Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should know, a production of five
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's guest
Speaker 1: producer Josh over there. Guess enough with the pleasant trees.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to it Chuck. Thailand All Murders, Part two.
Speaker 1: If you did not listen to the first part, seven
Speaker 1: people were murdered by ingesting Thailand, all tainted with cyanide
Speaker 1: on the same day, all on the same day. America
Speaker 1: and much of the world is super freaked out. Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson is the manufacturer, and part one of part
Speaker 1: two has a deal with Johnson and Johnson and how
Speaker 1: they handled this in a public relations sort of way,
Speaker 1: because there were and are a huge company. Like you
Speaker 1: said in the episode one, they held thirty seven percent
Speaker 1: of the market share, which was many hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars of Thailand all that they're selling every year,
Speaker 1: and that's right, which is like gazillions now, So it
Speaker 1: was a very big deal for that company. And the
Speaker 1: way they handled it is taught in colleges and pr
Speaker 1: classes all over the world as exactly how to handle
Speaker 1: a big public relations crisis like this, like it's literally
Speaker 1: called a textbook example of how how it's done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did a good job because, as you remember from
Speaker 1: the last episode, they found out pretty sure early on
Speaker 1: that this had nothing to do with Johnson and Johnson, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it wasn't in their factory, wasn't in their supply chain.
Speaker 1: That happened almost certainly, and that it probably happened by
Speaker 1: some crazed person taking them out of the store, tainting
Speaker 1: them maybe in the store in the parking lot, then
Speaker 1: putting them back on the shelf. But Johnson Johnson can't
Speaker 1: come out on the news and say, hey, wasn't us
Speaker 1: right Well, at first, though, and this this gets overlooked
Speaker 1: and left out of the college business courses, in the
Speaker 1: PR courses. At first, Johnson and Johnson was not in
Speaker 1: favor of a massive recall. Well, it looks good in
Speaker 1: one way but bad in another. And they actually didn't
Speaker 1: recall anything until Mayor Jane Byrne held her press conference
Speaker 1: on Friday calling for a recall of the Thailand all
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and Johnson and Johnson did a little face palm,
Speaker 1: and yes, we're recalling all of the Thailand all in Chicago. Yes,
Speaker 1: what she said, right, So by Friday, uh, the thirty
Speaker 1: one of September is their thirty one in September? Was
Speaker 1: this October one? I have no idea. I think it
Speaker 1: was October one. Anyway, By the Friday, two days after
Speaker 1: the death, the death um Johnson and Johnson recalled all
Speaker 1: of the Thailand all in Chicago. And that should have
Speaker 1: been enough to them. That was in a but this
Speaker 1: PR crisis was so massive and spread so fast, and
Speaker 1: like we said earlier in Part one, became global almost overnight.
Speaker 1: It was not enough. And so Johnson and Johnson, within
Speaker 1: a week of the deaths, recalled every bottle of extra
Speaker 1: strength taile and all in the United States, which is
Speaker 1: worth about a hundred million dollars at the time, took
Speaker 1: it back to their factories and destroyed it. So they say, right, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: both Johnson and Johnson, right. I wonder if one of
Speaker 1: them was like, I don't know about this. They're one
Speaker 1: of them said Okay, I'll take all the states west
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and some Wyoming,
Speaker 1: and then you take all the other states. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a Part one joke. Uh, they even got an
Speaker 1: award the Public Relations Society of America, which is a
Speaker 1: real thing, I believe it or not. They awarded them
Speaker 1: their Silver and bul award. Or how they handle the
Speaker 1: crisis the Thailand All poisoning, that's right, and um high
Speaker 1: grade foods. Remember we talked about the bad Wieners in
Speaker 1: the first episode the ballpark. Frank sip Um supposedly had
Speaker 1: razor blades but did not. That still created a public
Speaker 1: relations crisis for them, even though they were just these
Speaker 1: little jerks in Detroit. And uh, they won the Golden Anvil,
Speaker 1: which is one higher than silver because of how they
Speaker 1: handled the pr crisis brought about by the copycats of
Speaker 1: the actual taile in All crisis, which was in fact
Speaker 1: really brought about by two jerk kids in Detroit really
Speaker 1: not even copycats, not the thaile in All crisis. I
Speaker 1: wonder where those kids are today, probably in the Senate.
Speaker 1: I bet one of them was the guy who did
Speaker 1: our our lighting at our Detroit show. There was a smoke. Yeah, guys,
Speaker 1: we we did the show in Detroit a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and um, very famously we still use that as the
Speaker 1: standard or for a bad crew. Bad We had a
Speaker 1: guy that looked like a former roadie for your Riyah
Speaker 1: Heap that was running like a light show basically during
Speaker 1: the middle of our podcast, and like smoke came out.
Speaker 1: We were like, we had to stop the show, almost
Speaker 1: like dude, what are you doing? Yeah, well the lighting
Speaker 1: was so bad that your highlighter had turned like brown
Speaker 1: and you could and you asked him, we had to
Speaker 1: stop the show and you had to ask him to
Speaker 1: use a different color light. And his response, because Umi
Speaker 1: was hanging out and our friend Chris Bowman was hanging
Speaker 1: out in the sound booth with the guy, his response,
Speaker 1: according to them, was who wants smoke. I'll give him
Speaker 1: some more smoke. And we got some more smoke like
Speaker 1: a smoke machine man. And people ask us why we
Speaker 1: haven't been back to Detroit. That's a big reason. It's
Speaker 1: a big reason. Not the only reason. Uh. Okay, So
Speaker 1: they won the Golden Anvil for the Wiener pr moves.
Speaker 1: UM McNeil Consumer Products, which is a subsidiary of Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson. They actually make Thailand. All yeah, they make
Speaker 1: the pills again. The way this all this supply chain
Speaker 1: works is really convoluted. Um and uh, like you said,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to recall Johnson Johnson everything at first.
