On September 29/30, 1982, seven people in the metropolitan Chicago area were poisoned with Tylenol capsules tainted with potassium cyanide. It was only through the swift inception of police that dozens of more deaths were prevented. The person responsible has never been caught.
Chicago police were first alerted to the mass poisoning when four people complaining of identical symptoms died within hours of being admitted to hospital. Three of the victims were found to have taken Extra-Strength Tylenol from the same bottle before falling ill, and a test on the bottle confirmed that all the pills within had been tainted with cyanide. Three more poisoning deaths followed the next day, and the Chicago police had to team up with Johnson & Johnson (the distributor of Tylenol) to recall thousands of bottles of pills. Three more tainted bottles were discovered on random shelves, but the actual number of poisoned bottles is not known.
The police didnt have much luck tracking the person responsible. It was established early on that the Tylenol was not poisoned during the manufacturing or distribution stages, and the offender likely purchased individual bottles, poisoned them at home, then returned the Tylenol to shelves. A few persons of interest have cropped up over the years, but a definitive case has never been built against any of them. The Chicago Tylenol Murders remain unsolved.
