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Speaker 1: In part two of our episode on the nineteen eighty

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Speaker 1: two Chicago Thailand All Murders, we look at the suspects

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Speaker 1: in the case and really zero in on one of them,

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Speaker 1: but to this day it's not clear if they were

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Speaker 1: behind it, and although there was a lot of weird

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Speaker 1: evidence around him, it's all circumstantial. I hope you enjoy

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Speaker 1: finishing up on the Thailand All Murders.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Steff. You should know, a production of Iheartradios

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Speaker 2: How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's

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Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's guest producer Josh over there.

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Speaker 1: Guess enough with the pleasantries. Let's get back to.

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Speaker 3: It Chuck Thailand All Murders, Part two, Park, if you

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Speaker 3: did not listen to the first part. In nineteen eighty two,

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Speaker 3: seven people were murdered by ingesting Thailand, all tainted with cyanide,

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Speaker 3: all on the same day, all on the same day.

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Speaker 3: America and much of the world is super freaked out.

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Speaker 3: Johnson and Johnson is the manufacturer, and part one of

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Speaker 3: part two has a deal with Johnson and Johnson and

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Speaker 3: how they handled this in a public relations sort of way.

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Speaker 3: Because there were and are a huge company. Like you

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Speaker 3: said in the episode one, they held thirty seven percent

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Speaker 3: of the market share, which was many hundreds of millions

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Speaker 3: of dollars of tile and all that they're selling every year.

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Speaker 1: And that's in nineteen eighty two dollars.

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Speaker 3: Right, which is like gazillions now. So it was a

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Speaker 3: very big deal for that company. And the way they

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Speaker 3: handled it is taught in colleges and PR classes all

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Speaker 3: over the world as exactly how to handle a big

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Speaker 3: public relations crisis.

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Speaker 1: Like this, Like it's literally called a textbook example of

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Speaker 1: how it's done.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they did a good job because as you remember

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Speaker 3: from the last episode, they found out pretty sure early

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Speaker 3: on that this had nothing to do with Johnson and Johnson, right, Like,

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Speaker 3: it wasn't in their factory, it wasn't in their supply chain.

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Speaker 3: That it happened almost certainly, and that it probably happened

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Speaker 3: by some crazed person taking them out of the store

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Speaker 3: or tainting them maybe in the store in the parking lot,

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Speaker 3: then putting them back on the shelf. But Johnson Johnson

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Speaker 3: can't come out on the news and say hey what

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Speaker 3: and us.

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Speaker 1: Right well at first though, and this gets overlooked and

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Speaker 1: left out of the college business courses and the PR courses.

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Speaker 1: At first, Johnson and Johnson was not in favor of

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Speaker 1: a massive recall.

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Speaker 3: Sure, because that looks well, it looks good in one

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Speaker 3: way but bad in another.

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Speaker 1: And they actually didn't recall anything until Mayor Jane Byrne

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Speaker 1: held her press conference on Friday calling for a recall

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Speaker 1: of the Thailand all in Chicago, and Johnson and Johnson

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Speaker 1: did a little face palm. Yes, we're recalling all of

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Speaker 1: the Thailand all in Chicago.

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Speaker 3: Yes, what she said.

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Speaker 1: Right. So by Friday, the thirty first of September, is

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Speaker 1: there thirty one in September? Was this October first?

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Speaker 3: I have no idea.

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Speaker 1: I think it was October first, anyway. By the Friday,

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Speaker 1: two days after the death yeah, the deaths, Johnson and

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Speaker 1: Johnson recalled all of the tail in all in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: And that should have been enough to them, that was enough.

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Speaker 1: But this PR crisis was so massive and spread so fast,

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Speaker 1: and like we said earlier in Part one, became global

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Speaker 1: almost overnight. It was not enough. Yeah, And so Johnson

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Speaker 1: and Johnson, within a week of the deaths recalled every

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Speaker 1: bottle of extra strength TIL and all in the United States,

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Speaker 1: which is worth about one hundred million dollars at the time,

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Speaker 1: took it back to their factories and destroyed it.

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Speaker 3: So they say, right, yeah, both Johnson and Johnson, right.

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Speaker 3: I wonder if one of them was like, know about this.

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Speaker 1: One of them said, Okay, I'll take all the states

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Speaker 1: west of the Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Somewayoming

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Speaker 1: and then you can take all the other states. That's

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Speaker 1: a part one, Joe.

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Speaker 3: They even got an award the Public Relations Society of America,

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Speaker 3: which is a real thing, I believe it or not.

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Speaker 3: They awarded them their Silver Anvil Award for how they

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Speaker 3: handle the.

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Speaker 1: Crisis the tailan All poisoning, that's right.

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Speaker 3: And high grade foods. Remember we talked about the bad

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Speaker 3: Wieners in the first episode. The ballpark Frank Zip supposedly

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Speaker 3: had razor blades but did not. That still created a

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Speaker 3: public relations crisis for them, even though they were just

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Speaker 3: these little jerks in Detroit, And they won the Golden Anvil,

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Speaker 3: which is one higher than.

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Speaker 1: Silver, because of how they handled the pr crisis brought

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Speaker 1: about by the copycats of the actual tailan All.

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Speaker 3: Crisis, which was in fact really brought about by two

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Speaker 3: jerk kids in Detroit, right, really, not even.

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Speaker 1: Copycats, not the tile in all crisis. I wonder where

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Speaker 1: those kids are today, probably in the Senate.

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Speaker 3: I bet one of them was the guy who did

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Speaker 3: our our lighting at our Detroit show.

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Speaker 1: It was a smoke I'll go some more smoke.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, guys, we did a show in Detroit a few

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Speaker 3: years ago and very famously we still use that as

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Speaker 3: the standard bearer for a bad crew bad. We had

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Speaker 3: a guy that looked like a former roadie for Uriah

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Speaker 3: Heap that was running like a light show basically during

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Speaker 3: the middle of our podcast, and like smoke came out.

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Speaker 3: We were like, we had to stop the show, almost

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Speaker 3: like dude, what are you doing?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the lighting was so bad that your highlighter

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Speaker 1: had turned like brown and you could no longer see

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Speaker 1: the words. And you asked him, we had to stop

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Speaker 1: the show, and you had to ask him to use

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Speaker 1: a different colored light.

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Speaker 3: Uh huh.

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Speaker 1: And his response, because you and me he was hanging

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Speaker 1: out and our friend Chris Bowman was hanging out in

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Speaker 1: the sound with the guy. His response, according to them,

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Speaker 1: they want smoke, I'll give them some more smoke and

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Speaker 1: we got some more smoke.

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Speaker 3: Like a smoke machine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Man, And people ask us why we haven't been back

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Speaker 3: to Detroit.

