Episode 87 - The Tylenol Murders

0:14 Two crumbesties. We're here for episode 87 and it's been a day. It's been a day. We've had a good day though. Very good day. Big sporting day for the kids. We're recording this on a Sunday, so in between or after two games of footy. Yeah. Basketball yesterday, yeah, big night out for me last night as soon. As I saw you at the footy this morning, I was like, oh. Wow. Oh wow. It's like this is too early. Oh, shabby as. Yeah, shabby as. Hence the the coke connects to your computer there rather than a wine.

0:49 That's true. No wine. And I'm even past water at this point. I'm like, I need the caffeine, I need the the bubbles. I need the bubbles. Soak up that. Yeah. Alcohol. Yeah. Mm. Hmm. Mm. Hmm. You had fun though. Great night. Great. Lots of fun. Worth it. It it was it was really good. It was really good. Just don't recover like we used to. Not even close. Not even close. No, that's OK. That's you know. That's still good. You can just paying for that tomorrow I reckon still too. So I reckon I'll be just tired tomorrow 'cause I also, we got home really late.

1:23 I then couldn't get to sleep straight away. Yeah, and we were up at 7:00 for sport this morning, so I think I've probably had about four hours. Yeah, that's the killer on it. Yeah, because I find like this age day drinking's great love. Me a day drinking set. Unreachable hours still like pre midnight, Yeah and get you know that good 6 to 8 hour minimum. Still, you'll still have a massive hangover, don't get me wrong. But you, you'll be right. Be fine. Yeah. So I think for me, it's like a sleep. And then after recording this, we're actually off to a family friend's birthday dinner.

1:58 Yeah. So I'm like, we're gonna have to just not be late. I'm gonna need to come home. I'm gonna go to work tomorrow, actually for work. No, I've gotta actually pretend to, you know, do stuff tomorrow. Yeah. That sucks. Yeah, it's the. Worst. It's hard. God, how do we do it, as you know? I I don't know where you go out night after night. Oh my God. Yeah, I don't know. Or you'd, you'd go out and wake up still at 8:00 the next morning to go to work that day or something. Oh my God. They just. Well, the young ones don't do like what we used to do, which I I mean, so impressed with.

2:30 Me too. Out with some people during the week with that sort of thing. And one of the, the younger boys, he's, Oh my God, he's 19. And he actually had had. It was his first more than one drink that he'd ever had. Wow. Yeah, kids. Just don't had like a beer or something or whatever. And yeah, he actually had five beers and this evening that we're all out for. It was quite hilarious. But kids it is. It's true. They don't really drink like we used to. Like we just from the minute you turn 18. Oh, Mum, totally.

2:59 Eighteen from exactly 18. Yeah. Never. Not one day before. Yeah. Yeah. You know, drinking's like a big, big thing. Yeah. But I I like that there's a cultural shift away from it. I really like that. I do. Too, As long as it's not shifting to somewhere where I really don't want it to go like. Yeah, to something else. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah, that's really true. It's. Expensive that to be able to go out and drink all the time like that. That did exactly I. Mean it felt expensive when we were kids like you know, you always like.

3:25 Yeah, but you could afford it with your part time job. I don't know that you'd be able to these days. God. No, no, I mean $14.00 at times for a glass of wine. Forget it. And then some sometimes, like, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, it's mental gorgeous. How's your week been though otherwise? Yeah, it's, oh, it's back, getting back into the routine and stuff, which I mean, this week it's hard to judge by. I've had a bit of a week, but yeah, you know, it's, it's I think good to get back into routine.

3:52 Yeah, Yeah. No. How about you? I'm about, I'm about the same. So like 8-9 weeks ago I had a surgery and I meant that I couldn't exercise for for that amount of time and I went back to the gym this week and Oh my God. Yeah. You know when you're so sore you can't even sit down on the toilet? You kind of have to just freefall onto the toilet. This muscle that I'm really, it's killing you. Yeah, that's where I'm at. That's where I've been at. So I actually feel like that's contributing to how I feel today because all my muscles sore.

4:21 So we're actually talking about you and our game because we're separate footy games today and one of the girls was saying like about running the doing the trainer and stuff. And we're saying that our poor trainer was having to run out a fair bit today. And, and she goes, you know, but at least at least Emma, she's fit. And I said, well, actually, she's she's not been allowed to be at the gym. So yeah, she's probably feeling it that with a hangover. I mean, we'll give you some empathy. Thanks for going around and telling everyone I had a hangover at the other gap ground.

4:47 We'll. See from Mr. Standard well. It is Sunday. Just shared it with a few, yeah. Yeah, I, I was actually pretty lucky today. I didn't have to run out and we had to run out once and it wasn't even terrible. So it was. We had a fairly physical game, I said. My son's ended up with a black eye like. Yeah, I mean not. Nothing purposeful, obviously, but yeah, very physical, very getting in there. So Oh my God, I don't know if I like this, but then now. It starts getting really rough. Really, really rough.

5:15 Yeah, Yeah. Crazy. Aside from that, what has my week been getting back into the routine of school, as you said, because we're sort of this is we're sort of at the end of week one of the next term now of term two. Yeah. And it just made me realize, again, we've said this before on the podcast how much I hate washing lunch boxes. Yep. I just hate it. But at least we're back in a routine. The kids are back doing what they need to be doing, and it's all good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as I say, the sports all that.

5:49 I mean, now we're into double season with the winter. It's like it's every night after the week. Every time there's something, it's. Kind of good though, having the routine. I do like it and it's good that the kids are out there being active. I just keep thinking, you know, it's absolutely worth it this coming weekend. Like you and I are actually not recording another episode this week. But don't worry, there's going to be no break for you guys. You guys won't even know, but we're going to Halls Gap to the grape escape.

6:15 Yeah, so to a wine festival. So I'm really looking forward to that now. Hopefully I won't be. I was gonna say hopefully I'll be feeling much better by then, but I'm really looking forward to that. We're gonna be away for the weekend so the kids will miss sport, but looks like the weather is gonna be really nice. And what is doing good doing this? That'd be lovely low. 20s kind of mid 20s stuff. It's nice a bit. Of Sunshine week. Me too, Yeah me too. Good. We have got so many shout outs for today so going.

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11:10 Excellent, excellent. OK. So we are today we are discussing the Tylenol murders. Yeah, this one is. I mean, I knew a fair bit about it, I think sort of in the lead up. I've watched documentaries before and it's definitely something that I think because this case was so instrumental in changing a lot of things that we just now take for granted in day-to-day life. Yeah, I think that's that kind of plays into what I knew about it and why I knew about it, yeah. It's hard to think that like those things that we just I just like to take for granted weren't in place.

11:48 Like it's almost like what that you could just open anything. I. Know it's crazy yeah. Meanwhile, my kids. Yesterday, buddy, Chemist Warehouse were trying to like fighting each other and who can open the childproof lock on one of the containers and I'm like, I'm not buying that. I don't need that. Stop, stop, stop. It God because I'm. Sure, they could get into Childproof buddy. Oh. Yeah, probably by now it's not really stopping a 12 year old or 10 year old from getting into getting into things. It's more of your toddlers the way we're looking out for, I guess.

12:18 True. So anyway, for, for those of you who don't know much contextually about this, the Tylenol murders were a literally it was a a day, basically a series of murders took place that just by pure chance really played out over about a 24 hour period on the 29th of September in 1982 in Chicago, in Illinois, in the USA. And as we go through and we talk about, we're going to talk about the victims and we're going to talk about the suspects and all of that kind of thing. I think it's, you know, keeping the back of your mind what Meg was saying, the fact that anybody could open any medication and we're not just talking Tylenol, all medications was kind of like open on the shelf.

13:03 There was no tamper evident sealing seals or anything like that. So, you know, in terms of mechanisms for delivery for these kinds of things, like you can kind of see how it happened. And I'm so surprised that it hadn't happened before. Yeah. Yeah, something that sort of like LinkedIn with this a little bit like I didn't, I actually didn't realise this until I read this was that you know how like everyone gets nervous about Halloween and lollies and stuff. There's actually never been any issue and anything linked to a Halloween of, of anything being tampered with.

13:35 Yet we get really nervous about lollies being handed out. And apparently it is a, a correlation between the fact of this case and the Tylenol being tampered with that people have just assumed then that people would tamper with something else that we have free access to. And that's, I think that's that, you know, yet being able to access it freely was what has what then created this, you know, like is here. Do you think it's more that, you know, it's OK? Access is absolutely one thing, but the fact that people would do it is another thing because like, I think before this, you wouldn't think that somebody would tamper, necessarily tamper with medication.

14:11 So true. And you don't think people are gonna tamper with children's lollies, But there are fucking psychos in the world, I think. Yeah, people just. And there are people, yeah, there are people who will do that shit. I think there's kind of almost two sides to it in that way. Yeah. And yeah, I, I absolutely wouldn't let my kids eat a lolly that wasn't, you know, in a sealed bag or in a rapper. Yeah, I mean, hygienically, but also because you don't know what kind of weird people are out in the world and what they might try to do to you.

14:39 Weird. People that we come across with this, yeah, Yeah, People are. It's possible that people could do this stuff. Yeah. Or weirder stuff. Crazy. So let's start with patient zero. The first the first patient. This is so incredibly tragic because just awful. The first victim in this situation was a 12 year old girl by the name of Mary Kellerman. Before we even get into this, could you believe how many Marys are in this story? I was like. First I was like, you know, because trying to work out what's going on here.

15:09 Yeah. Did they ever kind of go? Are they targeting Mary? Yeah. I I literally thought the same thing. I'm like, how coincidental. Yeah. That there are out of all of you know, there's not that many people who who died over these couple of days. Yeah. Three of them are named Mary anyway, so don't get confused like I did when I was doing my research. But Mary Kellerman, first victim, 12 years of age. Yes. So she woke up on this pit on the morning of the 29th of September in 1982, and she had a bit of a cold.

15:37 Apparently she'd been sort of coming down with something for a few days and her dad, she woke up said to her dad, I'm really not feeling very well. And he's like, look, stay home from school today. I'll give you some Tylenol and go back to bed and sort of, you know, we'll, we'll ride out the day. We've all done this with our kids. You know, she had a bit of a fit, very low grade fever. I would have done exactly the same thing. So Tylenol. For those who don't know, an equivalent in Australia would be Panadol.

