Hey there, everyone has promised. It's me again, Josh. And for Part two of this week's s Y s K Select, we talked about Johnson and Johnson's response to one of the biggest PR crises ever to grip an American company, and we meet the suspects and talk about the effects of the senseless Thailand All Poisonings. I hope you enjoy Part two of two of this week's special two parts Select Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Josh over there. Because enough with the pleasant trees, let's get back to it. Chuck Thailand All Murders Part two. If you did not listen to the first part, seven people were murdered by ingesting Thailand, all tainted with cyanide on the same day, All on the same day. America and much of the world is super freaked out. Johnson and Johnson is the manufacturer. And part one of part two has a deal with Johnson and Johnson and how they handled this in a public relations sort of way, because there were and are a huge company, Like you said in the episode one, they held thirty seven percent of the market share, which was many hundreds of millions of dollars of Thailand all that they're selling every year, and that's right, which is like gazillions now. So it was a very big deal for that company. And the way they handled it is taught in colleges and PR classes all over the world as exactly how to handle a big public relations crisis like this. It's literally called a textbook example of how how it's done. Yeah, they did a good job because, as you remember from the last episode, they found out pretty sure early on that this had nothing to do with Johnson and Johnson, right, like, it wasn't in their factory, wasn't in their supply chain. That happened almost certainly, and that it probably happened by some crazed person taking him out of the store, tainting them maybe in the store in the parking lot, then putting them back on the shelf. But Johnson Johnson can't come out on the news and say, hey, wasn't us right well at first though, and this this gets overlooked and left out of the college business courses, in the PR courses at first Johnson and Johnson was not in favor of a massive recall. Look well, it looks good in one way but bad in another. And they actually didn't recall anything until Mayor Jane Byrne hells her press conference on Friday calling for a recall of the Thailand all in Chicago, and Johnson and Johnson did a little face palm and yes, we're recalling all of the Thailand all in Chicago. Yes, what she said. Right. So by Friday, uh, the thirty one of September is their thirty one in September? Was this October one? I have no idea. I think it was October one. Anyway, By the Friday, two days after the death the death um, Johnson and Johnson recalled all of the Thailand all in Chicago. And that should have been enough to them, that was enough. But this PR crisis was so massive and spread so fast, and like we said earlier in Part one, became global almost overnight. It was not enough. And so Johnson and Johnson, within a week of the deaths, recalled every bottle of extra strength Thailand all in the United States, which is worth about a hundred million dollars at the time. Took it back to their factories and destroyed it. So they say, right, uh, yeah, both Johnson and Johnson, right. I wonder if one of them was like, I don't know about this. They're one of them said Okay, I'll take all the states west of the Mississippi North Dakota, South Dakota in some Wyoming, and you take all the other states. That's a that's a part one joke. Uh. They even got an award the Public Relations Society of America, which is a real thing, I believe it or not. They awarded them their Silver and Bull Award for how they handle the crisis the Thailand all poisoning, that's right, and um high grade foods. Remember we talked about the bad Wieners in the first episode the ballpark Frank sip Um supposedly had razor blades but did not. That still created a public relations crisis for them, even though they were just these little jerks in Detroit. And Uh. They won the Golden Anvil, which is one higher than silver, because of how they handled the pr crisis brought about by the copycats of the actual Thailand all crisis, which was in fact really brought about by two jerk kids in Detroit really not even copycats, not the tile in all crisis. I wonder where those kids are today, probably in the Senate. I bet one of them was the guy who did our our lighting at our Detroit show. There was a smoke Yeah, guys, we we did a show in Detroit a few years ago and um, very famously we still use that as the standard bearer for a bad crew bad. We had a guy that looked like a former roadie for your Riyah Heap that was running like a light show basically during the middle of our podcast, and like smoke came out. We were like, we had to stop the show, almost like dude, what are you doing? Yeah, well the lighting was so bad that your highlighter had turned like brown and you could and you asked him, we had to stop the show and you had to ask him to use a different color light. And his response, because Umi was hanging out and our friend Chris Bowman was hanging out in the sound booth with the guy, his response, according to them, was they wants smoke, will give them some more smoke, And we got some more smoke like a smoke machine man. And people ask us why we