The Tylenol Mafia (25 page)

An investigation completed by Johnson & Johnson and the Winfield police on October 1, 1982, revealed that Frank’s Finer Foods received its Tylenol from the Certified Grocers distribution center in Hodgkins, Illinois. Winfield Police Officer Scott Watkins testified at Lynn Reiner’s coroner’s inquest that the Dependable Trucking Company delivered Tylenol to the Certified Grocers distribution center in Hodgkins. The California-based Dependable Trucking Company shipped that Tylenol to the Hodgkins warehouse from a warehouse in California that received its Tylenol from J&J’s regional distribution center in Glendale, California. That center received its Tylenol from the McNeil manufacturing plant in Round Rock.

All of the Tylenol in the Frank’s Finer Foods store in Winfield, including the bottle of Regular Strength Tylenol from Lot 1833MB that Lynn Reiner had purchased there, was manufactured in Round Rock. The Tylenol in the eighth bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol, bearing lot number MC2873, had been manufactured in Fort Washington, and was never on a shelf in any of the Frank’s Finer Foods stores.

Local officials, by planting a bottle of cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules into evidence, claiming it had been purchased at Frank’s Finer Foods, evidently hoped to give prosecutors a more believable story that would implicate Ed Reiner in the Tylenol murders. Prosecutors might have been able to sell the premeditated murder hypothesis to a jury if that jury believed that at least two bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules had been planted at the Frank’s Finer Foods store in Winfield. Prosecutors could have claimed that the Tylenol killer planted one Extra Strength Tylenol bottle and one Regular Strength Tylenol bottle at the front of the display shelf to improve the odds that Lynn would buy a bottle containing cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, regardless of which strength she bought.

On October 26, 1982, the press abruptly ended its coverage of the Tylenol murder conspiracy story. The demise of this story, it appeared at the time, was because Ed Reiner had passed a lie-detector test. But that wasn’t the case. The
Chicago Sun-Times
reported on Tuesday, October 26
^th
, that a man previously considered to be the prime suspect [Reiner] in the Tylenol investigation had been cleared after passing a lie-detector test. However, officials said Reiner did remain under scrutiny, but not as the person who poisoned the Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. Officials said [Reiner] has been co-operating with investigators, and he might take another lie test. The FBI and IDLE clearly had not given up on Reiner just yet.

On Tuesday afternoon, Wheaton Police Lieutenant, Terry Mee, said that the eighth bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol had been purchased at the Frank’s Finer Foods store in Winfield. Authorities had thus linked the planted eighth bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol to the same Frank’s Finer Foods store where Lynn Reiner had purchased a bottle of Regular Strength Tylenol on the afternoon of her death.

When Linda Morgan came forward and said she had purchased the eighth bottle at the Frank’s Finer Foods store in Wheaton, instead of Winfield, the gig was up. Since the eighth bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol could no longer be linked to the Winfield store, it could no longer be used to help authorities fabricate a case against Ed Reiner. Authorities in DuPage County had apparently intended to enter that bottle as evidence in a Tylenol murders trial that would have been held in the 18
^th
Circuit Court in DuPage County.

DuPage County had two highly publicized and politicized murder cases in the 1980s -- the Jeanine Nicarico murder on February 25, 1983, and the Tylenol murders on September 29, 1982. In both these cases, officials in DuPage County fabricated, hid, and lied about the evidence.

Prosecutors from the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office charged Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez in 1983 for the rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. DuPage County Sheriff’s detectives working on the Nicarico case hid exculpatory evidence that should have exonerated Cruz and Hernandez. They made up a “vision statement,” claiming it was Cruz’s confession to the Nicarico murder. That phony confession was the centerpiece of a prosecution that led to the wrongful convictions and death sentences for Cruz and Hernandez in 1985. During a lengthy appeals process, the defense won a second and then a third re-trial for each of the defendants.