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Speaker 1: That's a big reason. It's a big reason, not the

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Speaker 1: only reason.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 3: Okay. So they won the Golden Anvil for the Wiener

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Speaker 3: pr moves McNeil Consumer Products, which is a subsidiary of

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Speaker 3: Johnson and Johnson.

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Speaker 1: They actually make Til it All.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they make the pills again. The way this all

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Speaker 3: this supply chain works is really convoluted, and like you said,

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Speaker 3: they didn't want to recall Johnson Johnson everything at first.

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Speaker 3: They want to kind of take it a little slower.

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Speaker 3: I guess, well, sure, because they'd found out the drugs

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Speaker 3: are actually fine, right thanks to Pinky McFarland.

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Speaker 1: This is one hundred million dollars worth of stock that

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Speaker 1: they were kind of feeling the pressure to recall. That's right.

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Speaker 1: So they were kind of reluctant at first, especially if

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Speaker 1: they were convinced that there was nothing wrong with the

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Speaker 1: rest of them.

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Speaker 3: They had no choice, no, that was the only way

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Speaker 3: to do it was to lose a lot of money

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Speaker 3: in favor of future gains.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. But even at the time, a lot of people

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Speaker 1: were like, this is it for tail and All. Sure,

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Speaker 1: the public has lost faith in Thailand All. So when

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Speaker 1: Thailandol recalled thirty one million, fifty count bottles of Extra

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Speaker 1: Strength tilent All and destroyed it all, there was a

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Speaker 1: chance that not only were they losing one hundred million dollars,

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Speaker 1: but that they were losing one hundred million dollars of

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Speaker 1: a brand that had already lost the public trust and

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Speaker 1: would never regain it. So which wasn't true. But yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily know that at the time. It was

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Speaker 1: still up in the air. So they it was basically

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Speaker 1: thirty one million sacrificial lambs that were killed to show

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Speaker 1: the public this taint of talent All has gone forever.

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Speaker 3: That's right.

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Speaker 1: Your chances of dying from taking Extra Strength tilent All

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Speaker 1: are now gone. You can go back to taking Thailand All. Now.

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Speaker 1: That was one thing that was a big gesture, which

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Speaker 1: is what it amounted to. It was a gesture half

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Speaker 1: of Johnson and Johnson. But they did other stuff too.

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Speaker 1: They started to do things right out of their reluctance.

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Speaker 1: Once they finally said there, we have to just go

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Speaker 1: with this to save face and to win back public trust,

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Speaker 1: they started to do things right, like including like setting

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Speaker 1: up a hotline sure putting out one hundred thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: reward for information.

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Speaker 3: Jump change, considering how much they had lost already.

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Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty two dollars.

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Speaker 3: Well still jump change it is, yeah, and that remains unclaimed.

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Speaker 1: It does they But because of all of this, Johnson

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Speaker 1: and Johnson managed to regain the public trust and actually

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Speaker 1: managed to position itself as a victim in all of this, Like, yes,

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Speaker 1: there were these which they were, I mean seven murder victims. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Johnson and Johnson. I don't think I ever tried to

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Speaker 1: push them out of the spotlight. But they also managed

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Speaker 1: to portray themselves as the victim of a mad poisoner

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Speaker 1: who may or may not had something out for them.

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Speaker 1: But either way, their brand was taking a huge hit

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Speaker 1: because of this, and they were a victim and were

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Speaker 1: able to generate public sympathy. Is part of the road

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Speaker 1: to regaining the public trust.

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Speaker 3: Right, which is why it's taught in PR classes. So

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Speaker 3: we'll take you back to nineteen eighty two if you're

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Speaker 3: if you weren't around then or old enough to be

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Speaker 3: taking OTC pills and pain relievers.

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Speaker 1: OTC is over the counter by the way. That's right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: you down with OTC. Yeah, you know me so dumb.

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Speaker 3: I love that you played along, though, I appreciate that

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Speaker 3: you could have made me feel stupid.

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Speaker 1: We've been partners for eleven years almost now.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd be when next month or this month? Yeah right, yeah, unbelievable.

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Speaker 1: So uh I'm believable, Not not in that way. Okay.

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Speaker 3: So here's how it used to happen. If you wanted

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Speaker 3: to take a pill, like a tile and all, you

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Speaker 3: would get your bottle, you would pop it open with

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Speaker 3: your thumb.

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Speaker 1: Well first, first it came in a little box.

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Speaker 3: Sure, but the box wasn't even glued shut. No, you

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Speaker 3: would pop it open with your finger. You would take

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Speaker 3: out the cotton in there, and you would take your pill.

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Speaker 3: It was that easy. There was no tamper proofing. No,

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Speaker 3: there was no The cotton was completely superfluous at this time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Cotton originally was introduced to keep bare aspirin like

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Speaker 1: the hard tablets, yeah, from getting crushed in transport.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And since they started using capsules and other stuff and

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Speaker 1: figured out how to strengthen tablets, there was no reason

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Speaker 1: for the cotton any longer. But because consumers expected it.

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Speaker 3: I know.

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Speaker 1: Still today you'll find cotton in your in your pills.

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Speaker 1: There's no reason for it to be there except because

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Speaker 1: the companies know that you want it to be there.

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Speaker 1: You would be weirded out if there wasn't cotton in

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Speaker 1: your pills.

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Speaker 3: Imagine the cotton lobby had something to do with that too.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'll bet they're not. They're not complaining, you know,

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Speaker 1: so big cotton.

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Speaker 4: They.

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Speaker 3: New, fancy otc pill should have Micromo doll in there, right.

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Speaker 1: It just comes with a pair of Meuni stuffed into

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Speaker 1: your pill bottle like these have been warm.

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Speaker 3: And so this was a time. It was a very

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Speaker 3: innocent time previous to this, where you could like and

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Speaker 3: you pointed this out. I remember seeing this in grocery stores,

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Speaker 3: like I remember seeing mothers and grocery stores opening food

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Speaker 3: products and smelling them.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that's what you could do, and then.

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Speaker 3: Closing it back and putting it back on the shelf.

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Speaker 4: Mate.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh there's a little mold in this one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I'll just leave it for the next person.

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Speaker 3: Forget poisoning like these they could be spitting in this stuff.

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Speaker 3: It was allowed.

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Speaker 1: That's just the way it was. Like, there was America

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Speaker 1: was innocent enough that that was fine. That's how we lived.

