Helena and Jan Tarasewicz, center left, the parents of Theresa "Terri" Janus, grieve at the funeral Mass for Terri, her husband Stanley and her brother-in-law Adam Janus at St. Hyacinth Catholic Church. (Carl Hugare / Chicago Tribune)

This story originally published in the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 1, 1982:

Cyanide-filled capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol were blamed for the deaths of three persons in suburban Cook County, the critical illness of another, and probably the deaths of two Du Page County women Thursday.

As the toll rose, the federal Food and Drug Administration warned persons throughout the country against use of the popular pain reliever in capsule form, broadening an earlier warning.

And in DuPage County, Dr. James P. Paulissen, director of the health department, warned against taking any form of Tylenol. “Although only Extra-Strength Tylenol has been indicted, prudence dictates that all forms of Tylenol are possible suspects,” he said.

The medical examiner's office shows Tylenol bottles containing analyzed contents of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. The specimen, right, was found to contain cyanide. (Charles Osgood / Chicago Tribune)

Tylenol, according to one business community expert, is the biggest nonprescription painkiller in the U.S., with approximately $400 million in sales this year.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office said the deaths of three persons in Arlington Heights and Elk Grove Village are being treated as homicides because the capsules in bottles of the product they used had apparently been tampered with.

In DuPage County, Deputy Coroner Peter Siekmann said one victim was found to have had Tylenol in her home and an inspection of the capsules found four containing cyanide. Cyanide was found late Thursday in five of 10 Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules found in the other victim’s purse.

“Apparently a very sophisticated, very malicious person is at large who had to spend a lot of time and a lot of effort to lace these capsules with cyanide,” said Police Chief Carl Sosta of Winfield, where one of the DuPage victims lived.

Elmhurst Police Sgt. John J. Millner said: “We’re investigating it as a homicide simply because someone had to be crazy enough to do that. The thing is going to boil down to where’s the stuff (cyanide) coming from?”

The dead were Mary Kellerman, 12, of 1425 Armstrong Lane, Elk Grove Village; Adam Janus, 27, of 1262 S. Mitchell Ave., Arlington Heights; his brother, Stanley Janus, 25, of 4515 Kingston Ave., Lisle; Mary Reiner, 27, of 27W114 Cooley St., Winfield; and Mary McFarland, 31, of 445 Mitchell Ave., Elmhurst.

Seven victims died in 1982 from cyanide poisoning after ingesting tainted Tylenol, murders that were never solved. From clockwise top left is Adam Janus, Mary McFarland, Mary “Lynn” Reiner, Terri and Stanley Janus, Paula Prince and Mary Ann Kellerman. (Chicago Tribune archive)

Winfield police have classified Reiner’s death also as a homicide. Reiner had just had a baby boy five days ago, and had three other children, a neighbor said.

Described as in extremely critical and unstable condition in Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights was Stanley Janus’ wife, Theresa.

Chicago FBI chief Edward D. Hegarty said his agency is “watching closely” developments in the case. In Washington, a high-ranking FBI official said he saw no basis for some television news reports connecting the cyanide-Tylenol case and a recent California food extortion case involving cyanide.

Autopsies on the Cook County victims showed lethal levels of cyanide and tests on a woman who remained critically ill in Northwest Community Hospital also indicated the presence of cyanide. Blood tests are to be conducted and autopsies completed Friday on the DuPage victims.

Arlington Heights and Elk Grove Village police joined forces with three DuPage County police departments to try to solve the grim and growing mystery of the poisoned capsules and their seemingly unrelated appearance in different households.

A spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, parent firm of the company that makes Tylenol, said Thursday evening his firm “launched an investigation this morning to track down these capsules.”

The spokesman, Robert Andrews, and two other Johnson & Johnson officials met for an hour and a half with Elk Grove Village detectives and evidence technicians.

He said his firm is “collectively shocked.”

At Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, where McFarland died, two other persons were admitted Thursday after complaints of symptoms that could have meant cyanide poisoning, including light-headedness, vertigo and tingling in the extremities. Both also had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. Blood tests, however, had not been completed on those patients.

The common thread that tied the macabre cases together was discovered by accident as suspicions arose during conversations between two off-duty firemen, one from Elk Grove Village and one from Arlington Heights, who became curious about the deaths. Fireman Phillip Cappitelli in Arlington Heights was aware of the two deaths there because he monitored fire radios in his home, and his mother-in-law told him of the death of the little girl.

Arlington Heights Fire Lt. Philip Cappitelli, left, and Elk Grove Village firefighter Richard Keyworth discuss how they put two-and-two together in the Tylenol deaths on Sept. 30, 1982. (Quentin C. Dodt / Chicago Tribune)

Cappitelli called firefighter Richard Keyworth in Elk Grove Village, who got information on the girl’s death from the fire department there. When the two compared symptoms, they noted similarities. Keyworth said the girl had taken Tylenol, suggested that might bear investigation and the two learned that Tylenol was involved in the other cases too.

In the Cook County cases, the bottles apparently were purchased from two Jewel Food Stores in the northwest suburbs and were part of a batch of 93,000 such bottles that may have been distributed throughout the Midwest, according to authorities.

That batch bears Lot No. MC 2880 and the expiration date of April, 1987. The batch was shipped in August.

The agency could not confirm which states the product has been distributed in, but noted that the company which makes the pain reliever — McNeil Consumer Products, a division of Johnson & Johnson — is responsible for taking the product off the market.

McNeil announced Thursday afternoon that it is voluntarily withdrawing bottles in that batch from the market.

A photograph of a television screen shows the recall of Extra-Strength Tylenol with the specific lot number 2880 on the box on Sept. 30, 1982. (Don Casper / Chicago Tribune)

But other lot numbers surfaced with the investigations in DuPage County. The Elmhurst victim, Mary McFarland, was found to have been carrying cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in a bottle inside her purse which were traced to two 50-capsule bottles of 500-milligram Extra-Strength Tylenol with the numbers 1910 MD and MB 2738. Both bottles were found at her home, one of them empty and discarded in a garbage bin.

In each case of poisoned capsules, medical examiner spokesmen said, there was no Tylenol left; the capsules were filled with cyanide, about 65 milligrams. Only 5 to 7 milligrams, a tiny fraction of that amount, are necessary to kill a person, the spokesmen said.

Siekmann said the Winfield victim’s husband had told police that his wife purchased her Tylenol at Frank’s Finer Foods in the suburb. He also told police that although she purchased regular strength Tylenol and the plastic bottle was so marked, inside were both regular and extra-strength versions of the medicine.

Marshall Collins, executive vice president of Jewel Foods in Melrose Park, said Thursday, “We don’t have any definite information that it (the Tylenol in question) was purchased in a Jewel store.”

“We are doing everything we can to cooperate in this situation,” he said, adding that all Tylenol products in Jewel stores in Elk Grove Village and the one in Arlington Heights were given to police departments in the suburbs. He said the product in the 198 other stores the firm operates in the Midwest were removed from the shelves Thursday morning.

Many other store chains reported that they were removing all Extra-Strength Tylenol from their shelves.

As news of the Tylenol-cyanide deaths spread, poison control centers in the area began distributing cyanide-antidote kits to paramedics for emergency use in case of calls that sound as if they might warrant their use.

But experts noted that a massive dose of cyanide will kill in from 1 to 15 minutes.

The mystery had almost immediate impact on Wall Street, where the stock of Johnson & Johnson dropped sharply, although experts in the financial community said the massive recall will have little or no long-range effect on the pharmaceutical company.

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