Fatal (Tylenol) tampering case is renewed

[Last Stand]

CAMBRIDGE -- FBI agents and State Police investigators searched a Cambridge condominium yesterday that is the longtime home of a leading suspect in the 1982 deaths of seven people from cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area, one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in the last generation.

The first-floor condominium belongs to James W. Lewis, 62, of 170 Gore St., who spent 12 years in federal prison for trying to extort $1 million from the painkiller's manufacturers, but was never charged in the killings. The authorities spent most of the day yesterday inside the six-story, yellow brick building and searched a storage facility at an undisclosed location in the city.

snip

The seven victims of cyanidetainted Extra-Strength Tylenol -- four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl -- died in 1982 after taking capsules that had been purchased from drugstores and groceries in the Chicago area. Someone had opened the capsules and replaced some of the acetaminophen with cyanide and returned them to the shelves.

snip

In 2004, Lewis was arrested on charges of rape, kidnapping, and other offenses in an attack on a woman in the building. After he had been jailed for three years, prosecutors dropped the charges the day Lewis's trial was to start in July 2007, when the victim refused to testify, according to the district attorney's office.

Lewis was also charged with murder in 1978 in the death of Raymond West, an elderly former client of Lewis's accounting business, in Kansas City, Mo. West's body had been cut up, stuffed into a plastic bag, and hoisted to an attic ceiling in West's home. Charges were dismissed after a judge ruled that Lewis's arrest and a search of his home were improperly conducted.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/05/fatal_tampering_case_is_renewed/

[MadMaddie]

1. Okay is it me or should Americans be more afraid of this

bastard than the spooky terrorist that Cheney and his ilk are afraid of?

Why is this guy still walking around?

[Bluebear]

2. ABsolutely.

[pacalo]

3. Here's the youtube video of the interview mentioned in the article...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH4iQzHdtIU

In 2007, Lewis was interviewed several times in Cambridge by Roger Nicholson, who calls himself an "ambush journalist" and hosts The Cambridge Rag, a local access television show. One of the interviews is available online.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. I remember this story. Products weren't sealed before the tylenol scare.

[InvisibleTouch]

5. And now stuff is almost impossible to open...

...thanks to this one asshole. I'd rather fight with packaging than have products be unsafe, of course, but you take my meaning. Some of the things that are so impossibly sealed aren't even food products but cosmetics and the like.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. yep. some of the packaging is a pain in the ass

[EmeraldCityGrl]

6. I lived in Park ridge, Il. when this happened.

I remember tearing into our medicine cabinet and examining the capsules. Pretty scary stuff.

Within a a couple months packaging on everything had changed.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. yep. I remember when things like yogurt and butter weren't sealed. Nothing was

It seemed that no one even considered messing with products. But after the tylenol scare there were lots of copy cats.

[Berry Cool]

9. I wonder if they will ever figure out who did this.

It's one of the great unsolved crimes of our time, and in its way, it affected everyone. The horrible randomness of it, the way people were brutally murdered by a person they'd probably never met, simply by swallowing a product they'd bought off a store shelf. The way we all wondered whether we could be next.

I hope the killer is brought to justice.