The Tylenol Mafia (26 page)

The feds admitted that Lewis never intended to profit from the extortion letter, but Lewis had interjected himself into a high-profile, politically charged case, so Margolis and a team of Justice Department lawyers led by Dan Webb prosecuted him for extortion anyway. On October 27, 1983, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Chicago convicted Lewis of attempted extortion for writing the Tylenol extortion letter. That letter made Lewis a very unpopular fellow in late 1982 and the ideal scapegoat for Tyrone Fahner.

“As for James Lewis, there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute him for murder,” said Jeremy Margolis. Yet in the years following the Tylenol murders, several Illinois officials stated outright that they thought Lewis was the Tylenol killer. As the Tylenol case grew cold and then colder, Fahner became ever more direct in saying that he believed Lewis had committed the crime.

Fahner later worried that he had been too vociferous in his public speculations about Lewis. “I don’t need to have someone who’s in prison do some jail-house
lawyering
and sue me for libel,” he said in 1992. “There are plenty of people in law enforcement who believe he’s the one, and that’s not libelous,” Fahner insisted.

 
“Sometimes public officials get in a position and try to find ways of avoiding pressure,” Lewis suggested in 1992. “They are looking for a scapegoat, so they do not have to deal with the fact that they can’t find the Tylenol murderer.” Of the Tylenol case, Lewis said, “I am not fascinated with it. I am not intrigued with it. What I’m puzzled with is how I continue to be ensnared in all of this, and I’m unable to get myself extricated from it.”

The only man who was ever truly a legitimate suspect, Roger Arnold, appeared in court for a hearing on the unregistered gun charges on October 26, 1982, but the judge postponed the hearing until November 22
^nd
of that year. Thomas Royce said the postponement was a “delay tactic” to keep Arnold under surveillance. Royce said he and his client were being harassed, and Arnold should be charged with the murders, or the police should back off.

The police did back off. Police ended their surveillance and investigation of Arnold on October 27
^th
, one day after authorities stopped tailing Ed Reiner and Howard Fearon, Sr. Nonetheless, the intense surveillance of Roger Arnold by the Chicago police was a strong indication that they had been ready to make an arrest or certainly hoped they would be able to do so.

Chicago Police Sergeant, Monroe Vollick, said of Arnold, “I consider him a goof. One of those macho types who is into guns and making poisons, but not the Tylenol murders.” As Vollick would soon learn, Arnold did indeed have what it took to be a cold-blooded killer.

While being questioned about his possible involvement in the Tylenol murders, Arnold allegedly told his interrogators: “I’d like to be in on the homicide of the guy that turned me in for what he did to me.” Police said Arnold later sought revenge against Marty Sinclair, the man who turned him in.

On the morning of June 18, 1983, after a night of drinking, Arnold was outside a Lincoln Avenue bar on Chicago’s North Side just after “last call” when the man who was the focus of his anger walked out of the bar. Arnold approached the man. The two spoke briefly and then Arnold shot him in the chest. The bullet went straight through the man’s heart, allowing him only seconds to cry out, “I’m shot,” before he died. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Grant Hospital at 2:38 a.m. One of the witnesses chased Arnold to a getaway car and was able to get the license plate number before the car sped off.

As it turned out, Arnold had not killed Marty Sinclair. Instead, he had shot and killed John Stanisha, a 46-year-old computer consultant and father of three. He was a man who Arnold reportedly mistook for Marty Sinclair.

Roger Arnold turned himself in on the afternoon of June 18, 1983. Printed in large letters on his t-shirt was “
Pattaya
, Thailand,” a popular tourist area on the East coast of the Gulf of Thailand. It looked like Arnold had finally taken his vacation to Thailand. Three days later, a Cook County Grand Jury indicted Arnold for murder and armed violence.

During his trial, Arnold testified in his own defense. He said the bullet that killed Stanisha accidentally discharged from his gun. The jury didn’t buy this story. On March 30, 1984, Arnold was convicted of murdering John Stanisha and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After serving 15 years, Arnold was released in 1998, a 64-year-old man.