Speaker 1: They want to kind of take it a little slower,
Speaker 1: I guess um, because they found out the drugs are
Speaker 1: actually fine, right thanks to Pinky McFarland. This is a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars worth of stock that they were kind
Speaker 1: of feeling the pressure to recall it's right, So they
Speaker 1: were kind of reluctant at first, especially if they were
Speaker 1: convinced that there was nothing wrong with the rest of them.
Speaker 1: They had no choice, no, that was the only way
Speaker 1: to do it was to lose a lot of money
Speaker 1: and in favor of future gains. Yeah, but even at
Speaker 1: the time, a lot of people were like, this is
Speaker 1: it for taile and All. The public has lost faith
Speaker 1: in thailan All. So when thailan All recalled thirty one million,
Speaker 1: fifty count bottles of extra strength taile and All and
Speaker 1: destroyed at All, there was a chance that not only
Speaker 1: were they losing a hundred million million dollars, but that
Speaker 1: they were losing a hundred billion dollars of a brand
Speaker 1: that had already lost the public trust and would never
Speaker 1: regain it. So, which wasn't true. But no, but they
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily know that at the time it was still
Speaker 1: up in the air. Um. So they it was basically
Speaker 1: thirty one million sacrificial lambs that were killed to show
Speaker 1: the public this tainted Title and All has gone forever.
Speaker 1: Your chances of dying from taking extra strength Title and
Speaker 1: All are now gone. You can go back to taking
Speaker 1: tile and all. Now, that was one thing, and that
Speaker 1: was a big gesture, but which is what it amounted to.
Speaker 1: It was a gesture on behalf of Johnson and Johnson.
Speaker 1: But they did other stuff too. They started to do
Speaker 1: things right out of their reluctance. Once they finally said
Speaker 1: there we have to just go with this to save
Speaker 1: face and to win back public trust, they started to
Speaker 1: do things right, like including like setting up a hotline
Speaker 1: putting out a hundred thousand dollar reward for information how
Speaker 1: much they had lost already none ted. Two dollars still
Speaker 1: jump change it's it is yeah, and that remains unclaimed.
Speaker 1: It does. Um but they But because of all this,
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson managed to regain the public trust and
Speaker 1: actually managed to position itself as a victim in all
Speaker 1: of this. Like yes, there were these which they were
Speaker 1: seven murder victims, and Johnson and Johnson I don't think
Speaker 1: ever tried to push them out of the spotlight, but
Speaker 1: they also managed to portray themselves as the victim of
Speaker 1: a of a mad poisoner who may or may not
Speaker 1: have something out for them, but either way, their brand
Speaker 1: was taking a huge hit because of this, and they
Speaker 1: were a victim. And we're able to generate public sympathy,
Speaker 1: which is part of the road to regaining the public trust,
Speaker 1: which is why it's taught NPR classes. So, um, we'll
Speaker 1: take you back to two if you're if you weren't
Speaker 1: around then or old enough to be taking uh OTC
Speaker 1: pills and pain relievers. OTC is over the counter, by
Speaker 1: the way. That's right, Okay, you're done with OTTC. Yeah
Speaker 1: you know me so dumb. Uh. I love that you
Speaker 1: played along, though I appreciate it, you could have made
Speaker 1: me feel stupid. We've been partners for eleven years almost now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be when next month or this month? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: unbelievable So uh not not in that way. Okay. So
Speaker 1: here's how it used to happen. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: take a pill like a tail and all you would,
Speaker 1: um get your bottle. You would pop it open with
Speaker 1: your thumb first. First it came in a little box. Sure,
Speaker 1: but the box wasn't even glued shut. Um, you would
Speaker 1: pop it open with your finger. You would take out
Speaker 1: the cotton in there, and you would take your pill.
Speaker 1: It was that easy. There was no tamper proofing, there
Speaker 1: was no The cotton was completely superfluous at this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cotton originally was introduced to keep bear aspirin like the
Speaker 1: hard tablets from getting crushed in transport. Yeah, and since
Speaker 1: they started using capsules and other stuff in figured out
Speaker 1: how to strengthen tablets, there was no reason for the
Speaker 1: cotton any longer, but because consumers expected it. Still today,
Speaker 1: you'll find cotton in your and your pills. There's no
Speaker 1: reason for it to be there except because the companies
Speaker 1: know that you wanted to be there. You might be
Speaker 1: weirded out if there wasn't cotton in your pills. Imagine
Speaker 1: the cotton lobby had something to do with that too. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll bet they're not. They're not complaining, you know, so
Speaker 1: um big cotton. They should uh new fancy otc pills
Speaker 1: should have micromodal in there. Right, it just comes with
Speaker 1: a pair of me and the stuffed into your film bottle.
Speaker 1: You're like, these have been worn so uh, this was
Speaker 1: a time. It was a very innocent time previous to
Speaker 1: this where you could like and you pointed this out.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this in grocery stores, like I remember
Speaker 1: seeing mothers and grocery stores opening food products and smelling them. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what you could do, and then closing it back
Speaker 1: and putting it back on the shelf. There's a little
Speaker 1: a mold in this one, yeah, and I'll just leave
Speaker 1: it for the next person. Forget poisoning like that. These
Speaker 1: they could be spitting in this stuff. It was allowed.
Speaker 1: That's just the way it was like there was. America
Speaker 1: was innocent enough that that was fine. That's how we lived.
