Speaker 1: Now Up is one of my favorite of our true
Speaker 1: crime episodes on the poisoning deaths of at least seven
Speaker 1: people in the Chicago area back in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: What makes this case so unsettling is that there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any connection whatsoever between the victims and
Speaker 1: the killer. The murderer just seems to have been a
Speaker 1: mad poisoner. Like most good true crime mysteries, this one
Speaker 1: is also unsolved. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
Speaker 2: How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
Speaker 1: There's Josh. Not me too, Why Chuck? Guest producer Josh
Speaker 1: is back in the house. Yeah, and there's a little
Speaker 1: Chuck in.
Speaker 3: Your pocket, Remember little Elvis.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say that you got that right, town.
Speaker 3: Of Oh Man, what a great sketch. Really?
Speaker 1: That was Nick Cage, wouldn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Man, did you ever see Mandy?
Speaker 1: Yes? It was terrible. I don't care what anybody else says.
Speaker 3: You hate it.
Speaker 1: Terrible, terrible movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nolan and I talked about it on movie Crush. He's
Speaker 3: seen it like four times, thinks it's the best thing
Speaker 3: ever come on. No, he was like people the love
Speaker 3: it or hate it? And now it's like, actually, I
Speaker 3: was kind of in the middle.
Speaker 1: Were you really Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I told him young Chuck, like twenty two
Speaker 3: year old college Chuck sure would have probably liked it
Speaker 3: a lot more. Yeah, But today Chuck was kind of like,
Speaker 3: I get it, Like, sure, sure parts of it were fine.
Speaker 1: Sure to me. Spending an hour doing character development, uh huh,
Speaker 1: but not successfully making you care about the characters just
Speaker 1: really irked me.
Speaker 3: Wow, you had structural issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really the big thing. I also thought
Speaker 1: Linus Roach was very very odd for casting. But is
Speaker 1: that which one was the main bad guy that called later?
Speaker 3: That was weird, very weird. I don't even know him, but.
Speaker 1: He's from law and like some other stuff you gotta
Speaker 1: get into. Wa see how what you're missing out on?
Speaker 3: That's becoming a bit.
Speaker 1: So did we start recording yet?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 1: Oh, I already welcomed everybody the podcast. That's right, So Chuck,
Speaker 1: we are. This is some true crime stuff we're getting
Speaker 1: into here, that's right. But I feel like we need
Speaker 1: to set the tone right because this isn't this didn't
Speaker 1: happen just yesterday. This happened way back in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two in Chicago, Illinois, And I remember this yea though
Speaker 1: I was like six at the time.
Speaker 3: It was one of my favorite years.
Speaker 1: Because of this, the opposite of that, right, mainly because
Speaker 1: of movies. What was so great about nineteen eighty two?
Speaker 3: Look it up? Man? Well, I was kind of hoping
Speaker 3: to tea Blade Runner?
Speaker 1: Oh really?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, yeah, that was the best movies.
Speaker 1: Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I
Speaker 1: was forty.
Speaker 3: That's not true, Yes it is? Oh really, yes, the original.
Speaker 1: The original Blade Runner?
Speaker 3: H Did you like it good?
Speaker 1: I like the second one too, you like?
Speaker 3: But they spent way too much time on characters. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I just did a little poking around about nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, and it was It was a good year
Speaker 3: for an eleven year old, but it was an uneasy
Speaker 3: time in America. Well for a bunch of awful things
Speaker 3: happened that year. And I don't know if it was
Speaker 3: any more or less than other years. But air Flight
Speaker 3: ninety crashed in into the Potomac River, remember that. No,
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. The plane crash in the river.
Speaker 3: Didn't hit a bridge maybe, but was there was like
Speaker 3: a daring icy river rescue. Oh really yeah, seventy eight
Speaker 3: people died. Though. That same day a metro train in
Speaker 3: d C derailed, killed three people.
Speaker 1: Geez.
Speaker 3: February was when Wayne Williams was convicted, and that was
Speaker 3: just the end of a lot of unease, you know,
Speaker 3: for years. Yeah, klaud savan but Law was found guilty
Speaker 3: of attempted murder his wife in March.
Speaker 1: I didn't make it to the end of reversal of fortune,
Speaker 1: so I honestly didn't know what happened to Klaus guilty.
Speaker 3: In June was the murder of Vincent Chen, who was
Speaker 3: a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two
Speaker 3: men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese and they
Speaker 3: were like stealing his their auto work. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: I know, right. And then July ninth, pan Am flight
Speaker 3: seven five nine goes down in Louisiana, kills all one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty six people on board, plus eight more
Speaker 3: on the ground. And then in September, early September, this
Speaker 3: was when I know, man, remember planes used to just crash,
Speaker 3: yeah a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that never happens.
Speaker 3: Now, not as much, but yeah, weird that we're recording
Speaker 3: this in the midst of more plane gratches. And then
Speaker 3: early September was when that paper boy in Iowa was
Speaker 3: kidnapped and never seen again. Johnny Ghosh, I don't know
Speaker 3: that one. That was a big deal too, because it was,
Speaker 3: you know, the paper boy, and there was this false
Speaker 3: story about a pedophile ring from politicians and that turned
Speaker 3: out not to be true, but he was never found again.
Speaker 1: So basically everything that's going on today is just a
Speaker 1: rehash of nineteen eighty two. It sounds like I.
