This Day in History: Seven people died near Chicago after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules on this day in 1982. The Tylenol murders case - the most extensively covered news story since the assassination of John F. Kennedy - has perplexed federal, state, and local authorities for decades. This crime remains one of the biggest unsolved murder cases in the U.S., a case that has had more than 100 police investigators, more than 6,500 leads and 400 possible suspects. Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was actually a suspect at one time.
Author Scott Bartz theorized that the perpetrator might have been a disgruntled employee who worked at or with Johnson & Johnson? This person knew that what he did could have destroyed the company in lost revenue and lawsuits.
This incident inspired the pharmaceutical, food, and consumer product industries to develop tamper-resistant packaging, such as induction seals and improved quality control methods. Moreover, product tampering was made a federal crime. The new laws resulted in a 90 year prison sentence in an Excedrin tampering case.
Also, this crime prompted the pharmaceutical industry to move away from capsules, which were easy to contaminate as a foreign substance could be placed inside without obvious signs of tampering. Within the year, the FDA introduced more stringent regulations to avoid product tampering. This led to the eventual replacement of the capsule with the solid "caplet", a tablet made in the shape of a capsule, as a drug delivery form and with the addition of tamper-evident safety-seals to bottles of many sorts.
Tylenol's market share plummeted, but after a few years the company was back on top again.
Hundreds of copycat attacks involving Tylenol and other over-the-counter medications took place around the United States immediately following the Chicago deaths. Product tampering is nothing new. Product tampering began in the 1890s. An especially bad case was the cyanide poisoning of Bromo Seltzer containers that led to a media sensation in 1899. In April 1985, 12 people died in Japan after consuming popular drinks that were dispensed from vending machines. As late as 1991, Kathleen Daneker and Stanley McWhorter died in Washington state after taking cyanide-laced Sudafed. A Joseph Meling was arrested in this case. According to the prosecution, Meling's tried to kill his wife with the sudafed in order to collect insurance money. Worried he would be a suspect in the poisoning, he planted the other five bottles to deflect suspicion. Meling was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
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