Speaker 1: And that sets up this tail and all poisoning. It
Speaker 1: really shows how much of a jarring experience it was
Speaker 1: for America because all of a sudden, like it's finally
Speaker 1: sunk in in a couple of days, there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with the thaile and all. Somebody has gone out of
Speaker 1: their way to poison the tail and all in order
Speaker 1: to randomly kill people. And the reason they were able
Speaker 1: to do this because there it's easy to to get
Speaker 1: into the taile and all tamper with it, put it back,
Speaker 1: and no one will be any any any more. The
Speaker 1: wiser and wait, it's not just taile and all. Milk
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything that that keeps it tamper resistant. New,
Speaker 1: there's orange juice, new, there's cereal. New, there does um
Speaker 1: cottage cheese? Enough does? And America for wreaked out. And
Speaker 1: this is the reason why this Taile and All poisoning
Speaker 1: is considered widely the first incident of domestic terrorism in
Speaker 1: the United States, because it was terrorism, pure and simple.
Speaker 1: America was terrified. They were petrified not only to take
Speaker 1: Thailand All or any over the counter medicine, now they
Speaker 1: were petrified to drink milk or give milk to their kids.
Speaker 1: Paula Prince, the flight attendant who was the last one
Speaker 1: to die in Chicago, she had a coworker who said,
Speaker 1: like everything looked tainted now, I was afraid to give
Speaker 1: my kids milk. I was afraid to give my kids cereal.
Speaker 1: If they could get to the title tail and all,
Speaker 1: they could poison anything. And that was really emblematic of
Speaker 1: the the attitude, the shock that everybody went through. And
Speaker 1: as a result, within six weeks, Thailand all said we
Speaker 1: got this coverage. Yeah, and I have a feeling they
Speaker 1: did this so fast. There had to have been this
Speaker 1: idea in place already. It was I saw, I saw
Speaker 1: a reference that it was, and I imagine it was
Speaker 1: not done because they were like, well, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and why why would we bother. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not like someone's gonna poison the medicine. And then
Speaker 1: that happened. So within six weeks they had a box
Speaker 1: that was actually glued shut, so if your little box
Speaker 1: had been opened, you would be able to tell yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was part one of three of this
Speaker 1: tamper resistant packaging. That little plastic seal over the top
Speaker 1: of the bottle after you open it. Uh oh no, No,
Speaker 1: the the plastic is over the cap on the outside
Speaker 1: of the bottle. Yeah, like the plastic foil, and then
Speaker 1: the uh, the actual foil was over the mouth of
Speaker 1: the bottle that we all have to poke through now
Speaker 1: to pull out the cotton and whatever still uses cotton.
Speaker 1: None of that existed until the beginning of nine. So
Speaker 1: all three of these are put in place within six weeks. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only that, they said, you know what, we're going
Speaker 1: to introduce the caplet, which everyone knows now it was
Speaker 1: we didn't have them back then. Everything was a little
Speaker 1: capsule that you could literally pull apart and you could
Speaker 1: snort the Thailand all if you wanted to. Quite sure
Speaker 1: some people did. I'm sure someone did. But the caplet is,
Speaker 1: you know, a tablet coated with an easy to swallow
Speaker 1: a gelatine. It's solid, it's um. I imagine you could
Speaker 1: tamper with it. And even I even saw with all
Speaker 1: these things in place, they said, nothing is tamper proof.
Speaker 1: But these measures really went a long way to restore
Speaker 1: the public, uh, you know, well, like the good feelings
Speaker 1: about what was going on. Yeah, within about a year,
Speaker 1: tailand all Or Johnson and Johnson managed to win the
Speaker 1: public's trust back in Thailand. All that's hard to believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really fast. But it also goes to show
Speaker 1: like just how perfectly they did everything from that from
Speaker 1: the time they committed to it on. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: feel like I remember like commercials with CEOs and stuff
Speaker 1: addressing the public. He became I can't remember his name.
Speaker 1: I want to say Geoffrey Beam. It's like a shoe brand.
Speaker 1: Gabby Johnson. No, um, Bill Johnson. You know, Howard Johnson.
Speaker 1: Yes this I can't remember his name, but he Jimmy
Speaker 1: Johnson is way far away from that UM. But he
Speaker 1: became a public face. He he would, you know, go
Speaker 1: on to sixty minutes and and he talked to Dan
Speaker 1: Rather and take Copple and all those cats. Like he
Speaker 1: he was out there like showing how much the company cared.
Speaker 1: And it had had a huge effect. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: in Congress got involved. They passed what they dubbed the
Speaker 1: Thailand All Bill, which basically says, if you do something
Speaker 1: like this is now a federal offense. A few years
Speaker 1: later in UM, the f d A actually established guidelines
Speaker 1: for all manufacturers of any product really to make it
Speaker 1: tamper proof. Yeah, because it wasn't just the O. T
Speaker 1: C manufacturers that that started doing this. They followed suit
Speaker 1: very quickly once Thailand all came out with it, because
Speaker 1: they kind of had to if they wanted to keep
Speaker 1: up with tail and all. UM. But also the UH,
Speaker 1: the manufacturers of everything, like every product, every consumer products
Speaker 1: started putting their products in like tamper proof packaging. Dial
Speaker 1: soap started coming wrapped in cellophane inside the box to
Speaker 1: trap the chemicals in I guess, but also to show
Speaker 1: like nobody's injected this with lie or something like that,
Speaker 1: although lie is used in the making a soap, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I remember my Fight Club. It's pretty funny someone injected
Speaker 1: soap into the soap. All right, let's take another break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the profile of the supposed mad poisoner right after this.
Speaker 1: Stop stop. Al Right, So, uh, this was a very
Speaker 1: big case at the time, obviously, like we've been saying,
Speaker 1: it was a landmark case. Um, so of course you're
Speaker 1: going to get um psychological profiles, which you know, we
Speaker 1: should do one in profiling. Actually have we done that?
Speaker 1: I don't think so it'd be a good one because
Speaker 1: it always like seems like the trope in movies and TV.
