Cold Case

CHICAGO (CBS) ― It's a Chicago area cold case that frightened the entire nation -- seven people died from taking Tylenol. This week, we mark the 25th anniversary of the Tylenol murders. Someone replaced the medicine in that popular pain reliever with poison. The incident sparked a massive investigation that brought together a city, state and suburban police departments and the FBI. The killer has never been found.

One the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, an emergency call was made to the Arlington Heights Fire Department.

There was nothing paramedics could do when they got to Adam Janus' home.

"The fellas came back after an hour and a half and told us they lost a relatively healthy 27-year-old man that had just died," said Chuck Kramer, a former Arlington Heights firefighter.

At first, it was thought Janus had a heart attack. That night, his grieving brother, Stanley, and other family members gathered at Adam's house to make funeral arrangements. There, Stanley took a few steps and dropped to the floor.

Once again, paramedics were called to the same address. Kramer was alarmed.

"Especially when it was a man down in the morning and he's dead and now I have another man down, same address, six hours later," he said.

Stanley Janus died, so did his wife Teresa – three members of one family gone.

What could have happened? Was there a gas leak at the house? Hours later, at the hospital, health department nurse Helen Jensen interviewed the Janus family. She gleaned one bit of information that proved crucial.

Kramer witnessed the interview.

"The only thing these three people have in common - other than they're relatives - they don't live in the place -- is that they took Tylenol," Kramer said.

It was Tylenol that had been on a counter in Adam Janus' home. Firefighters Kramer, Richard Keyworth, and Phil Cappitelli – all good friends – started comparing notes.

Cappitelli told them about a 12-year-old girl, Mary Kellerman, who had also died suddenly that same day in Elk Grove Village.

Keyworth discovered she too had taken Tylenol. The firefighters alerted investigators who discovered the medicine had been tainted with cyanide.

"Somehow or another we connected this thing," Keyworth said. "If there were other tainted capsules, we saved lives at that point. We had no idea how big this thing was going to get."

Four others, all over the Chicago area, would die after taking what they thought was a safe pain reliever. 31 million Tylenol capsules were pulled from store shelves across the country and local governments and the media warned consumers.

Some 200 investigators from various law enforcement agencies went to work. One member, John Fellman, then an Arlington Heights detective, says they interviewed thousands.

"The first six weeks, there wasn't a day off," Fellman said. "It was seven days a week. We were working 12-, 14-, 16-hour days."

Investigators concluded someone had taken Tylenol home, replaced the medicine with cyanide and put the boxes back on store shelves.

One man, James Lewis, went to prison for writing an extortion letter to the maker of Tylenol, claiming her would continue the poisoning unless he got $11 million. But he was never charged with the murders themselves. In 1987, Lewis talked to CBS 2's Mike Parker and denied that he committed the murders.

Today, when leads come in, they are pursued. But the 25-year-old Tylenol case is cold.

"We have seven homicides that still sit out there unsolved," Fellman said.

"I wish I could get five minutes with him, because I saw what he did," Kramer said.

As Robert Grant, the head of the Chicago FBI office told CBS 2, sometimes tragedy leads to action. After the Tylenol murders, the federal government passed anti-tampering laws and drug companies now put safety seals on their over-the-counter products. Today, when someone opens them, you know it.

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