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Speaker 1: And that sets up this Tile in All Poisoning. It

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Speaker 1: really shows how much of a jarring experience it was

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Speaker 1: from America, because all of a sudden, like it's finally

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Speaker 1: sunk in in a couple of days, there's something wrong

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Speaker 1: with the tile in all. Somebody has gone out of

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Speaker 1: their way to poison the tail and all in order

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Speaker 1: to randomly kill people. And the reason they were able

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Speaker 1: to do this is because it's easy to get into

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Speaker 1: the tile in all, tamper with it, put it back,

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Speaker 1: and no one will be any any more. The wiser

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Speaker 1: and wait, it's not just tile and all. Milk doesn't

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Speaker 1: have anything that keeps it tamper resistant. Nei, there's orange juice, NEI,

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Speaker 1: there's cereal. Neither does cottage cheese. Nothing does. And America

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Speaker 1: forreaked out. And this is the reason why this Tile

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Speaker 1: in All Poisoning is considered widely the first incident of

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Speaker 1: domestic terrorism in the United States, because it was terrorism,

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Speaker 1: pure and simple. America was terrified. They were petrified not

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Speaker 1: only to take tail in all or any over the

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Speaker 1: counter medicine. Now they were petrified to drink milk or

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Speaker 1: give milk to their kids. Paula Prince, the flight attendant

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Speaker 1: who was the last one to die in Chicago, she

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Speaker 1: had a coworker who said, like, everything looked tainted. Now,

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Speaker 1: I was afraid to give my kid's milk. I was

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Speaker 1: afraid to give my kids cereal. If they could get

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Speaker 1: to the tail and all, they can poison anything. And

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Speaker 1: that was really emblematic of the attitude, the shock that

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Speaker 1: everybody went through. And as a result, within six weeks,

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Speaker 1: Tyland all said we got this covered.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I have a feeling they did this so

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Speaker 3: fast there had to have been this idea in place already.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. I saw a reference that it was.

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Speaker 3: And I imagine it was not done because they're like, well,

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Speaker 3: it's a lot of money, and why would we bother.

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Speaker 3: It's like, it's not like someone's going to poison the medicine, right,

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Speaker 3: And then that happened. So within six weeks they had

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Speaker 3: a box that was actually glued shut, so if your

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Speaker 3: little box had been opened, you would be able to tell.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was That was part one of three of

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Speaker 1: this tamper resistant packaging.

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Speaker 3: That little plastic seal over the top of the bottle

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Speaker 3: after you open it or no, no, no, the plastic is

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Speaker 3: over the cap on the outside of the bottle.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like the plastic foil.

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Speaker 3: And then the actual foil was over the mouth of

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Speaker 3: the bottle that you we all have to poke through

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Speaker 3: now to pull out the cotton and whatever still uses cotton.

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Speaker 1: None of that existed until the beginning of nineteen eighty three.

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Speaker 3: So all three of these are put in place within

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Speaker 3: six weeks. Not only that, they said, you know what,

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Speaker 3: we're going to introduce the caplet, which everyone knows now

283
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Speaker 3: it was we didn't have them back then. Everything was

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Speaker 3: a little capsule that you could literally pull apart, and

285
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Speaker 3: you could snort the tile in all if you wanted to.

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Speaker 1: Sure, I'm quite sure some people did.

287
00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:25,040
Speaker 3: I'm sure someone did. But the caplet is, you know,

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Speaker 3: a tablet coated with an easy to swallow a gelatine.

289
00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:32,080
Speaker 3: It's solid, it's I imagine you could tamper with it.

290
00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:35,000
Speaker 3: And even I even saw with all these things in place,

291
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Speaker 3: they said, nothing is tamper proof. But these measures really

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Speaker 3: went a long way to restore the public, you know, well,

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Speaker 3: like the good feelings about what was going on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, within about a year, Thailand all or Johnson and

295
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Speaker 1: Johnson managed to win the public's trust back in Thailand.

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Speaker 3: All that's hard to believe. Yeah, that was really fast, but.

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Speaker 1: It also goes to show like just how perfectly they

298
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Speaker 1: did everything from that from the time they ca admitted

299
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Speaker 1: to it on.

300
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I feel like I remember like commercials with

301
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Speaker 3: CEOs and stuff addressing the public. He became sake.

302
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Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. I want to say, Jeoffrey Beam.

303
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:11,480
Speaker 1: That's like a shoe brand.

304
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Speaker 3: Gabby Johnson, No, um, Bill Johnson, No, Jimmy Howard Johnson.

305
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Speaker 1: Yes, this, I can't remember his name, but he Jimmy

306
00:15:23,200 --> 00:15:26,520
Speaker 1: Johnson is way far away from that. But he became

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Speaker 1: a public face. He would, you know, go on to

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Speaker 1: sixty minutes and he talked to Dan Reather and take

309
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Speaker 1: Copple and all those cats like he he was out

310
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Speaker 1: there like showing how much the company cared. Yeah, and

311
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Speaker 1: it had had a huge effect.

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Speaker 3: And then in nineteen eighty three, Congress got involved. They

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Speaker 3: passed what they dubbed the Tail and All Bill, which

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Speaker 3: basically says, if you do something like this is now

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Speaker 3: a federal offense. A few years later, in nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 3: the FDA actually established guidelines for all manufacturers of any

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Speaker 3: product really to make it Tampa proof.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because it wasn't just the OTC manufacturers that started

319
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Speaker 1: doing this. They followed suit very quickly once Tail and

320
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Speaker 1: all came out with it, because they kind of had

321
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Speaker 1: to if they wanted to keep up with TIL and all.

322
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Speaker 1: But also the uh, the manufacturers of everything, like every product,

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Speaker 1: every consumer product, started putting their products in like tamper

324
00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:26,040
Speaker 1: proof packaging. Dial soap started coming wrapped in cellophane inside

325
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Speaker 1: the box.

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Speaker 3: To trap the chemicals in.

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Speaker 1: I guess, but also to show like nobody's injected this

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Speaker 1: with lie or something like that, although lie is used

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Speaker 1: in the making the soap, isn't it. I remember my

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Speaker 1: fight Club.

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Speaker 3: It's pretty funny someone injected soap into the soap. All right,

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Speaker 3: let's take another break and we'll come back and talk

333
00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:52,400
Speaker 3: a little bit more about the profile of the supposed

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Speaker 3: mad poisoner. Right after this.

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Speaker 4: Stop you know, stop stop, should know no stop?

336
00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:21,119
Speaker 3: All right. So this was a very big case at

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00:17:21,119 --> 00:17:23,159
Speaker 3: the time. Obviously, like we've been saying, it was a

338
00:17:23,240 --> 00:17:28,959
Speaker 3: landmark case. So of course you're going to get psychological profiles,

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00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:31,840
Speaker 3: which you know we should do one in profiling. Actually,

340
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Speaker 3: have we done that.

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Speaker 1: I don't think so, it'd be a good one.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because it always like seems like the trope in

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Speaker 3: movies and TV. But it is kind of like that.

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Speaker 1: No, it is a thing for sure.

345
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Speaker 3: It's not like they just make this stuff up. But

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Speaker 3: in the end they said, you know, this is probably

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Speaker 3: a man in his twenties or thirties who was sort

348
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Speaker 3: of a Jekyll and Hide type During the day, he's

349
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Speaker 3: very ordinary. He could be in the desk cubicle next

350
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Speaker 3: to you and you wouldn't even know it.

