On Sept. 29, 1982, seven people in the Chicago area ingested poisoned Tylenol pills, consequently collapsing and dying shortly after. The victims included: 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, 27-year-old Mary Reiner, 31-year-old Mary McFarland, 35-year-old Paula Prince, 27-year-old Adam Janus, 25-year-old Stanley Janus, and 19-year-old Theresa Janus. Adam Janus ingested a Tylenol and died at the hospital. When the came back to mourn, Stanley Janus and his wife Theresa took a Tylenol and died, making it three deaths in the same family on the same day. However, this tragedy is what led investigators to connect the dots.
Cook County investigator, Nick Pishos, compared the Janus' Tylenol bottle to Mary Kellerman's and noticed they had one similarity, a control number: MC2880. Deputy medical examiner, Edmund Donoghue asked Pishos to smell the bottles and Pishos replied that they both smelled like almonds. The poison cyanide is known to smell like bitter almonds which, in large amounts, can cause seizures, cardiac arrest, and respiratory failure. The blood tests on all of the victims showed that they had taken a dose 100-1000 times the lethal amount.
Donoghue spoke to an attorney from Johnson & Johnson, Tylenol's parent company, and after all the victims were buried on Oct. 1, 1982, that the Tylenol bottles were intentionally poisoned with potassium cyanide. Immediately, over 31 million bottles of Tylenol were recalled by the manufacturer and were issued warnings. They also offered to replace recalled bottles with new bottles and offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who may have any information on the perpetrator. These precautions cost the company over $100,000,000.
There were several more copycat deaths across the United States after the initial incident had occurred. This led to the invention of safety seals that you see on medicine bottles today. To this day, no suspect has ever been charged or convicted of the poisonings.
quite short sorry but its hard to write 2 in one day