haven't been back to Detroit. It's a big reason. It's a big reason, not the only reason. Uh. Okay, So they won the Golden Anvil for the Wiener pr moves um McNeil Consumer Products, which is a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson. They actually make Thailand on. Yeah, they make the pills again. The way this all the supply chain works is really convoluted. Um. And uh, like you said, they didn't want to recall Johnson Johnson everything at first. They want to kind of take it a little slower, I guess, um, because they found out the drugs are actually fine, right thanks to Pinky McFarland. This is a hundred million dollars worth of stock that they were kind of feeling the pressure to recall. It's right, So they were kind of reluctant at first, especially if they were convinced that there was nothing wrong with the rest of them. They had no choice, No, that was the only way to do it was to lose a lot of money and in favor of future gains. Yeah. But even at the time, a lot of people were like, this is it for thaile and all the public has lost faith in Thailand all. So when Thailand all recalled thirty one million, fifty count bottles of extra strength Taile and All and destroyed at all. There was a chance that not only were they losing a hundred million dollars, but that they were losing a hundred billion dollars of a brand that had already lost the public trust and would never regain it. So which wasn't true. But no, but they didn't necessarily know that at the time. It was still up in the air. Um so they it was basically thirty one million sacrificial lambs that were killed to show the public this tainted tail and All has gone forever. Your chances of dying from taking Extra Strength Thaile and All are now gone. You can go back to taking Thaile and All. Now, that was one thing, and that was a big gesture, but which is what it amounted to. It was a gesture on behalf of Johnson and Johnson. But they did other stuff too. They started to do things right out of their reluctance. Once they finally said there, we have to just go with this to save face and to win back public trust, they started to do things right, like including like setting up a hotline, putting out a hundred thousand dollar reward for information change how much they had lost already still jump change it's it is yeah, and that remains unclaimed. It does. Um, but they But because of all this, Johnson and Johnson managed to regain the public trust and actually managed to position itself as a victim in all of this. Like, yes, there were they were seven murder victims, and Johnson and Johnson I don't think ever tried to push them out of the spotlight. But they also managed to portray themselves as the victim of a of a mad poisoner who may or may not have something out for them. But either way, their brand was take a huge hit because of this, and they were a victim and we're able to generate public sympathy, which is part of the road to regaining the public trust right, which is why it's taught NPR classes. So, um, we'll take you back to two. If you're if you weren't around then or old enough to be taking uh O t C pills and pain relievers is over the counter, by the way. That's right, Okay, you're done with OTC. Yeah you know me so dumb. Uh. I love that you played along that I appreciate that you could have made me feel stupid. We've been partners for eleven years almost now, Yeah, that'd be when next month or this month? Right, Yeah, unbelievable. So uh, I'm believing that, not in that way. Okay. So here's how it used to happen. If you wanted to take a pill like a tail and all, you would, um get your bottle. You would pop it open with your thumb. Well first, first it came in a little box, sure, but the box wasn't even glued shut. Um. You would pop it open with your finger. You would take out the cotton in there, and you would take your pill. It was that easy. There was no tamper proofing, There was no The cotton was completely superfluous at this time. Yeah. Cotton originally was introduced to keep baar aspirin like the hard tablets from getting crushed in transport. And since they started using capsules and other stuff and figured out how to strengthen tablets, there was no reason for the cotton any longer, but because consumers expected it. Still today you'll find cotton in your and your pills. There's no reason for it to be there except because the companies know that you wanted to be there. You might be weirded out if there wasn't cotton in your pills. Imagine the cotton lobby had something to do with that too. Well, I'll bet they're not. They're not complaining, you know, so um big cotton. They should uh new fancy OTC pills should have micromodl in there. Right. It just comes with a pair of me undy him bottle. You're like, these have been worn so uh. This was a time. It was a very innocent time previous to this, where you could like and you pointed this out. I remember seeing this in grocery stores, like I remember seeing mothers and grocery stores opening food products and smelling them. That's what you could do, and then closing it back and putting it back on the shelf. There's a little mold in this one. Yeah, and I'll just leave it for the next person. Forget poisoning like that. These they could be spitting in this stuff. It was allowed. That's just the way it was