351
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Speaker 1: Every once in a while uses here him go more.

352
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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But deep in his in the recesses of

353
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Speaker 3: his brain, everyone, he's plagued with self doubt and has

354
00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:07,000
Speaker 3: an illusion that a random killing can boost a sense

355
00:18:07,040 --> 00:18:13,240
Speaker 3: of self worth, which is just sounds like a straight

356
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Speaker 3: out of a movie.

357
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Speaker 1: It sounds like a psychiatrist saying I want to be

358
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Speaker 1: on TV. Yeah, listen to me.

359
00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:23,719
Speaker 3: They also speculated, and this is just completely like conjecture

360
00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:26,760
Speaker 3: was that he had probably already taken his own life

361
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:28,960
Speaker 3: after the killings.

362
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Speaker 1: That was one specific person who was it that. Yeah, Yeah,

363
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:36,160
Speaker 1: it was I think like the medical examiner for Cook County.

364
00:18:36,680 --> 00:18:40,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, he probably already jumped off the bridge, so don't

365
00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:41,080
Speaker 3: worry about it.

366
00:18:41,200 --> 00:18:45,280
Speaker 1: Don't worry everybody. Yeah, yeah, he just threw that out there.

367
00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:47,199
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was to calm people or not,

368
00:18:47,359 --> 00:18:50,280
Speaker 1: but or maybe he's just throwing his two cents in.

369
00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:55,399
Speaker 1: But I think you kind of said it earlier. I

370
00:18:55,400 --> 00:18:57,239
Speaker 1: don't remember if it was part one or part two.

371
00:18:57,320 --> 00:18:59,600
Speaker 1: The whole things is blurred and become a haze by now.

372
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:05,200
Speaker 1: But no one has ever been charged with the Thailand

373
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Speaker 1: All murders.

374
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:07,960
Speaker 3: Yeah that's the ending.

375
00:19:07,960 --> 00:19:11,520
Speaker 1: But there has been There were a lot of suspects

376
00:19:11,560 --> 00:19:14,600
Speaker 1: that remember Thailand All set up a hotline and this

377
00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:18,080
Speaker 1: Thailand All Task Force, one hundred and forty person strong

378
00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:23,639
Speaker 1: task force investigating this, chasing down leads, taking calls on

379
00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:27,240
Speaker 1: the hotline. Thousands and thousands of calls that were coming in. Yeah,

380
00:19:28,040 --> 00:19:31,280
Speaker 1: they were trying to whittle those down into actual tips

381
00:19:31,359 --> 00:19:34,480
Speaker 1: that were worth pursuing, and out of all of them,

382
00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:39,680
Speaker 1: they deemed twelve hundred tips or twelve hundred leads worth

383
00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:42,760
Speaker 1: checking out. There's a lot of leads for a case,

384
00:19:44,160 --> 00:19:46,800
Speaker 1: even considering yet one hundred and forty people working them.

385
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:49,879
Speaker 1: And I read somewhere that they started out with like

386
00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:53,679
Speaker 1: twenty thousand suspects or something like that and whittled it

387
00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:54,679
Speaker 1: down to four hundred.

388
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:57,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, And sort of the sad part is as quickly

389
00:19:57,440 --> 00:19:59,760
Speaker 3: as they sort of figured a lot of this out

390
00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:02,960
Speaker 3: and had that one hundred and forty person task force,

391
00:20:03,520 --> 00:20:07,080
Speaker 3: they almost just as quickly within a few months, realized that, like,

392
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:10,159
Speaker 3: we don't have a very good chance at finding this person.

393
00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:11,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it became clear very quickly.

394
00:20:12,040 --> 00:20:15,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, they whittled that down. By the last week of October,

395
00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:17,359
Speaker 3: the task force was down to forty people. By the

396
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:19,800
Speaker 3: end of the year, it was down to twenty. And

397
00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:22,600
Speaker 3: it was a situation again in nineteen eighty two where

398
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:27,320
Speaker 3: you didn't have security cameras everywhere, you didn't have credit

399
00:20:27,359 --> 00:20:31,920
Speaker 3: cards and debit cards creating paper trails. It was a

400
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:34,600
Speaker 3: lot easier back then to get away with something like this,

401
00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:39,359
Speaker 3: to be completely unknown, to walk into a store, maybe

402
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:41,200
Speaker 3: slip some tilin all into your pocket, go out to

403
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:42,800
Speaker 3: the parking lot and come back in and slip them

404
00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:45,160
Speaker 3: back on the shelf. Yeah, if you're really easy.

405
00:20:44,960 --> 00:20:46,920
Speaker 1: You won't even go to the trouble of buying it.

406
00:20:47,840 --> 00:20:49,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's a good point, steal it and

407
00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:52,000
Speaker 3: then put it. But you know people were using cash.

408
00:20:52,119 --> 00:20:55,800
Speaker 3: If there were cameras in a place, they were probably

409
00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:59,280
Speaker 3: trained on employees. I worked at a golden pantry in College.

410
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:02,640
Speaker 3: Only camera we had was directly above us, pointing down

411
00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:03,479
Speaker 3: at the catch register.

412
00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:06,919
Speaker 1: It was the one at Alps in Atlanta Highway.

413
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:14,240
Speaker 3: Alps. No, ok, the one on the east side College

414
00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:17,760
Speaker 3: Station Road. I think, okay, yeah, very interesting job. That's

415
00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:19,640
Speaker 3: the one where I got a job. I needed a job.

416
00:21:19,680 --> 00:21:22,560
Speaker 3: I got a job at McDonald's and I showed up.

417
00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:25,240
Speaker 3: I took the one hour training video and they got

418
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:27,679
Speaker 3: my uniform number. I went home and I was supposed

419
00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:29,159
Speaker 3: to show up the next day and I was just like,

420
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:31,920
Speaker 3: I can't do it. I can't go work at McDonald's.

421
00:21:32,440 --> 00:21:34,360
Speaker 3: And I got the Golden pantry job later that day.

422
00:21:34,400 --> 00:21:37,200
Speaker 3: Here you go, which, hey man, sure, it's like sign

423
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:37,720
Speaker 3: me up.

424
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,440
Speaker 1: From Golden arches to golden pantry. That's like a rags

425
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:41,240
Speaker 1: of riches story.

426
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:43,320
Speaker 3: I was selling beer and cigarettes.

427
00:21:43,560 --> 00:21:43,840
Speaker 1: Nice.

428
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:44,720
Speaker 3: It was pretty great.

429
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:46,840
Speaker 1: You're like one for you, one for me.

430
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:52,199
Speaker 3: Oh, I would never do that, all right? Where was I?

431
00:21:52,320 --> 00:21:52,399
Speaker 1: Oh?

