The Tylenol Mafia: Marketing, Murder, and Johnson & Johnson

394 Pages·2012·1.82 MB·English

by  Scott Bartz

PART 1
A Curious Discovery
The Tylenol Murders
Who Will Protect America?
The Tylenol Crisis
All of Burke’s Men
The Developing Investigation
We Will Be Completely Honest
J&J and the FBI
Above the Law
The Madman Myth
Handling the Evidence
Selling the Myth
Rack Jobbers
The Vanishing Evidence
A Reluctant Recall
The Other Cyanide Murders
A Poisoned Investigation
The Tylenol Institution
The Louis Zahn Drug Company
We Know Who did It
The Closet Chemist
A Conspiracy Theory
The Eighth Bottle
The Conspiracy
The Last Suspect
Project Chatham
Death is a Manageable Side Effect
PART 2
The 1986 Tylenol Murder
We Never Said It Is Tamper Proof
The Great Capsule Debate
Burke’s Nightmare
The Puerto Rican Diversion
Our Credo
The Vergari Problem
Revisionist History
Big Jim’s Boys
PART 3
The Manhunt
How Do You Solve A Problem Like James Lewis?
A Second Look
A Novel Approach
A Familiar Pattern
The Judges of DuPage County
A Reactivated Cover-up
The New Case; Same as the Old Case
Mens Rea: Guilty Mind
The Madman
About the Author
Endnotes
THE TYLENOL MAFIA
Marketing, Murder, and Johnson & Johnson
(Revised 2nd Edition)

By Scott Bartz
New Light Publishing
Cover art by Michael P. Swanson
Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Scott Bartz
All rights reserved.
Scott Bartz
Acknowledgements
My editor, Linda, the “Write Watchman,” was a true partner in this
endeavor. Her expertise and guidance were invaluable to me. Thank you, Linda.
Thank you, Jack O’Dwyer, for your encouragement and journalistic
integrity. Jack has long been one of the few voices in the PR industry to call for
some accuracy in the way J&J’s handling of the “Tylenol crisis” is reported.
Thank you, Michael P. Swanson, for creating the cover for this book.
I’d like to also thank Michelle Rosen for working tirelessly to dig up
important facts about the Tylenol murders investigation. Michelle, along with
several other people named in this book, provided critical information that
brought this story to life in a way that could not have been done through the
documented evidence alone.
Most of all, thank you Anne and Justin.
PART 1
1
________
A Curious Discovery
A man who would soon become notoriously anonymous slipped away
unnoticed as Deputy Joseph Chavez pulled into the parking lot at the Howard
Johnson’s Motor Lodge and Restaurant in Elgin, Illinois early Tuesday morning,
September 28, 1982. Deputy Al Swanson arrived about a minute later and
parked next to Chavez in one of fifteen spaces facing Route 25, known locally as
Dundee Avenue. The deputies were working the midnight to 8 a.m. shift for the
Kane County Sheriff’s Department and were meeting at the all-night restaurant
for breakfast.
It was a clear night and about 55 degrees when Swanson and Chavez exited
their vehicles at 2:32 a.m., exchanged pleasantries, and headed for the
restaurant’s entrance. Chavez glanced down the line of mostly empty parking
spaces and saw two cardboard boxes resting on the pavement next to the grass
median that ran between the parking lot and Dundee Avenue. The boxes,
identical in size, measured about 10 inches wide by 10 inches deep and were 8
inches tall. The labels on the boxes gradually came into focus as the deputies,
obviously curious, walked toward them.
The words “EXTRA-STRENGTH TYLENOL CAPSULES” were embossed
in bold black uppercase letters on the right half of each box-front. On the left
half of each box-front, the Tylenol manufacturer’s name, “McNEIL,” was
imprinted just below the description of the contents: Twelve 6-packs of 50-count
bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules.
One of the boxes was open. Two dozen Tylenol bottles remained in the open
box, but two of those bottles were also open. Strewn on the pavement within a
few feet of the boxes were hundreds of red and white capsule-parts labeled with
the 500-milligram Extra Strength Tylenol dosage mark. In between the boxes
was “a big pile of powder that looked as if it had been dumped.”
“It looked like hundreds of capsules had been emptied,” Deputy Chavez said
later. “We looked at them and found a couple of capsules that had been put back
together.”
Swanson and Chavez scraped up some of the powder and rubbed it between
their fingers. They picked up and examined a few of the capsules and capsule-
parts. The deputies guessed that the capsules might have been emptied by drug
dealers who were planning to mix the acetaminophen with cocaine or some other
illegal drug. Still, it was odd that some of the capsule-parts had been refilled and
“put back together.” The Tylenol 500mg labels on the reassembled capsules were
misaligned as a result.
Before the deputies had time to fully consider the possible implications of
what they had found, Swanson suddenly became violently ill, with vomiting, a
headache, and dizziness - all symptoms of cyanide poisoning, which can occur
from inhalation or absorption through the skin. Deputy Chavez also became sick,
with a headache and a strange rash and painful swelling on his arm. They made
no immediate connection between the Tylenol capsules and the sudden onset of
their mysterious illnesses, so they simply left the boxes of Extra Strength Tylenol
capsules right where they found them; sitting in the Howard Johnson’s parking
lot at the intersection of Route 25 and Interstate 90, about 38 miles northwest of
Chicago.
2
________