The Tylenol Mafia (14 page)

Sergeant David Burrows, of the Kane County Sheriff’s Office, said most of the capsule-parts still in the parking lot had been run over and crushed in the ensuing two days. He said they did however send 31 capsules Friday morning by registered mail
to the State Department of Public Health’s toxicology lab in Chicago. The results from the analysis of those capsules were never disclosed.

FBI agents were seen questioning employees at the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant again on Monday morning
, October 4
^th
. The motel bookkeeper said “people working on the case” had asked for and received a list of guests, but she declined to say what time period the list covered and who made the request. The media attention was wearing thin on at least one Howard Johnson’s employee. “I wish you guys would stop bugging me,” a Manager at the restaurant told an Associated Press reporter. “I didn’t see
nothing
.”

On Monday afternoon, Deputy Sheriff Cole answered reporters’ questions about the boxes that Chavez and Swanson had found in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot. The interview was done over the phone, with Cole relaying the reporters’ questions to Chavez and Swanson, who were on separate telephone lines.

The boxes “said Tylenol on them and one of them was open,” recalled Deputy Chavez. “I picked up the powder,” he said. “It looked like hundreds of capsules had been emptied. We looked at them and found a couple of capsules had been put together.” Since Tylenol was not a controlled substance, the officers did not report the incident. “We just blew it off,” said Chavez. “We just didn’t think anything about it.”

“It was evident they [the capsules]
were
tampered with,” added Cole. “Some of the capsules were empty. They had no powder in them. The officers assumed there evidently was something going on with drugs,” Cole explained. The deputies had suspected that the Tylenol powder was being used to cut cocaine or some other illegal drug.

Cole said the officers experienced dizziness, nausea, and vomiting minutes after handling the capsules. Swanson became so violently ill that he was relieved from his shift. Chavez had also become sick, but stayed on the clock until the end of the shift. He did not return to work until five days later. Dr. Barry Rumack, of the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center in Denver said, “The symptoms reported by the officers are consistent with cyanide poisoning.”

 
“I was stupid,” said Chavez. “I should have picked it [the boxes of Tylenol] up and brought it in,” he said. “I kick myself in the head every time I think of it. Maybe we could have saved these people’s lives, or at least got an investigation started.”

Deputy Chavez, commenting about the capsules and capsule-parts strewn in the parking lot, said, “It looked like hundreds of capsules had been emptied.”

On Friday, October 1
^st
, Tyrone Fahner called the Howard Johnson’s evidence one of the “very substantial leads” in the case. But now, three days later, on Monday night, Fahner changed his tune. Fahner now dismissed the entire incident as insignificant. “That appears to be a total washout,” he told Cable News Network (CNN).

Fahner also changed his tune regarding the symptoms of dizziness, nausea, and vomiting that the deputies had experienced minutes after handling the capsules. On Friday, Fahner had said, “The medical people tell me that if you don’t ingest cyanide, just getting it on your skin or in your system by breathing it could cause the kind of illness these two people [Swanson and Chavez] have experienced.” Now, on Monday night, Fahner said investigators were “reasonably certain” that the severe symptoms experienced by the deputies “were not symptoms of cyanide poisoning.”

But that’s not what the experts believed. Dr. Barry Rumack, of the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center, said the symptoms reported by the officers were “consistent with a sub-lethal dose of cyanide poisoning.” Fahner’s own spokesperson, Paul
Zemitzsch
, said cyanide “can go right through the skin.” [The deputies] were sick for several days - nausea, headache, syndromes that can be associated with a very, very mild type of cyanide poisoning.”

It made no sense that Fahner would dismiss the Howard Johnson’s evidence as being irrelevant to the tamperings. Apparently, Fahner was deliberately using the press to get out a story that misstated the true focus of his investigation, thus concealing the fact that the Howard Johnson’s evidence was actually extremely important. Only someone with access to Tylenol in the channel of distribution could have gotten hold of those cases of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. The easiest way for the Tylenol killer to get the poisoned capsules into local retail stores was to simply bring them back to the warehouse he had taken them from in the first place, knowing that the local delivery drivers would then unknowingly transport them to Chicago area outlets.