Speaker 1: But it is kind of like that. It is a thing,
Speaker 1: for sure. It's not like they just make this stuff up.
Speaker 1: But in the end they said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: probably a man in his twenties or thirties who was
Speaker 1: sort of a Jekyl and Hide type during the day.
Speaker 1: He's very ordinary. You could be in the desk cubicle
Speaker 1: next to you and you wouldn't even know it. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while, he's just hearing go Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But deep in his in the recesses of his brain, everyone,
Speaker 1: he's plagued with self doubt and has an illusion that
Speaker 1: a random killing can boost his sense of self worth
Speaker 1: self worth. Um, which is just sounds like a straight
Speaker 1: out of a movie. It sounds like as psychiatrist thing
Speaker 1: I want to be on TV. Yeah, listen to me. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also speculated, and this is just completely like conjecture
Speaker 1: was that he had probably already taken his own life
Speaker 1: after the killings. That was one specific person who said that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was I think like the medical examiner for Cook County. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: he probably already jumped off the bridge, So don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Don't worry everybody. Uh yeah, he just threw
Speaker 1: that out there. I don't know if it was the
Speaker 1: calm people or not, but or maybe he's just throwing
Speaker 1: his two cents in. But um, I think you kind
Speaker 1: of said it earlier. I don't remember if it was
Speaker 1: part one or part two. The whole things is blurred
Speaker 1: and become a haze by now. But um, no one
Speaker 1: has ever been charged with the Thailand All murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the ending. But there has been a lot. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of suspects. Remember Thailand all set up
Speaker 1: a hotline and this Thailand All task force, a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty person strong task force investigating this, chasing down leads,
Speaker 1: taking calls on the hotline, thousands and thousands of calls
Speaker 1: that were coming in. Um, they were trying to whittle
Speaker 1: those down into actual tips that were worth pursuing, and
Speaker 1: out of all of them, they they deemed twelve hundred
Speaker 1: tips leads worth checking out. There's a lot of leads
Speaker 1: for a case, um, even even considering yet a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty people working them. And I read somewhere that
Speaker 1: they started out with like twenty thousand suspects or something
Speaker 1: like that and whittled it down to four hundred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And sort of the sad part is as quickly as
Speaker 1: they sort of figured a lot of this out, uh
Speaker 1: and had that hundred and forty person task force, they
Speaker 1: almost just as quickly within a few months, realized that, like,
Speaker 1: we don't have a very good chance at finding this person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it became clear very quickly. Yeah, they whittled that down.
Speaker 1: By the last week of October, the task force was
Speaker 1: down to forty people. By the end of the year
Speaker 1: it was down to twenty. And it was a situation
Speaker 1: again in where you didn't have security cameras everywhere, you
Speaker 1: didn't have credit cards and debit cards, um creating paper trails.
Speaker 1: It was a lot easier back then to get away
Speaker 1: with something like this too, um to be completely unknown.
Speaker 1: To walk into a store, maybe slip some Thailand all
Speaker 1: into your pocket, go out to the parking lot and
Speaker 1: come back in and slipping back on the shelf. If
Speaker 1: it's really easy, you won't even go to the trouble
Speaker 1: of buying it. Yeah, I guess that's a good point
Speaker 1: to steal it and then put it back. But you
Speaker 1: know people were using cash. If there were cameras in
Speaker 1: a place, they were probably trained on employees. I worked
Speaker 1: at a golden pantry in College and the only camera
Speaker 1: we had was directly above us, pointing down at the
Speaker 1: catch register. It was the one of alps in in
Speaker 1: Atlanta Highway Alps No, the one on the east side
Speaker 1: College Station Road. I think, yeah, very interesting job. That's
Speaker 1: the one where I got a job. I needed a job.
Speaker 1: I got a job at McDonald's and I showed up,
Speaker 1: took the one hour training video, and they got my
Speaker 1: uniform number. I went home and I was supposed to
Speaker 1: show up the next day, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I can't go work at mcdoults.
Speaker 1: And I got the golden pantry job later that day, which,
Speaker 1: hey man, sure, it's like sign me up from Golden
Speaker 1: arches to golden pantry. That's like a ragster richest story.
Speaker 1: I was selling beer and cigarettes. Nice, it was pretty great.
Speaker 1: You're like one for you, one for me. Oh, I
Speaker 1: would never do that. Um, all right, where was I? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a golden pantry. So the cameras trained on
Speaker 1: the register. They're not they're not. You know, you can
Speaker 1: come and go in a store and no one even
Speaker 1: knows it was cops have nothing to go on. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: no motive. That was a big one because remember this
Speaker 1: is just a Jekylin Hyde type. You'd never suspect who's
Speaker 1: probably at the bottom of the Chicago River, right, who
Speaker 1: also is engaged in some senseless random killings of people,
Speaker 1: anonymous poisoning killing, not even shooting. It made zero sense whatsoever. So,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, the cops figured out within about
Speaker 1: a month. Within the first month of the investigation that
Speaker 1: this was. They were not going to have a break
Speaker 1: in this case. But it's not to say that they
Speaker 1: didn't have some suspects. Some people definitely did kind of
Speaker 1: come to come to the four, but not many of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but these two are really interesting sub stories in and
Speaker 1: of themselves. The first guy's name was last name Arnold,
Speaker 1: first name Roger, Roger, that's right, I call him Richard,
Speaker 1: that's all right, But for good reason? Oh sure, because
Speaker 1: you said he was like the richer jewel of his day,
Speaker 1: the Olympic bomber, who was not the bomber, right, but
Speaker 1: whose life was ruined because he basically was implicated as
Speaker 1: the Olympic bomber. The same thing happened to this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was one of the first named suspects, forty nine
Speaker 1: year old guy. So so put yourself in the position. Okay,
Speaker 1: the media is going berserk on this story. Everybody hears
Speaker 1: about it. It's a mad anonymous poisoner, and now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's a name and a face associated
Speaker 1: with it. Who's a suspect, but he's the first person name.
