James Lewis, the lone suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, was found dead Sunday at his home in suburban Boston, multiple law-enforcement sources confirmed to the Tribune.
His death comes after 40 years of intense scrutiny from law enforcement, in which Lewis played a cat-and-mouse game with investigators. Local authorities questioned him as recently as September as part of a renewed effort to bring charges in the case.
With the investigation’s only suspect dead, it now seems unlikely that charges will ever be brought in poisonings that killed seven people and caused a worldwide panic.
I don’t understand how the law couldn’t nail this guy. He sent an extortion letter to Johnson and Johnson threatening more poisonings to follow if they didn’t pay him off. Couldn’t they extrapolate that letter to a confession? Who else but the poisoner would send such a letter?
While this guy may have done it, I can also see a con man trying to cash in on the killings via extortion.
Meanwhile, someone just as bad as the Tylenol poisoner is still in prison. Stella Nickell first fatally poisoned her husband with cyanide. Then, when the insurance payout wasn’t enough for her (the death was originally thought to be from natural causes) she tampered with Excedrin capsules sold at store(s), causing the death of a total stranger. She succeeded in getting her husband’s case reopened and sued the manufacturer, but the attention led to her arrest and conviction.
Any sensational crime will trigger copycats, wackos falsely taking credit, and if there’s an avenue for extortion, various pretenders hoping to cash in on that aspect by making their own extortion demands.
Given the vast interest this case caused back then, if there had been any way to tie Lewis to the murders, or even if there wasn’t but the prosecutor was daring
/ ambitious enough, they would have done so by indicting and trying him.
That they did not suggests either he pulled off a nearly perfect crime in the sense of leaving no conclusive evidence, or that he was not in fact the actual poisoner.
I don’t remember alot about this. I read some.
It’s terrible he basically got away with it.
As per packaging:
I was at a convenience store and a guy in front of me asked for a BC powder. The clerk grabbed the 3 pack. He said “No, I want just one packet”
Clerk reaches under the counter and brings one individual packet. I couldn’t tell what he was charged for it. But isn’t that a crime?
I would never take something removed from the original packaging. I agree some of the wrappings are overkill. And hard to remove.
This is why I have an exacto knife.
BC Powder, and the similar Goody’s Powder, are definitely Southern U.S things (and, they are now both owned by the same company). They’re headache/pain remedies: BC contains aspirin and caffeine, while Goody’s also contains acetaminophen.
Hand to Heaven, I just took one before I opened this thread. BC Powder is a headache powder. I believe it is more prevalent in the Southern USA. Tastes awful, works fast.
The individual powders somewhat recently changed from unlabeled folded wax papers to labeled sleeves. I wonder if tamper proofing was part of that decision.
IIRC the advantage for hangover sufferers is that you can pour the BC powder in a glass of booze and have some hair of the dog while claiming you’re just medicating your headache.
Actually, I think mind blown is correct on any device. Now that I zoom in I see the goop blasting upwards from the hole in the top of the head. The white is a cloud of smoke/steam.
But I like my interpretation too. The Dope could certainly use an emoji for “WOW, do I have an amazing hangover or what?”
I think there was a fair amount of circumstantial evidence developed over the years that he was the killer, but no real physical evidence directly linking him to it, so they never brought charges.
It’s mentioned in the link, but maybe the closest they got was the fact that the extortion letter was postmarked October 1 (a fact they weren’t able to confirm until years later). In a sting operation in 2007, Lewis admitted it took 3 days to write the letter, which meant he started composing it on September 29 (the date the 7 victims were killed), but news of the murders only became public knowledge on September 30.
I use the exploding head emoji for migraines. I have suffered migraines which absolutely blew off the top of my head, and splattered brains all over the ceiling.