J&J executives and FDA officials indicated that the Tylenol capsules were packaged at McNeil and then shipped through a rather simple distribution system directly to the retailers’ warehouses. In reality, Tylenol was distributed through an extremely complex distribution system that investigators apparently did not understand.

In 1983, the FDA conducted an investigation into the distribution of the OTC drug, Maalox, a popular liquid antacid. This investigation provides a more realistic picture of the distribution channel for OTC drugs than the one painted during the Tylenol murders investigation. Shipments of Maalox that were intended to go to a foreign market were diverted in 1983 by “grey market” brokers and then sold to retailers in the United States. The grey market exists because of the multi-tiered wholesale pricing system. Manufacturers sell drugs at substantial discounts to buyers in certain classes of trade, and in foreign markets, under the stipulation that these discounted drugs cannot be sold to U.S. retail class-of-trade buyers. Buyers don’t always adhere to these terms though, because they can make more money by diverting these discounted drugs to the retail class of trade.

The Maalox diversion scheme came to light in January 1984 when a pharmacist at the Dart Drug store in Wheaton, Maryland, noticed something strange about their bottles of Maalox. The labels on the bottles did not include a list of ingredients, nor was there an expiration date, or national drug code number. An FDA investigator was dispatched to the Wheaton store and confirmed that the bottles of Maalox were never intended for U.S. distribution.

Maalox was manufactured by William H. Rorer, Inc., headquartered in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, just down the road from the headquarters of the McNeil Consumer Products Company. Rorer executives said the suspect lots were part of a 164,496-bottle shipment originally destined for Iraq. That shipment also included 92,400 bottles of
Ascriptin
tablets (an aspirin-Maalox combination) and 83,436 bottles of Maalox tablets that should have gone to Saudi Arabia. These drugs had been ordered by the Meridian Ship Agency of Norfolk, Virginia, for Mainline Trading Ltd. of London, England. The drugs were shipped in January 1984 via Volpe Philadelphia Express to Meridian in care of
Erskin
Freight Forwarding Co. of Bayonne, New Jersey.
Erskin
rented space in a warehouse in Jersey City, New Jersey, and the shipment left that warehouse shortly after it arrived, but it did not go to the Middle East. Subsequent investigation by the FDA revealed that the drugs had been “diverted” to Interstate Cigar Co., a Long Island, New York, wholesale distributor, apparently on orders from someone in the Meridian Ship Agency.

Through two distributors - Interstate Cigar Co. and Inter American Cosmetic, of Carlstadt, New Jersey - Rorer was able to recapture 83,197 bottles of Maalox tablets, 81,615 bottles of
Ascriptin
tablets, and 59,000 bottles of Maalox liquid that had been diverted.

This investigation illustrates how the FDA, with help from Rorer, was able to track down most of the Maalox that was being sold on the grey market through a complex network of middlemen. Officials involved in the Tylenol murders investigation never described the inner-workings of the Tylenol distribution channel.

15

________

James Burke, Wayne Nelson, and a few other J&J executives hopped on the company helicopter and flew to Washington D.C. on Monday afternoon, October 4
^th
, to meet with FBI and FDA officials there. Burke later said that while he was in Washington he advocated for a recall of all Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. According to folklore, FBI and FDA officials counseled Burke against recalling the drug precipitously. “The FBI didn’t want us to do it,” explained Burke, “because it would say to whoever did this: ‘Hey, I’m winning. I can bring a major corporation to its knees.’ And the FDA argued that a recall might cause more public anxiety than it would relieve.”

Burke’s suggestion that he was the lone voice fighting on behalf of American consumers to remove all Tylenol capsules from the marketplace is refuted by the facts. Burke’s actions revealed that he had no intention of ordering a recall of all Tylenol capsules. The two lots that Burke recalled on Thursday, September 30
^th
, and Friday, October 1
^st
, were well publicized. Not so well publicized, were the other five lots linked to poisoned Tylenol capsules that Burke had not recalled.