Speaker 3: Just remember being about that age and they're just the
Speaker 3: nightly news sort of just being a horror show. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and not politically speaking, you know, like a real bad
Speaker 3: incidence is occurring.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, plane crash like just about at any age,
Speaker 1: like that'll bring you down if you see that on
Speaker 1: the news, for sure, Yeah, because you know, when you
Speaker 1: get on a plane, you think, huh, maybe this plane
Speaker 1: will go down while I'm on it, and that would
Speaker 1: be terrible.
Speaker 3: Although I wasn't flying at eleven.
Speaker 1: So all of those things you just mentioned sweep them
Speaker 1: totally off the table, okay, because come the end of
Speaker 1: September of that year, nothing else mattered. But what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about now, that's right. Nothing nothing came
Speaker 1: close to taking the over the national psyche like the
Speaker 1: deaths of seven people beginning on September twenty, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two in Chicago, Illinois. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And one of the articles I read about this, I mean,
Speaker 3: are we trying to keep it a secret? It's a
Speaker 3: show title, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they're going to have to figure it out.
Speaker 3: So yeah, go ahead, the tailan all murders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, you're like, oh no, no, but that's that
Speaker 1: comes up in part two.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is a two parter.
Speaker 1: Yeah as well, so buckle in everybody.
Speaker 3: So I was doing some research though when I saw
Speaker 3: one article that said something about, you know, the first
Speaker 3: domestic terror incident United States that nobody's ever heard of?
Speaker 3: Was like, what, who hasn't heard of this?
Speaker 1: A millennial wrote that headline.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to say, Josh on the way in here, yeah,
Speaker 3: I told him Thailand murders and he went, huh.
Speaker 1: He goes, what's the tailand all? You old coger, we.
Speaker 3: Should probably say what tailandill is?
Speaker 1: Huh oh okay, yeah, I guess just in case you
Speaker 1: are a millennially you've never heard of Thailand All, but
Speaker 1: tailand All was and still is an over the counter
Speaker 1: pain reliever. It's like you have aches and pains and
Speaker 1: apparently what's crazy? People would take tailand All whatever was
Speaker 1: wrong with them, right, because now you can go get like,
Speaker 1: you know, aspirin, and you can get advil and a leave.
Speaker 1: There was no leave back then. That was a nineties drug.
Speaker 1: There's way more over the counter pain relievers now than
Speaker 1: the we're back then. Back then, tailand All was basically it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a set of minifin, which is different than aspirin,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of people just think those
Speaker 3: are interchangeable.
Speaker 1: Right. The reason I believe Thailand All became so big
Speaker 1: is because aspirin upsets a lot of people's stomachs, right,
Speaker 1: tailand All does not, or it's not supposed to, And
Speaker 1: that's why it came out of nowhere and just took
Speaker 1: over the asper market. I think by nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: tailand All had thirty seven percent of the market. It's
Speaker 1: pretty good cornered. Yeah, yeah, almost half.
Speaker 3: Especially since like some of the other like aspirins have
Speaker 3: been around since you know, nineteenth century, right.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense then that when a little girl
Speaker 1: named Mary Anne Kellerman complained that she had a sore
Speaker 1: throat and wasn't feeling too good at like seven am
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty two, her parents said,
Speaker 1: just take an extra strength title and all and go
Speaker 1: back to bed man her sore throat.
Speaker 3: You imagine the guilt. Oh no, these parents feel.
Speaker 1: Well, don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to
Speaker 1: Mary Anne Kellerman yet.
Speaker 3: I think everybody knows. Yeah, she got up, said him sick.
Speaker 3: He said, take this. The father said he heard her
Speaker 3: go into the bathroom and closed the door, then heard
Speaker 3: something drop and went to the door, saying, are you okay,
Speaker 3: You're okay? No answer, opened the door and there she
Speaker 3: is on the floor. Taking to the hospital. But died
Speaker 3: very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably was when she went to the hospital. Was
Speaker 1: pronounced there and they suspected And this is just a
Speaker 1: little twelve year old girl of middle school girl into
Speaker 1: Jane Adams Middle School. They think she died of a stroke.
Speaker 1: That's what they thought happened too. They were just so
Speaker 1: baffled that they're like it had to have been a stroke.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing that can come on like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's seven am. Just the day is just beginning,
Speaker 3: and one atrocity has already happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a very bad day in the history
Speaker 1: of Chicago. September twenty ninth, nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and it started early. Adam Janis, who will
Speaker 3: detail his story, but put a pin in this one too,
Speaker 3: because he figures in even more prominently in a minute.
Speaker 3: But a little bit later that same morning, this gentleman,
Speaker 3: Adam Janis, he's twenty seven years old and lived in
Speaker 3: Arlington Heights, another Chicago suburb, and he died. And they
Speaker 3: think that this is a heart attack. He complained of
Speaker 3: chest pains after he had driven his daughter's neighbor home
Speaker 3: from school, said I'm going to take the day off,
Speaker 3: comes home, eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength
Speaker 3: tile and all that he bought from a local drug store.
Speaker 3: Collapses in front of his wife and by you know,
Speaker 3: a few minutes later, when the paramedics arrived, he was dead.
Speaker 1: Right, And again, like you said, they said heart attack
Speaker 1: because he'd been complaining of chess pains, which had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. Right, But just like Marian Kellerman,
Speaker 1: took an extra strength tilent all for a sore throat.
Speaker 1: He took some extra strength tilent off for some chest pains.
Speaker 1: This is just what people did back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's what complicated it a little bit at first,
Speaker 3: was that you know, if you take the tile and all,
Speaker 3: it means you felt bad already. So obviously you know
Speaker 3: they're going to be saying, like, wait a minute, chest
Speaker 3: pains or sore throat, Like, how does that figure in? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it didn't.