Almost nothing related to the Tylenol murders investigation was ever what it seemed. Even the true target and motivation for Arnold’s murder of John Stanisha were not as clear as suggested. Police said Arnold had mistaken Stanisha for a man he believed had made him a suspect in the Tylenol murders case. Prosecutors for the Cook County State’s Attorney Office also said Arnold had mistaken John Stanisha for Marty Sinclair. They called the shooting a “revenge murder,” but Arnold and his attorney said otherwise.

Thomas Royce denied that Arnold mistook Stanisha for the person who told police Arnold had cyanide in his apartment. “That couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. Royce said that when Arnold turned himself in for the murder of Stanisha, he was with Arnold throughout his questioning. Arnold “made no statements to anybody,” said Royce. “We don’t know who the informant was in the Tylenol case.”

In fact, Arnold must have known that Marty Sinclair was the informant. Shortly after Arnold’s arrest on October 11, 1982, Chicago police detective, Jerry Beam, told reporters that the bartender who told police that Arnold kept cyanide at his home was the same man who had recently charged Arnold with assault. Arnold knew that Marty Sinclair had charged him with aggravated assault, so he must have also known that Sinclair had given police the tip that made him a suspect in the Tylenol murders case.

Arnold testified at his murder trial that Stanisha had taunted him in the bar and then later, outside the bar, took a threatening step toward him. When interviewed thirteen years later, in 1996, Arnold recanted that story. Arnold’s amended story, as told to Tom McNamee, a reporter for the
Chicago Sun-Times
, was that he had walked up to Stanisha outside the bar - convinced that Stanisha was Sinclair - and shot him dead in a cold act of revenge. “I was thinking to myself, you know, that’s it. This is going to be the end of this,” Arnold said. “I called out, ‘Marty, did you turn me in?’ And he turned around and said something like, ‘Yes, it was.’ And that was it.”

After a long pause, Arnold then said, “You know, he wasn’t even talking to me.”

Arnold had testified at his trial that he fully intended to assault Stanisha, but not kill him. He said the gun had “misfired.” But that was a lie, Arnold told McNamee. “I killed a man, a perfectly innocent person. I had choices. I could have walked away.”

The story Arnold told McNamee in 1996 matched the one told by the press in June of 1983 and by the attorneys who prosecuted Arnold for second degree murder in March, 1984. However, it seems unlikely that Arnold mistook Stanisha for Sinclair. Roger Arnold and Marty Sinclair knew each other fairly well. They had a history. Arnold was apparently a frequent patron at Sinclair’s tavern. Four months prior to the Tylenol murders, Sinclair filed assault charges against Arnold after they had gotten into an argument and Arnold pulled a gun on Sinclair. They engaged in a conversation at Sinclair’s bar in early October just before Sinclair dropped a dime on Arnold. Sinclair knew Arnold well enough to view him as a peculiar bird who kept cyanide, test tubes, and guns in his house.

Chicago Police Sergeant, Edward J. Flynn, described Stanisha as “a big husky fellow,” about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 250 pounds. But Chicago police described Marty Sinclair as having average height and build. Stanisha and Sinclair did not look alike. Roger Arnold shot John Stanisha at point blank range. He could not have mistaken Stanisha for Sinclair.

Arnold had insisted all along that he had not mistaken Stanisha for Sinclair - a fact he testified to during his murder trial. Nevertheless, prosecutors handed the mistaken-identity alibi to Arnold, charging him with second-degree murder and letting him off the hook for premeditated first-degree murder.

So why did Roger Arnold really kill John Stanisha? At his trial, Arnold claimed that Stanisha had taunted him in the bar about being a suspect in the Tylenol murders case. Arnold then angrily left the bar with murder on his mind. When Stanisha walked out of the bar after last call, Arnold was right there waiting. Roger Arnold killed John Stanisha because Stanisha had razzed him about his 15-minutes of infamy as the “Tylenol kid.”

Authorities never had a stitch of evidence implicating Fearon or Reiner in the Tylenol poisonings, but the evidence collected on Roger Arnold should have led to a thorough investigation of Arnold and the channel of distribution. It didn’t.