16:09 Like in terms of a brand name. The actual drug is acetaminophen or Paragon. Sorry, acetaminophen. Yeah, good. 1. Yep, and all paracetamol. It's exactly acetaminophen. Paracetamol. 2 names for the exact same drug. Yeah. So Tylenol though in the US was their leading brand of of pain relief medication, so much so I think it accounted. So the company was owned at this point by Johnson and Johnson and I believe they had 30% market share for pain relief medication, which is huge. By far they were the biggest and use I think there was like, you know, millions and millions and millions of homes in in the America had yeah, a bottle of Tylenol.

17:04 It was their. Biggest product that they produced in terms of financial, what they got, you know how big that product was for them, It was their biggest one. Biggest. Money earner and I I believe to this day it's very, very similar yeah it's it might not be their biggest, but it oh, actually, no, I actually think it still is yeah, I mean. They'll be more expensive drugs, yeah, but as in terms of volume and how much they sell of it and what? Yeah, that I believe it is still their leading drug. Yeah.

17:29 OK, so Mary Kellerman was 12 years old. She was a 7th grader and she was the only child of Dennis and Jana Kellerman. So as we said, she was feeling not amazing on this morning. Her dad's given her a Tylenol extra strength and sent her back to bed. Now she was described as a really bright young girl and she was really looking forward to Halloween and it was something she'd already started to try and organize her, her costume. Her mom was making a costume for her, as you would anyway. So she took the pill from her dad.

18:11 She's then gone to go to the bathroom and she collapsed on the bathroom floor. So her mum and dad were down the hallway and they just heard this thud and, of course, race to her. And by the time they got to her, she was completely like, her pupils were fixed and dilated. She was she. I think she had some very shallow breathing. Yeah, but she was completely out of it. They, of course, dialed 911. Emergency services attended and performed CPR on her. And they actually kept her alive until she arrived at the Alexian Brothers Medical Center, where they pronounced her dead.

18:50 They they they could not sustain her life. And the the doctors at the Medical Center were absolutely baffled. Yeah. They sort of were like some symptoms of like almost like a heart attack kind of symptoms I was seeing, but it wasn't a heart attack and very confused by such a young girl to just. Yeah. So I think they thought it might have been a stroke. Yeah. Because she did have some, like drooping and other sort of anomalies in terms of her facial features. But then they also thought, well, maybe it was like a congenital heart defect that had never been diagnosed or something like that.

19:29 Because of course, I mean, 12 year olds don't just drop dead, you know, it had to have been. It had to have been something. Yeah. So. Very unusual and really threw them for a six in terms of what has caused this, like, yeah, just. Really, really unusual. Really unusual. Yeah, Let's park Mary there for now. Yeah. Because on the same day, this one, this next lot of people is so incredibly tragic. This is the. Janice family. Yeah. So this family ended up. It's just absolutely tragic. Let's start with Adam.

20:07 Adam. Yeah. Adam was a 27 year old postal worker and Ellington Heights. Yeah, and he was a family man. He had a son and a daughter. Yep. And apparently he was just such a lovely, lovely person. Like he was a very much a family man. He had emigrated from Poland to the United States and really made a go of his life. They lived in a very sort of modest 3 bedroom home, but it was their home. You know, they'd saved and bought that house and they were living a really lovely life as a family unit. Apparently Adam was a very sensitive man and really gentle and kind.

20:49 And anyway, on this particular day, he had the day off work, but he actually also wasn't feeling 100%. And so his daughter had preschool that day. And because he was off work, he was able to go and pick her up. And on the way home from preschool, he decided to drop into the local supermarket because for two reasons, actually. He wanted to get some steaks for dinner, and he wanted to get some flowers for his wife, which was something that he did like often. Isn't that beautiful? So he bought her gladioli eyes, right?

21:22 I think it was good. They're a plant, are they? I assume, like flower? Oh my God. Meg. Oh mate. They're pretty. They'd be pretty yo. So anyway, so while he was there, because he wasn't feeling 100%, he's like, I'll pick up some Tylenol while I'm here. He goes to the shelf, picks off a bottle of extra, extra strength Tylenol and goes home and gives his wife the flowers and starts to sort of set himself up for the night. Obviously he was planning on cooking these steaks for dinner. Now he I guess he'd gotten to a point where he was like, oh, actually I really am not feeling 100%.

22:03 I'm going to take that Tylenol and, you know, hopefully I'll feel better. I'll be able to then spend the rest of the night with the family and it'll all be good. Now he takes 2 Tylenol, extra strength. Yeah. And almost immediately just drops to the floor. It's like, again, same. In fact, I believe the same wording was used by his wife. He dropped with a thud. Yeah. Like it's that don't like complete just Yeah. Out of it. Yeah, of course she calls 911-A neighbor actually came to assist because the neighbor heard the absolute terror screaming.

22:41 So a neighbor came to assist. They were performing CPR. I think the fire brigade got there. They did. Is that right? That's. How on the phone she was like they they again thought like heart attack kind of thing. They were definitely so because that was sort of mentioned of like the kind of instant how he had dropped so quickly in those moments. Yeah, fire brigade can attend first if they're the closest. Whoever's closest, they'll just get someone there. So you have Fire Brigades to arrive first.

23:08 But then again, they walked into this scene of this, you know, young man, I mean healthy. Apparently he was really like someone described him like he was sort of strong as an ox. So he wasn't like thin, but he wasn't overweight. He was just, you know, he was a fit, strong, healthy 27 year old man. Like you don't expect, no, a 27 year old to just dropped dead, but I guess that was kind of the thing that fit his symptoms, yeah. Yep. Now, yeah, they attempted CPR, continued on him, the paramedics arrived and they did the same, but unfortunately they could not revive him, no.

23:46 They did take him to the hospital and the local hospital and he was pronounced dead on arrival there. Yeah, So absolutely tragic. And what that meant was, you know, his wife and the extended Janice family then gathered back at their house after. I mean, you just can't imagine the devastation and the shock of that. Yeah. For such a young family, you know, it's just, it's actually unfathomable. Absolutely. So of course everyone wants to rally around and there's obviously different arrangements that probably need to start being made or even just being with each other and it's.

24:21 Almost, it's just the shock, the show just coming together to kind of be together. Yeah, yeah. Because Adam had two brothers and so they've come around to kind of go like speak, you know, make to see his wife and be like what's going on here and all start grieving together in terms of getting their heads around what has just taken place. I mean, they've all, I'm guessing standing around kind of going like, what the hell? Like how did this happen and what has caused this? And in that sort of grief and feeling, you know, uneasy and all of that.

24:49 I think obviously as Adam wasn't well and with a cold and things, it's probably others were feeling a bit the same. And in doing that, Stanley Janice, his brother, who was his younger brother of 25, and Teresa, his wife, Janice. Teresa Janice, who was 19. And also they'd only be married. Was it seven months 7? Months or something. Yeah, that sounds right. It was only briefly that they'd very early, very early days, I mean. You can see photos from their wedding at So that it was so early in their marriage that they actually didn't have their professional photos back yet.

25:21 They'd only just seen proofs. They hadn't actually gotten their wedding album back. But obviously, you know, in the course of over the course of time, the photos have come. Yeah. And there's this beautiful photo of, of Stanley and Teresa as the bride and groom with Adam's family, so with his wife and the two kids. And it's the the six of them together. And it's a really, really lovely, like everyone's dressed up, everyone's really happy, lovely, lovely, lovely. But then tragedy. Yeah, I suppose a dozen, two of them have, you know, kind of gone well, not feeling very well and have gone and taken some Tylenol that they saw in the bathroom thinking that would be which was.

26:05 Actually on the kitchen counter, so it was left. Out like I was sitting there in front of them they kind of went oh actually that's probably what I need at the moment I'll take some Tylenol, extra strength Tylenol to sort of see if it'll help me make me feel better well for. Sure. Because like, you know, in that grief, like you've probably got a headache. I mean, you're so emotional. Whether it was that they was coming down with something like with a cold or something, or whether it be just the grief and feeling, you know, yeah, just say headaches and things.

26:29 They just, they decided to take a Tylenol and unfortunately, Stanley collapsed first pretty much immediately after taking it. And again, then the family called paramedics back, which I mean, they'd only just been there. Like literally it was hours just. Just left there. They've gone back to the house and they started, just started to work on Stanley when all of a sudden from behind them, Teresa collapses as well. Have you? Heard the so again the fire fire department attended and it was the same the same people returned yeah because I mean they were still on shift like that's how soon is happening so the.

27:06 Fact of like, we're just there, like what the Hell's going on with this? Because that was weird enough that, you know, that Adam had passed away. The 27. Now we've got a 25 year old and a 19 year old. Yeah. Well, I mean, the 1919 collected once that when they got there in front of them, which I mean, there's interviews with many of the paramedics and the fire, fire firefighters that were there that, you know, they said they commented saying like it was just they're in disbelief. Like when it's particularly when she dropped down.

27:30 Well, that's what that's what this one that. I'm in particular that I'm thinking of this. I think he was a, a firefighter, yeah. And obviously trained in emergency response and he was saying he they were working on Stanley. And next minute, he felt Teresa grab him and she, he thought it was because she was so in, like, so desperate to. Yeah. For hit, for something to happen. And then so it kind of took him a beat to turn around to see her because he was focused on Stanley. Yeah. But when he did, as soon as he turned around, she collapsed.

28:06 Yeah, and they're. Like, what the fuck is going on? They say something environmental, like what's happening anyway? But obviously in the immediacy of what was going on, they needed to sort that situation out and get these two people to hospital. Yeah, but. That's the thing. It immediately triggered that whole idea of, you know, well what what is going on here and what's created this like is there monoxide poisoning in this in this house? They actually, they got obviously, well, Stanley, they, they did take him to hospital, but he passed away.

28:32 Teresa was on life support for a little bit longer, but she survived. Until the next the next day. Yes. So they, they, she was holding on, but they but didn't. Sorry. Two days, but two days. Yeah. 1st of October. She passed away. Yeah, right. Yeah. But yeah, so they were kind of, they thought they might be able to get her through, but that was they. But what they did was they segregated her so because they were like, what's is, is this something? Is there some sort of something in the airborne? Is there something airborne?