Speaker 1: Plus, also, what made this even more baffling is that
Speaker 1: Marian Kellerman was twelve and healthy. Adam Janis was twenty
Speaker 1: seven and healthy. Yeah, and all of a sudden, they
Speaker 1: just dropped dead. People don't just drop dead, no matter
Speaker 1: what you see on TV or in the movies or whatever.
Speaker 1: Dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing. When you're
Speaker 1: a healthy person, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: Next, we have Mary Reiner, same day, same day. This
Speaker 3: is still all on the same day. She's twenty seven
Speaker 3: years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had just
Speaker 3: come home from the hospital after having given birth to
Speaker 3: her fourth kid a couple of days before. Super Super Sad.
Speaker 3: All of these are obviously, but being just a brand
Speaker 3: new mom for the fourth time, it's just so tragic.
Speaker 3: And then by three forty five she was so ill
Speaker 3: she was rushed back to the hospital and again died
Speaker 3: very very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like Adam Janis collapsed in front of his wife,
Speaker 1: she collapsed in front of her young eight year old daughter.
Speaker 1: One of her children saw and Yeah, when she was
Speaker 1: taking the hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This
Speaker 1: is mid afternoon. Mary McFarlane was up neck. She was
Speaker 1: over in the suburb of Lombard and she worked at
Speaker 1: an Illinois Bell phone center where you remember, like you
Speaker 1: go get your phone, like the rotary phone, you know,
Speaker 1: you would actually lease your phone.
Speaker 3: I wasn't involved in that process, but we had them
Speaker 3: in our home.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well your parents knew that.
Speaker 3: Play figured they just bought that stuff.
Speaker 1: No, there was like a store where you would go
Speaker 1: it's like the phone company's retail store, and you would
Speaker 1: go and be like that pink one that's.
Speaker 3: Like smartphones today, kind of same model.
Speaker 1: Kind of yeah, I guess so, but this was with
Speaker 1: a big, clunky rotary phone and you had to pay
Speaker 1: extra for the extra long court. Well, Mary McFarlane worked
Speaker 1: in one of these stores, and at about four o'clock
Speaker 1: at the Illinois Bell Phone Center, she had a massive
Speaker 1: headache that just came on out of nowhere, and she
Speaker 1: went and back and got some extra strength tile and
Speaker 1: all out of her purse, took a couple of them,
Speaker 1: and within minutes collapsed in the store.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was young at well, she was thirty one
Speaker 3: years old, mother of two. And then remember I was
Speaker 3: talking about Adam Janis. A few minutes ago, his family
Speaker 3: goes to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there. He passes away,
Speaker 3: and so the family makes their way home to begin
Speaker 3: morning and just sort of trying to reconcile what had
Speaker 3: just happened. His brother, Stanley, he was only twenty five,
Speaker 3: and then his wife Teresa, who was only nineteen, are
Speaker 3: both just overcome and worn out and have headaches. So
Speaker 3: they're at Adam's house. They got to his medicine cabinet,
Speaker 3: get out the tile on all that he took completely unknowingly, obviously,
Speaker 3: and Stanley hits the ground, Foam comes from his mouth,
Speaker 3: his eyes roll back in his head. Everyone's freaking out,
Speaker 3: and a few minutes later his wife collapses and they
Speaker 3: call the ambulance. By the time the ambulances get there,
Speaker 3: I think Stanley died that day and Teresa somehow managed
Speaker 3: to live a couple of days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she hung on and I don't know if like
Speaker 1: her dose was lesser or what, but she survived for
Speaker 1: a couple of days after that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean my guess is that there just wasn't as
Speaker 3: much cyanide and the capsule she took, right, did I
Speaker 3: just give something else away?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you did it. But so Stanley took his titlan
Speaker 1: off first, and then Teresa's occurs, and one of the
Speaker 1: paramedics noted like Teresa was the one that called the
Speaker 1: ambulance out to come out for Stanley. And when you
Speaker 1: get there, they're both like on the ground, like what's
Speaker 1: going on, And one of the paramedics that everything that
Speaker 1: was happening to the guy happened to the woman like
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes later, right like she was just
Speaker 1: following him through this process of like basically systemic organ failure.
Speaker 3: And this is the same day that his brother had
Speaker 3: passed away.
Speaker 1: Yep, this is about five six hours, six hours after
Speaker 1: Adam Janis had died.
Speaker 3: Then finally I know this is all tough to go
Speaker 3: through everyone. We almost selected this as our next live show.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad we did.
Speaker 3: He'll be a good cause.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine trying to liven this up
Speaker 1: with some jokes?
Speaker 3: I thought the whole time I was like, nah, we
Speaker 3: can do that. But yeah, the more I got into it,
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, it's probably not good live material.
Speaker 1: Right, we should have a rule of thumb that any
Speaker 1: story that begins with the death of a twelve year
Speaker 1: old girl probably not live show material.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. So finally we have Paula Prince,
Speaker 3: Paula Jean Prince. This is a couple of days later.
Speaker 3: This is not the same day. This is on Friday evening.
Speaker 3: She was a thirty five year old flight attendant and
Speaker 3: she was found dead in her apartment after police responded
Speaker 3: for a welfare check that her sister called in saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I know she's a flight attendant and all,
Speaker 3: but no one knows where she is. Can you go
Speaker 3: check on her a welfare check up? And they finally
Speaker 3: found her and she was gone. Yes, very very sad.
Speaker 1: She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of
Speaker 1: extra strength tile and all still open. On the counter
Speaker 1: and she They looked into her receipts and found that
Speaker 1: she had purchased it on Wednesday, September twenty ninth.
