The Tylenol Mafia (3 page)

McNeil Laboratories became McNeilab Inc. in 1978, and J&J formed two new operating companies under the McNeilab umbrella – the McNeil Pharmaceutical Company and the McNeil Consumer Products Company. J&J CEO James Burke, and Wayne Nelson, the first chairman of the reorganized McNeil, formed the McNeil Consumer Products Company to sell only non-prescription products that contained acetaminophen. At the time, those products were Tylenol,
CoTylenol
, Children’s Tylenol products, and Sine-Aid.

In 1982, the McNeil Consumer Products Company manufactured Tylenol at plants in Round Rock, Texas and Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. McNeil distributed Tylenol to wholesalers across the country from three Johnson & Johnson facilities located in Round Rock, TX, Montgomeryville, PA, and Glendale, CA.

Facts about the Tylenol distribution network, especially in Illinois, were conspicuously absent from the publicized accounts of the Tylenol murders investigation. The general public, still today, knows almost nothing about the immense manufacturing and distribution conglomerate that Johnson & Johnson operated in the Chicago area in 1982. Most of the products that Johnson & Johnson was known for then - Band-Aids, Adhesive Tapes, Gauze Pads, Cotton Swabs, Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, Baby Powder, and Baby Oil - were all being manufactured in plants located just outside Chicago. The importance of Chicago as a major manufacturing hub for Johnson & Johnson began in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression. At that time, J&J Chairman, Robert Wood Johnson II, decided that the company needed to open a manufacturing plant in Chicago to help the company ship its products west much faster and more efficiently.

Robert Wood Johnson II was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1893 to Robert Wood Johnson Sr. and Evangeline Johnson. His father’s brothers, James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson, founded Johnson & Johnson in 1886. Soon after, Robert Wood Sr. joined the company and eventually dominated his brothers. When Robert Wood Johnson Jr. was sixteen, his father died, leaving him an estate of $2 million (about $45 million in 2012 dollars). Johnson was attending Rutgers Prep School at the time, but he dropped out a few months later and started working full-time at Johnson & Johnson. He also dropped “junior” from his name lest it detract from his desired air of social preeminence.

Johnson married Elizabeth Dixon Ross in 1916. They had one child, Robert “Bobby” Wood Johnson III. Robert and Elizabeth divorced in 1930. That same year, Robert married Margaret Shea. In 1943, Margaret was granted a divorce from Johnson on grounds of “extreme cruelty.” Johnson then married Evelyn Vernon
Bruff
, a brunette nightclub dancer, on August 16, 1943, only three weeks after his second divorce and one day after her first.

Johnson became president of Johnson & Johnson in 1932, and then chairman from 1938 to 1963. He was a dynamic, visionary businessman who was obsessed with power, writes biographer, Barbara Goldsmith. He controlled Johnson & Johnson with an iron hand. Johnson’s weak and self-indulgent brother, Seward, who sexually abused his eldest daughter from the time she was nine until she was fifteen, followed his every command. In 1941, Johnson brought his son Bobby into the company and elevated him to president in 1961. Goldsmith says Johnson then brutally turned on his son, denigrating him and telling him he would amount to nothing. Johnson fired Bobby in 1965. He also pushed Seward out of the company.

When Johnson decided in 1933 to build a new manufacturing plant in Chicago, Johnson & Johnson already had a small sutures manufacturing plant there, and Johnson now enlisted the general manager of that plant to help find a good Midwest location for the new plant. In commenting about the project, Johnson said, “Sites and factories were easy to find, but we were planning for the future, not merely for 1933. We, therefore, continued our search until we found a location that would give us what we needed for many years to come. We discovered it in the Clearing Industrial District, a modern development in the Southwestern part of Chicago.”

The Clearing District was founded in 1907, and got its name because farm goods from the area were “cleared” (delivered) through the Midway airport and the railroad yards. J&J’s new plant was located just one block south of Chicago’s Midway airport at 5540 West 65th Street on the southern boundary of the Clearing District. The plant’s first product line, Modess Sanitary Napkins, was in production just one month after the workers were hired and the plant opened.