28:59 Is it something that's contagious then that, you know, people are catching from each other and, you know, this is, you know, pre COVID that we're also more aware of those things like pre COVID, you know, yeah. So but that people were sort of thinking, is this something that we could all be, you know, infected with as well and more people are going to drop. So, so they've, they've isolated her as well as the people who were in working with on her and Stanley because they weren't sure if there was cross contamination between them all.

29:24 So that that happened, but that meant that they couldn't then investigate kind of and look at what was happening. So this was a point where a particular nurse was contacted who was a phenomenal nurse that they sent her in to sort of look at. What do you think has gone on here and start start looking into this because thank. God, thank God they sent this woman in. Yeah. Yeah, she. Is, I think if it weren't for her. Oh. They could have been all sorts of trouble. This could have been it was really bad, but it could have been worse.

29:58 I. Agree. Yeah, I think that this meant that they actually connected dots quicker. Very. Quickly. Yeah. So what she did was so she had the fire brigade come in to do the carbon monoxide testing. That was something that they could do. They had instrumentation to be able to do that. Yeah, that was ruled out. And so then she decided to go around and look at potential contaminants within the home. Like she said, you know, sometimes it might be something foodborne. They didn't know if it was like, a Botulism or something from food they'd eaten or.

30:31 Anyway, So she's gone and started looking around the house now. She made a couple of comments. The first comment she made was that the house was immaculately clean. Like it was very clean. So she's like, it's not like they were living in squalor and there's, you know, disease, like a disease ridden home. There were no animals in the house, which again, they can bring in different diseases that you may not know about. There was no evidence of rodents or anything. So she said sometimes that, you know, in rodent feces there can be different things that are carried.

31:01 She's like, so no evidence of that. So she's then looking through, I guess the less conspicuous things. You know, she's ruled out all of the things. They're like, Yep, there's no poo, there's no nothing filthy. She's looked in the fridge and she's like everything gas you. Know like that sort of stuff. That's it and. In the fridge, all of the food was fresh, nothing is off. Everything smelt OK. Like she she was very, very thorough. Yeah. Anyway, so she's found this bottle of Tylenol extra strength on the kitchen bench and she's like, oh, that's interesting.

31:32 Let me count how many pills there are. So she did, and she discovered that there were 6 pills missing and she's like 6 pills missing. Three people dead, you take. Two at a time? Yep. That and she's like I just knew in that instance it was this. She said I didn't know what it was to do with this, but I knew it had to be this and she was pretty adamant because when she took this to so I believe it was the police chief had asked her to go and do this. Yes. Or was it the Fire Chief? It was the police chief, was it?

32:04 And when she took it, when she anyway, when she took it to the superior, he said to her, it's Tylenol. Like, no, Yeah. And she's like, but there is literally nothing else. Oh, that's the other thing. In the bathroom, she found the receipt for the Tylenol and saw that it had been purchased that day. And so she's like, so it was. It was purchased. It's brand new. It was purchased today. And six pills are missing today. And we've got two people. Three people dead. Yeah. Each having taken 2, likely having taken two of these these pills.

32:34 So he's like, okay, bring it in and we'll get the medical examiner to have a look at it. Edmund. Donahue was the medical examiner, chief medical examiner in the area. And so he immediately like took a smell of it and he could smell there's this almond type smell to cyanide and he smelled that immediately. Apparently only 50% of the population can actually smell it. Yeah, Right. Yeah. That's so interesting. It's. It's one of those weird genetic things. Yeah. Like being able to curl your tongue. Well, I believe.

33:02 He then got someone else to smell it, to check it, and they both could smell it. So at least the two of them were 50% of the population that could, yeah.

33:11 Yeah, yeah. So that's really interesting. So he's like, right, well, he, I think he said, or maybe it was the other person he got to smell it actually said as soon as they even released the lid is like, I could smell it immediately. Yeah. So and we know what that smell is in. Relation. You don't know that that's, you know that smell you're not thinking about looking at, you're not feeling very well. And you open a bottle of that and take two. It's not just immediately. I wouldn't go. Hmm. So I can smell almonds and not take my Tylenol.

33:39 Yeah, no. No. Well, we would now. No. Well. Probably. Probably not. I don't know. Probably you can learn shit from this. They started to start. Take note. Yeah, please take note. All right, so we've got the, you know, we're looking now that at the source of this. And, yeah, so they don't know how the cyanide got there, why the cyanide got there, but they're like, OK, let's run this now through an analyzer to be 100% sure that what it is, what we think it is, is actually what it is. Now, unfortunately, that took a bit of time.

34:15 Yeah. When I say a bit of time, it was still very fast, but it wasn't fast enough to then save the remainder of the victims, I don't think. If it could have been because they'd already been purchased, you know what I mean. Or yeah, but. I mean, I guess if you if they were able to get that message out in that instance, not to take them, we don't know whether it would have reached the right people in the right time or not. But anyway. So the next victim was another Mary by the name of Mary Reiner Raina.

34:42 She was 27 years of age. And look, this is absolutely, absolutely heartbreaking. I think, you know, the death of a 12 year old girl is tragic, but this one kind of really got me. But I guess it got me in the fields because of the position in her life that she was in. And I just found it so incredibly relatable. Absolutely. So she was living in Winfield, IL, and she was a mother of four children, the youngest of which was six days old. On this particular day and back in the day and still to to this day, Panadol has always been considered or paracetamol, Tylenol, sorry, has always been considered a safe drug to take in pregnancy.

35:29 Now, I know we all try not to, but there's days where you have no choice. You've got a headache, whatever, Take it if you need it. You take it if you need it. Yep. And it is considered safe to take in pregnancy and in your very early postpartum days as well when you're breastfeeding and all of that kind of thing. So she's obviously had a headache. Well, so her husband said that she was like physically and emotionally just exhausted, 27 years of age with four children. Six days ago you gave birth.

35:58 You're coming home to three other kids. I would be exhausted and burnt out too and probably have a permanent headache and would need to be taking paracetamol. Absolutely. So she did just that. So they also bought extra strength Tylenol and she took 2 tablets. And again, in exactly the same way as everyone else that we've spoken about to this to this point has collapsed. Yeah. So her husband's name was Ed, and he did exactly what all the other victims families did and called an ambulance. And she was actually rushed to the Central DuPage Hospital, which was about a 2 minute drive from their house.

36:44 Like, So it's not like it was far. She they, you know, tried to save her. They performed CPR again, they're looking at this 27 year old woman, the fact that she'd just given birth, they thought that like maybe it was like a massive blood loss or that it was something relating to having just given birth, which is a really tumultuous time in the life of a woman. Absolutely. I can understand why they did. Yeah, but they but couldn't find any connection to that once they not. At all. There was no bleeding, nothing like that.

37:13 She passed away in the hospital a little bit later on that afternoon. Yes. So it's it's it was again, the so we're talking now three different hospitals for these five victims. Yeah. So, and at the time there wasn't like a centralized system or anything like that. I mean, they were still doing paper charting and we didn't have the computers like we have today. No. So nothing was being. They weren't. Connecting the dots between those, I mean, obviously three in the 11 family that got things moving, whereas these between the the three of those and then the sort of poor Mary Kellerman and and this Mary, they weren't the those those three separate occasions of this were not being connected at that point.

37:56 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just absolutely horrific. And you know, to have a baby, a six day old baby left without his. Absolutely. I mean the other children as well, but particularly the fact that they didn't even get a chance to to bond, you know, make that connection there as as strong as. So sad. So, so sad. Yeah, OK. The next victim was another Mary by the name of Mary McFarland. Her death happened in a sort of a more public setting. Yeah, in a way. And look, so sorry. So her name, she went by the name of Sue, not Mary.

38:41 She was 31 years of age. She was a divorced single mum raising two sons at the time. So Ryan was 5 and Bradley was three at the time of her death. So another young mum. Like, it's just, you know what? It actually makes me think young mums really need Panadol. Fuck yeah. At least, at least. Yes, at least apparently she came home. So yet late afternoon she'd been working and oh, no, she was at work, wasn't she? And she developed a throbbing headache. Oh, my God, we've all been there. She was sitting at her desk at the time and she's like, oh, I'm gonna gonna grab some extra strength Tylenol and knock this, you know, knock this headache out.

39:23 Yeah. To the horror of her Co workers, she was in like the main area of their office. And again, in exactly the same way as the other victims, she just collapsed. Yeah. She was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, where she was pronounced dead later that night. Just. Awful SO. Even despite, you know, many of these victims arriving at hospital alive, what had happened to them? They there was no, they weren't able to sustain life like from what from all of the reports I've read and things I've listened to about this.

40:03 Their pupils were fixed and dilated. Their breathing was extremely shallow. It was that they just couldn't get it back. And it's just absolutely horrific. And when we know about what you know, they obviously figured out, especially with the Janus family initially, that it was due to cyanide. The way that cyanide works, it is it actually blocks oxygen from getting into your blood cells. And so, and it can be immediate like it can be so so fast if you immediately knew. That like I don't cyanide. I don't think that changes it doesn't Nah Nah, yeah.

40:37 Because even like when I look think of like all the victims here and you look at that Teresa, who was, you know, they was literally paramedics on hand at the time she collapsed even from that entry point of like. Is there like an antidote to cyanide? Yeah. Or just even don't know. Yeah. Knowing like, you know, OK, we know what that effect is that it does. Well, if we do this, it might counteract that. Yeah. Oh, there. Is a apparently there is a drug. I don't know whether there was back then. Yeah, whether, but apparently there is an antidote.

41:05 Mm. Hmm, there is now, but I'm assuming it would have to be administered pretty pretty. I mean, obviously it does. Work very fast cyanide like especially in the levels which we'll get to that that's. What we know from the Janus family is that each capsule contained enough cyanide to kill 3 adult humans. So if they're taking two of those capsules, that's enough to kill 6 people. And so it obviously just worked in an instant. Yeah, really, really fast. Oh God. Okay, so I guess in this oh sorry one.