432
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was at Golden pantry. So the cameras trained

433
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:57,639
Speaker 3: on the register. They're not. You know, you could come

434
00:21:57,680 --> 00:21:59,840
Speaker 3: and go in a store and no one even knows.

435
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:03,240
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty two, right, it ops of nothing to

436
00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:05,320
Speaker 3: go on. Most importantly, no motive.

437
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:08,280
Speaker 1: That was a big one, because remember, this is just

438
00:22:08,359 --> 00:22:11,959
Speaker 1: a Jekylin Hyde type who you'd never suspect.

439
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:13,720
Speaker 3: Who's probably at the bottom of the Chicago.

440
00:22:13,359 --> 00:22:17,240
Speaker 1: River, right, who also is engaged in some senseless random

441
00:22:17,359 --> 00:22:22,359
Speaker 1: killings of people, anonymous poisoning killing, not even shooting. It

442
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,680
Speaker 1: just made zero sense whatsoever. So, like we said earlier,

443
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,520
Speaker 1: the cops figured out within about a month, within the

444
00:22:28,520 --> 00:22:31,160
Speaker 1: first month of the investigation, that this was they were

445
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:33,359
Speaker 1: not going to have a break in this case. But

446
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:36,400
Speaker 1: it's not to say that they didn't have some suspects.

447
00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: Some people definitely did kind of come to come to

448
00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:41,680
Speaker 1: the fore, but not many of them.

449
00:22:41,880 --> 00:22:44,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, but these two are really interesting sub stories in

450
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:45,600
Speaker 3: and of themselves.

451
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 1: For sure.

452
00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:51,479
Speaker 3: The first guy's name was last name Arnold.

453
00:22:51,240 --> 00:22:54,399
Speaker 1: First name Roger. That's right, I call him Richard, That's

454
00:22:54,440 --> 00:22:56,120
Speaker 1: all right, but for good reason.

455
00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,080
Speaker 3: Oh sure, because you said he was like the Richard

456
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,879
Speaker 3: Jewel of his day. Yeah, the Olympic bomber who was

457
00:23:02,920 --> 00:23:04,240
Speaker 3: not the bomber.

458
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:07,720
Speaker 1: Right, but whose life was ruined because he basically was

459
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 1: implicated as the Olympic bomber.

460
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:11,679
Speaker 3: Right, the same thing happened to this guy. Yeah, he

461
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 3: was one of the first named suspects. Forty nine year

462
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:15,480
Speaker 3: old guy.

463
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: So put yourself in the position. Okay, the media is

464
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 1: going berserk on the story. Everybody hears about it. It's

465
00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 1: a mad anonymous poisoner. And now all of a sudden

466
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: there's a name and a face associated with it. Who's

467
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: a suspect, But he's the first person named. Oh yeah,

468
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:35,439
Speaker 1: it's like people going crazy, like trying to get to

469
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:36,640
Speaker 1: this guy to interview him.

470
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:37,440
Speaker 4: Yeah.

471
00:23:37,560 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 3: I have my doubts about this guy, not that he

472
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 3: did that, but there are a lot of hinky things

473
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 3: that they found out about him. Sure, and then how

474
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 3: it all ended up. Yeah, as you're about to see.

475
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:48,600
Speaker 3: So he was a diy chemist.

476
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:49,680
Speaker 1: It's a big one.

477
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 3: There's a big thing right there, because into chemistry.

478
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: He said, he's a jekylin Hyde type who's probably into chemistry.

479
00:23:55,920 --> 00:24:00,159
Speaker 3: That's right. He was a dockhand at Jewel food just

480
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,440
Speaker 3: at a warehouse west of Chicago.

481
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 1: And Dual Foods. There are a couple of different jewel

482
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: foods are where the tyran was bought. It's like a

483
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:08,919
Speaker 1: grocery store of food market.

484
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 3: It's all checking out so far. So the cops look

485
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:17,879
Speaker 3: into him and go to his house. He has a book,

486
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 3: a handbook rather on methods of killing people.

487
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:25,159
Speaker 1: How to kill people A to Z. I don't know

488
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 1: if that's a title, but okay, that's a good one.

489
00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 3: He had five unregistered guns.

490
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: That's a big one.

491
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 3: He admitted to having cyanide once. Yeah, but he said

492
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 3: I threw it out like at least six months before

493
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:39,720
Speaker 3: these murders.

494
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 1: He's like, when were the murders again? Oh, yeah, six

495
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: months before that. That's fine, it was.

496
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:47,199
Speaker 3: And then his wife said, uh, you know they're investigating

497
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:48,959
Speaker 3: her and interviewing her. She was like, you know what,

498
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 3: Actually I did take some tyl and all and felt

499
00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 3: really sick and threw up one time. But again I

500
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 3: was it was probably due to overeating and it was

501
00:24:58,880 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 3: just that once.

502
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: As the fact of the podcast, So like, you.

503
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 3: Can't blame cops for saying this guy's a pretty good lead.

504
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can kind of start to see, like

505
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:09,640
Speaker 1: if you add all the other stuff together. And then

506
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 1: hear about the wife throwing up from tailand all we like,

507
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:17,560
Speaker 1: could you see this guy like toying with his wife,

508
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:19,679
Speaker 1: like testing it out on her, just enough to make

509
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: her sick, but not to kill her, to see what happened,

510
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,159
Speaker 1: you know, see if she would notice? Who knows. But

511
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:30,400
Speaker 1: the cops thoroughly investigated this guy and cleared him. There's

512
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: a there's not a person associated with the story that

513
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:37,160
Speaker 1: I came across who thought, he said, I actually think

514
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:39,640
Speaker 1: this guy did it. I didn't find one person who

515
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 1: thought Roger Arnold actually did it. But in very short

516
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:47,080
Speaker 1: order he proved that he was more than capable of murder,

517
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 1: because six months after he was cleared as a suspect,

518
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: he was brought in for the murder of somebody else,

519
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 1: a guy named John Stenishaw Stanisha. I would say, yeah,

520
00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: I'm going with that too, some Slovak or something.

521
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was forty six. He was a Chicago computer consultant.

522
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:08,479
Speaker 1: And that's saying something in nineteen eighty two.

523
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably. So, So here's what happened Arnold. There was

524
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 3: his bartender name or bar owner named Marty Sinclair, who

525
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 3: Arnold had thought had initially turned him into the cops

526
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 3: and ruined his life essentially, so he goes to kill

527
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 3: who he thinks is Marty Sinclair and it's actually this

528
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:30,919
Speaker 3: just completely innocent, random guy who gets shot point blank.

529
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 3: And so he in fact did kill somebody. He did

530
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:36,200
Speaker 3: because of what had happened to his life.

531
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: It was premeditated murder, even though it was the wrong person.

532
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:44,120
Speaker 1: He was definitely he created an intentional homicide. He killed

533
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: somebody on.