like there was. America was innocent enough that that was fine. That's how we lived. And that sets up this tile and all poisoning. It really shows how much of a jarring experience it was from America because all of a sudden, like it's finally sunk in in a couple of days, there's something wrong with the tile and all. Somebody has gone out of their way to poisoned the Thailand all in order to randomly kill people. And the reason they were able to do this because there it's easy to to get into the tail and all tamper with it. Put it back and no one will be any any any more. The wiser and wait, it's not just taile and all. Milk doesn't have anything that that keeps the tamper resistant. New there's orange juice, there's cereal, new there does um cottage cheese. Nothing does. And America for wreaked out. And this is the reason why this tile and all poisoning is considered widely the first incident of domestic terrorism in the United States, because it was terrorism, pure and simple. America was terrified. They were petrified not only to take tail in all or any over the counter medicine, now they were petrified to drink milk or give milk to their kids. Paula Prince, the flight attendant who was the last one to die in Chicago, she had a coworker who said like everything look tainted. Now. I was afraid to give my kids milk. I was afraid to get my kids cereal. If they could get to the tile tile and all, they could poison anything. And that was really emblematic of the the attitude, the shock that everybody went through. And as a result, within six weeks, Thailand all said we got this coverage. Yeah. And I have a feeling they did this so fast. There had to have been this idea in place already. It was I saw I saw a reference that it was, and I imagine it was not done because they're like, well, that's a lot of money, and why why would we bother. It's like, it's not like someone's gonna poison the medicine. And then that happened. So within six weeks they had a box that was actually glued shut, so if your little box had been opened, you would be able to tell yeah, that was That was part one of three of this tamper resistant packaging. That little plastic seal over the top of the bottle after you open it. Uh oh no, no, the the plastic is over the cap on the outside of the bottle. Yeah, like the plastic foil, and then the the actual foil was over the mouth of the bottle that we all have to poke through now to pull out the and whatever still uses cotton. None of that existed until the beginning of ninet. So all three of these are put in place within six weeks. Uh. Not only that, they said, you know what, we're going to introduce the caplet, which everyone knows now it was we didn't have them back then. Everything was a little capsule that you could literally pull apart and you could snort the Thailand all if you wanted to. Quite sure some people did. I'm sure someone did. But the caplet is you know, a tablet coated with an easy to swallow a gelatine. It's solid, it's um I imagine you could tamper with it. And even I even saw with all these things in place, they said, nothing is tamper proof. But these measures really went a long way to restore the public, uh you know, well, like the good feelings about what was going on. Yeah, within about a year Thailand all Or Johnson and Johnson managed to win the public's trust back in Thailand. All that's hard to believe. Yeah, that was really fast. But it also goes to show like just how perfectly. They did everything from that from the time they committed to it on. Yeah, and I feel like I remember like commercials with CEOs and stuff addressing the public. He became I can't remember his name. I want to say Geoffrey Beam and it's like a shoe brand. Getty Johnson, No, um, Bill Johnson Johnson, Yes, this, I can't remember his name, but he Jimmy Johnson is way far away from that. UM. But he became a public face. He would, you know, go on to sixty minutes and and he talked to Dan Rather and take Copple and all those cats. Like he he was out there like showing how much the company cared. Yeah, And it had had a huge effect. And then in Congress got involved. They passed what they dubbed the Thailand All Bill, which basically says, if you do something like this is now a federal offense. A few years later, in nine UM, the f d A actually established guidelines for manufacturers of any product really to make it tamper proof. Yeah, because it wasn't just the O. T C manufacturers that that started doing this, they followed suit very quickly once Thailand All came out with it, because they kind of had to if they wanted to keep up with tile and all. Um. But also the uh, the manufacturers of everything, like every product, every consumer products started putting their products in like tamper proof packaging. Dial soap started coming wrapped in cellophane inside the box trap the chemicals in, I guess. But also to show like nobody's injected this with lie or something like that, although lie is used in the making a soap, isn't it. I remember my Fight Club. It's pretty funny someone injected soap into the soap. All right, let's take another break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the profile of the supposed mad poisoner right after this stop. All right, So, uh, this was a very big case at the time, obviously, like