The Tylenol Mafia (23 page)

Tyrone Fahner, on the other hand, completely dismissed Arnold as a viable suspect. Fahner described Arnold’s arrest as “another one of those [incidents] that are unrelated” to the killings. Fahner’s un-named spokesman said, “Based on what we know about Mr. Arnold, it does not appear likely that he is the main suspect in this case.”

Despite Fahner’s public dismissal of Arnold as a suspect, the circumstantial evidence against him was extremely compelling. Arnold admitted he had purchased cyanide, apparently in April of 1982, and then disposed of it in August. Arnold owned an array of books on bomb making, booby traps, and poisons, and he had access to Tylenol in the distribution channel. Furthermore, Marty Sinclair was not the only tavern owner who had heard Arnold talk about poisoning people with cyanide. According to the
Daily Herald
, Arnold had reportedly told several Chicago tavern owners rambling stories about killing people with cyanide.

Chicago cops believed they had a good case against Arnold, but Fahner appeared uninterested. In response to questions about Arnold’s arrest, Fahner simply said, “The lead in that case was developed by Chicago police… and their information to us is that it’s unrelated.”

In truth, the Chicago police never suggested that the Arnold case was “unrelated” to the Tylenol murders investigation. The leaders of the Tylenol task force, however, had targeted their prime suspect already. Arnold’s arrest was an unwelcome distraction. Law enforcement officials soon found a way to incorporate that distraction into a conspiracy theory.

22

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On Friday, October 22, 1982, Tyrone Fahner set up weekend negotiations with Thomas Royce, reportedly to work out a deal with Roger Arnold in exchange for information he might have about the Tylenol murders. Three days later, the earlier portrayal of the Tylenol killer as a random murderer who did not know any of his victims suddenly changed.

The early edition of the
Chicago Sun-Times
, on Monday, October 25
^th
, reported that investigators believed that two men had conspired to commit the Tylenol murders. Authorities had questioned a “prime suspect” on Sunday night who was a relative of one of the victims. The victim and the victim’s relative reportedly had a violent argument in late September before the poisonings occurred. Investigators said they believed that this relative - possibly acting with another person - had placed cyanide-tainted Extra Strength Tylenol capsules on the shelves of several stores to give the appearance that the targeted relative was one victim of several random murders. The
Sun-Times
further reported that the “prime suspect” was a “long-time friend” of Roger Arnold.

On Monday evening, NBC-News specifically named Roger Arnold as one of the alleged co-conspirator in the Tylenol murders. Two weeks earlier, police had said one of the “coincidences” that made Arnold a suspect was that he worked with a relative of one of the victims. Now, with the disclosure of a Tylenol murder conspiracy theory, the relevance of that alleged relationship was more apparent. Investigators had evidently been trying to connect Roger Arnold to Lynn Reiner’s father, Howard Fearon Sr., a truck driver for Jewel, ever since Arnold’s arrest two weeks earlier.

Shortly after Arnold’s arrest, the press began cleverly placing Fearon into their news stories, stating that Roger Arnold worked with Fearon, a relative of one of the victims, i.e., one of the “interesting coincidences” that made Arnold a suspect. Fearon had been under around-the-clock surveillance since the beginning of the investigation.

The
New York Times
said Arnold appeared to be a promising lead in the investigation because of his interest in poisons, his collection of literature on killing people, and his employment at Jewel Food. The victim’s relative who was a suspect was reportedly a “longtime friend” of Arnold’s. Chicago’s local NBC affiliate reported that Arnold and the victim’s relative were “drinking buddies.”

From the first day of the investigation, Tyrone Fahner and the agents from the FBI and IDLE had been trying to build a case against a relative of Lynn Reiner. Roger Arnold alluded to this fact twelve days before the Tylenol murder conspiracy story broke when he said, “I knew the family, unfortunately, but not the suspect.”

The “suspect” Arnold was referring to was apparently Howard Fearon, Sr. The “family” Arnold mentioned was the Reiner family. His use of the word “unfortunately” was probably a reference to the unfortunate death of Lynn Reiner.

Authorities interrogated Fearon on Sunday night, October 24
^th
. On Monday, NBC reported that Roger Arnold’s lawyer, Thomas Royce, had conducted weekend negotiations with Illinois Attorney General, Tyrone Fahner. NBC quoted an unidentified high-ranking investigator as saying Royce was “trying to make a deal for Arnold” regarding information Arnold might have about the Tylenol case.

Royce, however, said he only met with Fahner to try to find out why investigators were interested in Arnold. “He is the most innocent person you can imagine,” Royce insisted.

Tom Brokaw opened NBC’s Monday evening news broadcast by saying, “Chicago authorities now believe they know the real story behind the Tylenol murders. They’re working on a substantial lead, but they’re not yet prepared to make an arrest. However, the investigation, which has involved false leads and sensational developments which turn out not to be true does now appear to be going in one direction.”

Jim Cummins, reporting for NBC in Chicago, said, “Investigators now believe the seven Tylenol murders were the work of two men, including the relative of one of the victims. Investigators believe the two men conspired to kill a member of the relative’s family and cover up that crime by planting poisoned Tylenol in stores, killing other people to make it look like the work of a madman.”

NBC did not identify the name of the victim’s relative who was the suspect, but a law enforcement source in Washington said “members of the family of Mrs. Reiner were interviewed Monday,” and “they have been very cooperative.”

NBC showed video footage of an unidentified detective sitting in an unmarked car outside the home of the “prime suspect.” Tom Brokaw said that this prime suspect - a relative of one of the victims - was under constant surveillance. Based on prior news reports from the
Chicago Sun-Times
and WMAQ-TV, the prime suspect Brokaw was talking about was apparently Lynn Reiner’s father, Howard Fearon Sr. As it turned out, however, that was not the case.