Speaker 3: That's right. So at the end of this very short
Speaker 3: span of time in the Chicago area, we have seven
Speaker 3: people dead, and I feel like that's a good time
Speaker 3: to take a message break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 4: Stop, you know, stop stop stopping here, shouldn't no, no, stop?
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, So you said, Cyan, I how did you
Speaker 1: know that?
Speaker 3: Because I was eleven years old and I watched the
Speaker 3: nightly news, like all eleven year old stead He just
Speaker 3: called it right, just me and broke off. Dan Rather yeah, Copple, yep.
Speaker 3: Who else?
Speaker 1: That was it?
Speaker 3: Peter Jennings.
Speaker 1: He came a little later, but sure was he? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he came after somebody.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Cronkite wasn't still around, was he? Or
Speaker 3: was he? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I was.
Speaker 3: I was kind of into the news as a kid
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean that was that was where you
Speaker 1: got your news back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would watch the evening news. It's very strange
Speaker 3: to think about now, right with the up to the
Speaker 3: minute news cycle.
Speaker 1: So, oh yeah, I know how much more innocent things
Speaker 1: were back then.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: So remove yourself from the benefit of hindsight or the
Speaker 1: benefit of Dan Rather's insight, and put yourself in the
Speaker 1: shoes of the people in Chicago. Right, Yeah, these are five.
Speaker 1: These are seven different deaths I think, from five different
Speaker 1: townships in the greater Chicago area, including Chicago. Paula Prince,
Speaker 1: the last person to die, lived in Chicago. These people
Speaker 1: aren't talking. These people have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's just that there were five, seven separate, baffling deaths.
Speaker 3: You keep saying five. You want to fewer people to be.
Speaker 1: Dead, Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 1: My wishes aren't working though. It just so happens that
Speaker 1: the ambulance, the paramedics that showed up to attend to
Speaker 1: marry Mary Anne Kellerman, the first girl to die, they
Speaker 1: were just logging everything because it was such a baffling thing,
Speaker 1: and they logged her tail in all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, logged isn't collected.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, took it as evidence to maybe look into
Speaker 1: who knows sure, But they took the extra strength tile
Speaker 1: and all that she had taken, not thinking anything of it,
Speaker 1: but just basically throwing anything at the wall to see
Speaker 1: what stopped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure the dad was like, you know, she
Speaker 3: went in, took some tilan on, dropped dead, right, So
Speaker 3: it probably made sense, even though it's just tilent All
Speaker 3: to say like, well, hey, let's at least take this in.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that tilent all that right, you know, because
Speaker 1: that bottle of tail and All made its way into
Speaker 1: the hands of a medical examiner whose name was Michael Shaffer,
Speaker 1: and Michael Shaeffer tested the tile in All and was
Speaker 1: rather surprised to find that some of the capsules had
Speaker 1: not tile in all in it, but sixty five milligrams
Speaker 1: of potassium cyanide. Yeah, and it takes about fifty milligrams
Speaker 1: to kill a healthy adult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean some of them. I don't think they
Speaker 3: were all exactly the same, but some of them had
Speaker 3: been completely emptied of any aced of menifin and completely
Speaker 3: filled with cyanide.
Speaker 1: With cyanide right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was someone intent on for sure
Speaker 3: killing people.
Speaker 1: Yes, because cyanide is no joke. No, It's a really
Speaker 1: really small molecule and it normally attaches to metals outside
Speaker 1: of the body, which is why you have or minerals,
Speaker 1: I guess, which is why you have potassium cyanide right
Speaker 1: when it goes into the body when you ingest it. However,
Speaker 1: you ingest it, whether it's from a tile in all
Speaker 1: capsule or breathing cyanide gas like they used to use
Speaker 1: to execute people with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they stopped using it for executions because it
Speaker 3: was such a brutal death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very cruel, painful way to die. In
Speaker 1: the body. It detaches from its its mineral or metal,
Speaker 1: and it attaches to a protein in the body called
Speaker 1: cytochrome c oxidase, which doesn't sound like could be a
Speaker 1: big problem, but it turns out that that's about the
Speaker 1: worst protein that cyanide could attach itself to, because we
Speaker 1: really need cytochrome c oxidase to breathe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically it I mean, this sounds like such a
Speaker 3: cruel thing because it's just rapid cell death and it's
Speaker 3: not like your throat closes up and you can't breathe,
Speaker 3: like you're inhaling oxygen and you are technically taking breaths,
Speaker 3: but the oxygen is not getting in the cells.
Speaker 1: No, it's not because c or that cytochrome c oxidase
Speaker 1: is what helps transport the oxygen and allows the oxygen
Speaker 1: to be used for energy. So if the potassium is
Speaker 1: clinging to it, the oxygen can it just stays in
Speaker 1: the blood stream and it doesn't get used by the cells.
Speaker 1: And since your central nervous system is the most oxygen
Speaker 1: hungry system in your entire body, it.
Speaker 3: Does a lot of work.
Speaker 1: It starts to shut down first, and when your brain
Speaker 1: and your spinal cord starts shutting down, all sorts of
Speaker 1: things happen. Your lungs starts shutting down. Your heart, God
Speaker 1: bless it keeps beating for minutes after the rest of
Speaker 1: your body's shut down can so you're not technically dead.
