams at least it is now. I don't know if 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.520 it was then that's one of the differences between Thailand 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:53.120 and appall. I don't know if you know this or not, 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.800 but advill is two d and fifty milligrams a pill 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.360 and thailan All is five typically, so you can take 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.800 more advil in like a dose, you can better whatever. 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.000 But anyways, I just thought i'd ask if it was 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:10.520 I'm pretty sure that it was nothing, but science hard 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.360 to get that much into a capsule. I'm pretty sure 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.400 that they were just dumping out all the medication. Probably 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.640 why not go for the gusto. It's not like the 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:22.679 person is going to taste it in their food or something, 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:25.080 because it is a pill you just swallow. It's kind 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.320 of surprising that they whoever was, managed to do all 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:32.319 this without poisoning themselves. Yeah, they had to have some 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:35.520 working knowledge of it. You've got to presume that they 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.160 knew how to handle this substance without killing themselves away 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.040 to get it or how to make it. Yeah. Well, 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.160 and there's some of that as as you know we've 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:46.680 been alluding to. We'll be getting into as always in 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.280 the theories, of course. But the police in the FBI, Yeah, 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:55.080 the FBI got involved, began collecting pain reliever from stores 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:59.839 all over Chicago. Um. Now, because as we said, they 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.920 were all in the same area of town. The investigators 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.920 focused their first do you know what suburbs of Chicago names, 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.600 the neighborhoods were there? There was five of them. It 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:21.280 was elk Grove, Windfield, Arlington Heights, Elmhurst, and Lyle. Those 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.160 were the neighborhoods or the suburbs where this happened. I 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:28.520 like that you can actually pronounce Lyle, Lyle. There's a 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.560 weird there's a weird ass in there. I don't know, 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.240 It's fine, it doesn't matter. Yeah, okay, cool. So that's 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:39.240 a good good thing to know. We don't know exactly 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:44.120 how many bottles of this medicine were tainted. There was 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:50.160 They found five stores that had tampered bottles, but I 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:52.800 say we don't know the exact number because it's entirely 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:56.520 possible that there were more, and people who bought them 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:00.240 didn't end up taking them because they chucked them through 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:04.920 this whole thing blew up. If they had held on 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.560 to them, they could have sold them years later on eBay. Well, 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:13.240 of course, because they knew eBay was coming. Uh. What 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:15.560 what investigators had to do? And this had to be 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.760 just a horrible job. Is once they had collected all 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:23.920 of those bottles, they had to test the pills, and 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:26.320 they had to test each one because it wasn't every 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.600 pill in the bottle was poisoned. It was a handful 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.720 of them were poisoned in there, which makes it a 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.000 bit of a game of Russian roulette, like a literal 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:39.080 game of Russian roulette. Yeah, exactly, if not with a gun, 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.240 so sorry, with a bottle of pills that are going 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.680 to kill you, yeah, or somebody. And so the Some 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:48.760 of the bottles had just one pill, some of them 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.200 had several. That's the way it worked. It was several 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:55.480 per bottle, yes, and it seemed to have varied. Some 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.560 would have two or three, some seemed to have five 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:01.840 or six. The accounting, I mean, it's thirty some years later, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.880 it's been rewritten. As always, we find different interpretations of 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.280 the numbers, so I'm not positive that's that's interesting about 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.360 the case of one of the first ones who died, 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:18.440 the girl. Now the second one, oh Adam Jess Janie, 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.600 yeah or Janie his name was pronounced. It's kind of 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:24.400 interesting that three pills came out of that bottle and 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:28.280 all three of them were poisonous. It's possible that more 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.720 than three pills came out of that bottle. It's possible 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:34.640 because they weren't all tainted, that other people took the 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.960 title at all and didn't suffer any el effects because 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.520 they didn't get the poison pilluck out. Huh. Well, anyway, 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:43.920 we can talk about that later. But well, no, I mean, 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.080 it's it's a it's a great point. It's just they're 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:50.000 not all gonna be poisoned. They were. That's a lot 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.240 of poison for somebody to sit there and painstakingly scoop 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:56.800 up and put into each pill, so it wouldn't be fun. 