Police had said that Lynn Reiner’s Tylenol capsules were from Lot 1833MB, but Tylenol from that lot was not recalled. The cyanide-laced Tylenol that killed Paula Prince was from Lot 1801MA, but Tylenol from that lot was not recalled. Authorities had also found cyanide in Tylenol capsules from Lots 1665LM and MC2884, but Burke refused to recall Tylenol from either of those lots. Strychnine-laced Tylenol capsules from yet another lot had been found in two bottles in California, but Burke did not recall Tylenol from that lot. By the end of the second day of the investigation, authorities had recovered poisoned Extra Strength Tylenol capsules from containers bearing seven different lot numbers, but Burke recalled Tylenol capsules from only two of those lots.

*****

James Burke and Wayne Nelson were in their second day of meetings in Washington D.C. when reports hit the newswire of another Tylenol poisoning - this time in California. Greg Blagg, a 27-year-old butcher from Oroville, California, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that he had taken three Extra Strength Tylenol capsules on Thursday, September 30
^th
, and then passed out. Blagg said his wife purchased the Tylenol two weeks earlier at Longs drugstore in Oroville. Tests completed Monday evening, October 4
^th
, showed that some of the Tylenol capsules from Blagg’s bottle contained strychnine.

Soon after taking the capsules, said Blagg, “I displayed strange symptoms. I got ill, I vomited ... Later I passed out and woke up on the floor.”

His wife, Terry, took him to the hospital where he was treated and released at his own request four hours later. Blagg said he heard on the news that night about the deaths in Chicago, and the next day he took apart some of the capsules from his own Tylenol bottle and saw pink flecks in the powder. He then turned the bottle over to his physician, Dr. John Clay. That evening, at Dr. Clay’s suggestion, the Blaggs returned to the Longs drugstore in Oroville where they had purchased the original bottle, and bought two more bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. Some of the capsules in one of those bottles also contained pink flecks. When the Tylenol was tested, strychnine was found in the capsules from two of Blagg’s three bottles.

Ronald
Tossano
, the manager of the Oroville Longs drugstore, told NBC News, “We’re co-operating with an ongoing investigation being conducted by Johnson and Johnson, the parent company of McNeil Consumer Products, and the Food and Drug Administration.”
Tossano
clearly understood that Johnson & Johnson was in charge.

The FDA had not actually seen any of the bottles of strychnine-laced Tylenol capsules. The bottles had been mailed to McNeil headquarters in Fort Washington before the FDA knew anything about the Oroville tampering incident. Conversely, the FDA knew exactly what was going on, but simply let J&J take control of the evidence and the incident.

Larry Foster said Johnson & Johnson had received a telephone call on Friday from Blagg’s doctor regarding the possible strychnine contained in the Tylenol capsules. The J&J official told Dr. Clay to send the Tylenol capsules to McNeil’s lab in Fort Washington. Foster said the analysis of those capsules was not completed until late Monday night.

In addition to identifying strychnine in two of the three bottles purchased by the Blaggs, McNeil found a third bottle that “showed signs of tampering.” At that point, said Foster, the FDA was immediately notified. But this notification came three days after J&J had received reliable information from Blagg’s doctor that Blagg had been poisoned by adulterated Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. On Friday, when J&J had learned about the poisoning in California, a J&J representative removed the remaining bottles of Tylenol capsules from the Oroville store where the Blaggs had bought their Tylenol, and sent them to McNeil headquarters in Fort Washington.

As it turned out, the strychnine-laced Tylenol capsules were not actually planted by a
wanna
-be-killer. The press conference that announced the deaths of three Tylenol poisoning victims in Illinois was held at 8 a.m. (6 a.m. California time) on Thursday, September 30
^th
. Greg Blagg swallowed his suspect Tylenol capsules in Oroville sometime that afternoon. The Greg Blagg story has too many holes in it to be anything other than a poorly executed scheme, possibly an attempt to extort money from J&J.