41:38 Was one more victim that sorry that were you going? Yeah, sorry. That's all right. Go go, you're doing. Very well, I'll leave you to it, okay? So the next victim is a woman by the name of Paula Prince. She was 35 years old and was a flight attendant and apparently amazing at her job, like friendly, loved travelling, had an absolute zest for life. She was single, but she lived in a really lovely apartment on her own and she was just in in one of the like Chicago's Old Town apparently. And she was beautiful, like absolutely stunning woman and a real had a real zest for life.

42:17 And I heard, I think it was her. I want to say it was her sister. It might have been her friend speaking about her in a documentary I watched about this. And I really, I don't know. I, I felt like I'd like to be her friend. The way that she was spoken about. I'm like, she just sounded like so much fun. Yeah. So kind, really thoughtful, always giving to other people. And she had people in her life who had kids, and she'd always, like, do everything for them. And just a really, genuinely, solidly lovely person.

42:52 So she was a flight attendant for United Airlines. And she did well. She did actually international and domestic travel for part of that. And I think she was really, really good at what she did. Yeah. So she landed at O'Hare Airport on the 29th of September. She'd just flown from Las Vegas. And then she had some time off work, few days off work. She said that apparently on the way home she was exhausted and she had a had a bit of a headache. She stopped off at a Walgreens, which is a chemist, a pharmacy chain over in the United States and she purchased some extra strength Tylenol.

43:36 This is the most tragic part of this story because she was actually her sister was trying to get in contact with her. And two days later this, her sister phoned the police and asked them to do a welfare check on her because she hadn't heard from her, wasn't able to get her by phone. And the police did that. They went into her home and they found her collapsed on her bathroom. Well, she was kind of half in, half out of her bathroom. She was they found a bottle of extra strength Tylenol near nearby near her body.

44:13 One pill was missing and also the receipt was found in her apartment. So they know it was purchased that day and that's what I. Think with that one, I find really, really hard that she only took one like whereas the others were taking two, that then you wonder, OK, if she'd taken that kind of a dose and someone had been home with her, say, was there a chance maybe she would have made it? But the fact she was home alone, I mean, meant that there was no intervention for her whatsoever.

44:41 And the fact that her body was found two days later, it just makes me feel so. Sad, that is. I mean, that's just awful, yeah. Yeah, what about Mary Weiner, 27 years old. And so she was the 6th victim in terms of like the the, you know, the the process of all of this and similar thing. So she also had a headache, took some extra strength, Tylenol collapsed. Now, very, very luckily, she was also taken to the Central DeBarge Hospital, which is the same place Mary Rayner had been taken that day, earlier that day.

45:27 And because they now had two victims at the same hospital that had the same symptoms and died in the same way, they started to that hospital then started to be like, OK, there's something actually going on here.

45:44 What's what's the go? Let's see if they started to then reach out to other hospitals in the area to see if they'd seen anything like this. Because these two things were so, so bizarre. Yeah, yet unique. They'd never really seen anything like this before. And this is what started the hospitals talking. So the Doctor Who treated both of these Marys reached out to colleagues in the other emergency like emergency departments in the hospitals around. And then that's how they found, Oh my God, we've had a patient like this and we've had three patients where this has happened.

46:23 And this is where at that time, the police chief's like, Oh my Lord, we need to get the mayor and the, I don't know, the health department involved in this and sort of start, started the ball rolling in terms of like, what the fuck are we going to do about this? And because of the Janice family connection and the fact that they'd within the day figured out that there was cyanide in their Tylenol bottle, yeah, they were able to basically go put all this together. And everyone's like, I mean, obviously autopsies had to happen to be 100% sure, but looking at the symptoms, looking at the way these people died, they were pretty certain they.

47:01 The one, the thing that connected very quickly was that the Kalerman bottle, the bottle from Mary Kalerman and the bottle from the Janice family was from the same lot number. Yeah. So that they kind of actually jumped to a conclusion there a little bit of that, OK, it's that lot number that's been affected thinking that, I mean, because at this point still they're going, OK, it's Tylenol, They're thinking this has got to have happened in manufacturing, immediately gone back to the source of it because as we said at the start, no one's thinking about something's gone wrong in the manufacturing stuff.

47:32 This is a lot number issue. So they decided to recall that lot number. So basically thinking that removing that lot off the shelves would then fix. This because there was some error in manufacturing which basically meant that something in that lot got. Into that somehow. Yep, and. They'll address that, but let's get all that lot number off the shelves now. Johnson and Johnson were immediately on board with this. It wasn't that they were, you know, proactive. They didn't sort of do the whole no, no, no, our products fine, push it out in the shelves.

48:06 They were very, you know, instantly. Well, they immediately issued a recall, Yeah, just at the time they. So initially they only issued a recall of the extra strength Tylenol. Yeah. And the batch was like M-288-O or something like that. Yeah. And OK, so they MC. 2880 OK. Yeah, that wasn't bad, Emma. Well done you for remembering that. And they, yeah. So they've obviously got people to they're like, you can either hand it in to where you purchased it from, you can hand it to the police station, or please, at the very least, just discard it.

48:42 Yeah. But then very soon after that when they started then looking at there was more, once they kind of started linking these other cases up and so connecting those dots, they very quickly realized that there's more lot numbers that have been hit. So originally there was lots number 1910 MD and MB 2738 were also identified from the Callum. I'm sorry, not from, I'm from Mary Macfarlane's pill bottle as well. So they realized to what that actually meant to once they started putting them all together, it wasn't just the lot numbers that were many, many, it was also two different factories.

49:19 So originally it was a factory that was quite localized to Chicago that they pinpointed where these were from. But as they started looking at some of these lot numbers, one of them in particular came from Texas. So it didn't mean that then Texas were going to be necessarily, you know, that was sort of concerned then it could be something that could show up. These cases could shop elsewhere because the Texas factory was bigger even than the one that was out from Chicago. So then it became of even bigger concern of like how far this could go if it was coming directly from factories.

49:49 But at the same time they were like there is if there this is they realized that it couldn't be. There's nothing that Johnson and Johnson was saying there's no cyanide in their factories at that point, but there was number cyanide that they were going OK, this is somebody who is working. If this is someone working for Johnson and Johnson tampering with the bottles in the manufacturing process, that's not happening then at 2 separate factories, that's got to be at 1 factory. So the fact that it's now lot numbers from multiple factories almost really made them realize this is not a manufacturing issue in that there's something happening there.

50:25 This made it then go, then realize holy crap this is happening after they've left the factories. But at what point they didn't know this is. It so because they. Then the these bottles then go to distribution centres before they're then sent out to different pharmacies and and supermarkets and all of that kind of thing. Yeah, so they had to, they had to make a pretty big call. And the call that they had to make was, do we actually now just recall all Tylenol products? So they did. They absolutely did that.

50:56 And I can't tell. Me anyway that if you know as a consumer of that product that you would like go hang on a minute. I think there's products that being recalled. I wouldn't touch any of their products until I felt very safe. I think the. Only way Johnson and Johnson could have gotten out of this the way that they did. Yeah. And by that, I mean, getting back to the point where they're the number one selling analgesic products in the US Yeah, the only way they could have done that is by doing exactly what they did.

51:27 And that was recalling all Tylenol products around the States. Yes. So they recalled, I think it was 100 million bottles. Yeah, it was. Oh no. Was it 30 million? 31 million for 100. $1,000,000 value something like that. That was a. 100 million in. In 1982. The value of that now is something like. Probably 253. 100,000,400 million. I calculated it out to Wow, it'd be worth today's money. 400 million, yeah. Yeah, it's it's widely considered like that. Their recall of this is widely considered as like one of the best.

52:06 Gold. Standard. Kind of moves of what you do, the gold. Standard of what you do, they've never Johnson. And Johnson up until this point had never had to recall a product on mass scale before. And so this was absolutely unprecedented for any drug company anywhere. The fact that they were willing to take the hit is, I mean, of course they did because there were people dying and they didn't know what was going on. But reputationally, the fact that they played it the way that they did meant that people still had faith in them as a brand.

52:41 And they were able to, we'll talk about this in a minute, to how they got there. But they were then able to get that loyal, those loyal consumers to come back and buy their product again eventually, yeah. So I mean, coming from a place of like, you know, from I guess the consumers point of view that were doing the right thing, but they also like protecting their own asses. Of course they would come back, of course. So it's true fold, but it got it got the right action like it needed to happen. They also.

53:07 Announced a $100,000 reward. Yeah, to anybody who was able to come forward with information pertaining to how this happened, or if they knew anybody or any information that would lead to the solving of this problem, they came out with that straight away as well. I mean, $100,000 to them, obviously peanuts in relation to the 100 million. Yeah, the 100 million at the time. But you know, again, they were putting their money where their mouth was and they really did want to have this solved. Of course, their livelihoods were at stake.

53:40 This was such a massive portion of their of their revenue, yeah. I mean, so it highlighted to them at this point like, well, how are they going to get a product back on the shelves that people are going to trust? And that was when they started implementing these tamper proof seals, the full packaging and triple seal systems that they have to this day to ensure people can't get that access without a consumer knowing that that bottle's been opened before they've purchased it. So I mean, it brought something in that well and truly, I mean, we're grateful for today.

54:12 It's just that it was needed. We just take it for granted, don't we? You wouldn't even. Of course it would look weird if you got a bottle that didn't have something tamper like a tamper evident pill packet or a tamper evident, you know, sealed to a bottle. But we know no different, no. No, yeah, this is it. I mean, it also the other thing was that the capsules that were in these bottles were able to be opened up and things put inside and reclosed to the so that you you had no idea that had previously been done.

54:45 And so it basically it created a new product too that we know it today is being a caplet rather than a, a capsule or a tablet, but the combination of the two, which I thought I think was pretty interesting. So that's less tampering, being able to be made of a product, you know, be able to open solid. Put the product. That's solid, yeah. And and swallowed that way that which is interesting. I never thought about it until doing this that I was like, oh, that's why they do that. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

55:14 Yeah. God, cause yeah, just take it for granted. Absolutely. So what happened, I think it was a little bit later that year, is that it became a federal law. It was the federal Anti Tampering Act of 1983 became official and it became against the law to interfere with products that like that were being, you know, sold to consumers. So up until that point, tampering, tampering with a anything that a consumer was purchasing was not actually a crime. Well, I find that really, it's really interesting, isn't it?