Speaker 1: They're not sure exactly how long the pain and excruciation
Speaker 1: of dying from cyanide lasts, but they think you're probably conscious,
Speaker 1: in away and freaked out for about a minute at least,
Speaker 1: and your heart may continue beating for three or four
Speaker 1: minutes after that. So it's not a pleasant death at all.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, you're gasping for air, You're breathing in air,
Speaker 3: and nothing's happening. Like I said Stanley Janis, he was
Speaker 3: foaming at the mouth and his eyes rolled back in
Speaker 3: his head in front of his family. It's just like
Speaker 3: it's awful, like writhing on the floor, gasping for air.
Speaker 3: You're breathing, but it's not doing anything. It's just I
Speaker 3: can't imagine anything more horrifying.
Speaker 1: Right, because your central nervous system has kind of fallen
Speaker 1: out of its out of controller rhythm convulsions are usually
Speaker 1: a hallmark of cyanide poisoning.
Speaker 3: And then you turn bright red at the end of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your skin a cherry red, they said, because when
Speaker 1: your body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells,
Speaker 1: and the oxygen becomes depleted, your skin kind of turns
Speaker 1: like a rusty brownish red. But because it can unload
Speaker 1: that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red
Speaker 1: and your skin turns bright red. And then the other
Speaker 1: real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit
Speaker 1: like almonds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean not a bit. I mean these bottles
Speaker 3: supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond, And unless you
Speaker 3: know what that means, then you're probably not clued in,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I wouldn't have known. I opened a
Speaker 3: bottle of eiland on and it smelled like or almend.
Speaker 3: I'd probably be like, huh right, it's a nice smell.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, I like this tilant a. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: they have a new almond flavor.
Speaker 3: Awful.
Speaker 1: So, Michael Schaeffer, that medical examiner has just realized that
Speaker 1: this little girl has been poisoned, but he knows nothing
Speaker 1: about these other deaths. Yeah, there's nothing like that. It's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear how everything became connected or who connected it.
Speaker 1: But what I find just particularly astonishing is that within
Speaker 1: just a few hours, by that evening, by the evening
Speaker 1: of September twenty ninth, people were saying, there's something up
Speaker 1: with the tail and all in these mysterious deaths that
Speaker 1: have been going on all around Chicago.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll get into the drag net they cast.
Speaker 3: But within a few days they had kind of solved everything.
Speaker 3: But who did it and how it may have happened?
Speaker 1: Who done it?
Speaker 3: Who done it? So yeah, very quickly they figured out
Speaker 3: the tilent on. There are a couple of different stories
Speaker 3: on like you said, on who who was the first
Speaker 3: person to point this out. One story is that a
Speaker 3: reporter for the City News Bureau in Chicago was doing
Speaker 3: the reporter thing and then doing some deep diving and
Speaker 3: investigating and called up a deputy coroner and said, hey,
Speaker 3: I think this is what's happening. They told the police.
Speaker 3: Another story is that two people who didn't know each
Speaker 3: other kind of came together independently to let people know.
Speaker 3: One was a fire captain named Philip Capitelli.
Speaker 1: I knew it. I knew you were going to do that.
Speaker 1: There was like a ninety percent chance.
Speaker 3: You know why, because we got a lot of support
Speaker 3: from people that wrote in saying I'm Italian and I
Speaker 3: love it. Keep doing it right, And only one guy
Speaker 3: who hated it.
Speaker 1: But ironically it was fire captain Philip Capitelli written in
Speaker 1: and said no.
Speaker 3: So he uh here was his deal. His His mother
Speaker 3: in law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the victim's mother. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the first of the little girl, and she said, hey,
Speaker 3: would you mind looking into this because I'm friends with
Speaker 3: this little girl's mom.
Speaker 1: And it's weird that she dropped it at twelve and.
Speaker 3: He's a fire captain and they're all connected to, you know,
Speaker 3: the police, into the medical community.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows you want something done, ask a fire captain.
Speaker 1: I would sure, because they'll bust into the room with
Speaker 1: an axe. Get everybody's attention.
Speaker 3: So he's he's investigating. And then there's this, Uh, there's
Speaker 3: a nurse named Helen Jensen and she I don't do
Speaker 3: you know why she was so into this case?
Speaker 1: Was she just a no no? No? She was the
Speaker 1: public health nurse for Cook County I.
Speaker 3: Believe, Okay, so she had an official designation to investigate.
Speaker 1: Yes, but unfortunately no one would listen to her because
Speaker 1: this is nineteen eighty two, and she was a nurse, right,
Speaker 1: even though she was like a public health director, she
Speaker 1: was still a nurse, and people wouldn't listen to her.
Speaker 1: And she recalled in an oral history I read about this, yeah,
Speaker 1: that she was stomping her feet out of frustration, saying like,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with the tail and all, like the
Speaker 1: tail and all is behind all us, and people wouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to her.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Supposedly she and Philip got it, Teddy got together and
Speaker 1: joined forces, and I guess we're able to convince everybody
Speaker 1: that no, there's something wrong with the with the tail
Speaker 1: in all. And by this time people started talking. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you know the idea that Michael Schaeffer had identified
Speaker 1: Tylan All. I don't know if it was the same
Speaker 1: day or the day after something like that. But all
Speaker 1: this is within a span of thirty six forty eight hours, toss.
Speaker 1: It was really fast that all of this is going on,
Speaker 1: that the dots are being connected, right.
Speaker 3: So then what follows is Cook County's Deputy Chief Medical Examiner,
Speaker 3: doctor Edmund Donahue, holds a presser. I've either watched this
Speaker 3: one or one of the other ones. Like I remember
Speaker 3: specifically seeing this press conference on the news.
Speaker 1: Probably saw Jane Burns.
Speaker 3: That would have been the nationwide one, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was like, how would that have been nationwide?