TIME
magazine, in its decade-ending review of American business during the eighties, called J&J’s handling of the Tylenol crisis, the “Most Applauded Corporate Response to a Disaster.” The company’s “frank, decisive response won back customer loyalty and is now a textbook case in public relations.”

“Within one year, thanks to the intrinsic fairness of the public,” said Larry Foster, “Tylenol was back to its former pre-eminent position in the market. That seemingly impossible marketing achievement became a reality because the public realized that the company was not to blame for the tragedy, and because the press felt that the crisis had been handled with skill and in the public interest.”

“No disasters of this magnitude are handled flawlessly,” said Foster, “but by public and professional acclaim, Tylenol is still viewed as the classic example of how to manage a crisis. And the abiding interest in these heinous crimes, even today, is nurtured by the fact that they remain unsolved.”

“Perhaps because of the magnitude and complexity of the experience, said Foster, “those most closely involved in the Tylenol tragedy do not subscribe to the philosophy that a crisis plan on file assures successful management of a disaster. There was no such plan on file at J&J capable of guiding us through the months that followed the fateful morning of September 30, 1982, when we first learned of the Chicago murders.”

J&J President David Clare said the events surrounding the Tylenol crisis were so atypical that we found ourselves improvising every step of the way. In truth, the organizational moves Johnson & Johnson had made shortly before the Tylenol murders put the company in such an ideal position to manage this particular crisis that it raises the question: Did J&J executives have knowledge of a problem in the Tylenol distribution system prior to September 29, 1982?

In September 1982, there were some major changes made at Johnson & Johnson. Several high-level corporate executives connected to the manufacturing and distribution of Tylenol changed jobs, and the company was in the process of implementing a reorganization of its distribution infrastructure. Moreover, James Burke openly worried about the potential for a problem with the Tylenol business.

Johnson & Johnson had initiated “Project Chatham” in 1981 to explore the idea of centralizing the sales and logistics functions of 13 major J&J operating companies. The Project Chatham Committee recommended in April 1981 that J&J should create an operating unit to consolidate the sales and logistics functions and provide a common customer service group and electronic order entry system. Project Chatham sat dormant for the next 17 months. Then, in September 1982, just days before the Tylenol murders, J&J formed the Hospital Services Group (HSG) as a transitional corporate unit to develop action plans to implement the recommendations of the Project Chatham Committee.

The executives of J&J’s subsidiary, Ethicon, a manufacturer of sutures and other surgical closure devices, opposed the Project Chatham initiative. Robert Wood Johnson II had founded Ethicon in Chicago in 1941, and the company still had a major manufacturing and distribution operation in Chicago’s Clearing District. Ethicon already had an extensive sales and logistics system in place, and the subsidiary’s executives did not want to give up that profit center. H. Stuart Campbell was the Company group chairman with oversight for Ethicon.

In September 1982, when J&J decided to implement the recommendations of the Project Chatham Committee, Campbell resigned and founded Hyland Packaging - a contract pharmaceutical packaging company in Somerville, NJ. Edward Hartnett, the executive vice president of Ethicon, was then promoted to the position vacated by Campbell. In late 1982, J&J executives decided to make HSG a full-fledged Johnson & Johnson operating company, naming Edward Hartnett as its new general manager and Pete
Ventrella
as president.

Previously, the J&J operating companies had autonomy in running their sales and logistics and order fulfillment functions. Hartnett and
Ventrella
were now charged with centralizing these functions. HSG also took control of the distribution of raw materials and finished goods. Johnson & Johnson had thus begun to take control of the distribution channel in the same month that the cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules entered the distribution channel in Chicago.

Johnson & Johnson had also made some major executive changes in September 1982. Wayne Nelson was appointed chairman of J&J International, making way for David Collins to take over as chairman of the McNeil Consumer Products Company. Nelson was a former Chicago area resident and a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. However, Nelson’s roots in the Chicago area were nowhere near as extensive as those of Oak Park, Illinois-native, David Collins.