we've been saying, it was a landmark case. Um, so of course you're going to get um psychological profiles, which you know we should do one in profiling. Actually have we done that? I don't think so it'd be a good one because it always like seems like the trope in movies and TV. But it is kind of like that. It is a thing, for sure. It's not like they just make this stuff up. But in the end they said, you know, this is probably a man in his twenties or thirties who was sort of a Jekyl and Hide type during the day. He's very ordinary. You could be in the desk cubicle next to you and you wouldn't even know it. Every once in a while you just hear and go, yeah exactly. But deep in his in the recesses of his brain, everyone, he's plagued with self doubt and has an illusion that a random killing can boost his sense of self worth self worth. Um, which is just sounds like a straight out of a movie. It sounds like a psychiatrist thing. I want to be on TV. Yeah, listen to me. Uh. They also speculated, and this is just completely like conjecture was that he had probably already taken his own life after the killings. That was one specific person that Yeah, it was I think like the medical examiner for Cook County. Yeah, Um, he probably already jumped off the bridge, So don't worry about it. Don't worry everybody. Uh. Yeah, he just threw that out there. I don't know if it was the calm people or not, but or maybe he's just throwing his two cents in. But um, I think you kind of said it earlier. I don't remember if it was part owner, parts two. The whole things is blurred and become a haze by now. But um, no one has ever been charged with the Thailand All murders. Yeah, but there has been a lot. There were a lot of suspects. Remember Thailand. I'll set up a hotline and this Thailand All task Force, a hundred and forty person strong task force investigating this, chasing down leads, taking calls on the hotline. Thousands and thousands of calls that were coming in. Um, they were trying to whittle those down into actual tips that were worth pursuing, and out of all of them, they they deemed twelve hundred tips und leads worth checking out. There's a lot of leads for a case, um, even even considering yet a hundred and forty people working them. And I read somewhere that they started out with like twenty thousand suspects or something like that and whittled it down to four hundred. Yeah, And the sort of the sad part as as quickly as they sort of figured a lot of this out and had that hundred and forty person task force. They almost just as quickly, within a few months, realized that, like, we don't have a very good chance at finding this person. Yeah, it became clear very quickly. Yeah, they whittled that down. By the last week of October, the task force was down to forty people. By the end of the year it was down to twenty. And it was a situation again where you didn't have security cameras everywhere, you didn't have credit cards and debit cards um creating paper trails. It was a lot easier back then to get away with something like this too, um to be completely unknown, to walk into a store, maybe slip some Thailand all into your pocket, go out to the parking lot and come back in and slipping back on the shelf. If you're really easy, you won't even go to the trouble of buying it. Yeah, I guess that's a good point. Steal it and then put it. But you know, people were using cash. If there were UH cameras in a place, they were probably trained on employee is. I worked at a golden pantry in college and the only camera we had was directly above us, pointing down at the catch register. It was the one of alps in in Atlanta Highway. Alps No, the one on the east side College Station Road. I think, yeah, very interesting job. That's the one where I got a job. I needed a job. I got a job at McDonald's and I showed up. I took the one hour training video and they got my uniform number. I went home and I was supposed to show up the next day and I was just like, I can't do it. I can't go work at McDonald's. And I got the Golden Pantry job later that day, which, hey man, sure, it's like sign me up from Golden Arches to Golden Pantry. That's like a rags richest story. I was selling beer and cigarettes. Nice. It was pretty great. You're like one for you, one for me. Oh I would never do that. Um, all right, where was I? Oh? Yeah, I was at Golden Pantry. So the cameras trained on the register, they're not they're not. You know, you could come and go in a store and no one even knows it was cops have nothing to go on. Most importantly, no motive. That was a big one because remember this is just a jekylin Hyde type who you'd never suspect, who's probably at the bottom of the Chicago River, right, who also is engaged in some senseless random killings of people, anonymous poisoning killing, not even shooting. It just made zero sense whatsoever. So, like we said earlier, the cops figured out within about a month, within the first month of the investigation, that this was they were not going to have a break in this case. But it's not to say that they didn't have some suspects. Some people definitely did kind of come to come to the four, but not many of them. Yeah, but these two are really interesting sub stories in and of themselves. The first guy's name was last name Arnold, first name