Speaker 1: It's like people going crazy, like trying to get to
Speaker 1: this guy, to interview him. Yeah, I have my doubts
Speaker 1: about this guy. Not that he did that, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of hinky things that they found out
Speaker 1: about him and then how it all ended up as
Speaker 1: you're about to see. So he was a d i
Speaker 1: y chemist. It's a big one. There's a big thing
Speaker 1: right there, because into chemistry. He said, he's a Jacqueline
Speaker 1: Hide type who's probably into chemistry. That's right. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was a dock hand at jewel Foods at a warehouse
Speaker 1: west of Chicago, and jewel foods to a couple of
Speaker 1: different jewel foods are where the tyl was bought, like
Speaker 1: a grocery store, food market. It's all checking out so far. Um.
Speaker 1: So the cops look into him and go to his house.
Speaker 1: He has a book, a handbook rather on methods of
Speaker 1: killing people? How did kill people? A dizzy? I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the title, but okay, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: He had five unregistered guns, it's a big one. He
Speaker 1: admitted to having cyanide once. Yeah, but he said I
Speaker 1: threw it out like at least six months before these murders.
Speaker 1: He's like, when we are the murders again, Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: six months before that that's and then his wife said,
Speaker 1: you know, they're investigating her and interviewing her. She was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, actually I did take some tile in
Speaker 1: all and felt really sick and threw up one time.
Speaker 1: But again I was it was probably due to over eating,
Speaker 1: and it was just that once. That's the fact of
Speaker 1: the podcast. So like, you can't blame cops for saying
Speaker 1: this guy is a pretty good lead, yeah, because you
Speaker 1: can kind of start to see, like if you add
Speaker 1: all the other stuff together and then hear about the
Speaker 1: wife throwing up from Thailand, all we like, could could
Speaker 1: you see this guy like toying with his wife, like
Speaker 1: testing it out on her, just enough to make her sick,
Speaker 1: but not to kill her, to see what happened, you know,
Speaker 1: see if she would notice. Who knows. But the cops
Speaker 1: thoroughly investigated this guy and cleared him. There there's not
Speaker 1: a there's not a person associated with the story that
Speaker 1: I came across who I actually think this guy did it.
Speaker 1: I didn't find one person who thought Ronald Roger Arnold
Speaker 1: actually did it. But in very short order he proved
Speaker 1: that he was more than capable of murder because six
Speaker 1: months after he was cleared as a suspect. He was
Speaker 1: brought in for the murder of somebody else, a guy
Speaker 1: named John Stanisha. Stanisha would say, yeah, I'm going with
Speaker 1: that too, sons Slovak or something. Yeah, he was forty six,
Speaker 1: he was a Chicago UM computer consultant, and that's saying
Speaker 1: something yeah, probably so um. So here's what happened Arnold.
Speaker 1: There was his bar gender name or bar owner named
Speaker 1: Marty Sinclair, who Arnold had thought had initially turned him
Speaker 1: into the cops and ruined his life essentially. So he
Speaker 1: goes to kill who he thinks is Marty Sinclair and
Speaker 1: it's actually this just completely innocent, random guy who gets
Speaker 1: shot point blank. And so he in fact did kill somebody.
Speaker 1: He did because of what had happened to his life.
Speaker 1: It was premeditated murder, even though it was the wrong person.
Speaker 1: He was definitely he created an intentional homicide. He killed
Speaker 1: somebody on purpose, mistaken identity killing though right. And because
Speaker 1: of this, because it was directly related to the Thaile
Speaker 1: and All poisonings, John Stanisha is um frequently considered an
Speaker 1: eighth victim of the Taile and All killings, kind of
Speaker 1: like an honorary um victim in this case. But it
Speaker 1: is kind of appropriate that he just happened to be
Speaker 1: in the wrong place, of the wrong time, a victim
Speaker 1: of mistaken identity. You know, it would have like a
Speaker 1: slightly different ring to it if it had been the
Speaker 1: right guy. The fact that it was the wrong guy
Speaker 1: and poor dude just happened to be in the wrong
Speaker 1: bar and happened to look like the owner, that's just,
Speaker 1: it's just it's perfect for this for this saga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder what Marty Sinclair thought about all that. I'll
Speaker 1: bet he was not very happy, probably not, but probably
Speaker 1: also very relieved and probably also guilt. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: guess there's a touch of that, a range of emotions
Speaker 1: I would imagine, Yeah, all over the place. So Arnold
Speaker 1: ended up serving fifteen years of a thirty year sentence,
Speaker 1: was released in ninety nine, and died nine years later. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: before we go on to the main attraction, as far
Speaker 1: as the suspects go, Yeah, I propose that we take
Speaker 1: a break, agreed, Okay, We'll be right back. Stop you stop, alright, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So this dude, there was basically two suspects in this
Speaker 1: whole case, over all these years, there are basically two people.
Speaker 1: And again no one was ever actually charged with the murders.
Speaker 1: But this guy came awfully close, and his name was
Speaker 1: James Lewis, it turns out it was. But James Lewis
Speaker 1: came under the attention of the Chicago p D and
Speaker 1: the Thailand All Task Force when a letter showed up
Speaker 1: at Johnson and Johnson headquarters and it was from allegedly
Speaker 1: the Thailand All Poison or the Mad Poisoner. And in
Speaker 1: the letter it said basically like I've spent fifty dollars
Speaker 1: so far, and the whole thing has taken me about
Speaker 1: ten minutes per bottle, and I've already killed seven people.
