'Tylenol Man' long linked to the case, but did he do it?
On his Web site, http://cyberlewis.com, James W. Lewis refers to himself as the "Tylenol Man."
He went to jail for being the Tylenol extortionist. But is he the Tylenol killer?
Lewis has always been a prime suspect in the 1982 crime, in which seven people died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules that had been laced with poisonous cyanide.
On Wednesday, police took Lewis, 63, in for questioning, ABC7 reported. They also searched Lewis' condo in Cambridge, Mass., which he shared with his wife, LeAnn.
The FBI declined to say what they were looking for, only that they were following up on tips.
In 1983, when Lewis was an out-of-work tax accountant living in Chicago, he was convicted of extortion after sending a letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding $1 million to "stop the killings." In his letter, he also threatened to kill President Ronald Reagan if the president did not back off a plan to increase taxes, according to a 1995 Chicago Sun-Times story.
Lewis served 12 years in jail for that, including two years of a 10-year sentence for an unrelated tax fraud charge. After he was released from prison in 1995, he contacted Jeremy Margolis - the federal prosecutor who handled his extortion case - and offered to help solve the Tylenol murders.
Margolis, in a 2002 interview with the Daily Herald, said he found this to be strange but spent hours talking to Lewis in hopes he might provide some clues or a confession. He didn't. Lewis also provided dozens of handwritten pages of theories and even drew pictures of how someone might have put cyanide in capsules. Margolis framed one of those pictures, "The Drill Board Method Theory," and hung it on the wall of his office.
Margolis declined to comment Wednesday.
Lewis' life shows a history of problems. As a teen growing up in a small town in Missouri, he quarreled so violently with his adoptive parents that he was briefly committed to a mental hospital, according to the 1995 news reports.
In 1978, he was charged with killing Raymond West, dismembering him, and stuffing him in a plastic bag in the attic. West was an elderly former client of Lewis' accounting business. However, all charges were dismissed after a judge ruled that there was improper conduct during Lewis' arrest and a search of his home, the Sun-Times story said.
Lewis moved to the Boston area after getting out of prison in 1995 and is listed as a partner in a Web design and programming company called Cyberlewis. On its Web site, there is a tab labeled "Tylenol" with a written message and audio link in which a voice refers to himself as "Tylenol Man."
"Somehow, after a quarter of a century, I surmise only a select few with critical minds will believe anything I have to say," the message says. "Many people look for hidden agendas, for secret double entendre, and ignore the literal meanings I convey. Many enjoy twisting and contorting what I say into something ominous and dreadful which I do not intend.
"That my friends is the curse of being labeled the Tylenol Man. Be that as it may, I can NOT change human proclivities. I shant try. Listen as you like."
Staff Writer Barbara Vitello and The Associated Press contributed to this report.