The unmarked police car parked in front of the “prime suspect’s” house on Monday afternoon was actually parked outside the home of Ed Reiner. The prime suspect referenced by Tom Brokaw on October 25
^th
and Roger Arnold on October 13
^th
was not Howard Fearon, Sr., after all. Fearon was a suspect; he just wasn’t the
prime
suspect. Ed Reiner had been under around-the-clock surveillance since the very beginning of the investigation. He had been the prime suspect all along.

Ed wasn’t home when NBC shot that video footage outside his home late Monday afternoon. He had snuck out the back door to attend an invitation-only meeting with agents from the FBI and the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement (IDLE). The press never specifically named Ed Reiner as a suspect, but they did set up camp outside his home, hoping to get the money-shot of police hauling him away in handcuffs.

IDLE investigators asked Ed to meet with them Monday, October 25
^th
, to “help out with the investigation.” Agents from IDLE had leaked the Tylenol murder conspiracy story on Sunday night, so it would be headline news by the time they met with Reiner on Monday afternoon. The interrogation of Reiner, conducted by agents from the FBI and IDLE, went on for several hours, but it had barely begun when the interrogator’s true objective hit Reiner like a sharp slap to the face. They wanted Reiner to confess to the Tylenol murders.

An IDLE investigator began the interrogation by declaring that Reiner had murdered his wife with cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. He also said that Reiner, with help from Roger Arnold, had planted bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in Chicago area supermarkets and drugstores. He said investigators knew that Reiner and Arnold were drinking buddies and that they had planned the Tylenol murder conspiracy at a bar on Chicago’s North Side. The interrogator then falsely claimed that authorities even had photographs of Reiner and Arnold hanging out together inside that bar.

Reiner was flabbergasted. He had never met Roger Arnold. He did not hang out in any bars on Chicago’s North Side, and there were certainly no pictures of him and Arnold together at a North Side bar or anywhere else for that matter.

The IDLE agent spent an hour or more questioning Reiner before turning the interrogation over to the FBI. The FBI interrogator then made an astonishing revelation. The Tylenol murder conspiracy was not just a two-man conspiracy theory, as reported in the news media – it was a three-man conspiracy theory. The alleged co-conspirators were Ed Reiner, Roger Arnold, and Howard Fearon, Sr.

In a condescending, perverse tone, the interrogator told Reiner that the investigators knew that he, his father-in-law, and Roger Arnold were drinking buddies. The three of them, said the interrogator, had killed Reiner’s wife and then planted bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol in local stores, to make it look like Lynn’s death was one of several random murders committed by a madman. The interrogator claimed that Reiner, Fearon, and Arnold were about to skip the country for Thailand when Arnold was picked up on October 11
^th
.

As the inquisition dragged on, a foreboding concern was growing in Reiner’s mind. He was rightfully apprehensive that his name was about to be plastered all over the media as the prime suspect. Investigators from IDLE had planted the seed for that fear by leaking their fabricated story of the Tylenol murder conspiracy to the press. Several hours into his interrogation, the time was finally right to offer Reiner a way out of his predicament. The interrogators offered Reiner the same deal they had given his father-in-law the previous day. If Reiner was truly innocent, said one FBI interrogator, he should take a lie detector test.

To the consternation of his attorney, Reiner immediately agreed. Reiner was plenty pissed off, and he wanted to put a stop to all the ridiculous speculation about him. Reiner said he would take the lie detector test, but he wanted the results made public right away. That was probably the worst deal a suspect in a high-profile murder case could ever make.

Polygraphs, because they fail to conform to the Frye doctrine, were inadmissible in a court of law in 1982. The Frye doctrine states that in determining whether to admit scientific expert evidence, the court must examine whether the scientific method has attained “general acceptance” within the relevant scientific community.
Polygraphy
is widely rejected by the scientific community, which classifies it as “junk science.” According to polygraph expert, Michael Lawrence
Langan
, M.D., the accuracy of
polygraphic
lie detection is slightly above that of chance.

The polygraph test most commonly used in forensic settings, the Control Question Test (CQT), is based on an implausible set of assumptions that makes it biased against innocent individuals and easy for guilty persons to defeat using countermeasures, says William G. Iacono, PhD, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota. Iacono has done extensive research on the detection of deception. His research found that a major goal of polygraph testing is to solve crimes by extracting occasional confessions from those who fail the tests.

Law enforcement agencies tend to administer polygraph tests only in certain cases. For most of these cases, says Iacono, investigative efforts have failed to yield compelling incriminating evidence, and it is likely the case will go unsolved unless a suspect confesses. Iacono says it is at this point that suspects are likely to be asked to take a polygraph test. This is exactly where Fahner and the Tylenol task force were in their Tylenol murders investigation in October 1982 when they cajoled Howard Fearon Sr., Ed Reiner, and several relatives of other Tylenol victims into taking lie detector tests.

Polygraph exams cannot produce evidence or solve crimes, but they are an applicable psychological weapon. They were the primary “investigative tool” used by the members of the Tylenol task force who put many relatives of the Tylenol victims on the suspect list. The only way these relatives could get off that list was to take a polygraph exam. Law enforcement officials who had conducted an inept investigation were thus using polygraph exams out of desperation. It was out of pure desperation that on Monday afternoon, October 25
^th
, investigators from the FBI and IDLE interrogated Ed Reiner and accused him of being the ringleader of a Tylenol murder conspiracy.

After the grilling Reiner received during the interrogation, he was obviously not in a very good state of mind to take a test designed to measure his level of anxiety. Nevertheless, Reiner knew the allegations were ludicrous, and he wanted to put an end to them. He had just finished the polygraph exam when the press began reporting the discovery of an eighth bottle of cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules.

23

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