Speaker 1: I basically see no reason to stop. Pay me one
Speaker 1: million dollars and then I will stop the killings. And
Speaker 1: he gave a bank account number. He said, wire me
Speaker 1: this money very very presidently. Now that's not the right word. Uh,
Speaker 1: stupid maybe, but is it. No, it's not. So this
Speaker 1: letter has a New York postmark, but the bank account
Speaker 1: is associated with the travel agency in Chicago. And so
Speaker 1: the cops go, Okay, this seems like it was dropped
Speaker 1: in our lap, but let's go check it out and
Speaker 1: they find the owner of this travel agency that had
Speaker 1: closed up and gone under um. And this guy is like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're kidding me. It's like, no, I
Speaker 1: didn't write this letter, but I can guarantee I can
Speaker 1: tell you who did, as a guy named Robert Richardson.
Speaker 1: Robert Richardson, it turned out, was the husband of a
Speaker 1: woman named Nancy Richardson who had worked at the travel
Speaker 1: agency and when the travel agency went belly up, Nancy
Speaker 1: lost her job and never got her last paycheck. Well,
Speaker 1: Robert Richardson was the type of guy who would fixate
Speaker 1: on this, and was even more so the type of
Speaker 1: guy who would write a letter to frame the owner
Speaker 1: of the travel agency for the Thailand all murderers in
Speaker 1: retaliation for at last paycheck. He was that kind of dude, right,
Speaker 1: And so the cops started sniffing into this Robert Richardson
Speaker 1: cat and they figured out pretty quickly that Robert Richardson
Speaker 1: didn't actually exist, that he was actually somebody else, a
Speaker 1: man named James Lewis. So when we joked earlier about
Speaker 1: is that his real name, and you said it was,
Speaker 1: it was? It was. His name was not Robert Richardson.
Speaker 1: Though that was an alias. So what they found out
Speaker 1: was that Robert Richardson was a tax consultant. UM. He
Speaker 1: had and this is just a strange, ironic twist. When
Speaker 1: he was twenty years old, he tried to take his
Speaker 1: own life by swallowing aspirin thirty six of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's just neither here nor there. But an interesting
Speaker 1: little side note. Yeah, the fact that, like most people
Speaker 1: don't have that as part of their past. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is interesting that it came up. So he had a
Speaker 1: pretty long rap sheet. He was wanted by postal inspectors
Speaker 1: for a credit card fraud in Kansas City. UM. He
Speaker 1: was indicted in ninety for And this one is just
Speaker 1: mind blowing. He's indicted for murder after police found remains
Speaker 1: of one of his former clients in bags in his attic,
Speaker 1: and he got let loose because it was an illegal search.
Speaker 1: But he he was caught with the body of one
Speaker 1: of his clients dismembered in his attic with no good
Speaker 1: explanation as far as I've ever heard. Yes, So Joe, well,
Speaker 1: what explanation would be good? Well, we were playing poker
Speaker 1: and one thing like doing another started juggling swords, and yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so his wife's real name was Leanne, the one
Speaker 1: who worked at the travel agency and went unpaid. They
Speaker 1: fled Kansas City in December of eighty one. Um, and
Speaker 1: this was as US Postal inspectors were converging on them
Speaker 1: about this credit card scheme. Right, So they're like, just
Speaker 1: bad people, not the postal inspectors. No. Great, So they
Speaker 1: moved to Chicago. They changed their names to Robert Nancy
Speaker 1: Nancy Richardson. He got that job as a tax preparer,
Speaker 1: but then he was fired after a violent outburst in
Speaker 1: his office against his co workers. Um. And then she
Speaker 1: lost her job, went unpaid. They left Chicago, and this
Speaker 1: turns out this is what got them exonerated from the time.
Speaker 1: All thing is they left Chicago and moved to New
Speaker 1: York before this happened, right before those same month. Right.
Speaker 1: But if the theory held up that this person went around,
Speaker 1: most likely in one day and did all this stuff,
Speaker 1: then it couldn't have been them. No, And here's why,
Speaker 1: because the cops had decided that it was done locally.
Speaker 1: And one of the other things that supported that local
Speaker 1: mad poisoner theory was because the cyanide through the gelatine
Speaker 1: capsules eventually, so I had a very very short shelf
Speaker 1: life before the whole bottle just turned into a mush
Speaker 1: of cyani powder and melted gelatine. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: it had to have been done basically the day before
Speaker 1: they nine. They could not, no matter how hard they tried,
Speaker 1: they could not put James Lewis or his wife in
Speaker 1: Chicago that day. They just couldn't. And for his part,
Speaker 1: James Lewis said, yeah, I wrote this letter. I wrote
Speaker 1: the letter of Johnson and Johnson framing that travel agency guy.
Speaker 1: But I did not. I did not poison the title
Speaker 1: at all. He's always been adamant about that. He's never
Speaker 1: toyed around with it. He's never messed around, he's never
Speaker 1: been coy He's always been adamant that he did not
Speaker 1: poison that title at all. Although the title and all
Speaker 1: task force tried to trip him up once. I guess
Speaker 1: to just get this on the record that he'd done this,
Speaker 1: But they asked him, like in an in an interview, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you had done it, how would you have
Speaker 1: done it? And he actually he showed them how he
Speaker 1: would have done it. Yeah, he just didn't write a
Speaker 1: book about it. He just showed him in an interview. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he defends this later on by saying it was
Speaker 1: just a speculative scenario. I could tell you how Julius
Speaker 1: Caesar was killed, but that doesn't mean I was the killer.
Speaker 1: I think the answer for me it would have been
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, Yeah, I'm innocent. I don't I
Speaker 1: can't figure this out. But he's like, here's how I do.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for you to ask me though. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's eventually found in New York City. He's at the
Speaker 1: public library um with a reference book, copying names and
Speaker 1: addresses of newspapers. Uh. I would imagine to send them
Speaker 1: letters like zodiac style. Yeah, because so we gotta say this.