Roger, Roger, that's right, I call him Richard. That's all right, But for good reason, Oh sure, because you said he was like the Richard Jewel of his day, the Olympic bomber, who was not the bomber, right, but whose life was ruined because he basically was implicated as the Olympic bomber. The same thing happened to this guy. Yeah, he was one of the first named suspects, forty nine year old guy. So so put yourself in the position. Okay, the media is going berserk on this story. Everybody hears about it. It's a mad anonymous poisoner, and now all of a sudden there's a name and a face associated with it. Who's a suspect, but he's the first person name. It's like people going crazy, like trying to get to this guy to interview him. Yeah. I have my doubts about this guy. Not that he did that, but there are a lot of hinky things that they found out about him and then how it all ended up as you're about to see. So he was a d i y chemist. It's a big one. There's a big thing right there, because into chemistry. He said, he's a Jacqueline Hyde type. He's probably into chemistry. That's right. He was a dock hand at jewel Foods at a warehouse west of Chicago. Jewel Foods, a couple of different jewel foods are where the was bought, like a grocery store, food market. It's all checking out so far. Um, So the cops look into him and go to his house. He has a book, a handbook rather on methods of killing people? How did kill people? A dizzy? I don't know if that's the title, but okay, that's a good one. He had five unregistered guns. It's a big one. He admitted to having cyanide once. Yeah, but he said I threw it out like at least six months before these murders. He's like, the murders again, Oh, yes, six months before that. That's and then his wife said, you know they're investigating her and interviewing her. She was like, you know what, Actually I did take some tile in all and felt really sick and throw up one time. But again I was it was probably due to over eating, and it was just that once. That's the fact of the podcast. So like he can't blame cops for saying, this guy is a pretty good lead, yeah, because you can kind of start to see, like if you add all the other stuff together, and then hear about the wife throwing up from Thailand, all we like, could you see this guy like toying with his wife, like testing it out on her just enough to make her sick, but not to kill her, to see what happened, you know, see if she would notice? Who knows. But the cops thoroughly investigated this guy and cleared him. There there's not a there's not a person associated with the story that I came across who said I actually think this guy did it. I didn't find one person who thought Ronald Roger Arnold actually did it. But in very short order he proved that he was more than capable of murder because six months after he was cleared as a suspect, he was brought in for the murder of somebody else. A guy named John Stenishaw Stanisha would say, yeah, I'm going with that too, sons Slovak or something. Yeah, he was forty six, he was a Chicago UM computer consultant, and that's saying some yeah, probably so um. So here's what happened Arnold. There was his bar gender name or bar owner named Marty Sinclair, who Arnold had thought had initially turned him into the cops and ruined his life essentially. So he goes to kill who he thinks is Marty Sinclair, and it's actually this just completely innocent random guy who gets shot point blank. And so he in fact did kill somebody. He did because of what had happened to his life. It was premeditated murder, even though it was the wrong person. He was definitely he created an intentional homicide. He killed somebody on purpose, mistaken identity killing though right, and because of this, because it was directly related to the taile and all poisonings, John stanisha is Um frequently considered an eighth victim of the tie in all killings, kind of like an honorary um victim in this case. But it is kind of appropriate that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of mistaken identity. You know, it would have like a slightly different ring to it if it had been the right guy. The fact that it was the wrong guy and the poor dude just happened to be in the wrong bar and happened to look like the owner, that's just it just it's perfect for this for this saga. Yeah, I wonder what Marty Sinclair thought about all that. I'll bet he was not very happy, probably not, but probably also very relieved and probably also guilt. Yeah, I would guess there's a touch of that, a range of emotions I would imagine, yeah, all over the place. So Arnold ended up serving fifteen years of a thirty year sentence, was released in ninety nine, and died nine years later. Yep, so chuck. Before we go on to the main attraction, as far as the suspects go, I propose that we take break. Okay, we'll be right back. Stop alright, Chuck. So this dude, there was basically two suspects in this whole case. Over all these years, there are basically two people. And again no one was ever actually charged with the murders. But this guy came awfully close and his name was James Lewis, it turns out it was. But James Lewis came under the attention of the Chicago p D and the Thailand All Task Force when a letter showed up at Johnson and Johnson headquarters and it was from allegedly the