Speaker 1: And then I looked it up. WGN was a superstation
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen eighty. Oh you know it, man, So
Speaker 1: everybody saw it because WGN could broadcast nation Why by
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: I watched Cubs Games kid just because it was on.
Speaker 1: Yep, that was it, like that embraced games where all
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man. So doctor Donahue has a presser, a local presser.
Speaker 3: Of course there is panic initially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he scares the s out of everybody because he
Speaker 1: comes out of nowhere and says stop taking the tile
Speaker 1: and all.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, sure, and so anyone. I mean, imagine how
Speaker 3: many people in Chicago had taken tiland all within two
Speaker 3: hours of that press conference, right, and are thinking like
Speaker 3: should I go to the hospital?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, the poison control lines
Speaker 1: for basically every in every city where somebody saw this
Speaker 1: started to light up right after that, and people were
Speaker 1: like I just took tile and all, am I okay?
Speaker 3: Or gave my kid?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: And what came to be the pat response was if
Speaker 1: you are still standing and talking to us, you're probably okay.
Speaker 3: Which is sort of a double edged sword. It's like,
Speaker 3: don't worry, you die super fast, right kind of, So
Speaker 3: just relax.
Speaker 1: So just hold the line for five minutes and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to come back and check on you. And
Speaker 1: if you're still talking, you're fine.
Speaker 3: Oh man, all right. So then the Chicago Mayor's office
Speaker 3: gets involved, Like you said, Mayor Jane Byrne, she gets says,
Speaker 3: you know, print a bunch of flyers, print them in
Speaker 3: a bunch of languages.
Speaker 1: Maybe on golden Rod and cornflower blue.
Speaker 3: Sure, why not really catch people's attention that she had
Speaker 3: police drive through with loud speakers on their car, literally
Speaker 3: saying yeah, like don't take tyl and all.
Speaker 1: Re enacting that scene from The Blues Brothers where I.
Speaker 3: Was thinking Slacker and that's funny. Two different movies.
Speaker 1: But do you remember they're driving through in the police
Speaker 1: car with the loud speaker talking about their show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same and Slacker.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I don't. I guess I didn't make
Speaker 1: it the end of slack Er either.
Speaker 3: It was in the middle.
Speaker 1: Ish, it was no days inconfused, huh oh.
Speaker 3: Just different movies. Okay, so they're they're posting flyers, cops
Speaker 3: are driving around blaring it through neighborhoods, and then she
Speaker 3: has a press conference. She has all Thailand All removed
Speaker 3: from the Chicago area.
Speaker 1: She calls for it.
Speaker 3: Well, sure she didn't go around with her.
Speaker 1: Basket, right, No, I'm not one hundred percent clear if
Speaker 1: she was actually able to demand that the tail and
Speaker 1: all be removed. I think she was more warning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I doubt if there was any law
Speaker 3: she could invoke.
Speaker 1: I wonder though, seems like you would afterward.
Speaker 3: I would imagine, yeah, that's you know, we'll talk about
Speaker 3: that later. Okay, So the TV and the radio, you know,
Speaker 3: obviously everyone picks us up, not just in Chicago or
Speaker 3: the United States. It goes worldwide and so you know
Speaker 3: there's people in Europe and Asia pulling Thailand all off
Speaker 3: the shelves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a big deal and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of attention lavished on this. There was a
Speaker 1: poll that was taken the next month in October that
Speaker 1: found that nine this was in cities all over the country,
Speaker 1: that found that ninety percent of respondents were aware of
Speaker 1: this tile and all poisoning story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some press agency like a news clipping service said that
Speaker 1: it's the number of the number of stories dedicated to
Speaker 1: it were second only to the number of stories dedicated
Speaker 1: to the assassination of JFK. That's how big this story
Speaker 1: became overnight. And again one of the reasons why is
Speaker 1: because everybody took tail and all for everything all the time.
Speaker 1: That's just what you did. It was just something everyone
Speaker 1: took and that same product was now killing people.
Speaker 3: So the most chilling part of all this to me,
Speaker 3: and this is all chilling, maybe the copycat stuff, because
Speaker 3: almost immediately copycat incidences started popping up all over the country.
Speaker 3: There were two hundred and seventy reports of product tampering
Speaker 3: in the month after thirty six were quote hardcore true tamperings.
Speaker 3: And that's what's the most chilling to me, is like,
Speaker 3: there were that many people, at least thirty six, let's
Speaker 3: go in the low end, thirty six people across the
Speaker 3: country that wanted to kill people and just saw an idea.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, that's what I'll do now.
Speaker 1: I should have thought of that myself.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's scary, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's what's scary but also infuriating is that there's
Speaker 1: such terrible self starters that they had to be a
Speaker 1: copycat murderer in that, right, you know what I'm saying. Sure,
Speaker 1: Like it's bad enough that they're trying to kill somebody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: randomly kill somebody, anonymously kill somebody. They didn't even think
Speaker 1: of it themselves. I know that is a pathetic murderer
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 3: It's pretty pathetic.
Speaker 1: Put my foot down.
Speaker 3: Etceterrin extra strength etcrin capsule were found poison with mercuric
Speaker 3: chloride and that almost killed a man in Colorado. His
Speaker 3: name was William Sinkovic and he he had liver and
Speaker 3: kidney failure, but he did survive.
Speaker 1: This one gets me so more than one person thought Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know people spray and like drop things in their
Speaker 1: eyes and nose, I'll put acid in there. So tampered
Speaker 1: CinEx and tampered vizine both turned up after they had
Speaker 1: burned people with acid. Chemical burn up your nose.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a bad one.