Speaker 1: So the cops figured out who James Lewis was before
Speaker 1: they found James Lewis, and it became part of the
Speaker 1: national media um circus hunt. While they were looking for
Speaker 1: James Lewis, this guy was writing letters to newspapers. He
Speaker 1: called in a radio talk show. He was really relishing
Speaker 1: the fact that there was a national man hunt out
Speaker 1: for him. Who Like, that's That's what I'm saying. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, you gotta kind of feel a little
Speaker 1: bit bad that this guy was kind of being railroaded
Speaker 1: into you know, the wrap for these murders. After his
Speaker 1: extortion attempt, that's where the feeling bad firms. You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. He totally brought this on himself. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: they hauled him out of the New York Public Library.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to ten years for extortion attempt in
Speaker 1: ten years for credit that original credit card fraud uh
Speaker 1: and served thirteen years and lives in the Greater Boston
Speaker 1: area today. So still today there. I think there are
Speaker 1: a few people who are like, I could see this guy,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he could. He could be at some Some
Speaker 1: detectives maintain that the Thailand All murder could have flown
Speaker 1: into O'Hare running a car, done that circuit, flown or
Speaker 1: driven back to a hair and flown out all on
Speaker 1: the same day the day before, but they could never
Speaker 1: put James Lewis in Chicago at all that day. UM.
Speaker 1: So he was cleared finally, although he did serve two
Speaker 1: consecutive ten years sentences. He served thirteen of the twenty
Speaker 1: years for that credit card fraud that the Postal Inspectors
Speaker 1: wanted him for and for extortion letter um and like
Speaker 1: you said, he lives in Cambridge, mass now. But then
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, the case, after basically having gone
Speaker 1: dormant in the early eighties, was reignited by the FBI
Speaker 1: because they worked up they thought a DNA profile from
Speaker 1: the capsules and they rated James Lewis's house. Um demanded
Speaker 1: a fingerprint and DNA sample. James and Leanne Lewis fought
Speaker 1: it in court. The judges like, no, you have to
Speaker 1: do this. Before leaving the courthouse, they gave him the
Speaker 1: samples and nothing has come of it. So I guess
Speaker 1: that means tacitly that the Lewises were cleared once and
Speaker 1: for all of the tail and all murders. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, the DNA thing is an interesting piece because um,
Speaker 1: they still have some samples of the cyanide. I guess
Speaker 1: that the capsules have have worn away by now if
Speaker 1: it had the cyanide in there. But there was and
Speaker 1: still his hope, um, that DNA could could crack this case. Um,
Speaker 1: just like eight or nine years ago, the unibomber ted Kazinski.
Speaker 1: Is that a two parter? No, No, it's just one parter,
Speaker 1: good podcast, So I don't think. So that was a
Speaker 1: good episode. Uh, he grew up in Chicago and his
Speaker 1: parents were living in the Greater Chicago area in eight two,
Speaker 1: and he is the UNI bomber. So they said we
Speaker 1: might as well get a DNA sample and talk to him,
Speaker 1: and um, he was cleared. I don't think he was
Speaker 1: ever a super strong suspect and he probably would have
Speaker 1: admitted it. So he was like, no, this is not
Speaker 1: me right. So, UM, the UNI bomber has been cleared.
Speaker 1: That's right from the talent on mers. But that remains
Speaker 1: the case remains unsolved to this day. I think they
Speaker 1: also have a fingerprint work up that they found on
Speaker 1: one of the bottles and that and some DNA. It's
Speaker 1: is they're just sitting around with that. There's there are
Speaker 1: no suspects there. Every suspect has been cleared. Um, and
Speaker 1: there's nobody on the horizon. It's just an unsolved random
Speaker 1: series of killings that happened. Yeah, they're still working on
Speaker 1: it though. Um. There's a police sergeant named Scott Winkleman
Speaker 1: who has been on this task force for a long
Speaker 1: time and he says he thinks it's solvable. Um and
Speaker 1: his department did just saw a forty five year old
Speaker 1: murder case cold case. Man, if they solved this one,
Speaker 1: that would be the biggest cold case ever solved. I
Speaker 1: think so. I think. I mean, who knows, but I
Speaker 1: could see maybe finding like a deathbed letter or something
Speaker 1: one day, Like I don't know if they're going to
Speaker 1: catch someone in at the bottom of the Chicago River
Speaker 1: in all of to jail, but I could see the
Speaker 1: truth coming out one day, I hope so for the
Speaker 1: families because um Monica Janie, she's the niece of Adam
Speaker 1: Stanley and Teresa. She said, her family to this day.
Speaker 1: This is from an article like last year, I think
Speaker 1: um said that they have still not gotten over it.
Speaker 1: She said her grandparents have passed now, but she said,
Speaker 1: literally every day for the rest of their lives, they
Speaker 1: just cried about, uh, the fact that they didn't know
Speaker 1: who did it. Um. She grew up. It has been
Speaker 1: a therapy therapy her whole life because um, there were
Speaker 1: all victims. You know that this post traumatic stress disorder
Speaker 1: kicks in where she grew up fearing that any of
Speaker 1: her family members could die at any time. Um. Oh.
Speaker 1: In that article, by the way, it was really good.
Speaker 1: It was called the Thailand All Murders Colin is it
Speaker 1: too late to solve the famous cold case? And that
Speaker 1: was from any real crime and written by Jamie Bartas
Speaker 1: Joseph manus Her. Her dad says that he still has
Speaker 1: dreams like you know on the rag about these murders. Um.
