Most consumers don't think much about potential threats related to products bought on a daily basis. The assumption is twofold: first that the rights that have protection to prevent the worst event, and secondly, that no one would be ghostly enough to deliberately manipulate something that the person will not disappear.
Today it is mainly true, but this was not the case in 1982, when a series of deaths caused national panic and almost brought a pharmaceutical giant. Murders, later called Chicago Tytolol murders, remain unresolved, but the changes they introduced to the American consumer culture still influence consumers over thirty years later.
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The papular crime began in September 1982, when 12-year-old Mary Kellerman complained to her parents for a chilly. Kellerman gave her a TyroNol capsule. She died just a few hours later. At the same morning, a postal worker Adam Janus died of what was initially considered a heart attack.
His brother and sister -in -law, Stanley and Teresa, returned home after they heard the news about the tragedy. They also died shortly after he took capsules with additional strength Tynenol from the same bottle that Adam opened earlier on the same day. Three subsequent deaths occurred quickly: Mary McFarland, Paul Prince and Mary Weiner succumbed to sudden death shortly after consuming Tynolle Capsules.
The police followed the only link, which was shared by seven victims: the fact that everyone consumed so many hours or a few days before their deaths. In each case, the capsules were sent to laboratories for testing, which revealed the terrifying fact: the capsules were combined with potassium cyanide, in a dose sturdy enough to kill a person many times.
The police came to the conclusion that as soon as the inhabitants of Chicago were affected by cyanide, without any other deaths in the country, the capsules had to be manipulated at the store level, not at the production level.
They thought that the killer had to download bottles from the shelves of local stores, poisoning the capsules and returned them to the shelves. So the murders were not targeted, but rather random actions against unknown victims. The police were surprised by the possible motive of murder.
Death caused panic madness throughout the country. He is worried that people flooded hospitals and flooded poisoning control lines, they were afraid that they were consumed by contaminated medicine. By adding fuel to the fire, the followers are looking for their own five minutes of fame, a thorganic hats contaminated with everything, from the poison of rat to hydrochloric acid.
Within a month after the murders of Tylenol, there were more than two hundred cases of followers. For his part, the producer Tythenol, Johnson & Johnson, responded to murders, and then panic, pulling all products and advertising Tytolol, which costs millions of dollars. The company's future had doubts; It seemed that the giant could not be reflected from this disaster.
As for the person or the people who started panic, the police were lost. In October 1982, tax consultant James Lewis wrote a letter to Johnson & Johnson, demanding a million dollars to “stop killings”. The police tracked Lewis in New York.
Lewis denied that he had something to do with the murders of Tylenol, but his denial did not stop investigators from suspicion. He had a dull past. In Kansas City in 1978 he was accused of murder after the police found the remains of a former client of his stuffed in a bag in the attic. The allegations were abandoned when the judge stated that the police illegally searched his home.
Despite his murderous history, Lewis would never be specifically related to the murders of Tytinol. However, the letter was sufficient to accuse him of extortion, which would lead to Lewis, who had a 20 -year sentence in a federal prison.
In 2008, the FBI again opened its investigation, with a repetition to Lewis as a probable suspect. However, their investigation did not appear any fresh potential customers. The culprit remains a mystery.
After the murders, Johnson and Johnson took the lead, committing to protect their clients against such attacks. They introduced a packaging resistant to manipulation, which eventually became an industry standard for all over -the -counter drugs. They also introduced a caplet, a tablet that was as simple to swallow as a capsule, but much harder to accuse.
Tynol bounced after the murder and once again became the best -selling killer of pain. The government also answered. In 1983, Congress adopted “Tytnol Bill”, which made there crimes to manipulate consumer products. For its part, Food and Drug Administration has established federal guidelines for producers to adopt a fresh packaging resistant to manipulation.
The unfortunate truth is that it often requires a tragedy, such as the Chicago Tytolol murder, to introduce protection, which in retrospect seems obvious.
However, at that time no one could imagine that a person could be so twisted that poisoning without a prescription drug used by millions of all ages. Seven people died killed for reasons that you can never find. This is a slight comfort for their loved ones, but their death has led to protection, which has been stopped by millions of people from meeting the same fate for decades.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
