Seattle theater to stage play about Tylenol murders
A small theater in suburban Seattle will stage a new play next month about the 1982 Tylenol cyanide poisonings, which killed six people from the suburbs and a Chicago woman.
Writer and director Alan Bryce, who grew up in London and has no ties to Chicago, said he was inspired to write the play, "Death on the Supermarket Shelf," after reading the self-published 2011 book, "The Tylenol Mafia: Marketing, Murder, and Johnson & Johnson," by Scott Bartz.
Bryce said he'd been interested in the case since he moved to America in the 1980s, when the story dominated the news. Last year, he went in search of books on the crime.
"This was the only book I could find about one of the biggest crimes of the century, and I thought that was strange," he said. "I thought the research (in the book) looked pretty darn good. And I saw there was an extraordinary story here."
The play centers on the "moral conundrums" faced by police and Johnson & Johnson. But it also focuses on the tireless pursuit of what happened by Michelle Rosen, daughter of victim Mary "Lynn" Reiner, of Winfield.
Rosen was only 8 years old when she saw her mother drop to the kitchen floor and die of cyanide poisoning. Years later, that memory drove her to spend years doing her own in-depth investigation. Despite obstacles, Rosen uncovered information about the case (much of it is on tylenolmurders.com) and came to believe the Tylenol tampering occurred in the distribution channel, not the widely believed theory that a lone madman planted cyanide in Tylenol bottles across the suburbs.
Rosen's research was used in "The Tylenol Mafia." However, her findings have been largely ignored by investigators.
Rosen, who now lives in Texas, said she doesn't know Bryce and hasn't seen his script. But she is hopeful the play will help bring the spotlight back onto the cold case.
"The idea that my pursuit actually inspired an artist to create this story, in his own way, is incredibly moving," she said. "I truly hope that the audience watching leaves with a question about everything they have remembered about this case from its past coverage and are motivated to start looking into a new, solid direction of the distribution channel. Can a play do that? Why not? Even if just one person walks away looking to find out more, that would be enough for me."
"Death on the Supermarket Shelf" will be performed by a cast of 12 on March 4 to 26 at Centerstage! Theatre in Federal Way, Washington, a 234-seat venue on the shore of the Puget Sound. Bryce said the play includes a lot of music, including a song by Chicago bluesman Robert Johnson about selling your soul to the devil.
The play poses the question of how cyanide got into the bottle of Tylenol that Reiner received from the dispensary at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield.
"That, to me, seems to be the key to everything," Bryce said.
The Tylenol poisonings remain one of the country's most famous unsolved murder mysteries. In 2013, after decades of investigating and no arrests, the FBI handed the case over to the Arlington Heights Police Department, the town where three of the seven victims died.
Deputy Chief Mike Hernandez said this week that there was nothing new to report about the investigation, only that "we periodically get information and follow up on it."
The last significant event in the investigation, at least publicly, was seven years ago this week, when the FBI raided the Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of longtime suspect James Lewis. The raid did not result in any criminal charges.