Speaker 1: He said he had one recently where everyone involved was
Speaker 1: in a room in the case. Uh, and then two
Speaker 1: black men in suits and glasses were laughing about how
Speaker 1: they got away with murder. Um. Michelle Rosen, she's the
Speaker 1: daughter of Mary Reiner. Um. She has dedicated her life
Speaker 1: to investigating this on her own, and she doesn't agree
Speaker 1: with the loan the mad pois in her theory at all. No,
Speaker 1: this is this is interesting. Yeah. She thinks it had
Speaker 1: something to do with the supply chain and that Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson knew this and covered it up. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the things, one of the things that people who
Speaker 1: believe this point to is that Johnson and Johnson recalled
Speaker 1: all of that Thailand, all thirty one million bottles, and
Speaker 1: then destroyed them allegedly without testing any of it. So
Speaker 1: we will never know whether it was Pinky had the
Speaker 1: day off right, whether whether it was beyond Chicago or
Speaker 1: just local in Chicago, seems like it took long enough
Speaker 1: that other people would have died in that week before
Speaker 1: the national recall was undertaken. But um, there was something
Speaker 1: very very interesting that was a post script to all
Speaker 1: this that does undermine that mad poisoner theory. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just a few years later a woman in New
Speaker 1: York named Diane els Roth took two extra strength thaile
Speaker 1: and all capsules and died from cyanide pisoning. Um, but
Speaker 1: they found I mean, it's just completely unrelated. Was it
Speaker 1: another copycat case well, or or the original poisoner? Maybe?
Speaker 1: So this different cyanide, right, the cyanide was definitely not
Speaker 1: the same size some from the same batch. It was
Speaker 1: chemically different. But there was another bottle found around the
Speaker 1: block from where Mary els Roth bought hers and Yonkers
Speaker 1: that did match that cyanide. So there were two bottles
Speaker 1: of extra strength tilent all two years later in another
Speaker 1: state that had been UM tampered with. The problem is
Speaker 1: this was after the three pronged tamper resistant packaging had
Speaker 1: been UM introduced, which means it was an inside job, right,
Speaker 1: I guess because the tamper the thing had not been
Speaker 1: obviously tampered with then Thailand all was never able to
Speaker 1: explain what happened. Yeah, and then within five days of
Speaker 1: her death, eight states outright band the capsules, Thailand All Capsules, right,
Speaker 1: and Thailand all for its part, was like, we've been
Speaker 1: trying to get everybody to take caplets anyway, but they
Speaker 1: keep taking capsules, so we're making it. And then a
Speaker 1: guy wrote a book, right, Um Scott Bart's Yeah, a
Speaker 1: former Johnson and Johnson employee, Um wrote in two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven a self published book, UM on the Time of
Speaker 1: All Poisonings, And he said what we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: He's like, the supply chain is so convoluted, Um, basically
Speaker 1: like it could definitely could have happened at any point
Speaker 1: along the way. And his his idea is that that
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson knew that it was in their distribution
Speaker 1: network and they covered it up self published book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta note that for sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: knocking it, no, but it's noteworthy. It does if there's
Speaker 1: like any hint of journalistic integrity and us that feels
Speaker 1: like we have to note that. So that's the title,
Speaker 1: and All Poisonings of nineteen eighty two in Chicago changed America,
Speaker 1: changed the world, but definitely changed America. It was the
Speaker 1: end of some form of innocence that we still had. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the tile and
Speaker 1: all poisonings, go online. There's stuff all over the place
Speaker 1: and you can go down that rabbit hole and it's
Speaker 1: deep and wide. Since I said that, it's time for listener,
Speaker 1: ma'am uh. This is from Gin from Brunswick, Maine. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: been listening for several years and never thought I'd have
Speaker 1: a never thought a perfect time right to write in
Speaker 1: would be related to synthetic farts. Remember the discussed episode
Speaker 1: we talked about synth synthetic parts. It's a real thing.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, my dad came across
Speaker 1: the stuff online called liquid a s s as horrible.
Speaker 1: Not allowed to curse right that ourson would spell it
Speaker 1: out though, um or, I guess maybe you should have
Speaker 1: said like a asterisk asterisk. Yeah, there you go, good
Speaker 1: name for a product, though she said he found it
Speaker 1: on a joke web website in order to and I
Speaker 1: have to tell you it is the worst thing you've
Speaker 1: ever smelled. I can't even describe it. It makes you
Speaker 1: want to not breathe anymore. The tiniest little drop is deadly,
Speaker 1: So of course I took it to college with me
Speaker 1: to play pranks, and boy did it backfire. I thought
Speaker 1: I was pretty funny putting a couple of drops in
Speaker 1: the radiator by my across the friend across the hall
Speaker 1: friends room, not eating things, and not even thinking about
Speaker 1: what would happen when the heat turned on. Well, the
Speaker 1: heat turned on, and the whole floor of the dorm
Speaker 1: was amazingly disgusting and made us just about gag. Smells
Speaker 1: took almost a week to finally go away, and I
Speaker 1: have not used it again in the ten year since.
Speaker 1: It's probably it's called learning your lesson. But she still
Speaker 1: has the bottle. She's like, but I kept it just
Speaker 1: in case. Thank you for your interesting and entertaining podcast.
Speaker 1: This is the first podcast ever listened to and it's
Speaker 1: still always on the top of my download list. Thanks
Speaker 1: for giving this twenty eight year old woman a platform
Speaker 1: on which to tell a story of synthetic farts that
Speaker 1: is not completely out of place. Signed anonymous that is
Speaker 1: Jen Green. Thanks Jen Green, very brave you to put
Speaker 1: your name on that one. Especially I wonder if you
Speaker 1: stepped up and said that horrible smell. That was my bad.
Speaker 1: If you have a great story about college pranks, we
Speaker 1: want to hear about it. Um You can get in
Speaker 1: touch with this via our social links by going to
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know dot com, or you can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
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