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:59.200 That was Adam Jannis married, by the way, I do 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:02.640 not believe he was, so it was just him. We 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.520 talked about this a little bit before, but the copycat 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:09.800 killings that happened because of this, this is another one 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.600 of those things where the media actually mahade the problem 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:19.479 worse because they told the world about this and exactly how, 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.720 exactly how it happened. Every yo yo with a grudge 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:30.639 poisoned pills. In the first month after this happened, two 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:35.359 hundred seventy cases of tampering. Oh my gosh, it was. 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.120 It was things as simple as somebody trying to kill 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.520 their spouse A lot of them did, or somebody they 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:46.200 didn't know, and then to cover their tracks, they all 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.800 fell followed the same path. I've got to cover my path. 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:51.240 So what do they do? They stick a bottle back 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.520 on the shelf and kill some other unsuspecting poor schlab. 0:17:56.080 --> 0:17:58.399 It's a great way to cover your tracks, it is. 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:04.400 But it's freak and terrible, is what it is. Obviously, 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:07.760 murdering your spouse is kind of bad, too, ye, Murdering 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:09.960 anybody is bad. It's kind of bad. A lot of 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.000 these people, though, were not nearly as crafty about it 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.320 in terms of covering their tracks, because a bunch of 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.040 them got caught the Feds. They don't screw around about 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:24.560 this anymore. The puzz that went into effect are so stern. 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:29.240 There's a woman, what is her name, Stella Nickel. She 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:35.720 poisoned Eccedrian capsules with cyanide and killed her husband, and 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.960 then to again to cover her tracks, she poisoned some 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:40.880 other pills and stuck him in the bottom, stuck him 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.720 back on the shelf. She killed a woman named Susan 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:47.159 Snow and for those two deaths. She was sentenced to 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:54.320 ninety years in prison. Two people. Yea, she could potentially 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.960 have killed a lot more. Yeah, No, it's I'm not 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.960 I'm not questioning that sentence at all. It's just a 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.800 great example of once they put that rule in effect, 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.920 that they went after people like like a bulldog as 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:12.240 well they should. Yeah, as Devin had talked about earlier, 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.199 Johnson and Johnson through this whole thing came out like 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:21.119 the shining star. They're they're referenced in business books and 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:25.040 all this stuff about how to handle a consumer situation 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:30.440 because they were the first to institute the packaging regulations 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:34.000 on medication. Actually they did it before it became a regulation. 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:38.240 They just started doing it. They willingly pulled their products 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:44.040 from the shelves, They offered refunds, they pulled the hospitals 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.399 loved to use thailan, especially extra strength thailand all and 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:51.520 they yanked it all out of the hospitals willingly. They 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.399 didn't have to at the time that they did it. 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.200 Eventually the FDA came in and said, get that crap 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.160 out of here, but they had already gotten it out 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:03.280 of the stores and the hospitals. Um after things had 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.719 settled down, and they went on a huge pr campaign. 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:13.439 They offered coupons, they had refunded people already, they were 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.879 they were advertising how they had all these protections on 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:21.520 their pill bottles. In the end, one year after this happened, 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.240 they had only lost ten percent of their market share 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.240 and they were at the top to beginning now and 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:30.440 as you know they are, they're still going strong now. 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.639 But you know, I really, really it would have been 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.359 right after this whole thing happened, you know, right after 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:38.560 the whole they're pulling them off the shelves. You know, 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:41.000 you know that James J. Stock had to be tanking. 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:43.879 What a great time to buy Johnson and Johnson stock. 