25 years later, pain of Tylenol poisonings remains

No one has ever been arrested in the case.

CHICAGO (AP) — Helen Jensen can still picture the bottle of Tylenol perched in the medicine cabinet. She feels the receipt she pulled from the wastebasket. She hears the pills she poured onto the kitchen table.

And she recalls the absolute certainty, even before she finished counting, that pills from the bottle in her hand killed the 27-year-old man who lived there, as well as two of his relatives.

“Six capsules were missing, and there were three people dead,” she recalled thinking.

It has been exactly 25 years since Jensen, then a nurse for the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights who accompanied investigators to the home, played her role in a story that sent shock waves all over the country.

In a space of three days beginning Sept. 29, 1982, seven people who took cyanide-laced Tylenol in Chicago and four suburbs died. That triggered a national scare that prompted an untold number of people to throw medicine away and stores nationwide to pull Tylenol from their shelves.

If the scare has faded from memory, pushed aside by terrorist attacks and natural disasters, reminders of what happened are as close as the drugstore and the corner market.

Today’s safeguards

“Every time you open a bottle or package [of medicine, food or drink] that has tamper-evidence features, a band around the lid or an interior seal, it is because of the Tylenol case,” said Pan Demetrakakes, executive editor of Food & Drug Packaging magazine.

Jeffrey Leebaw, a spokesman for Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, N.J., declined to comment Friday.

For those who lost loved ones or investigated the case, pain, anger and frustration remain. Part of the reason is that nobody was ever charged, much less convicted of the crime.

“It’s hard to bring this up,” said Patricia Kellerman, whose 12-year-old granddaughter, Mary Kellerman, died in her home after taking Tylenol for a sore throat. “Nothing ever changes,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion, unable to say any more.