James W. Lewis Chicago area long suspected of poisoning Tylenol bottles In a crime that killed seven people in 1982 and forever changed the way thousands of products are packaged and sold, he died in the Cambridge condo he’d lived in since the mid-1990s, police said.
Lewis, 76, was found unresponsive at 4 p.m. Sunday at his Gore Street home, police said. He was confirmed dead at the scene. Cambridge Police said his death was not considered suspicious. The state coroner’s office will investigate Lewis’ cause of death, a spokeswoman said.
Police said Lewis’ wife, who was out, had asked a friend to check on her.
In 1982, seven people died in the Chicago area after ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol, and Lewis was a longtime suspect in their deaths. Although he was not charged with poisoning, he was convicted of attempted poisoning. extort $1 million from Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The Boston Globe reported that in interviews with law enforcement and reporters over decades, Lewis staunchly denied having any involvement in the killings, but that his clients were unaware of the tampering. provided details of how the Tylenol capsules were poisoned.
The Chicago Tribune, which reported on Lewis’ death on Sunday, said: Federal investigators said they interviewed Lewis in Cambridge last fall. Lewis spoke with three Illinois detectives for several hours and recorded the conversation, according to the Tribune. The conversation did not result in charges against Lewis.
of Seven victims (four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl) died in 1982. After taking capsules purchased at Chicago area drugstores or grocery stores. Someone opened the capsule, replaced some of the acetaminophen with cyanide, and put it back on the shelf.
Lewis was an unemployed accountant at the time of the murder and was widely cited as the prime suspect. He claimed he had nothing to do with the tampering and the resulting death, saying he was living in New York City at the time.
Lewis and his wife lived in a condo in Cambridge for many years. Investigators searched in 2009.
Lewis created a website There he claimed his innocence and debated his notoriety.
“Search the Internet for three words James Lewis Tylenol. You can directly see who was called the murderer.[er]Worse, it went on for over 40 years without a shred of evidence,” he wrote. “I lived in New York, not Chicago, so it was absolutely impossible for me to commit those murders. You should.”
In 2004, Lewis was indicted in Middlesex County on aggravated rape, drugging and intercourse with a person “with intent to stun or overwhelm”, and four other counts. She was held without bail until 2007 when the victim refused to press charges, according to court records.
“The federal government cannot prove the charge on the complaint without the testimony of the prosecution witness,” the prosecutor wrote in the court record.
Lewis was convicted of trying to extort J&J for $1 million in connection with the Tylenol poisoning case and served almost 12 years in federal prison. He was released in his 1995.
His death left law enforcement in the Chicago area frustrated that they were never able to prosecute Lewis in connection with the poisoning.
“I always wanted justice to be served, but this shorted it out,” former FBI special agent Roy Lane, who worked on the case for decades, told the Tribune.
last year, Tribune publishes multi-part survey Added an investigation into the Tylenol murders that tracked Lewis’ personal background, including being charged with murdering an elderly client while working as a tax accountant in 1978. The charges were dropped due to a procedural error by the police.
The Tribune also detailed law enforcement’s 40-year effort to solve the Tylenol murders. A Tylenol poisoning incident led him to the enactment of the Federal Product Fraud Prevention Act of 1983, according to the FBI Chicago Office History.
Globestaff Jeremiah Mannion contributed to this report.
John R. Element can be reached at [email protected]. follow him on twitter @JREbosglobe.