55:56 Because you just assume it would be in that because it should, it shouldn't be done. But at the same time, there's been no need for there to be a law about it. It was common sense not to. Yeah. Like that's, it's a really interesting turn of events of like society, isn't it? Totally. Totally, totally. Oh, wow. Yeah. But then obviously if you're putting cyanide into a pill, that's an extra. It's not like you were just replacing the acetaminophen with, I don't know, like talcum powder or something.

56:24 That's something. Or bacon powder, something that's not harmful, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The fact that they will cyanide you would still be. You're definitely going to get caught for murder. Yeah. But yeah, tampering in general is now legal. Is now illegal. Yeah, interesting. It's. Really, really interesting. So, OK, we need to now maybe have a bit of a look at who might have done this. Yeah. Well, I mean, they were at a loss because, well, there's no, no CCTV of these, you know, places where these things were bought as to know who was in there that could have done it at that point.

56:54 There was no CCTV of, you know, depots where trucks were leaving and, you know, carrying these products. There was a photo taken of the flight attendant of Paula in the supermarket where she purchased hers, right. There's there is a photo of her. They so they didn't have CCTV. No, but they, they did have cameras that took still photos once every X amount of minutes or something. Yeah. And there is, But there is this photo, and she's lining up and she's kind of looking away from where the camera is looking at something.

57:29 And it's haunting because you're like, she's literally standing there about to buy the thing that will kill her tonight. Yeah. Isn't that fucking awful? It's. Fucking awful, yeah. Like you're going to the supermarket and buying. Yeah, I. Literally had Panadol this morning like. Many I think you've had today, yeah. But like, you don't. Think twice about it. No, I said. Even even though we're recording this today, I didn't. It is. I did. I did pop it out of a blister pack, Yeah, and a tamper evident blister pack, but didn't think anything of it.

58:02 This. Thing you just don't. No, not at all. And why should you? You shouldn't these people, yeah. So basically there's sort of a bit of a loss to try to find suspects at this point. However, they've got their reward and hoping that someone might come forward with that money. Can be very motivating but. All of a sudden, a ransom letter appears. This is. Just. So this is like on the 1st of October. So this is only two days. This is 2 days after this is all occurred so. There were victims who hadn't even died yet.

58:29 There was. We didn't even know that Paula had died yet. And. Yeah. So nothing really much like it had been obviously was out in the media that this occurred, but there wasn't great details that we're getting out through the media. This is early days of this occurring. So when putting it together, yeah, I. Think this is an important point too. When they said that there was a recall, they didn't actually say why at the time. Because they could. They couldn't. They didn't. They didn't definitively know.

58:52 They, I just knew that there was something in these Tylenol bottles that was killing people. Yeah. So that's all that was really broadcast out there. And I mean, they did a lot. Even the local mayor for Chicago, she got police to go around with loud speakers, do door knocking to tell people, throw your Tylenol in the bin, like public service announcement it was on. Like they got media involved so people knew but they didn't know why no. And so, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but you are keep going before no.

59:25 You're doing all good. Yeah. So this ransom letter arrives at Johnson and Johnson, so I'll read it for you. Oh. Yeah, go. OK this. Because the start of which pisses me, I. Know right so. Sign of the times, gentlemen. Gentlemen, because there wouldn't be a woman in charge at the pharmaceutical company. What? Home with the children cooking dinner. Sorry. Sarcastic enough? Sorry. As you can see, it is easy to place cyanide, both potassium and sodium, into capsules sitting on store shelves. And since the cyanide is inside the gelatin, it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill.

1:00:08 Another beauty is that cyanide operates quickly. It does not take long for victims to die. So far I have spent less than $50 and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle.

1:00:28 If you don't mind the publicity of these little capsules, then do nothing. If you want to stop the killing. Why A1 $1 million to the following bank account? Now that bank account, obviously it was then looked at very, very carefully. That bank account belonged to a man who ran a travel agency. What? Sorry, what that? Whole ransom letter, I know. I. Know. I mean, it's beyond creepy in that they know. They know everything. Yep, they. Do they know what's been done? What's been used what how much money that would cost, like what cyanide would cost to and it.

1:01:18 Was out of church like it was checked out and that was exactly right all spot. On how long it would take to carefully undo each capsule and fill it with some cyanide and put it back together and put it into the bottle. They, the police were very thorough and looking at that, those sorts of things are like, you know, they made that sort of shit up. You know, they were very like, you could do it in 10 minutes, it could be done. What? Especially if you had a pill press, which, you know, Yeah, even without one, actually, yeah.

1:01:48 Yeah. So they looked into obviously this very, very carefully and found the man who owns the bank account that was listed there. Now they went to him, as I said, he owned like a travel agency and he was a regular run-of-the-mill bloke. No, nothing like untoward. They did full backtrack check on him of like to kind of go, what's his deal? Before they even approached him, they couldn't see anything that this man would connect to any of this. He had no priors, nothing, you know. Yeah, very much travel agency.

1:02:23 Now I'm trying to like what? Kill people with cyanide pills? Like what He was his business was doing well, you know, So it wasn't like he was he necessarily. I mean anyone could do with $1,000,000 but like. I can Yes, please. Yes, please. But you know who he wasn't needing? He wasn't needing the money. You know, like he wasn't in some sort of dire straits who was desperate for money that would need him to be going. I'll be, I'll do this to get ransom money. So with talking to him, though, they found the only person that this man could think of that would do something like this was an ex employee's husband.

1:03:01 This ex employee had they'd had some issues in terms of her work and she had left the company. And when that occurred, her husband was not happy about it, not at all. Now, he went by a name that was not his birth name at this time, as the husband and I couldn't find out. Could you find out much about why that is why he used that other name? I'm not. Sure. No, I couldn't find anything. I I certainly, I didn't come across it in any of my research, no. No. So he went by name. Oh, Richard. Something, wasn't it Rich?

1:03:38 God isn't going to find it, but he's. But in looking into him, they very quickly found this Richard actually was James Williams Lewis. Yeah, So who was James William Lewis then? Well, he was a very. Interesting, man. Interesting. Doesn't even cut the far out, Yeah. So he was already had some dealings with police at from immediately looking into him were like, well yeah, he's odd and very unusual in that he had been arrested previously and tried for a murder. Not only that, he had such a long standing rap sheet with the police, he.

1:04:24 He. He was one of those people who'd been, I don't know, I feel like he'd he'd in everything a serial pest because he'd always kind of reached just under the threshold to be convicted or tried of certain things. Like it's like he was constantly pushing this little boundary across the the years, never quite tipped over into unfortunately. We'll get to some of the more specifics in a second. Yeah. But never quite pushed over into him spending any time in prison. Well, not at this point anyway. Yeah.

1:04:55 Spending any time in prison or anything like that. Yeah. So, yeah, Serial Pest I think is fair, but he was doing some really fucking dodgy shit and and really damaging to other people. He was a con artist. He like, committed like credit card fraud. Yeah. He opened credit cards in all these different people's names. And I think he even opened one in the name of the travel agent who his wife. So his wife's name was Leanne. I think he they were. Like we want to get rid of her, but I think a lot of it was more to do with him, you know, in in wanting them out of like being.

1:05:26 And she, Leanne was. So, so, so loyal to her husband. Like to. Yep, that I can see that. If he said to her, oh, you need to find me like his Social Security number so I can buy a get a credit card in his name, she would have done it. Oh, yeah. She was just like one of those people. She just did everything he said. Yeah. And she never once, never once said a word against him to the police, to anybody in all of this. No. So to me, I feel like she would have known what was going on. She's culpable.

1:06:08 Yeah, I. Agree. As well. Yeah, I mean, he's obviously anyway, let's, let's get into that a little bit more. He's 100% next level. Very. And I have to admit, straight up, I've watched that more recent documentary and he is interviewed in that and at the time of him being looked at, he became quite vocal in media and was quite out there just loving. So sick, loved a. Bit of media back then, he then dropped off the radar and wouldn't be involved in media for quite some time in between and then. So then when it came to this newer documentary, I think he was like, bring it, you know, I'll have a chat with you.

1:06:45 And I have to admit, I slightly got sucked into this guy for a minute. For a minute. OK, I yeah, he told this story. He started to tell the story of how he was linked to this murder, which part of it broke my heart. Same so. Basically, him, James and his wife Leanne, had a daughter, and his daughter happened to have Down syndrome. And the way he spoke about her in this documentary was really loving. Yeah. That he wanted to do everything and anything for her. You know, growing up, I mean, in the 80s and having a child with Down syndrome, I don't know how much support would have been out there and how much sort of a lot of people could have been quite, you know, unhelpful to a family in that kind of situation.

1:07:29 I feel unlike today in the 80s. People born with with Down syndrome were still being institutionalized. Like that is it? It blows my mind that basically within our living lifespan that that was still happening. Like I can't believe that. Thank God things have changed and I. Think that immediately got me sucked in because I was like immediately this is a dad who was like that's not happening to my daughter and I'm raising her and I'm you know this is for us and this is my daughter when I was. In, yeah, I mean, look, I think.

1:08:03 Even the worst of the worst of people, surely they, I mean, there are people who are all bad. But yeah, we've all got our things right. And obviously I I agree with you. I agree that the way he spoke about her, but then you look at him and you're like, oh, he's a con artist. He would know it wasn't He would know that this looks really makes him look really sympathetic and. Yeah, and what do I? Actually think like if we're looking at this critically. Yeah. Where's the motivation makes you flip? The the other I. I hope, but I hope that it was genuine.

1:08:36 I really do. But unfortunately when she was, I think she was two years of age, she had a hole in her heart and she died during the surgery where they were trying to repair it. So. Yeah, she she passed away. And something they knew about too isn't something they weren't aware of. Yeah, they knew that she had this heart condition, which is quite common with people, Down syndrome. So, yeah, when it happened, it was heartbreaking. And he teared up in that documentary, and so did I along with him kind of going, oh, my God, this poor man's being accused of, you know, poisoning people.