By 1982, Johnson & Johnson had more than a dozen facilities in the Clearing District. Johnson & Johnson’s Midwest operation included the Consumer Products Company and the Ethicon Corporation in Bedford Park, Illinois. J&J also had a Consumer Products plant and distribution center in nearby Lemont, and a Johnson & Johnson Baby Products plant in Wilmington, Illinois. At its height, the 11-plant Bedford Park operation produced 492 products and was also a major shipping center for the company. It was the site of many developments in engineering, operations, and quality assurance programs for all of Johnson & Johnson, and it pioneered electronic recordkeeping for the company in the 1960s.

One of J&J’s largest and most profitable plants in Illinois, or anywhere else for that matter,
does
not normally come to mind when consumers think of Johnson & Johnson today. The plant, long since abandoned, was opened in Illiopolis in 1942 and fit right in with Robert Wood Johnson’s other occupation - the military. During World War I and World War II, the leaders of big corporations went to Washington in large numbers to direct industrial mobilization of resources for the war efforts. They were called “dollar-a-year” men because they drew an annual salary from the government of just one dollar. However, they maintained their profitable corporate connections and continued to receive salaries and bonuses from the companies they ran. Johnson held a Reserve Army commission as a colonel in the Quartermaster Corps during the 1930s, and was made a brigadier general during World War II. He also served as the chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation and as a vice chairman of the War Production Board (WPB).

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the WPB in December 1941 to exercise general direction over the war procurement and production program. The Board’s primary task was converting civilian industry to war production. The president appointed the chairman of the Board, and the Army and Navy Munitions Boards reported to the president through the chairman of the WPB. From 1942 to 1945, the chairman of the WPB was Donald M. Nelson. Nelson’s private sector job was as chairman of the Sears Roebuck Company in Chicago.

In January 1943, Donald Nelson, at the direction of President Roosevelt, brought in big business owner, Robert Wood Johnson II, to run the Smaller War Plants Corporation (SWPC). The SWPC had been established in June 1942 as a division of the WPB to finance and aid smaller American businesses employing fewer than 500 employees. Harry S. Truman, then a U.S. Senator from Missouri, strongly objected to this appointment because he thought big business would have too much control of government contracts under Johnson’s leadership. Truman said he was also concerned about Johnson’s monopolistic business practices.

Johnson & Johnson was still privately held during World War II, with Robert Wood Johnson II and his brother, Seward, owning 84 percent of the company. These men directly benefited from the war production contracts awarded to Johnson & Johnson to supply the military with combat First-Aid kits, wound dressings, tape, paper products, sutures, and other products. As chairman of the SWPC, Johnson awarded government contracts to Johnson & Johnson’s smaller operating companies. As vice chairman of the WPB, Johnson also steered war contracts to Johnson & Johnson’s larger operating companies.

Much of Johnson & Johnson’s wartime revenue came from the products it produced at its factory in Illiopolis, Illinois. That plant was a United States Army ammunition manufacturing plant constructed in 1942 while Robert Wood Johnson II was a colonel in charge of the Army’s New York Ordnance District.

The ordnance plant was located west of Illiopolis in Sangamon County and encompassed 20,000 acres. It began as two plants separated by Illinois Route 36 - the Sangamon plant, operated by Remington Rand, and the Oak Ordnance Plant, operated by Johnson & Johnson. The Oak Ordnance Plant produced 20-, 57-, 75-, and 90-millimeter artillery shells as well as 3-inch (76mm) armor-piercing and high explosive artillery shells. It also produced bomb fuses and the core of firebombs known as “
bursters
.” When the war ended, Johnson & Johnson and Remington Rand simply abandoned these taxpayer-funded ordnance plants and left them for the government to clean up, once again using taxpayer dollars.

On May 4, 1943, Johnson was promoted to brigadier general; a commission he held for only three months. “General” Robert Wood Johnson relinquished his commission on August 10, 1943, two weeks after divorcing Margaret Shea, and one week before marrying Evelyn Vernon
Bruff
.