534
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:46,920
Speaker 3: Purpose mistaken identity killing though.

535
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: Right, and because of this, because it was directly related

536
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: to the Titlan All poisonings, John Stanisha is frequently considered

537
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: an eighth victim of the Titlan All killings. Yeah, kind

538
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: of like an honorary victim, right in this case. But

539
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: it is kind of appropriate that he just happened to

540
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 1: be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a

541
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 1: victim of mistaken identity. You know, it would have like

542
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 1: a slightly different ring to it if it had been

543
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 1: the right guy. The fact that it was the wrong

544
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 1: guy and that poor dude just happened to be in

545
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: the wrong bar and it happened to look like the owner,

546
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: that's just it just is perfect for this saga.

547
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder what Marty Sinclair thought about all that.

548
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: I'll bet he was not very happy.

549
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 3: Probably not, but probably also very relieved and probably also guilt.

550
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would guess there's a touch of that.

551
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 3: A range of emotions, I would imagine, yeah, all over

552
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 3: the place. So Arnold ended up serving fifteen years of

553
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:47,160
Speaker 3: a thirty year sentence, was released in ninety nine, and

554
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 3: died nine years later.

555
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,400
Speaker 1: Yep, So, chuck, Before we go on to the main attraction,

556
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: as far as the suspects go, yeah, I propose that

557
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: we take a break. Agreed. Okay, We'll be right back.

558
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 4: Stop you know, stop stop stop, should know no, stop?

559
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,120
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck. So this dude, there was basically two

560
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,959
Speaker 1: suspects in this whole case. Over all these years, there

561
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,640
Speaker 1: are basically two people. And again no one was ever

562
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:36,160
Speaker 1: actually charged with the murders. But this guy came awfully close.

563
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: And his name was James Lewis. It was it, it

564
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: turns out it was. But James Lewis came under the

565
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: attention of the Chicago p D and the Thailand All

566
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 1: Task Force when a letter showed up at Johnson and

567
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: Johnson headquarters and it was from allegedly the Thailand All Poisoner,

568
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: the mad Poisoner, and in the letter. It said basically like,

569
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: I've spent fifty so far, and the whole thing has

570
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: taken me about ten minutes per bottle, and I've already

571
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: killed seven people. I basically see no reason to stop.

572
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: Pay me one million dollars and then I will stop

573
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: the killings. And it hired.

574
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 3: He gave a bank account number, right, he said, wire

575
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 3: me this money.

576
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 1: Very very presiently. No, that's not the right word. Stupidly maybe,

577
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 1: but is it. No, it's not. So this letter has

578
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: a New York postmark, but the bank account is associated

579
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: with a travel agency in Chicago. And so the cops go, Okay,

580
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: this seems like it was dropped in our lap, but

581
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: let's go check it out. And they find the owner

582
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: of this travel agency that had closed up, had gone under,

583
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: and this guy is like, oh my god, you're kidding me.

584
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I didn't write this letter, but I

585
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: can guarantee I can tell you who did is a

586
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 1: guy named Robert Richardson. Robert Richardson, it turned out, was

587
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 1: the husband of a woman named Nancy Richardson, who had

588
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: worked at the travel agency, and when the travel agency

589
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: went belly up, Nancy lost her job and never got

590
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,720
Speaker 1: her last paycheck. Well, Robert Richardson was the type of

591
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: guy who would fixate on this, right, and was even

592
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: more so the type of guy who would write a

593
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: letter to frame the owner of the travel agency for

594
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:23,480
Speaker 1: the tailan all murderers in retaliation for that last paycheck.

595
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 1: He was that kind of dude, right, And so the

596
00:30:25,760 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: cops started sniffing into this Robert Richardson cat and they

597
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: figured out pretty quickly that Robert Richardson didn't actually exist,

598
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: that he was actually somebody else, a man named James Lewis.

599
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 3: Right. So when we joked earlier about is that his

600
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 3: real name, and you said it was, it was?

601
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:42,400
Speaker 1: It was.

602
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 3: His name was not Robert Richardson though, that was an alias.

603
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 3: So what they found out was that Robert Richardson was

604
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 3: a tax consultant. He and this is just a strange,

605
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 3: ironic twist, when he was twenty years old, he tried

606
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 3: to take his own life by swallowing aspirin.

607
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: Thirty six of them.

608
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's just neither here nor there. But an

609
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 3: interesting little side note.

610
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fact that, like most people don't have that

611
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: as part of their past. Yeah, it is interesting that

612
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: it came.

613
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 3: Up, so he had a pretty long rap sheet. He

614
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 3: was wanted by postal inspectors for a credit card fraud

615
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 3: in Kansas City. He was indicted in nineteen seventy eight.

616
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:25,680
Speaker 3: And this one is just mind blowing. Yeah, he's indicted

617
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 3: for murder after police found remains of one of his

618
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 3: former clients in bags in his attic, and he got

619
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 3: let loose because it was an illegal search.

620
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: But he was caught with the body of one of

621
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: his clients. He was dismembered in his attic with no

622
00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: good explanation as far as I've ever heard.

623
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, what explanation would be good?

624
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 1: Well, we were playing poker and one thing I.

625
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 3: Do another juggling swords and yeah. So his wife's real

626
00:31:56,760 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 3: name was lee Anne, the one who worked at the

627
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 3: travel agency and went unpaid. They fled Kansas City in

628
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: December of eighty one, and this was as US Postal

629
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 3: inspectors were converging on them about this credit card scheme.

630
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,120
Speaker 3: So they're like, just bad people.

631
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: Not the postal inspectors, No, no, no, the Lewises.

632
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 3: Sure great. Yeah, so they moved to Chicago. They changed

633
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 3: their names to Robert Nancy Richardson. He got that job

634
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 3: as a tax preparer. But then he was fired after

635
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 3: a violent outburst in his office against his co workers,

636
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 3: and then she lost her job, went unpaid. They left Chicago,

637
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 3: and this turns out this is what got them exonerated

638
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 3: from the title. All thing is, they left Chicago and

639
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 3: moved to New York before this.

640
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: Happened, right before those same month, right.

641
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 3: But if the theory held up that this person went around,

642
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: most likely in one day and did all this stuff,

643
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 3: then it couldn't have been them.

644
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: No, And here's why, because the cops had decided that

645
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: it was done locally. And one of the other things

646
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: that supported that local mad poisoner theory was because the

647
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: cyanide ate through the gelatin capsules eventually, so I had

648
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: a very very short shelf life before the whole bottle

649
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: just turned into a mush of cyanid powder and melted gelatin. So,

650
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: like you said, it had to have been done basically

651
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: the day before the twenty ninth. On the twenty eighth,

652
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 1: they could not, no matter how hard they tried, they

653
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: could not put James Lewis or his wife in Chicago

654
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: that day. They just couldn't. And for his part, James

655
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: Lewis said, yeah, I wrote this letter. I wrote the

656
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: letter of Johnson and Johnson framing that travel agency guy.