Thailand All Poisoner, the Mad Poisoner. And in the letter it said basically like I've spent fifty dollars so far, and the whole thing is taking me about ten minutes per bottle, and I've already killed seven people. I basically see no reason to stop. Pay me one million dollars and then I will stop the killings. And he gave a bank account number. He said, wire me this money very very presidently. No that's not the right word. Uh, stupidly maybe, but is it. No, it's not. So this letter has a New York postmark, but the bank account is associated with the travel agency in Chicago, and so the cops go, Okay, this seems like it was dropped in our lap, but let's go check it out. And they find the owner of this travel agency that had closed up and gone under um. And this guy is like, oh my god, you're kidding me. It's like, no, I didn't write this letter, but I can guarantee I can tell you who did, as a guy named Robert Richardson. Robert Richardson, it turned out, was the husband of a woman named Nancy Richardson who had worked at the travel agency, and when the travel agency went belly up, Nancy lost her job and never got her last paycheck. Well, Robert Richardson was the type of guy who would fixate on this, and was even more so the type of guy who would write a letter to frame the owner of the travel agency for the thaile and all murderers in retaliation for that last paycheck. He was that kind of dude. And so the cops started sniffing into this Robert Richardson cat and they figured out pretty quickly that Robert Richardson didn't actually exist, that he was actually somebody else, a man named James Lewis. So when we joked earlier about is that his real name, and you said it was, it was, it was. His name was not Robert Richardson though, that was an alias. So what they found out was that Robert Richardson was a tax consultant. UM. He had and this is just a strange, ironic twist. When he was twenty years old, he tried to take his own life by swallowing aspirin thirty six of them. Yeah, so that's just neither here nor there. But an interesting little side note, Yeah, the fact that that, like most people don't have that as part of their past. Yeah, it is interesting that it came up. So he had a pretty long rap sheet. He was wanted by postal inspectors for credit card fraud in Kansas City, UM. He was indicted in ninety eight for and this one is just mind blowing. He's indicted for murder after police found remains of one of his former clients in bags in his attic and he got let loose because it was an illegal search. But he he was caught with the body of one of his clients was dismembered in his attic with no good explanation as far as I've ever heard. Yeah, so Joe, well what explanation would be good? Well, we were playing poker and one thing I do another started juggling swords and yeah, uh so his wife real name was Leanne, the one who worked at the travel agency and went unpaid. They fled Kansas City in December of eighty one. Um, and this was as US Postal inspectors were converging on them about this credit card scheme. So they're like, just bad people, not the postal inspectors. No. Great, So they moved to Chicago. They changed their names to Robert Nancy Nancy Richardson. He got that job as a text preparer, but then he was fired after a violent outburst in his office against his co workers. Um. And then she lost her job, went unpaid. They left Chicago, and this turns out this is what got them exonerated from the time. All thing is they left Chicago and moved to New York before this happened before same month. Right, But if the theory held up that this person went around most likely in one day and did all this stuff, then it couldn't have been them. No, And here's why because the cops had decided that it was done locally. And one of the other things that supported that local mad poisoner theory was because the cyanide eight through the gelatine capsules eventually, so I had a very very short shelf life before the whole bottle just turned into a mush of cyani powder and melted gelatine. So, like you said, it had to have been done basically the day before. They n they could not, no matter how hard they tried, They could not put James Lewis or his wife in Chicago that day. They just couldn't. And for his part, James Lewis said, yeah, I wrote this letter. I wrote the letter of Johnson and Johnson framing that travel agency guy. But I did not. I did not poison the title at all. He's always been adamant about that. He's never toyed around with it. He's never messed around, he's never been coy He's always been adamant that he did not poison that title at all. Although the title in all task force tried to trip him up once. I guess to just get this on the record that he'd done this, but they asked him like in an in an interview. Okay, let's say you had done it, how would you have done it? And he actually pulled an o J. He showed them how he would have done it. Yeah. He just didn't write a book about it. He just showed him in an interview. Yeah. And he defends this later on by saying it was just a speculative scenario. I could tell you how Julius Caesar was killed, but that doesn't mean I was the killer. I think the answer for me would have been I don't know, man, Yeah, I'm innocent. I don't I can't figure this out. But he's like, here's how I do I've been