1:09:07 And here he is. He's had, you know, all this going for him. Like, how awful. No, no, no. He's a piece of shit. He's a piece of shit. I mean. Both things can be true. It can be true that it's really sad that his daughter died, and it can be true that he's also a fucking piece of shit who's potentially allegedly perpetrated all these other things against other people. Definitely. So basically when his daughter passed away, he had this very good friend, now this good friend of his who was who absolutely adored his daughter and spent lots of time coming around and visiting her.

1:09:42 Oh, my God, I'm just trying to find Raymond W, isn't it? Yeah. So he's, look, they, they, they had an interesting friendship. And I, it was interesting to hear his perspective of like this great mate of his that came to his house all the time and everything. And then you hear Raymond West's daughter, I believe it was. I think I've heard her interviewed and how her perspective of Raymond West's relationship with James Lewis was a bit more like, oh, look, he's weird and a pain in the ass. But my dad was a very kind person and was friends with people.

1:10:08 Yeah. So it's very interesting seeing both perspectives of that. Yeah. So they would spend a lot of time together, according to James Lewis. And at one point though Raymond W, he had, well, interestingly, he disappeared. But James Lewis said he went on holidays and he even to the point of he went to his house and put a card on the door of his house saying I've gone to X so and so for this time. And so if you come to knock at my door, basically I won't be there. I'm not here. I've gone away back in the.

1:10:42 Days before mobile phones, people. Oh, and that. And worrying about people robbing your house because, you know, basically telling the world, you know, I'm not home. Like actually that's. A good point. I actually hadn't even thought about that, but yeah, I thought. You're doing the good friendly neighbor thing of like, you know, putting this note on the door, but you're just telling everyone like, you're not there. Like, I'm not home at this point. OK. All right. But yeah, according to to James Lewis, he had spoken to Raymond West, and he had decided to go on this trip.

1:11:10 And so James took it upon himself to put this note on the door, but he, Raymond W didn't appear. He, again, he was missing. His family, you know, rang the police and reported him missing, and they couldn't find him. And really, tragically, they ended up finding his body in the attic of the house. His body was dismembered. It was quite horrific, what had been done to him prior to death and after death. He, yeah, was not, not good. And obviously the last person to have seen him alive was James Lewis.

1:11:47 Interestingly enough, isn't it? Yeah. I'm sorry, no, go, go. I was going. To say the police obviously brought James in for questioning as they do. Yeah, absolutely the right thing to do. Last person to see him alive. And unfortunately, before interviewing him, they didn't read him his Miranda rage. Yeah. And so, I mean, I haven't. Have you actually, were you able to watch any of that interview? Have you watched? Any of it? No. I read some transcripts. I was. Going to say I read some transcripts but I don't know if the video is actually available.

1:12:22 No, maybe, maybe not actually, because I feel like I would have come across it when researching it, but it it was pretty fucking damning. It was pretty damning. And so the police have then charged him with the murder and dismemberment of this body because there's. No question. This man was murdered. Oh yeah. You can't commit murder and then cut your limbs off. No, you. Know you're committing suicide here and, like, you know, in his attic, he he was murdered, no question. Yeah. Someone else has done this too.

1:12:50 Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, they've charged James with the murder and it's gone to court and unfortunately. He. Had a really good lawyer and the lawyer figured out through, and I believe it was through these written transcripts that he was never, it was never documented. There was never assigned documentation with regard to him having been read his Miranda rights. And so the judge had no choice but to throw the case out. Yeah. There was not enough evidence without it without. It and so that's it. It literally he walked away from that.

1:13:27 He's. Free. Of course he does. Didn't. Kill him and has another story of that of like what he thinks happened, which is just doesn't make sense. Of course. Yeah, but I mean, we're pretty confidently can say he probably got away with murder of that there. And some people do believe it's because maybe Raymond W was like, mate, I can't do this anymore. Yeah, because he. Sorry. He had also stolen his credit card details too and was using Frame and West's credit card as and things. So there was that was that was the evidence they did have.

1:14:01 But that doesn't prove murder. Like kind of that's all they had on top of what these tapes were. Yeah. So these interviews. So yeah, that was basically they had to throw it out that they had no choice in that matter. But it did leave James Lewis as being someone who is just who's obviously I think got a, you know, a past that doesn't rule him out from being potentially someone who might do this to Cyano tablets, but. Also like the fact that he's written this extortion letter for the $1,000,000, to me that's like.

1:14:32 He. Knew something that wasn't publicly known. Like there's just so many things that just really line up well. The thing on. That is that the police sort of feel it like they, the bit of evidence with this that they feel is a bit of a clincher is that this letter arrived at Johnson and Johnson on the 1st of October. Yeah, and, and he, James Lewis says like he, so we should say he admits to writing that letter. He wanted the travel agent who you know, that his wife worked for. He was pissed with him.

1:15:01 He wanted him to pay for that. So he thought he would write this letter to Johnson and Johnson and get him in the shit. That's what his story of it is. He admits I wrote it. That's why I wrote it. I wanted him to be the person they were looking at for all these Tylenol murders. However, he wrote that letter and like it was postmarked on the 1st of October and he says it took him three days to construct that letter. And thinking about it now, if that's the case, 3 days prior the media and the public did not know about this, no.

1:15:35 In fact, the first victim had only just died. Yeah. So how on earth does he know enough about this to go no, I'm going to? Write a letter. So yeah, that that bit of evidence there, it's. Everything gets. Me for everything, but then I have to do the whole OK. He did actually didn't admit that until further investigations in, like, the 2000s. Yeah. So is that a memory lapse of how long it took it? I mean, it's not like it's a long ransom letter. There's not too much to it, no. So did he actually take three days to write it?

1:16:10 And that's my only thing of like, my brain goes, OK. Is he overestimating how long he thought about this? You know why? Why do you feel the need to give him that? Because because I just don't know if he did it. Really. No. I don't know. OK. All right. Should we talk about another? Yeah. But what about. OK, actually, let's talk a little bit more about like later on in the 2000s when the when the FBI got involved. Yeah. And they basically conned him. They conned the con man. Yeah. Well. Done. Well done so.

1:16:44 They they. This to me, speaks to his personality. I'm assuming he's got a personality disorder. Oh. Yeah. And his narcissism, to be honest, because he, the FBI basically said, oh, because you know so much about all this stuff. So they didn't say they were the FBI. They said they were journalists. They posited themselves as journalists. And they're like, we want to write a story about all of this. And we want you to because you're so good. And, you know, I mean, we know you wrote that letter and we know it wasn't you who did it.

1:17:19 So, but because you seem to know so much about this, how about we're going to do a story about this, like an expose about all of this. Can you be our expert? And can you tell us like, you know, theoretically how somebody would have done this, right? And he literally draws them diagrams, he draws them. He's got formulas, he's got amounts you would need to fill. I mean, I think the Tylenol bottles had 30 capsules in them. I think he knew exactly how much cyanide he needed to 60 was it? So 30 doses?

1:17:57 Doses. Sorry, You're right. He knew exactly how much cyanide was needed to put into the 60 capsules per bottle. He knew how to, like, cut the cyanide so it looked a little more powdery. He literally drew diagrams. He literally had formulas. Right. So he's showing off to these journalists who are actually FBI agents, and he's saying to them, if if it was me, this is what I would have done. This is what I would have done. Yeah. And the the main journalist who was a woman, a female FBI agent, she says to him, So why do you reckon the perpetrator of this would have put the cyanide into the extra bottles?

1:18:43 Is it because, you know, if someone's really sick and they're going to take the extra strength Tylenol and then maybe they'll die quicker because they're already sick and it might. Get covered up by that it might. Get covered up right? And he goes, it's a joke, don't you get it? There's extra in the Tylenol.

1:19:06 And she, she says when he said that, she had absolute chills and she was like, oh, I know he did it. I know he did it. Anyway, they ended up this was like subsequently to that they're like, yeah, we we've got to nab this guy again. OK.

1:19:24 Or is that one of those things where like some people are just more logical and more you're? Going down the Lucy let me path with this. Are you think I am? Yeah, No, I do get that. I actually do get that because. So I've been listening to a lot of this Lucy let me stuff lately and about how, you know, we've talked about it in our episode where she writes on the notes I'm bad, I did this, I it's my fault, blah, blah, blah. Which at the time, not knowing different things, I'm like, OK, of course you read that as a literal interpretation of she's guilty, right.

1:19:55 Without any nuance. Yeah. I'm not saying she is or isn't OK. But in this instance, I can see how you could have a similar approach because he's theoretically saying that he's like he's sorry, not theoretically, hypothetically saying that he's done it. Yeah. To go along with a story. To a journalist, because he thinks he's feeding them information about what would happen if if he were the Tylenol murderer, I get, I do get that. Yeah, but it's also that really like like the interpretation of things like being, you know, like the the old, you know why the chicken cross the road joke, you know, of like the different like different people's interpretation of to get to the other side.

1:20:41 Whereas I as a kid believed that to be the other side of the road, whereas the joke was originally and people got it of being like to the other side as in death. Yeah, right. That just never that never landed with me, right.

1:20:59 Yeah. That I'm wondering whether it's just to the way his brain works, which. I do believe. He has a narcissism or you know, something along those lines. And is there something a little bit autistic in there of like that just that the. Black and white like. You or something like you know his idea of extra when he hears that, well, there's something added, there's something extra that his brain just works differently, but. Why would he? I guess that maybe he doesn't have the insight then to think other people's brains don't work that way.

1:21:26 Yeah, Yeah, OK. I don't know. I know I should be defending him at the end of the day. I do think that. I mean, I do think he's an asshole of a man. Oh, he's. A He's a shit person at the end of the day. Yeah, this is not. The only thing he did in terms of like pissing people off, there's a number like as I said, there's a list of mile long of things he's done that are pretty shit. So I think he's a Dick and an asshole. I just don't know that he did the Tylenol murders should. We talk about the other potential suspects.

1:21:55 Yep. Sure. Who do you want to go with next? What about Arnold? Roger. Yeah. Roger Arnold. Yeah. So he was a dock worker at the warehouse that supplied the stores. So he worked at a basically the distribution center, so the the ships shipments would come in to where he was working and it was his job to then distribute them to all the different like the different pharmacies and as we were saying, supermarkets and wherever, wherever the Tylenol is going. Yeah, there was no evidence that linked him specifically to those bottles.

