NationStates Jolt Archive

The FBI: "Never Give Up, Never Surrender".

For the young 'uns and those outside North America: The Tylenol Scare nearly killed America's most popular brand of over-the-counter painkiller back in 1982, when 7 people died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide and placed on drugstore shelves. This is why you can't open up a gelcap and put it back together again -- tamper-proof capsules helped Tylenol save its brand.

The FBI investigated, and they did arrest and prosecute a man, James Lewis, for extortion: he'd sent a letter to Tylenol demanding money to stop the killings. The FBI is damn sure that he's the one who put the cyanide in the capsules, but they were never able to prove it, and no-one was ever charged with the murders...

...but obviously they never forgot, because as of this morning, they're serving a search warrant on James Lewis's house (http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1412986,search-warrant-tylenol-killings-020409.article). Nobody's saying nothing as of yet.

So is the FBI noble in its doggedness or dangerous in its myopia? James Lewis: opportunistic letter-writer or the coldest of cold-blooded killers? Is justice delayed actually justice denied? Thoughts?

There's no statute of limitations on murder.

send him to git mo and water board him until he confesses.

send him to git mo and water board him until he confesses.

Oh, wait, there's a presidential order that shut that down already...

There's no statute of limitations on murder.

True, but every time the FBI say they have a Hoffa lead, the commentariat deride them for wasting taxpayer dollars. Should they be concentrating on more current cases?

True, but every time the FBI say they have a Hoffa lead, the commentariat deride them for wasting taxpayer dollars. Should they be concentrating on more current cases?

You concentrate on the ones that bear fruit.

Oh, wait, there's a presidential order that shut that down already...

shut it down for foreigners, now there is plenty of room for domestic dissidents

and they think they're going to find precisely WHAT after 26 years????

Maybe he's also the Zodiac killer...that would really tie up some loose ends.

Oh, wait, there's a presidential order that shut that down already...

Within a year. Not immediately.

wow i wonder what they hope to find after all this time has passed.

does this mean that they didnt search his house at the time? does this mean he hasnt moved in 27 years?

i sure would like to have the guilty person punished for this crime.

He was sent to prison in 1984 and he got out in 1995, so he's only lived in Cambridge since at least that time. One does indeed wonder what they're expecting to find.

The Chicago Reader ran a long piece on the Tylenol case (https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/Archive/abridged2.bat?path=2000/001103/LEWIS) back in 2000. For the tldr crowd, the upshot is that Lewis is a seriously odd person, and may or may not be crazy. They looked at him hard but never found evidence tying him to the killings, just to the letter written to Tylenol. He offered to help his prosecutors figure out the Tylenol case and spent hours speculating about what the killer might have done, but he refused a polygraph.

He also probably killed a guy in Kansas City four years before the Tylenol murders, but the police screwed up the case (they didn't mirandize him, among other mistakes,) so he was never prosecuted.

Without any information otherwise, it sounds entirely possible that they're just harrassing him.

and they think they're going to find precisely WHAT after 26 years????

You know, I'm actually wondering the same thing myself.

It might be newer documented evidence, something that would amount to a confession that he has made since that time... Just guessing.

By the way, the Tylenol murders not only ushered in the one-piece gelcap, but also the whole Age of Tamper-Resistant Packaging, which has made our lives .001% more annoying than it was before. If that son of a bitch did it, I'd like 5 minutes to explain to him what I think of his little trick. :mad:

Whoever did it was a stone-cold evil bastard.

and they think they're going to find precisely WHAT after 26 years????

You would be amazed at what people keep - especially when they should know better.

Further evidence for my theory of a link between playing the trombone and murder.

Pffft, reopening a 26 year old case, the UK opens 80 year old cases...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/04/missing-girl-murder-hunt-1920s