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:45.679 It would have been, Well, when we go back in 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.119 our time machine, that's what we'll do. But yeah, and 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:49.840 that might be part of this. Maybe the guy that 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:51.600 did this did it because he wanted to make their 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:53.159 stock tanks so you could buy a bunch of it. 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.600 Maybe I'm not going to well, this is that we're 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.359 at the theory. So that is a possible theory that 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.400 somebody did it to tank their stock. According to Joe, 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:08.240 Let's do you have any you want to flesh that 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.240 outn't also just occurred to me just I would say 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:14.920 that the yeah, it could have been a time traveler. 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.679 I don't know, but I would say that the FBI 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.800 needs to go back and just interview every stockbroker who yeah, 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:27.680 this sounds good. Our first theory, most of our theories 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.479 are going to be about specific people. The first theory 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.560 is about a guy named James Lewis, and James Lewis 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.960 is the name that you're gonna see more often than 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.520 not when you do any reading on this. The reason 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:46.760 is is that he didn't do the smartest thing ever. 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:52.120 When the story broke and everybody's freaking out, what does 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:56.399 he do? He writes a letter to Johnson and Johnson 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.159 requesting a million dollars to make the Kelly stop and 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.800 by the way, don't bring the cops in, and then 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:09.359 he signed his name to it, signed Bond. He didn't Joe, 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:15.440 but Johnson and Johnson didn't play ball. They immediately turned 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:17.439 over the letter to the authorities. I believe was the 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:22.320 FBI who figured out from the postmark where he was. 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:29.160 He was in New York and they went hunting for him. Yeah. Well, 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:32.119 they also had connected him to another letter that they 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.840 were looking into, which was a letter that he had 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:39.480 sent to Reagan threatening the life of the president because 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:43.000 Ronald Reagan was a president at the time. If Reagan 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.480 didn't change the tax code, I probably should have sent 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:50.920 that to Congress. Huh, because the tax showed Yeah, that 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:56.080 that really makes sense. Well, Lewis and his wife, they 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.399 were living in a hotel. I think it was a 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:01.880 short term stay hotel kind of situation if I understand 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:07.719 it correctly. Yeah, when they got wind or somehow they 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:12.119 got wind that the FEDS were after him, and they 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:14.800 went on the lamb because they didn't want to get arrested. Weird, 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:19.280 I know, crazy, um Louis and his wife were on 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:23.560 the lamb. Eventually a tip came in eight weeks after 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:28.440 they disappeared and he was arrested. His wife shortly thereafter 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:33.240 turned herself in, and of course the FBI went after 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.040 him full force because they were sure that he was 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:41.560 responsible for poisoning all of these people. In the end, 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:43.560 the only thing they could pin on him was the 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:48.840 extortion attempt a New York and not Chicago. Yeah, that's 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:51.199 a very good point, and that does play into a 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:54.040 lot of the stuff about him. But he got sentenced 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:57.879 to twenty five years in prison. He served thirteen, but 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.040 he did get a I don't remember exactly what the 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:04.320 reason was he was parole, but he's a He's an 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:07.119 elderly guy at this point, and I don't know that 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:10.080 they thought he was a threat anymore. But he did 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:13.320 serve time for the extortion a loan. They're still trying 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.239 to hang the crime on him. They are because you know, 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:19.040 guilty of one crime or one is good enough for 0:24:19.160 --> 0:24:27.199 the other. Right, No, no, it's not. Um. Here's the 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:32.480 problems with Louis being the perpetrator of this entire thing. 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.000 He was in New York. He was in New York. 0:24:36.800 --> 0:24:40.160 He would have had to have somehow gotten to Chicago 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:45.439 to drop off all the poison pills. Well, we know 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:49.960 from his wife's co workers that he showed up every 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:53.640 day to have lunch with his wife for almost every day. 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.960 They don't remember him missing hardly ever, and it wasn't 0:24:56.960 --> 0:25:01.840 ever a consecutive set of days. Now out thank you Google, 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:07.640 I figured out it takes today twelve plus hours by 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:11.040 car to drive from New York to Chicago by today's cars. 0:25:11.240 --> 0:25:13.600