Speaker 3: So food was also on the list of things being
Speaker 3: tampered with, orange juice, chocolate milk. Very high profile incident
Speaker 3: with ballpark hot dogs. Yeah, they pulled a million pounds
Speaker 3: of wieners off the shelves.
Speaker 1: And ran them through a metal detector.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because this was a scare all. You know, the
Speaker 3: old urban legend of razor blades and Halloween candy. Don't
Speaker 3: Did they actually find pins and needles and things for sure?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, because I thought that had literally never happened.
Speaker 1: It hadn't. It was an urban legend that became true.
Speaker 3: Okay, But nothing in the wieners.
Speaker 1: No, some boys I think in Detroit claimed to have
Speaker 1: found razor blades in their ballpark wieners, and like you said,
Speaker 1: a million pounds were recalled and then the boys were like,
Speaker 1: we were just kidding.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and ballpark. We'll talk about how ballpark was treated
Speaker 1: after that, but they were put on shoulders and carried
Speaker 1: around for how great they handled everything.
Speaker 3: And you know, there were a lot of hoaxes. There
Speaker 3: were a lot of tips called in about other tampering
Speaker 3: and it had to really like it. If the purpose
Speaker 3: of this was to induce panic and fear and terror,
Speaker 3: then it absolutely worked.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Should we take another break?
Speaker 1: I think so, Man, we're gonna come back and talk
Speaker 1: about the investigation.
Speaker 4: Stop, you know, stop stop stop, No, no.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. I also want to point this out Time magazine.
Speaker 1: You know how I'm like super into like going back
Speaker 1: and reading contemporary news articles about an event. Yeah, this one,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all over the place. But Time wrote
Speaker 1: about the copycat incidents back in nineteen eighty two, and
Speaker 1: they said that the copycats were trying to quote emulate
Speaker 1: their demonic hero, the still unknown poisoner, their demonic hero.
Speaker 1: That's what the journalists from Time decided to go with.
Speaker 3: That's funny, I guess. I mean, that seems like a
Speaker 3: very twenty nineteen thing to write, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're reverting back to nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: right now. I guess. So after that intro of yours.
Speaker 1: I'm now convinced. So everybody's freaked out. There are whole
Speaker 1: towns that canceled Halloween because remember this happened like a
Speaker 1: month before Halloween, and everyone was very scared about candy
Speaker 1: tampering because of the urban legend. Sure in some places
Speaker 1: it turned out to be true, a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: There were all these hoaxes, there are all these actual
Speaker 1: true product tampering copycats. People were freaked out and the
Speaker 1: cops needed to do something. And initially, these seven different
Speaker 1: deaths in five different towns in the Chicago area were
Speaker 1: being treated as five different investigations. Yeah, that didn't last
Speaker 1: very long. Within two days, by Friday, by the time
Speaker 1: Mayor Byrne holds her press conference on WGN, what came
Speaker 1: to be called the Tailan All Task Force was formed.
Speaker 1: All five of those investigations got folded into not just
Speaker 1: local investigations, the FBI, the Illinois State.
Speaker 3: Police, FDA of course, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The FDA was involved, and then the whole thing was
Speaker 1: led by the Illinois District Attorney's office, who was the
Speaker 1: nominal head of the investigation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they figured out pretty quickly that you know,
Speaker 3: like I said earlier. They cast their drag net, they
Speaker 3: come up with about a fifty mile radius of where
Speaker 3: all this stuff was bought and sold, and go investigate
Speaker 3: drug store after drug store, and they did find more
Speaker 3: bad tile and all that are still sitting on the
Speaker 3: shelves thankfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't want to skim past that. They
Speaker 1: found more tailentol waiting to be bought, that's right, like
Speaker 1: just sitting there like, hey, come buy me. Within two
Speaker 1: days of these first deaths, that's right, these first murders,
Speaker 1: we keep calling them death These were murders.
Speaker 3: That's right. And they name their case. There are always
Speaker 3: code names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty
Speaker 3: low in my opinion. Timers T Y m U R
Speaker 3: S short obviously for title mall murders.
Speaker 1: At the very least, the s should have been a
Speaker 1: Z timers Yeah, you know, yeah, just give it a
Speaker 1: little flavor.
Speaker 3: Agreed. So the cops are there was some confusion about
Speaker 3: how this went down because they're trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: you know, did it happen at the factory, did it
Speaker 3: happen after the factory? What's the supply chain?
Speaker 1: Like, well, that's that's huge. It's like the crux of
Speaker 1: the investigation. Oh yeah, absolutely, Where did the tainting occur?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they found out that all of the containers
Speaker 3: were from lot number MC twenty eight eighty, which was
Speaker 3: pushed out in August. Again, this is the end of
Speaker 3: September yep in states east, all states east of the Mississippi,
Speaker 3: plus the Dakota's, Nebraska, and a bit of Wyoming.
Speaker 1: Just a touch of Wyoming for flavor, like the z for.
Speaker 3: That mesquite flavor.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: However, they were from different production plants and they were
Speaker 3: sold in different drug stores.
Speaker 1: Which is weird. It's tough to wrap your head around
Speaker 1: there because it's the same lot, but they came from
Speaker 1: different plants, right. And it turns out Tailanol has also
Speaker 1: a really weird convoluted distribution network.
Speaker 3: I think that's every company.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I have a friend that works in supply chain management
Speaker 3: and I was like, huh.
Speaker 1: So supposedly they'll take boxes and open them up and
Speaker 1: repackage them in smaller boxes and it happens at like
Speaker 1: differ different companies at different points around the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty complicated. It is from a product from
Speaker 3: factory to your mouth, like what happens to kind of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I would think simplicity would be safer.