1:22:32 So I think when they looked into it, certain lot numbers had passed through his distribution centre, the one that he worked at, not. All, not all those lot numbers, no. So. He did have a link to Mary Rhyner's father. Well, that's. That's the other thing it. Was like, yeah, some sort of revenge on him. Yeah, so. So he became the prime suspect because he worked at a warehouse with Mary Renner's father at one point, but the police could never prove that he was the killer. No, the pressure of him being under investigation for this broke him as a human.

1:23:23 He then went on to murder a man by the name of John Stanisha. Yeah. He just he missed because. He thought that now this is so fucking tragic and and you look at this and you think this is this really honestly is yeah, another victim of the Tylenol murders, isn't he? So this this John was a another a family man, lovely guy, upstanding member of society got muddled into this whole mess. It was kind of a case of mistaken identity. Yeah. And Arnold killed him because he thought that, well, someone who looked like him anyway, had ratted him out to the police and said that Arnold was the was the the Tylenol murderer.

1:24:11 But. They did find at his house a book by the name of. It's the poor man's James Bond, it's called. And in it explains how to make potassium cyanide. Yeah, like, oh. Just it's probably worth noting as well, when they searched James Lewis's house, they did not find any cyanide, no. But they did find a book again that did actually. It was like. The what was it? I can't remember. What book it was, but it was definitely one that clearly identified what cyanide was. That's how much it would need. There was all that was in there.

1:24:41 It was like something it's. Like The Alchemist something, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there was definitely a link there of like having information at his house that would help in doing it. Yeah. The other thing with Lewis that I think is my, maybe my key thing of like going, I don't know if he did it. There's actually, he lived in New York, right? He didn't live in Chicago. He was not from the area. He there was no evidence of him even being in Illinois, in Chicago at the time. Yeah. So that's probably my.

1:25:14 He can't be placed there whereas bottles were clearly. Tampered with like in that they were in. Purchased. Taken home and then put back on shelves after purchase. I assume that's what you do. I in the shop, I don't think you could stand there and do it. No, in the shop I couldn't. No, I'm, I'm fairly certain that whoever did this must have purchased them, taken them home, done this and then, you know, substitiously put them back on shelves after that, which at the time they could do because they were.

1:25:37 Yeah, all those tampering things weren't there on the bottles to and there's no. CCTV or anything like that so. That's how I believe it would have happened and there's no evidence of him being in the area to have done it. That's probably my that's where I kind of because. When when you plot on a map all of the places where cyanide was found in these extra strength Tylenol bottles, they're all fairly within a 20 minute drive of one another, basically all within sort of the outer city limits of Chicago in Illinois.

1:26:08 So it was. Contained to that it was. Contained to a very quite a narrow area really yeah The the thing that I I think you're right I think that some the the perpetrator has done exactly what you said like bought some Tylenol taking it home. What I think is tough for me to get around my mind, but but I can also see you could absolutely do it because was it like 7 or 8 different places where they found it? Yeah. Wouldn't have been that many, not could have been. You're right, like so, so the what I'm saying is the perpetrator would have then had to have driven to all those places and placed the bottles.

1:26:45 But if you're trying to look for maximum impact, that's kind of maybe what you would do. Yeah, it's. Spread it like spread it. Out because you. Kept it at one shop, it kind of it means you like and they're going to look around that area for somebody whereas by doing it multiple shops. Yeah. It grows the the where you're looking for the. Scope, yeah, but that's where. I mean, he lived in New York. Yeah, well. Arnold lived in New York. Yeah. No, no. No, no, no, Lewis. Oh, Lewis. Yeah, Yep. Sorry, yeah.

1:27:10 Yeah, Oh, God. But the other person they did look at for this was actually the Unabomber. So they did do Adna. So in later years. So when we've really looked at this case in the 2000s, I think it was around about 2010, I want to say. Yep, they did. They did go to well, Arnold died, so they consumed his body to remove DNA so they could test him. They did get DNA from Lewis at that time he was still alive, only he only passed away in 2023, I think it was. So yeah, they took DNA from him and they took DNA from the Unabomber because he was operating that area as well.

1:27:44 So they kind of, that was one they had on their their list of being, well, it was this maybe one of his as well. And that that, but no, none of them of their DNA matched the DNA that they did find on these bottles that was that were tampered with. So that's another little. Bit of a It's just another weird thing I think. But then if you were doing this. Would. You wear gloves, probably because you don't want to get cyanide on your hands. Cyanide on you, that's true. But then, but they did find common DNA they.

1:28:15 Did that is true so. Yeah. I mean, they found the DNA of the victims who'd obviously handled the bottles. They found unknown DNA, which is likely to be that of shopped. Is putting on shelves that's but they. Yeah, it certainly didn't match any of the the suspects at the time. Yeah, there was one other guy whose name was sort of mentioned briefly, but he was ruled out fairly quickly. His name was Kevin Masterson. He had a very, very well known grudge against this. The grocery chain Jewel or Jewel Osco.

1:28:48 It was called Osco. Yeah. And a lot of the pills were bought at a Jewel store, but not all. So yeah, it was pretty quickly ruled out that it probably wasn't him, but he certainly was very, very vocal. They, he felt that so his wife had worked there and they, he felt very strongly that they had mistreated her as an employee. But, and also, I think he was a bit, he had some issues of his own going on. And so he kind of really took this and ran with it and was incredibly vocal about how awful they were.

1:29:28 So people, you know, members of the community thought, well, you know, maybe he would want to get back at them by doing this. But anyway, he got, he got ruled out. There was definitely no physical link there to, to, to, to link them together. Yeah. The other theory, though, is so Michelle Rosen, who is one of Mary Rayner's daughters. Yeah, So victim Mary Rayner's daughters had a theory that the tampering didn't happen in the stores at all. Her theory is that there was somebody in the distribution centres that did this because because of the way that they ended up randomly in different places.

1:30:06 So when the recall happened, a lot of the bottles, especially from the stores where known cyanide was tablets, were purchased within the bottles. Scientists went through and checked all. Like literally. They went through hundreds of thousands of capsules, broke them open, checked 31. Million bottles, yeah. Checked whether there was cyanide present and so not all of the ones on the shelf contain cyanide. So yes, they were like, well, was it that somebody in these distribution centers has put a random 1 bottle here that I've tampered with?

1:30:46 One bottle in that box, 1 bottle in that box. But to me, but to me, I don't think that's right, because not all of those bottles would have gone onto the shelves on the same day, no. You know it's been back for me. That's right, for weeks. Or, you know, someone sells more than the other person. To me, that is completely not even a thing. I think it had to have been placed there by a person on the same day. The person would have had to have driven around all these stores, paste the bottles back, but.

1:31:15 One thing that I want to hear your thoughts on this too, Like Johnson and Johnson, there's, there was some talk around the fact that like from Johnson, Johnson's perspective, they're like, we do not have cyanide in our factories. You know, like turns out they did. But when it was investigated further and that they, that Johnson and Johnson then had to come out and say, Oh yeah, yeah, no, we do actually. But it's kept behind lock and key. No one has access to it without these protocols. That's not actually true.

1:31:41 They didn't have all these protocols and it was pretty accessible by staff. They didn't really keep it away that much. Until after this. Yeah, exactly. And then with this like their proactiveness in terms of fixing this, which is applauded it all levels on what they did. However, I can't come at the fact that they were investigating themselves as part of the police operation. I can understand as a company you want to make your own, you know, like investigation to what happened. That's absolutely Yep, good.

1:32:14 But I can't agree with them being the people who were actually invited by the police to do the investigation of themselves of these bottles, because I think that's so fair. Yeah, all this stuff was basically they were like, oh, we've got the labs, we've got the ability to do this, which absolutely they do. Yeah, because they do their. Own. They do their own. That's what you see. And that's right. They need to check what you know, make sure that they're what they're putting out there is what they say they're putting.

1:32:40 Yeah. And how much faith can we then have as a Society of like, what it wouldn't? It wouldn't happen today that that would never happen today because independent testing would be happening for them just for what they're putting out anyway. Yes, they wouldn't be able to do just in house testing for that to in order to get accreditation to be able to actually put these products on the shelf. Yeah, but I I fully agree with you. The police gave them way too much robe in terms of the scope of what they were investigating in relation to this.

1:33:11 And it's like, it's like the police put blind faith in them to be like, oh, yeah. Well, no, we know it wasn't you. Yeah. But we, I mean, I don't look, I don't think it was, I don't think it was somebody in the manufacturing process. I don't. Either I don't think that's what happened, but you're not actually there's. Nobody impartial saying that counting. Yourself. Yeah, I feel like then there's this shadow over that. Yeah. Because of the fact that, well, who is to say that you, you haven't botched the outcome to cover it up for yourselves.

1:33:38 And it'd be like you who has medical background in terms of labs and stuff are like looking at, you know, things in a you have access to a lab. You know that you went and murdered Peter and the police turned around and went, well, you do. You do all the lab work for us because you know what you're doing. And then come back and tell us and then. I'll come and I'll come and get like DNA from my mortal enemy and be like, Oh my God, it's this person. Me after all. Good news, it's literally the. Same thing.

1:34:04 Yeah, on a smaller. Scale, yeah, I mean, just because they're a big company and they are trying to protect themselves, they have the money to protect themselves and. You know what? So they should be protecting themselves. I understand that that's business. But yes, I couldn't agree with you more. The police definitely gave them a lot of scope, but they shouldn't have been given it. At the end of the day, I do I I don't think that's how it happened. I agree with you in that it's with someone driving around putting it back on shelves.

1:34:27 I really agree. I think that to me. That's logically, that's the only way it could have happened in terms of because it was such a narrow time frame. Yeah. That the people bought them, yes. That it was all on the same day. I can't come it any other way that they could have all ended up on the shelves on the exact same day. No. Yeah. So. So we're looking at the moment there. We've got we've got a few suspects, you know, stand out being Lewis, but they just I mean, as I said, he can't be proven to be in the area.

1:34:57 So they really couldn't get him on this on the on the media. Have you? Seen though they did have like a really really shitty grainy photo That could have literally been me like you can't even you're honestly judging by the body shape of this person, I'm like I actually can't tell whether it's male or female they've got short hair, but the body like you can't even really tell because it the the photo's kind of on like a bit of an angle, so you kind of are not seeing their full stature if you know what I mean OK really blurry front and they're like Yep, that's him that's.

