Tylenol case 25 years later: Cold case, cold hearts

There is no statute of limitations for murder in Illinois, nor for victims' pain.

The families, emergency workers and investigators affected by the Tylenol murders 25 years ago Saturday know that all too well.

In the three days after Sept. 29, 1982, seven Chicago and suburban residents collapsed and died from cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. But the cause of the deaths wasn't immediately known.

Arlington Heights and Elk Grove Village residents helped alert authorities that someone was poisoning Tylenol capsules and placing them on the shelves of grocery and drug stores.

As the case developed, stores pulled bottles from their shelves across the country. Police used bullhorns along suburban streets to alert residents to the danger. Tylenol announced a complete recall.

Because people in five different towns died, the largest multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task force in Illinois history formed, but ultimately charged nobody. Police in Arlington Heights, Chicago, Elk Grove Village, Lisle, Lombard and Winfield keep the cold case files open to this day.

The crime remains very much alive for three area residents who lived it -- an Arlington Heights nurse who discovered the capsules and warned authorities, an Elk Grove firefighter who helped connect suspicious deaths to each other, and a sister devastated by the loss of two brothers and a sister-in-law in a single day.

All wait for answers and live with loss.

"When you talk about it, it only gets worse every year," said Patricia Kellerman, grandmother of 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, who died in her Elk Grove Village home after complaining of a sore throat. "The pain never goes away."

A nurse's hunch

A new receipt in a wastebasket and a Tylenol bottle in the Janus family kitchen were her clues as nurse Helen Jensen accompanied police through the Arlington Heights home.

Earlier in the day, three family members mysteriously collapsed and died in the Arlington Heights home of Adam and Theresa Janus.

Jensen emptied the bottle and counted the pills.

"Six were missing, and three people were dead," said Jensen, the Arlington Heights village nurse at the time. "I knew it was the pills."

Adam Janus had collapsed earlier in the day. His brother, Stanley, and sister-in-law, Theresa, were among family members grieving at his home when they, too, took Tylenol capsules and collapsed.

Jensen later interviewed Janus family members at Northwest Community Hospital and learned each victim had taken Tylenol capsules before collapsing.

She brought the tainted bottle to Northwest Community Hospital and voiced her suspicions.

"They didn't want to believe me," said Jansen, now an Arlington Heights trustee. "They pooh-poohed me."

Upset, she couldn't sleep that night. The next morning the hospital confirmed cyanide was in the capsules.

"I called the police and asked them if they had pulled (Tylenol) from the shelves," she remembered. "On my word, they pulled them off the shelves."

Jensen then used her Physician's Desk Reference to call the makers of Tylenol.

"I told them they better call the hospital because (Tylenol) was linked," she said.

Much more would unfold in the coming three days as seven Chicago-area deaths eventually would come at the hands of someone who stuffed cyanide into capsules.

Still, that first day, Jensen correctly guessed Tylenol as the link, insisted she be taken seriously, called for a clearing of shelves and notified the company.

Tears for her family

Even happy thoughts bring tears to Sophia Czyz when she thinks of her lost family.

Adam Janus would be a grandfather. Stanley and Theresa Janus would have children and maybe they would be grandparents, too.

"We could have been such a big, happy family," said Czyz, of her two brothers and sister-in-law.

Two of the four siblings who came over with their parents from Walki, Poland, died after taking cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsules.

"You feel like half of you goes dead," said Czyz, a Niles resident.

After Adam Janus complained of chest pains Sept. 29, 1982, he took Tylenol and went to bed. Later, he came staggering out of the bedroom of his Arlington Heights home and collapsed.

The distraught family gathered at the house, where Stanley and Theresa took Tylenol from the same tainted batch and collapsed themselves.

"I see my brothers and my sister-in-law in my head," Czyz said. "I see them always young. I will never know them old. We have aged, but not them."

Czyz and her brothers were all the closer because she ushered them to school daily, cooked them lunches and even substituted at parent-teacher conferences because their parents didn't speak enough English.

"I was like their little mother," she said. "I was a sister, but they were like my little babies."

160 capsules

When he looks back on the Tylenol murders, Richard Keyworth marvels at the deadly implications of 160 capsules.

"That's how many (tainted Tylenol) capsules they found," said Keyworth, a retired Elk Grove Village firefighter. "This could have gone on for years without someone knowing about it."

Keyworth and a loop of Elk Grove and Arlington Heights emergency workers connected the dots and within hours realized unusual deaths in the neighboring towns may be related.

"Without (people) talking to each other, the chances of these deaths being connected were slim to none," said Keyworth, who now runs a private consulting firm.

Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village was the first to die on Sept. 29, 1982. She collapsed on her bathroom floor after complaining of a headache and taking a tainted Tylenol capsule.

When three people in the Janus family died mysteriously in Arlington Heights the same day, Keyworth and fellow Elk Grove firefighter Phil Cappitelli and Arlington Heights firefighter Chuck Kramer connected the apparent isolated incidents into a chain of events.

Keyworth says that with modern government regulations and communication problems among departments, he doubts firefighters today would be able to make the connection so fast and limit the deaths to seven within three days.

"Who knows how many could have died," he said.

The victims

Elk Grove Village resident Mary Kellerman, 12, takes a cyanide-tainted Tylenol capsule and collapses on the bathroom floor of her home. Three hours later, she is pronounced dead at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village

Arlington Heights resident Adam Janus, 27, stayed home from his postal worker job. Complaining of chest pains, he takes Extra Strength Tylenol and dies three hours later.

Lisle residents Stanley and Theresa Janus, overcome with grief at Adam Janus' death, gather at the Arlington Heights home but unwittingly take Tylenol capsules from the same lot. Stanley was 25, Theresa 19.

Winfield resident Mary Reiner, 27, takes a poisoned capsule in her home while she is caring for her infant son. Reiner dies two hours later at Central DuPage Hospital, where her child had been born a week earlier.

Elmhurst resident Mary McFarland, 31, complains of a headache while at work and takes two capsules from a bottle in her purse. She dies within minutes.

Chicago flight attendant Paula Prince, 35, stops at a drugstore near her North Side high-rise, buys a bottle of poisoned capsules and is found dead in her apartment two days later with an open bottle of Tylenol sitting on the bathroom sink.

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