Speaker 1: Much, you know, probably not cheaper, though, you're probably right.
Speaker 3: So what they finally figured out was, here's what we
Speaker 3: think happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory.
Speaker 3: This stuff was not tainted in the supply chain. But
Speaker 3: this stuff was tainted it from the store and then
Speaker 3: returned back to the store.
Speaker 1: Right, because these pills were sold in different stores, which
Speaker 1: is a big one, because it not only could it
Speaker 1: have been like part of the factory, it could have
Speaker 1: been one of the local stores distribution centers where there
Speaker 1: was somebody messing with it. But since they were sold
Speaker 1: in Jewel food stores, in Walgreens and other places too
Speaker 1: around the Chicago area, that didn't make any sense. It
Speaker 1: couldn't have just been like the jewel distribution center. And
Speaker 1: also because they were coming from different production plants, it
Speaker 1: really couldn't have been the production plant or the factory
Speaker 1: where it came from. It had to be, like you said,
Speaker 1: happening at the stores.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there were a lot of initial theories, you know,
Speaker 3: was it someone who like a former disgruntled employee of
Speaker 3: Johnson and Johnson? Was it someone was it just a
Speaker 3: serial killer who just picked til and all and wanted
Speaker 3: to randomly kill people.
Speaker 1: Right, and this is that's weird. That's a weird idea
Speaker 1: at the time, Like now it just seems normal, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably that's sad, but this but this was two years
Speaker 1: before the Sanuel Sidro McDonald's massacre, which is one of
Speaker 1: the very one of the next random killings of people
Speaker 1: who just happened to be in the wrong place at
Speaker 1: the wrong time. This was kind of the first of that,
Speaker 1: but it was still so new and remote. An alien
Speaker 1: that's that didn't seem like a realistic idea at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of the other ideas they thought maybe this
Speaker 3: was someone that was targeting a specific person or people
Speaker 3: and then randomly poisoned other people to cover their tracks.
Speaker 3: One of the weird one of the weird theories that
Speaker 3: came out later after an spoiler alert, we now have
Speaker 3: tamper proof medicines. I'm sure everyone's noticed. There was one
Speaker 3: theory that it was someone who had a financial stake
Speaker 3: in tamper proof technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw something like that too.
Speaker 3: I don't think that was ever a ton of credens
Speaker 3: put into that one. But the point is there were
Speaker 3: a lot. I mean they were flying blind basically because
Speaker 3: it was just such an unexpected, odd, random thing, that
Speaker 3: were basically coming up with kind of any idea they
Speaker 3: could think of.
Speaker 1: But the one that the cops settled on and the
Speaker 1: one that Johnson and Johnson also settled on too, because
Speaker 1: they went back and tested samples from lot MC twenty
Speaker 1: eight eighty and found that there was no no, there
Speaker 1: was no taining of the of the lot that their
Speaker 1: samples were pure. So the cops and Johnson and Johnson
Speaker 1: both decided they settled on what's called the mad poisoner theory.
Speaker 1: That somebody went around this fifty mile radius in the
Speaker 1: Chicago area in about seven hours is what the cops
Speaker 1: calculated it would have taken either bought a bunch of
Speaker 1: tile and all and then took it back to their
Speaker 1: house and poisoned it, repackaged it and then drove around
Speaker 1: and redistributed it, or went from store to store, went in,
Speaker 1: bought some tile and all, took it out to the car, poisoned,
Speaker 1: and then repackaged it and brought it back in. But
Speaker 1: that it was local and it was specific to Chicago.
Speaker 1: That was the mad poisoner theory. And again why. Still,
Speaker 1: no one has any idea why. It could have been random.
Speaker 1: They could have been targeting somebody. It could have been
Speaker 1: a disgrunel Johnson and Johnson employee. But the main theory
Speaker 1: for the tail in all killings of nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: in Chicago is the mad poisoner theory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and do you know how they tested that the
Speaker 3: rest of that lot. They got Detective John Pinky McFarland,
Speaker 3: who had the best drug pinky in all of Illinois,
Speaker 3: and he went around and dipped that pinky in, touched
Speaker 3: it to his tongue. Yeah, he said it's good.
Speaker 1: He's like, I can't feel my face right now.
Speaker 3: The guy's a legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his pinky is his pinky ring is so significant
Speaker 1: and barely lift his finger. He only lifts it to
Speaker 1: test drugs.
Speaker 3: I told you we'd find some jokes.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: So by mid October, this is sort of the fine
Speaker 3: bit of part one here there was another bottle that
Speaker 3: people that they found another tainted bottle.
Speaker 1: This is so crazy.
Speaker 3: That was purchased on September twenty ninth, So it fit
Speaker 3: the bill, and it was a woman who was feeling
Speaker 3: bad and went to go get that tail in all,
Speaker 3: and her sister was like, no, I've got some buffering
Speaker 3: right here, just go ahead and take that. And the
Speaker 3: lady presumably said, well, I really prefer seat of benefit,
Speaker 3: but I guess I'll take an aspirin.
Speaker 1: See. Yeah, her sister in law saved her by offering
Speaker 1: her buffer instead. You believe that she was steps away
Speaker 1: from dropping dead at a family gathering.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeap, that is a good place to stop hun Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's part one of the Thailand All Murders or
Speaker 1: Timers with an S, and we're going to come back
Speaker 1: with part two after this. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us in the meantime, you can go
Speaker 1: on to stuff youshould Know dot com and check out
Speaker 1: our social links, or you can send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned email. Nineteen eighty two version to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio.
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