waiting for you to ask me though. Uh. He's eventually found in New York City. He's at the Public Library UM with a reference book, copying names and addresses of newspapers. Uh. I would imagine to send them letters like zodiac style. Yeah, because so look, we gotta say this. So the cups figured out who James Lewis was before they found James Lewis, and it became part of the national media um circus. While they were looking for James Lewis, this guy was writing letters to newspapers. He called in a radio talk show. He was really relishing the fact that there was a national man hunt out for him. Who like, that's that's what I'm saying. On the one hand, you gotta kind of feel a little bit bad that this guy was kind of being railroaded into, you know, the rap for these murders. After his extortion attempt, that's where the feeling bad firms. You're like, oh, yeah, that's right. He totally brought this on himself. Yeah. So they hauled him out of the New York Public Library. He was sentenced to ten years for extortion attempt, in ten years for credit that original credit card fraud, and served thirteen years and lives in the Greater Boston area today. So still today there, I think there are a few people who are like, I could see this guy he maybe maybe he could, he could be at some Some detectives maintain that the Thailand All murder could have flown into O'Hare running a car, done that circuit, flown or driven back to a hair and flown out all on the same day the day before, But they could never put James Lewis in Chicago at all that day. Um, So he was cleared finally, although he did serve two consecutive ten years sentences, reserved thirteen of the twenty years for that credit card fraud that the Postal Inspectors wanted him for and for the extortion letter. Um. And like you said, he lives in Cambridge, mass now. But then in two thousand nine, the case, after basically having gone dormant in the early eighties, was reignited by the FBI because they worked up they thought a DNA profile from the capsules, and they rated James Lewis's house. UM demanded a fingerprint and DNA sample. James and Leanne Lewis fought it in court. The judges like, no, you have to do this. Before leaving the courthouse, they gave him the samples and nothing has come of it. So I guess that means tacitly that the Lewises were cleared once and for all of the Thailand all murders. Yeah, and you know, the d n A thing is an interesting piece because, Um, they still have some samples of the cyanide. I guess that the capsules have have worn away by now if it had the cyanide in there, But there was and still his hope, UM that DNA could could crack this case. Um, just like eight or nine years ago, the unibomber ted Kazinski. Is that a two parter? No, no, it's just one parter. Good podcast, So I don't think so that was a good episode. Uh. He grew up in Chicago and his parents were living in the Greater Chicago area in eight two, and he is the UNI bomber. So they said we might as well get a DNA sample and talk to him, and um, he was cleared. I don't think he was ever a super strong suspect and he probably would have admitted it. So he was like, no, this is not me right. So, um, the UNI bomber has been cleared. That's right from the talent on Merbers. But that remains the case remains unsolved to this day. I think they also have a fingerprint work up that they found on one of the bottles and that in some DNA. It's is they're just sitting around with that. There's there are no suspects there. Every suspect has been cleared, um, and there's nobody on the horizon. It's just an unsolved random series of killings that happened. Yeah, they're still working on it though. Um, there's a police sergeant named Scott Winkleman who has been on this task force for a long time, and he says he thinks it's solvable. UM and his department did just sawve a forty five year old murder case cold case. Man, if they solved this one, that would be the biggest cold case ever solved. I think so. I think. I mean, who knows, But I could see maybe finding like a deathbed letter or something one day, like I don't know if they're going to catch someone and at the bottom of the Chicago River in all wo to jail. But UM, I could see the truth coming out one day. I hope so for the families because Um Monica Janie, she's the niece of Adam Stanley and Teresa. She said, her family to this day, this was from an article like last year. I think, UM said that they have still not gotten over it. She said. Her grandparents have passed now, but she said, literally every day for the rest of their lives, they just cried about, uh, the fact that they didn't know who did it. Um. She grew up. It has been a therapy therapy her whole life because Um, there were all victims you know that this post traumatic stress disorder kicks in where she grew up fearing that any of her family members could die at any time. UM. Joseph Manus, her her dad, says that he still has dreams like you know on the rag about these murders. Um. He said he had one recently where everyone involved was in a room in the case. Uh, and then two black men in suits and glasses, we're laughing about how they got away with murder. UM. Michelle Rosen, she's the daughter of Mary Reiner. Um. She has dedicated her life to investigating this on her own, and she doesn't agree