657
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: But I did not I did not poison the title.

658
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: In all. He's always been adamant about that. He's never

659
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: toyed around with it. He's never messed around, he's never

660
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: been coy he's always been adamant that he did not

661
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: poison that tile in all. Although the Talent All Task

662
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: Force tried to trip him up once, I guess to

663
00:33:57,680 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: just get this on the record that he done this,

664
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 1: but they asked him, like, in an interview, Okay, let's

665
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: say you had done it, how would you have done it?

666
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:09,959
Speaker 1: And he actually pulled an OJ. He showed them how

667
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: he would have done it.

668
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 3: Right.

669
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. He just didn't write a book about it. He

670
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: just showed him in an interview.

671
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:14,959
Speaker 4: Yeah.

672
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 3: And he defends this later on by saying it was

673
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,760
Speaker 3: just a speculative scenario. I could tell you how Julius

674
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 3: Caesar was killed, but that doesn't mean I was the killer, right.

675
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 3: I think the answer for me would have been I

676
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 3: don't know, man, Yeah, I'm innocent. I can't figure this out.

677
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:32,319
Speaker 3: But he's like, here's how I do it.

678
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for you to ask me.

679
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:37,359
Speaker 3: Though he's eventually found in New York City. He's at

680
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 3: the public library with a reference book, copying names and

681
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:46,320
Speaker 3: addresses of newspapers. I would imagine to send them letters

682
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 3: like zodiac style.

683
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, because so we got to say this. So the

684
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: cops figured out who James Lewis was before they found

685
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: James Lewis, and it became part of the national media circus.

686
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: While they were looking for James Lewis, this guy was

687
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: writing letters to newspapers. He called in a radio talk show. Yeah,

688
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: he was really relishing the fact that there was a

689
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 1: national manhunt out for him. Who Like, that's what I'm saying.

690
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,359
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you got to kind of feel

691
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: a little bit bad that this guy was kind of

692
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:23,760
Speaker 1: being railroaded into, you know, the rap for these murders.

693
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 3: After his extortion attempt, that's where the.

694
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:28,439
Speaker 1: Feeling bad forms is. You're like, oh, yeah, that's right.

695
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:30,400
Speaker 1: He totally brought this on himself.

696
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they hauled him out of the New York

697
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 3: Public Library. He was sentenced to ten years for extortion

698
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 3: attempt in ten years for credit that original credit card fraud,

699
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 3: and served thirteen years and lives in the Greater Boston

700
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 3: area today.

701
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:47,399
Speaker 1: So still today there, I think there are a few

702
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: people who are like, I could see this guy, maybe

703
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: maybe he could, he could be at Some detectives maintain

704
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 1: that the Tailanhall murder could have flown into O'Hare, rented

705
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: a car, done that circuit, flown or driven back to

706
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: here and flown out all in the same day the

707
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,920
Speaker 1: day before, but they could never put James Lewis in

708
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: Chicago at all that day. So he was cleared finally,

709
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: although he did serve two consecutive ten year sentences. He

710
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:19,719
Speaker 1: served thirteen of the twenty years for that credit card

711
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 1: fraud that the Postal Inspectors wanted him for and for

712
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: the extortion letter. And like you said, he lives in Cambridge,

713
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 1: mass now. But then in two thousand and nine, the case,

714
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: after basically having gone dormant in the early eighties, was

715
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:37,439
Speaker 1: reignited by the FBI because they worked up they thought

716
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: a DNA profile from the capsules, and they raided James

717
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: Lewis's house demanded a fingerprint and DNA sample. James and

718
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: Leanne Lewis fought it in court. The judges like, no,

719
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: you have to do this before leaving the courthouse. They

720
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: gave him the samples and nothing has come of it.

721
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 1: So I guess that means tacitly that the Lewises were

722
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:02,560
Speaker 1: cleared once and four all of the tailent all murders.

723
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, the DNA thing is an interesting

724
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 3: piece because they still have some samples of the cyanide.

725
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 3: I guess that the capsules have worn away by now

726
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 3: if it had the cyanide in there. But there was

727
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 3: and still his hope that DNA could could crack this case,

728
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 3: just like eight or nine years ago. The unibomber ted Kazinski.

729
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:30,279
Speaker 3: Is that a two parter? No, No, just one part

730
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 3: good podcast, So I.

731
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: Don't think so. That was a good episode.

732
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 3: He grew up in Chicago and his parents were living

733
00:37:37,080 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 3: in the Greater Chicago area in eighty two, and he

734
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 3: is the unibomber. So they said we might as well

735
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 3: get a DNA sample and talk to him, right, and

736
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 3: he was cleared. I don't think he was ever a

737
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 3: super strong suspect, no, and he probably would have admitted it.

738
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 3: So he was like, no, this is not me.

739
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: Right, So the unibomber has been cleared. That's right from

740
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: the talent on. But that remains. The case remains unsolved

741
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,560
Speaker 1: to this day. I think they also have a fingerprint

742
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: work up that they found on one of the bottles

743
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: and that and some DNA it is they're just sitting

744
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,760
Speaker 1: around with that. There's there are no suspects there. Every

745
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: suspect has been cleared and there's nobody on the horizon.

746
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: It's just an unsolved random series of killings that happened.

747
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:27,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're still working on it though. There's a police

748
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 3: sergeant named Scott Winkelmann who has been on this task

749
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 3: force for a long time and he says he thinks

750
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 3: is solvable and his department did just save a forty

751
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 3: five year old murder case cold case.

752
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: Man, if they solved this one, that would be, I know,

753
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 1: the biggest cold case ever solved.

754
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:49,240
Speaker 3: I think. I mean, who knows, But I could see

755
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:52,399
Speaker 3: maybe finding like a deathbed letter or something one day,

756
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 3: maybe like I don't know if they're going to catch someone.

757
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,439
Speaker 1: At the bottom of the Chicago River and hull them.

758
00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 3: Off to jail. But I could see the truth coming

759
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 3: out when day. I hope so for the families because

760
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 3: Monica Janis she's the niece of Adam Stanley and Teresa.

761
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 3: She said her family to this day, this is from

762
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 3: an article like last year, I think, said that they

763
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 3: have still not gotten over it. She said her grandparents

764
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 3: have passed now, but she said, literally every day for

765
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 3: the rest of their lives, they just cried about me,

766
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 3: the fact that they didn't know who did it. She

767
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 3: grew up and has been a therapy therapy her whole

768
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 3: life because there were all victims. You know that this

769
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress disorder kicks in sure where she grew

770
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 3: up fearing that any of her family members could die

771
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 3: at any time. Joseph Manus, her dad, says that he

772
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:48,760
Speaker 3: still has dreams like you know on the rag about

773
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 3: these murders. He said he had one recently where everyone

774
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 3: involved was in a room in the case and then

775
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,439
Speaker 3: two black men in suits and glasses were laughing about

776
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 3: how they got away with murder. Michelle Rosen, she's the

777
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 3: daughter of Mary Reiner. She has dedicated her life to

778
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 3: investigating this on her own and she doesn't agree with

779
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 3: the Loane the mad poisoner theory at all.

