27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
New Netflix doc explores the killer who put cyanide in the medicine cabinet
J ames Lewis eyes the Tylenol bottle placed in front of him.
Once considered a suspect in the deaths of seven people who died in 1982 after taking the medication that had been laced with cyanide, Lewis was sitting for a rare on-camera interview with Netflix for a new docuseries, Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders .
'You think I'm going to open this and get my fingerprints all over it?' Lewis asks as he struggles to open the tamper-evident bottle seal.
'Everybody who tries to open these bottles swears my name,' he admits with a smile.
Lewis eventually breaks through the seal with his long nails and rolls a capsule between his fingers.
'Well, they're considerably smaller than they used to be. I haven't had one of these in my hands for a long time.'
After breaking it apart, he pushes it away and says, 'OK, let's put that away. That might scare people.'
James Lewis, long regarded as the main suspect of the murders, sat down with the documentary makers for an interview before his death (Netflix)
Before 1982, nobody thought twice about opening a bottle of Tylenol, but when seven people who took cyanide-laced medicine in the Chicago area died within a span of just a few days, it sparked panic, triggering a nationwide recall of the product.
The poisonings eventually led to tamper proof packaging for over-the-counter medications.
Lewis quickly emerged as a suspect after investigators determined that he had sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to stop the Tylenol murders. But there was not enough evidence to charge him and he was instead convicted of attempted extortion and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
'They make it look like I'm the world's most horrible, dangerous person ever,' Lewis said in an interview with Netflix in 2023, not long before his death.
'And I wouldn't hurt anybody,' he then added with a chuckle.
Nearly two years after Lewis' death at age 76, his interview, along with interviews with the victims' families and people close to the investigation, will be featured on Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders , which will be available to stream on May 26.
But why now?
'Today, every tamper-proof seal is a reminder of that dark moment — when cyanide-laced capsules transformed an everyday medicine into a murder weapon, permanently reshaping consumer industries,' directors Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines tell Netflix.
'For more than 40 years, this case has been viewed through a narrow lens, locked onto a single theory while crucial evidence and promising leads were left unexplored. Perhaps that's why, even after all these years, the case remains unsolved.' The 7 victims of the 'Tylenol Murders'
The nightmare rash of deaths began on September 29, 1982 with a sick 12-year-old girl.
Mary Kellerman, who lived in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, felt sick one morning, so she took a Tylenol. She died soon after.
Later that same day, three members of the same family died after taking the medication.
Adam Janus, 27, took two Tylenol capsules and died in a hospital. His brother Stanley Janus and Stanley's wife, Theresa, took Tylenol from the same bottle, and both were dead a short time later.
New Netflix doc about the Tylenol Murders features the Janus family who died from taking cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1982 (Netflix)
Over the next two days, three more people died, including Mary 'Lynn' Reiner, 27, who had just given birth to her fourth child; 31-year-old Mary McFarland; and 35-year-old Paula Prince.
All seven victims lived in the Chicago suburbs.
Their deaths led the Food and Drug Administration to introduce anti-tampering features such as foil seals and standardized packaging.
Congress passed the 'Tylenol bill' in 1983 which made it a federal offense to tamper with packaging. Suspect in 'Tylenol Murders' dies in 2023
In July 2023, James Lewis was found dead in his Massachusetts home. He was 76 years old.
His death frustrated law enforcement who had continued to pursue him over the cyanide poisoning deaths, which led to widespread panic and sweeping changes to the way prescription drugs were bought and sold.
James Lewis is escorted through Boston's Logan Airport, Friday Oct. 13, 1995, after being released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. Lewis, the suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, was found dead Sunday, July 9, 2023 at his home (AP)
Lewis was arrested in 1982 after a nationwide manhunt and served 12 years in federal prison for trying to extort the drug manufacturer.
He later admitted sending the letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding the money to stop the murders, but he said he never intended to collect it. He said he wanted to embarrass his wife's former employer by having the money sent to the employer's bank account.
Investigators have fruitlessly tried to prove for 40 years that Lewis wrote the letters before the poisonings took place.
In a 1992 jailhouse interview with ABC 7 Chicago, Lewis described how the killer would have used a pegboard to drill holes into the Tylenol capsules and inject them with deadly cyanide.
James Lewis provided detailed drawings showing how the Tylenol murders poisoner could have carried out the 1982 terror campaign (ABC7)
Another suspect was identified as a dock worker named Roger Arnold after there were reports he had made threats to poison others. Arnold also had connections to some of the victims and allegedly kept cyanide in his home. He was ultimately ruled out by DNA evidence.
No one has been officially charged with the fatal Tylenol poisonings.