DuPage County prosecutors pursued the third trials against Cruz and Hernandez even though their own forensic expert had found that the DNA evidence on the victim’s body matched the DNA of Brian Dugan, a man who had confessed to the murder and rape of Jeanine, and who had previously raped and murdered two other girls in DuPage County. Rolando Cruz’s third trial was a bench trial before Judge Ronald Mehling in 1995. Judge Mehling put a stop to the trial before the defense even presented their case. Mehling found Cruz not guilty after hearing jail-house witnesses for the prosecution recant their original testimony and after the testimony of a lieutenant for the DuPage County Sheriff’s Department revealed that Cruz’s alleged confession had been made up by two of his deputies. Hernandez was also absolved a few weeks later.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Illinois was a hotbed of wrongful prosecution in death penalty cases. In 2004, of the 289 men and women who had been sentenced to death in Illinois since 1977, eighteen had been exonerated and released from prison – an error rate of over 6 percent. Fourteen others had won reversals and were awaiting retrials or re-sentencing. The Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment found that these wrongful convictions were not the result of innocent “mistakes,” but rather the product of the deliberate actions of prosecutors and law enforcement officials in Illinois who engaged knowingly in falsifying evidence, extracting coerced confessions, and relying on the testimony of jailhouse “snitches.” These tactics were used in the Nicarico and Tylenol murders cases by government officials who believed they needed convictions in big cases like these to advance their careers and achieve their political goals.

Tyrone Fahner, especially, felt the pressure to close out the Tylenol murders investigation quickly. Governor “Big” Jim Thompson was in a close gubernatorial race against Democrat challenger, Adlai Stevenson III, the son of the former Illinois governor and one-time presidential hopeful, Adlai Stevenson II. Fahner, in the race for Illinois attorney general, was trailing the Democrat challenger, Neil Hartigan. Fahner’s standing in the polls, however, had improved greatly since he’d become the official spokesperson of the Tylenol task force and was seen on television every day.

“He [Fahner] probably had more than the necessary number of press conferences… to get him on the news each night,” Chicago Police Superintendent, Richard Brzeczek, said later. “Fahner was running for election and nobody knew who he was, and they all figured, ‘we’ll get this solved and Ty will get a feather in his cap.’”

The creation of the Tylenol murder conspiracy scenario was a desperate effort to “solve” the case, make some arrests, and give Fahner the “feather in his cap” he needed to win the election. For the first 26 days of the Tylenol murders investigation, authorities had pursued an investigative strategy based on the erroneous hypothesis that six of the murders were “staged” as part of a conspiracy to cover up one premeditated murder. Along the way, authorities appeared to deliberately ignore the information and physical evidence that pointed directly to a warehouse within the channel of distribution as the source of the cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules.

The “discovery” of the eighth bottle generated news stories that helped to bury the true source of Lynn Reiner’s unit-dose package of cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules – the hospital. With the source of the cyanide-laced Tylenol that killed Lynn Reiner now obscured, an important piece of evidence linking the Tylenol tamperings to a warehouse in Johnson & Johnson’s distribution channel was also kept hidden.

Even if the authorities wanted to go back and track the cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules to their true source - it was too late. Investigators had long ago turned over the most important evidence they had - the Tylenol capsules themselves - to Johnson & Johnson, the one entity that had both the incentive and the resources to cover up any evidence that might have linked the tamperings to a location within the company’s distribution network.

Tyrone Fahner was compelled to call a news conference on October 27
^th
to put the final nail in the coffin of the Tylenol murder conspiracy story. He told reporters that Ed Reiner had voluntarily taken a lie detector test, which he passed. Reiner had never been considered a suspect in the first place, Fahner insisted. “No Reiner family member is a suspect in the Tylenol murders or any other investigation.”

As it turned out, Linda Morgan’s fingerprints were not found on the box for the eighth bottle or on any of the capsules inside the bottle. The FBI reportedly never found a match for the fingerprint on the eighth bottle’s box-top flap, and they were unable to get a usable fingerprint from any of the capsules inside the bottle. Fahner said the prints on the capsules from the eighth bottle were smudged.

The Tylenol murder conspiracy, which had been a sensational story on Monday, October 25, 1982, was now dead in the water. The biggest news story of the entire Tylenol murders investigation had been made up of nothing but lies, and now it simply faded away.