780
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:14,240
Speaker 1: No, this is interesting.

781
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, she thinks it had something to do with the

782
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 3: supply chain.

783
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: And that Johnson and Johnson knew this and covered it.

784
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 3: Up.

785
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 4: Yeah.

786
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,240
Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the things that people

787
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 1: who believe this point to is that Johnson and Johnson

788
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: recalled all of that tail and all thirty one million

789
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 1: bottles and then destroyed them allegedly without testing any of it.

790
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: So we will never know whether it was Pinky had

791
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: the day off right, whether whether it was beyond Chicago

792
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:44,919
Speaker 1: or just locals in Chicago. Seems like it took long

793
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: enough that other people would have died in that week

794
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: before the national recall was undertaken. But there was something very,

795
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: very interesting that was a PostScript to all this that

796
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,280
Speaker 1: does undermine that mad poisoner theory.

797
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:00,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just a few years later, in nineteen

798
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 3: eighty five, a woman in New York named Diane Ellsroth

799
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:10,359
Speaker 3: took two extra strength Tilon all capsules and died from

800
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 3: cyanide poisoning. But they found I mean, it's just completely unrelated.

801
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 3: Was it another copycat case well, or the original poisoner maybe?

802
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 3: So this is a different cyanide.

803
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,359
Speaker 1: Right, The cyanide was definitely not the same side from

804
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: the same batch. It was chemically different. But there was

805
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: another bottle found around the block from where Mary Elswroth

806
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: bought hers and Yonkers that did match that cyanide. So

807
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: there were two bottles of extra strength til and All

808
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 1: two years later in another state that had been tampered with.

809
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

810
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: The problem is this was after the three prong tamper

811
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: resistant packaging had been introduced.

812
00:41:51,160 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 3: Which means it was an inside job, right.

813
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 1: I guess because the tamper the thing had not been

814
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: obviously tampered with. Then Thailand all was never able to

815
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: play what happened?

816
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then within five days of her death, eight

817
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:08,840
Speaker 3: states outright banned the capsules, Thailand all capsules.

818
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: Right, and Thailand All, for its part, was like, we've

819
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 1: been trying to get everybody to take capl it's anyway,

820
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,160
Speaker 1: but they keep taking capsules, so we're making it.

821
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:19,360
Speaker 3: And then a guy wrote a book, right, Scott Bart's Yeah,

822
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 3: a former Johnson and Johnson employee wrote in twenty eleven

823
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 3: a self published book on the timel in All poisonings.

824
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,280
Speaker 3: And he said, you know what we were talking about earlier.

825
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 3: He's like, this supply chain is so convoluted, right, basically,

826
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 3: like it could definitely could have happened at any point

827
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 3: right along the way.

828
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:42,279
Speaker 1: And his idea is that that Johnson and Johnson knew

829
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,919
Speaker 1: that it was in their distribution network and they covered it.

830
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 3: Up self published book.

831
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta note that for sure.

832
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 3: I'm not knocking it, no, but it's noteworthy.

833
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: It does if there's like any hint of journalistic integrity

834
00:42:57,400 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 1: in US, that feels like we have to note that.

835
00:42:59,560 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 4: Sure.

836
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: So that's the tailanol poisonings of nineteen eighty two in

837
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: Chicago changed America, changed the world, but definitely changed America.

838
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: Was the end of some form of innocence that we

839
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:13,359
Speaker 1: still had.

840
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 3: Absolutely, if you.

841
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 1: Want to know more about the tail and Al poisonings,

842
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: go online. There's stuff all over the place and you

843
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,839
Speaker 1: can go down that rabbit hole and it's deep and wide.

844
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 1: Since I said that, it's time for listener, ma'am.

845
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 3: This is from Jin from Brunswick, Maine. Hey, guys, been

846
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 3: listening for several years and never thought I'd have a

847
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 3: never thought a perfect time would to write. End would

848
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 3: be related to synthetic farts. Remember the discussed episode we

849
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 3: talked about synthetic parts. It's a real thing. When I

850
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:48,720
Speaker 3: was in high school, my dad came across the stuff

851
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 3: online called liquid ass.

852
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 1: That's horrible.

853
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 3: Not a lot occurs, right, No, that occursion.

854
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 1: We can spell it out, though, sure, or I guess

855
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: maybe you should have said, like ask asterisk.

856
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:08,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. A good name for a product, though.

857
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 3: She said. He found it on a joke web website

858
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 3: and ordered some. And I have to tell you it

859
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 3: is the worst thing you've ever smelled. I can't even

860
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 3: describe it, and it makes you want to not breathe anymore.

861
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 3: The tiniest little drop is deadly. So of course I

862
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 3: took it to college with me to play pranks, and

863
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 3: boy did it backfire. I thought I was pretty funny

864
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:29,240
Speaker 3: putting a couple of drops in the radiator by across

865
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 3: the friend across the hall friends room, not eating, thinking

866
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:34,320
Speaker 3: and not even thinking about what would happen when the

867
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 3: heat turned on. Well, the heat turned on and the

868
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:40,439
Speaker 3: whole floor of the dorm was amazingly disgusting and made

869
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:43,360
Speaker 3: us just about gag. Smell took almost a week to

870
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:46,280
Speaker 3: finally go away, and I have not used it again

871
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 3: in the ten years since.

872
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: That's probably it's called learning your lesson.

873
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 3: But she still has the bottle.

874
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:53,240
Speaker 1: She's like, but I kept it right just in case.

875
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 3: Thank you for your interesting and entertaining podcast. This is

876
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 3: the first podcast ever listened to, and it's still always

877
00:44:59,840 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 3: on the top of my download list. Thanks thanks for

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Speaker 3: giving this twenty eight year old woman a platform on

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Speaker 3: which to tell a story of synthetic farts that is

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Speaker 3: not completely out of place.

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Speaker 1: Signed anonymous that is Jengreen. Thanks Jengreen, very brave for

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Speaker 1: you'd put your name on that one. Especially. I wonder

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Speaker 1: if you stepped up and said that horrible smell that

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Speaker 1: was my bad.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 1: If you have a great story about college pranks, we

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Speaker 1: want to hear about it. You can get in touch

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00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: with this via our social links by going to stuff

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Speaker 1: youshould Know dot com, or you can send us an

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Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of Iheartradios How

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Speaker 2: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.