1:35:30 Him. That was him. That was him putting. That's it, right? Yeah, it's not really. I'm like. No, that's not no, Yeah, OK. Can't go to court with that. No, but what they could go to court on was the extortion letter. Oh, yeah. So they did get him on that. And he did get 13 years for writing that letter. I mean of which? He served 10, I think in the end, yeah, but I mean. At least I could get him on that. I mean, he admitted to doing it. He did do it like he wrote the letter, but whether or not. But he he was charged with extortion, not with anything.

1:36:00 No murder. No, he was. Just charged with extortion. Yeah, rightly so, because absolutely. OK, If you can't get him on the murder, get him on something. We've got him on that. But he had to let him walk on the Tylenol thing. And so to this day. No one's been charged. No one's been charged. Gosh, but we did have some copycats. Yeah. I mean, well, just say. That. Could it if if that's not him, then who is it and are they still wandering around and doing this? That's an. That's a very, very fairpoint.

1:36:30 Look, I think in the aftermath of this, So in Chicago, definitely in other states of in the United States, so this happened late September, early October. So Halloween was coming up. A lot of counties cancelled their Halloween, said kids weren't allowed to go out and do trick or treating. That lasted for years in some areas, Yeah, because people were so scared. But in the weeks, like in the literal 3 or 4 weeks following these Tylenol murders, there were 270 reported incidents of product tampering.

1:37:09 Now that they don't know whether it was just not reported before this and not widespread as in, you know, people would bring products back to a store and say, oh, I found this unit. And then it wasn't kind of really going anywhere. And only because the tampering of these pills have been made, this become a reportable thing now because it's illegal now to tamper with consumer products. So they're not sure whether this was in reaction to or was always happening. But it was, you know, people were finding razor blades in candy, like in lollies.

1:37:46 They were finding there were pins and needles placed in fruit. And so, yeah. Was it that these things were just starting to get documented now because of the Tylenol murders and the fact that that, you know, tampering with things is, you know, illegal? Or were people now getting ideas to tamper with things with that? We don't don't really know. But anyway, the copycat, The copycat or, you know, was it the same person? We don't actually know. They started pretty quickly after these Tylenol murders.

1:38:21 Yeah, they. Say there was hundreds. Yep. Literally hundreds. Which ones have you written any down to talk about? There's a. There's a few, I've got one. Oh, there was 3 deaths that occurred in 1986 from gelatin capsules. Mm hmm. So that was that happened in Yonkers, in New York, Yep. Not in it. Back in Chicago. Yep. Which to me is like, hmm, curious, yes. Ever I that I that did stand out to me too. Yep. So a young woman by the name of Diane else Roth was 23 she died and they the capsules were laced with cyanide again.

1:38:58 It was it was very much the same sort of thing. So that's. Not good. The interesting thing about this one, though, so this happened in 1986, so a couple of three years later, yeah. By this stage, there were triple safety seals. So there was a foil plastic wrap and the box was glued. The box that the bottle was containing was glued. They were all intact when she bought them. Yeah. So what that says is that something must have happened in the manufacturing process. Which that's for it to. Be in there and that's.

1:39:31 Where you kind of go but wait, but wait, wait. How does that happen? Yeah. And it was extra strength Tylenol again, Yeah. Very bizarre. But then other ones would occur in different products all together, as in like more like pain relief kind of medicine still. But so there's one called, I mean, Excedrin. I think you can get Excedrin. That was in Washington state. They'd been tampered with and resulted in the deaths of of two people, Susan Snow and Bruce Nichol. Again, cyanide poisoning was what they passed away from.

1:40:03 There was, though, a conviction for that. Oh, this one's. This one's so interesting. That was. Bruce Nichol's wife, Stella.

1:40:13 So she ended up being convicted of that for she had intentionally tampered with those bottles, but unfortunately did murder her husband. And but then also a stranger with doing that. Yeah. I mean, that's she. Wanted his hundred and I think it was a roughly $180,000 payout and decided well, might as well off him and get that rid of him, yeah. And then but someone else got caught in the crossfire, too. That's horrible. That's just terrible with that. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Awful, yes. But there were many of them that occurred.

1:40:47 As you said, there were hundreds that the FBI attribute to being copycats or not necessarily even copycats. But you know, we're informed by in some way the Tylenol murders. And yeah, yeah, it's just crazy. Yeah, it was another one where they've been silent. Cyanide had been laced on some Sudafed tablets too, so that it sort of shifted across to different, a slightly different product. Yeah, but that's just, I don't know, It's crazy. It's. Crazy. Why people do the things they do, I will never know.

1:41:20 No, whoever did this, whoever did this, look to me. Lewis is my front runner. He is. My front runner, I just want evidence he was actually, I mean, that photo maybe, but by the sounds of things, not I want evidence he was a pen in the area because he's definitely fits a whole lot of the profile of someone who would do it. I definitely can, you know, come to that. Yeah. I, I, I he seems like the fact that he's, his letter was written and he's saying it. He started that letter prior to even any knowledge supposedly of this occurring means what I mean, even if you went OK, this is where I think more so to the fact of like, OK, there's hearing this in the news and then going why can I use this to my advantage to get back at that just.

1:42:08 Fucked as it is anyway, the thought. Process of that I believe could take him three days. Not the actual construction of the let him so much, but the thought process of like like to get that letter written and sent out and be postmarked by the 1st of October is very quick thinking A. Plan. There's a lot of planning that probably had to go into it to get it to that point. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, that I. Do think it did take longer than and then, you know, time that he would have had the information.

1:42:37 Genuinely, I can come at that for sure, yeah. Same and. His past of, you know, potentially, well, allegedly, I don't know, he killed, he killed. He's just so. Lucky that those coppers fucked up. Oh God, yeah. And everyone else in the world's potentially so unlucky that that happened. That's. Where I think he's, well, he thinks he's smarter than everyone else. Oh, yeah. And I I think he was fully aware that that they hadn't given him his misread his Miranda rights. And I think that's why he said what he said, because he knew he could be, he could be used in court.

1:43:10 Yeah. I don't think he would have said that. Yeah. He's quite, quite possibly, yeah, Absolutely. Quite possibly, yeah. What a piece of shit. What? An absolute piece of shit for a T-shirt. This. Is absolute piece of shit. Well, do we know the girls for you? We will actually put links in our show notes to where you can buy our merch. By the way, I meant to mention that earlier. Look, I think the thing that we need to remember as a society is that there is nothing. Nothing is tamper proof. Things can be tamper evident, but that's nothing is 100% foolproof in in the world, in this life.

1:43:50 And there are people who will go to extraordinary lengths sometimes to for whatever reason, for whatever motivation, people really try and fuck shit up and don't think like the rest of us. That's it. And you know, it's, it's a sad thought, but it's true. It's reality, the. Thought of like these bit the victims of this crime. I mean, seven people dying within 24 hours, completely not known to this person. This was not targeted, as I said jokingly, basically that were they targeting Marys? There were so many Marys that were murdered.

1:44:28 It was so random how to put them on a shelf and not know who's going to take that as it could have been a child. It was young as 12 to and 8090 year old person it's I. Heard an argument though that whoever did this maybe they put it in the extra strength because children wouldn't take it. I'm like the person who did this did not give a fuck about children. No and obviously someone has given their their. Well I think you know with most medications 12 is seen as an adult dose anyway. But yeah, a girl as young as 12 times see you.

1:45:07 You're giving them. It's in an everyday medication that we give to this day. We give to children, people of any age to rectify the smallest of pain that we were, you know, these are not people going and seeking out pain medication because they have chronic pain or, you know, severe things. This is the minor headache. The, you know, the mum recovering from having a baby, you know, with just those niggling, you know, things that are, you know, that are still there, you know, presiding after six days of having a birth.

1:45:38 Giving birth. Yeah. I mean, you're just taking something that will help you get through to that little bit, getting over a cold, I mean, and that's the result of it. What? Kind of, yeah. Something seemingly so innocent is just hip Suno so catastrophic for all these family. I mean the Janice. Family I could not feel more for them, I just was every. One of these victims had something that I was like, fuck me. Like, that's horrible. Like the young mum, the young girl, the three members of one family.

1:46:04 Yeah, just, you know, the flight attendant who was just on her own, like I just all of them had something just awful. Awful. Absolutely. Those poor families and you know, they still have no answers as to why that would occur. I mean, I know there's children of these victims now who are who are adamant they still want to find who did this. And I get that absolutely, because I don't know how you go through life knowing, you know, I mean, you know, the, the how they died, the why you've got no why, why were they these why was it done?

1:46:33 And who fucking did it? Who got up one that one morning and went oh this will be good fun. Tell us what you think. Yeah, who do you think did it? Do you? Really. There's someone we're missing? Is there someone that I have we haven't found in our research or is or do you really? Do you think that Lewis is the is the one? I mean, he's dead, but doesn't mean we can't find out that he did it. And yeah, we're feeling better for knowing some sort of outcome. Yeah. Because. Oh, God, as I say, I felt like a Dick, like watching that that interview with him.

1:47:03 It was one of the first things I watched when we're doing this. OK. And I looked at it and just went, oh, Oh no, that poor guy. Like but I. Think I think they set it up hoping, hoping for everyone to feel that way and then be like wait, what? Hey, you murdered. Somebody hold on a minute. Hold on a minute, you're actually a really bad dude. Yeah, I thought, oh God, I really honestly thought, oh, OK, he's done a few, you know, not so good things in his life, but he's genuinely a good going. No, we ain't.

1:47:31 No, no, no, no. All right, well, thank you everybody for joining us for another episode. We really appreciate everyone Get around the merch, get around the likes and the comments and all of the things and get around Patreon if you would like to win a prize pack. Yep. Absolutely make sure you have. If you've already joined us, you're in the draw already. If you have joined us today or between it before 5th of June, you're in the draw. So come and join us over at Patreon, patreon.com/two Crime Besties.

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1:48:47 That's why we still do tests. That's. Right. Oh God test. Not do tests, testing always, Yeah, no, we're recording here. We are tests. We're recording. Yeah, we've already done that test. I'm testing.