Possible Breakthrough in 1982 Tylenol Killings

(Jan. 8) -- Authorities may have a breakthrough in the 28-year-old Tylenol poisoning case, whose perpetrator has successfully evaded authorities for decades.

James W. Lewis, the original suspect in the killings of seven people through cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, appeared under subpoena along with his wife in a Massachusetts courthouse Wednesday, the local Boston-area paper Somerville News/Cambridge News Weekly reports. The hearing was held to determine whether Lewis and his wife must provide fingerprint and DNA samples, a law enforcement official told The Boston Globe.

"Proceedings such as that reported by the Somerville News, to the extent that they occur, are supposed to be secret precisely to protect the reputations of innocent people like James Lewis and his wife,'' David E. Meier, the couple's attorney, told The Globe. "To comment further would be irresponsible, unprofessional and unethical.''

Lewis, 63, was the prime suspect in the 1982 deaths of four women, two men and a 12-year-old girl, all of whom had taken Extra Strength Tylenol Capsules purchased in Chicago-area drug stores and supermarkets. Someone had replaced the acetaminophen in the capsules with cyanide. The deaths led to the ubiquitous tamper-resistant packaging found today.

Authorities re-examined the case last year, citing advances in forensic technology and new tips as the reasons behind their search of the couple's Cambridge apartment.

Lewis was an unemployed accountant at the time of the deaths. He was arrested in December 1982 in New York City and has always proclaimed his innocence. But at the time of his arrest, he gave authorities detailed sketches of how a person might manage to put poison into Tylenol capsules and replace the bottles on shelves undetected.

He also admitted to sending a letter to Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million to "stop the killing." The admission landed him in prison for 12 years. Lewis said he never meant to collect the money but was planning on having it sent to his wife's employer to embarrass them, Fox News reports.

Lewis was not the first suspect in the case. A 1982 Newsweek article says authorities first zeroed in on a dockhand who worked at a warehouse that supplied Tylenol to two of the five stores that sold the deadly bottles. Roger Arnold, 48 at the time, was an amateur chemist who told authorities he had worked with cyanide for a "project." When law enforcement officials searched his apartment, they found weapons, two one-way tickets to Thailand, and literature describing how to kill people by putting poison into capsules. But authorities ultimately said they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with the killings.

"The Tylenol murderer is still out dancing in the streets of this country," Lewis told an ABC News reporter in a 1992 interview conducted while he was in prison for extortion. The same reporter, Chuck Goudie of ABC affiliate WLS-TV Chicago, discovered years later that a U.S. Parole Commission report from 1989 had concluded that "Lewis was the Tylenol murderer."

The conclusion led the board to deny him parole. He was released from prison in 1995 and moved to Boston.

Lewis has a long history of trouble with the law. He spent two years of 10 in jail for tax fraud. He was charged in the 1978 dismemberment murder of a man who had hired him as an accountant, but charges were dismissed because the cause of death was not determined and some evidence was illegal. In 2004, he was charged with the rape and kidnapping of a Cambridge woman. He spent 3 years in jail awaiting trial, but again charges were ultimately dropped when the victim refused to testify.