During his time as chairman of the SWPC, Johnson had rubbed some members of Congress and the SWPC the wrong way. A WPB official said Johnson believed that the SWPC had received “less desirable” employees from other agencies, leading Johnson to view his staff as incompetent. Johnson’s departure from the Army was at the request of the U.S. Congress, though Johnson suggested otherwise.

Johnson said he resigned his Army commission because he wanted to become a “champion of civilian economy to a large degree.” In announcing his “resignation” Johnson made public a letter from Donald Nelson to Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. It said that Nelson shared Johnson’s belief that “it would be embarrassing to himself and the Army” if Johnson was required to return to civilian status. Johnson was allowed to keep his title of “General,” thus avoiding the indignation of returning to “civilian status.” Until the day he died, Johnson insisted that his employees address him as “General” Johnson.

Four months after Johnson resigned his commission on the SWPC and WPB, he informed Johnson & Johnson’s board of directors that he had decided to take the company public. On September 24, 1944, Johnson & Johnson began trading on the New York Stock Exchange with an initial stock price of $37.50 per share.

Johnson was tremendously critical of the United States government, calling it inherently incompetent. The solution to the problem of government incompetence, as Johnson saw it, was to put big corporations in charge of government programs.

In an article titled “Dig-Son-Dig,” which appeared in Army Ordnance magazine in January 1947, Johnson urgently called for the appointment of a commission of five civilians to plan for the design and dispersion of new underground manufacturing plants that would be protected from damage in the event of a nuclear war. The recipients of these plants would be Johnson & Johnson and other large corporations. Johnson asked several questions regarding the administration of such a program: “To what extent should the Armed Services contribute to the increased costs of such installations? What new laws are necessary? Where is the authority to be centered?”

Johnson suggested that the government’s role in the building of these underground factories should be to dole out taxpayer money to civilian appointees - all leaders of large corporations - and let them spend that money any way they saw fit. “Let the military help spell out the problem – let them assist and advise,” Johnson urged. “But let industry solve the problem and put the solution into effect.”

“We will not be the audience for a weak sister who couldn’t get a job with industry,” wrote Johnson. “Sure, we feel tough. Well, are we playing with the lives of our people or are we playing mumblety-pegs?”

“Who will protect America if we don’t?” Johnson asked.

In 1982, after the Tylenol poisonings, Johnson & Johnson once again positioned itself as America’s protector. J&J President David Clare, when reflecting on the company’s response to the Tylenol poisonings, said, “We had to act to protect the public, whether [the tampering] was more widespread than it appeared to be, whether it was a condition that could be repeated by other copycats using our product. So first and foremost, we had to protect the public.”

J&J Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, James Burke, claimed to have foreseen a Tylenol problem on the horizon. Johnson & Johnson’s top executives had met for their annual three-day strategic planning review the week after the September 1982 Labor Day weekend. The company had been on a long run of steady earnings growth and 1982 was shaping up to be a banner year. In fact, Burke worried that things were going too well. “I took some kidding at that meeting for worrying about things I don’t have to,” Burke recalled later. “We had been marveling at how lucky we were to be in our industry, to have some very profitable brands doing so well, and I had said, offhand, what if something happens to one of them, like Tylenol?” Curiously, Burke’s premonition of trouble for the Tylenol brand came true just three weeks later.

4

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Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the deputy assistant medical examiner for Cook County, held a press conference at around 8 a.m. (Central time) Thursday morning, September 30, 1982, to report the deaths of the Janus brothers in Arlington Heights and Mary Kellerman in neighboring Elk Grove Village. Donoghue said they had died on Wednesday from cardio-pulmonary collapse after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. He said the investigation had “definitely confirmed the presence of cyanide” in the Tylenol capsules.

Life support machines were still keeping Theresa Janus alive while her family flew in from Poland. She would be declared dead on Friday when the machines were turned off. Officials had not yet linked the deaths of Lynn Reiner and Mary McFarland to cyanide-laced Tylenol. The body of another victim, Paula Prince, would not be discovered until Friday evening.