with the loan the mad poisoner theory at all. No, this is this is interesting. Yeah. She thinks it had something to do with the supply chain and that Johnson and Johnson knew this and covered it up. UM. One of the things, one of the things that people who believe this point to is that Johnson and Johnson recalled all of that Thailand, all thirty one million bottles, and then destroyed them allegedly without testing any of it. So we will never know whether it was Pinky had the day off right, whether whether it was beyond Chicago or just local in Chicago. Seems like it took long enough that other people would have died in that week before the national recall was undertaken. But um, there was something very very interesting that was a post script to all this that does under mind that mad poisoner theory. Yeah, it was just a few years later a woman in New York named Diane h ells Roth took two extra strength tile in all capsules and died from cyanide poisoning. Um, but they found I mean, it's just completely unrelated. Was it another copycat case well, or or the original poisoner? Maybe? So this different cyanide, right, the cyanide was definitely not the same size some from the same batch. It was chemically different. But there was another bottle found around the block from where Mary ELL's Roth bought hers and Yonkers that did match that cyanide. So there were two bottles of extra strength tileent all two years later in another state that had been UM tampered with. The problem is this was after the three pronged tamper resistant packaging had been UM introduced, which means it was an inside job, right, I guess because the tamper the thing had not beenbviously tampered with. Then Thailand all was never able to explain what happened. Yeah, and then within five days of her death, eight states outright band the capsules, Thailand all capsules, right, and Thailand All for its part, was like, we've been trying to get everybody to take capulets anyway, but they keep taking capsules, so we're making it. And then a guy wrote a book, right, Um Scott Bart's Yeah, a former Johnson and Johnson employee, UM wrote in two thousand eleven a self published book UM on the Time of All Poisonings, and he said what we were talking about earlier. He's like, the supply chain is so convoluted, Um, basically like it could definitely could have happened at any point along the way. And his his idea is that that Johnson and Johnson knew that it was in their distribution network and they covered it up self published book. You gotta you gotta note that for sure. I'm not knocking it, no, but it's noteworthy. It does if there's like any hint of journalistic integrity and us that feels like we have to note that. Sure. So that's the Taile and all poisonings of nineteen eighty two in Chicago, changed America, changed the world, but definitely changed America. It was the end of some form of innocence that we still had. Absolutely, if you want to know more about the tile and all poisonings, go online. There's stuff all over the place and you can go down that rabbit hole and it's deep and wide. Since I said that, it's time for listener, ma'am uh. This is from Gin from Brunswick, Maine. Hey, guys, been listening for several years and never thought I'd have a never thought a perfect time right to write in would be related to synthetic farts. Remember the discussed episode talked about synthe synthetic parts. It's a real thing. When I was in high school, my dad came across the stuff online called liquid a s s as horrible. Not allowed to curse right, no occur would spell it out though, um or, I guess maybe you should have said like a asterisk asterisk. Yeah, there you go, good name for a product, though. She said he found it on a joke web website in ordered something and I have to tell you it is the worst thing you've ever smelled. I can't even describe it. It makes you want to not breathe anymore. The tiniest little drop is deadly, So of course I took it to college with me to play pranks, and boy did it backfire. I thought it was pretty funny putting a couple of drops in the radiator by my across the friend across the hall friends room, not eating, thinking and not even thinking about what would happen when the heat turned on. Well, the heat turned on and the whole floor of the dorm was amazingly disgusting and made us just about gag. Smell took almost a week to finally go away, and I have not used it again in the ten year since. It's probably it's called learning your lesson, But she still has the bottle she's like, but I kept it just in case. Thank you for your interesting and entertaining podcast. This is the first podcast I ever listened to, and it's still always on the top of my download list. Thanks for giving this twenty eight year old woman a platform on which to tell a story of synthetic farts that is not completely out of place. Signed anonymous that is Jen Green. Thanks Jen Green, very brave you to put your name on that one. Especially I wonder if you stepped up and said, uh, that horrible smell. That was my bad. Right. If you have a great story about college pranks, we want to hear about it. Um. You can get in touch with this via our social links by going to stuff you Should Know dot com, or you can send us an email to stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.