When authorities cleared Ed Reiner and Howard Fearon, Sr., and decided not to pursue a case against Roger Arnold, Fahner’s list of suspects was reduced to one name - Kevin Masterson. Though Masterson was not really a legitimate suspect, his name was thrust into the limelight on November 1, 1982 - one day before the Illinois election for attorney general and governor.

One investigator who insisted on anonymity said Masterson had told friends in September that he had planned to settle a grudge against two stores where the poisoned Tylenol was bought. Investigators told the
Chicago Tribune
that these “friends” had quoted Masterson as saying, “Now is the time to even the score” against Jewel Food and Frank’s Finer Foods. One of the problems with this alleged quote is that there were never any cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in any of the Frank’s Finer Foods stores. The reference to Franks Finer Foods appears to have been yet another effort by un-named sources to erroneously link cyanide-laced Tylenol to Frank’s Finer Foods. The manager of Frank’s Finer Foods in Wheaton, one of four stores in that independently owned chain, said he had “no idea” how such a grudge might have originated.

An affidavit filed in the 18
^th
Circuit Court in DuPage County by Joseph
McQuaid
, a sergeant for the Illinois State Police, said Masterson’s anger toward Jewel arose from an incident in which his former wife, Joann, felt Jewel security officers had mistreated her after suspecting her of shoplifting. Jewel Vice President, Jane Armstrong, confirmed that the woman had filed a civil suit against Jewel in 1975 and that a settlement was reached four years later. Armstrong refused to give details about the suit, but the
Chicago Tribune
said Mrs. Masterson had accepted an $8,000 settlement.

In December 1982, after the heat had been taken off Masterson, his parents spoke to
The Daily Herald
about the havoc caused by that intense media focus. “I feel he [Kevin] was used, definitely by the media and others,” said Kevin’s father, John Masterson. The country’s Founding Fathers designed a system of “trial by jury, and you are innocent until proven guilty,” said Masterson. “The way things are today,
it’s
trial by media, and you are guilty until proven innocent.”

Kevin’s mother said, “The injustice done was so gross that I think some strong positive statement should be made. You can’t imagine the harm. Possibly the media could be made aware of the suffering this could cause a family. An individual is really at the mercy of the press.”

“A friend told me that the 6 o’clock news is entertainment.
It’s
showbiz,” said John Masterson. “I guess there’s some truth to that. It can certainly play havoc with people’s life.”

The Mastersons said their son was never a suspect in the murders, and it “was more than coincidental” that daily press conferences were held by Tyrone Fahner during the week before the November 2
^nd
election.

Even the feds refused to call Kevin Masterson a suspect. On November 1
^st
, a Washington-based law enforcement source who asked not to be identified told the
Chicago Tribune
, “There’s still nothing to indicate Masterson is anything other than a guy with a big mouth. There are some questions to ask him, but it would take a quantum leap from what is known to connect him to the Tylenol killings.”

A well-timed news story hinting that Governor Thompson’s Attorney General was closing in on the Tylenol killer could have definitely helped the election outcomes for both Fahner and Thompson. The story leaked to the press on November 1
^st
, implying that Kevin Masterson was a legitimate suspect, was well-timed, but did not give Fahner the popularity boost he needed.

On November 2, 1982, Tyrone Fahner lost his election bid, and James Thomson narrowly defeated Adlai Stevenson. Masterson, in California at the time, soon turned himself in and then was immediately eliminated as a suspect. Masterson was just another pawn in the political game that the Tylenol murders investigation had become.

When Fahner said on October 9
^th
that his list of suspects had been reduced to just three people; the names on that list were Ed Reiner, Howard Fearon, Sr., and Kevin Masterson. Roger Arnold wasn’t added to that list until one or two days later. Yet, in the months and years that followed; the rhetoric from Fahner, IDLE Commander Thomas Schumpp, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Margolis, and U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, indicated that James Lewis was one of those announced prime suspects. But that was not the case. Authorities did not identify Lewis as the writer of the extortion letter until October 13
^th
.