'Family is everything': Daughter of Tylenol poisoning victim ready to share her story

Forty years ago, Adam Janus picked up his 4-year-old daughter, Kasia, from preschool at Our Lady of the Wayside Catholic Church in Arlington Heights and headed to a nearby Jewel store, where he bought a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules.

Nine hours later, the U.S. Postal Service worker and his brother, Stanley Janus, were dead. Stanley's wife, Theresa Janus, was in the hospital and would pass two days later.

They were among the seven Chicago-area residents who died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules on Sept. 29, 1982. Four decades later, their murders remain unsolved.

Kasia will share her story of the killings and their impact on her life for the first time at a public event Friday, during the MicroFinance Alliance Africa Projects Foundation's Thanksgiving Stories fundraiser at the Campus Life Center in Barrington.

The event, which benefits the foundation's work for impoverished families in Uganda, also will feature storyteller and singer Wayne Messmer, recently retired award-winning Daily Herald columnist Burt Constable, former Daily Herald reporter and Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 Director of Communications Erin Holmes and Daily Herald correspondent Eileen Daday.

Kasia and her mother, Teresa, will receive the foundation's Spirit of the Giraffe Award during the event.

The foundation has worked for nearly 10 years with front-line health care workers to serve sick, injured and impoverished mothers and babies in the central African nation.

“We seek to prevent doors of rural urgent care being slammed shut by village clinics that cannot afford to give away free medicine and care,” said Deacon Don Grossnickle of Our Lady of the Wayside Church, the foundation's executive director.

There is a special connection between the Janus family and Deacon Don. He was the family's backyard neighbor in Arlington Heights at the time of the tragedy.

“(Kasia) knows the plight of suffering alone and knows the healing hand of a friend, a village (that stands) tall with them,” Grossnickle said.

The foundation's mission convinced Kasia to help its cause by speaking in public about the Tylenol case.

“I have never spoken about this before, and I thought what a great way to use my platform for something good,” she said.

She plans to discuss the important role her community, especially her family's Mitchell Street neighbors and fellow Our Lady of the Wayside parishioners, played in the wake of an overwhelming tragedy.

“I think what really helped was that the neighbors and the church and the school reached out with open arms,” said Janus, who continued to live in the community with her mother and brother, Tom.

‘He's gonna wake up'

Though just 4 years old at the time, Kasia Janus still remembers the details of Sept. 29, 1982. Her dad buying the Tylenol capsules. Her mom's cries for help after he fell ill. Rushing to his side.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my dad's just sleeping, he's gonna wake up at some point,'” she said. “And then he never did.”

After her father died, relatives gathered at the family home, including his brother, Stanley, and Stanley's wife, Theresa. While there, they ingested capsules from the same tainted Tylenol bottle.

“And that was the last time I saw my aunt and uncle,” Kasia said. “They were the ones that were really consoling me. They were just giving me hugs.”

“My uncle just lost his best friend,” she said.

The next thing Kasia remembers was waking up on a bed with steel railings at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. The whole family had been quarantined because investigators had not yet determined the cyanide-laced Tylenol was to blame for the deaths.

“I felt like I was in jail. I was behind bars, hooked up to all these monitors, and I was scared,” she said.

‘Family is everything'

After authorities linked the deaths to the Tylenol capsules, thanks largely to public health nurse and future Arlington Heights village board member Helen Jensen's making the connection, the work of rebuilding their lives fell on the surviving Janus family members, especially Kasia's mom.

“Now she is all of a sudden a single parent with two young kids, and her whole world just completely vanished in a sense,” Kasia said. “Her family is in Poland, and she's got my dad's family. She had a choice. Do you stay or do you go back (to Poland)?”

She decided to stay, a decision influenced by the neighbors who reached out to her and the opportunities available to her children here.

“I don't think people realize how much being in a network, being in a community really helps someone move forward in a tragedy like this,” Kasia said.

Kasia, who now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and works at the University of Wisconsin, said her openness to speaking out about her family's tragedy began about four years ago, when she was in Poland for her grandmother's funeral.

Looking through her grandmother's personal effects, she found a black-and-white photo of her 4-year-old self taken by a newspaper photographer at Maryhill Catholic Cemetery the day her father, uncle and aunt were buried.

She dipped further into the past during the COVID-19 pandemic, reading through newspaper clippings and sympathy cards mailed to her family from people in Arlington Heights.

While the 40th anniversary of the murders has brought renewed media attention, Kasia said she has avoided the coverage.

She is, however, reconnecting with friends, family, neighbors and even a former co-worker of her dad. Some of that occurred at a special Mass Sept. 25 at Our Lady of the Wayside to celebrate the lives of her father, aunt and uncle. Her Aunt Theresa's brothers and father also attended.

“I felt like I accomplished something that I really wanted to do. And that was to celebrate and honor my dad and my aunt and uncle, but also reconnect with people from the past and to get people back together,” she said.

Her plan is to further develop those relationships and collect their stories for an upcoming book.

Recently, she said, her mom showed her the wallet her father kept. It contained photos of his wife, children and several other family members.

“And it just shows me that he had this capacity of love for his family,” Kasia said. “He just really cared so much about his family. And what we share in common is that family is everything.”

Thanksgiving Stories will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, at the Campus Life Center, 150 Lageschulte St., Barrington. Admission is $10. To register or learn more, visit MAAPFoundation.org.