The Tylenol Mafia (32 page)

The FBI assembled a team of agents who began culling records from the 1982 Tylenol murders. Ahlerich said these agents will try to trace the capsules from their point of manufacture - Fort Washington for the pills involved in Miss Elsroth’s death, and Dorado, Puerto Rico for the bottle of contaminated pills discovered Thursday - to what Ahlerich called “the point of adulteration.” Ahlerich said the FBI agents would be asking, “Do we have a warehouse situation, do we have an in-store situation, or do we have something that goes all the way back to the factory?”

The FBI never answered those questions though. Just as they had done in 1982, federal investigators limited their commentary to the psyche of the killer, never discussing the actual evidence. They freely speculated on their killer’s psychological tendencies, but refused to acknowledge the relevance of the physical evidence and the pure logic that said the tamperings had occurred in the channel of distribution. “We’re trying to think of the kind of person involved,” Ahlerich proclaimed. “What is the mentality of the killer here?”

On February 14, 1986, the press revealed that the FBI and Westchester County officials were working with J&J to schedule a visit to the McNeil plant in Fort Washington. Bruce Bendish, the Westchester County prosecutor in charge of the homicide unit, said the visit to the McNeil plant was “to make sure we’re familiar with procedures so it can help should further questions arise… For anybody to focus in on any one theory now would be premature.” Tampering in the distribution channel is one theory “we’ve been made aware of and [are] pursuing,” added Bendish.

Robert Kniffin spoke to the press on Saturday, February 15
^th
, to report that J&J was in the process of reviewing the personnel files of about 30,000 employees. Kniffin said the company was also going over its Tylenol production, storage, and distribution process. He did not elaborate on exactly what that review entailed.

James Burke, when asked if he thought an employee or former worker was responsible for the tamperings, said, “We honestly don’t know that’s the case at all.”

Unfettered by the culture of silence that Johnson & Johnson normally strictly enforced, Burke peppered the media with speculative theories. “Premeditated murder has not been ruled out. Nothing has been ruled out,” Burke declared. “We are convinced the same person was involved” in the two incidents at the A&P and Woolworth stores in Bronxville. “This investigation is going to be absolutely massive at all levels. All employee records are being examined.”

While Johnson & Johnson’s human resources department took charge of the “massive” investigation, namely, the examination of J&J employees’ records; Burke turned his attention to the growing debate on the future of Tylenol capsules.

30

________

After the death of Diane Elsroth, it was apparent to some that the elimination of unsealed capsules was long past due. The pharmaceutical industry, of course, saw things differently. Manufacturers sold $1.5 billion in OTC capsules per year, so the industry’s lobbyists continued to fight to keep them on the market.

Proprietary Association spokesperson, John Walden, insisted that tamper-resistant packaging was still the best protection against tampering incidents involving capsules. “You can’t make anything tamper-proof,” he said. “You can’t even make a vault tamper-proof. Burglars prove it all the time,” said Walden. He said drug industry executives and FDA technical experts “feel absolute confidence in the system they had developed in 1982,” adding, “Everyone feels the basic system is in place, and they see no reason to throw it away.” Walden failed to acknowledge that no one was asking the industry to “throw away” the basic anti-tampering system. The industry only needed to do away with the use of unsealed capsules.

In 1986, according to Johnson & Johnson, 14 million people used Tylenol capsules. An additional 23 million used Tylenol tablets, and 12 million used caplets. Tylenol products accounted for $525 million in annual sales, of which about $157 million came from sales of Tylenol capsules.
 
Heading into the 1986 President’s Day weekend, James Burke met with his top executives at his luxurious New Brunswick office overlooking the Raritan River to determine the fate of Tylenol capsules. While these executives discussed the available options, Burke listened, but said little, according to those who attended the weekend meetings.

The market research that J&J conducted right after the discovery of the second bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol showed that consumers no longer trusted Tylenol capsules. Telephone surveys revealed that J&J’s effort to persuade customers that the Tylenol tampering was a local incident was failing. One survey of 300 consumers in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta indicated that consumer loyalty to the product was not nearly as strong now as after the Chicago deaths. Burke said the public’s knowledge of the incident was almost universal. He said, “Ninety-seven percent of the public in the research that we’ve just completed know that something has happened to Tylenol. That’s more people than know the name of the President of the United States.”

“There was definitely a trend,” said McNeil Chairman David Collins. Although 78 percent of those surveyed in three cities agreed that Tylenol tablets were safe, a finding that Collins called “comforting,” he said that percentage should be much higher. Burke was not comforted at all by these findings. He blamed the unacceptable survey results on the media. The broadcast media in particular, said Burke, had failed to convey to the public that Tylenol tablets and caplets were safe and not at all involved in the tamperings.

Burke said that when he and J&J President, David Clare, began to push for the end of Tylenol capsules, McNeil executives argued that such a decision was too drastic. The deliberations that ultimately led to the decision to stop making capsules were far from harmonious, Burke recalled. The meetings were often punctuated by “yelling and screaming,” he said. According to Burke, such confrontational meetings were part of the normal Johnson & Johnson approach to forging a consensus.

“The anger that comes out in these meetings is just appalling,” said Burke. “If you walked in, you’d say, ‘Geez, these guys aren’t going to get anywhere; they hate each other!’ Well we not only don’t hate each other; we all love each other. And we’ve known each other long enough, so we can look somebody in the eye and say, ‘That’s crazy’ or ‘Will you shut up and listen to me?’” Burke remarked.

Yelling and screaming aside, the weekend meetings were really just academic. Burke had already decided privately that the capsules would have to go. He wanted to give his top managers a chance to debate the different choices, even though he had already made the choice for them. “It was very important to let people say whatever they thought because you are under terrible stress,” Burke explained.

On Friday, October 14
^th
, the day after the second bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol was found; Johnson & Johnson’s stock price had dropped $3.75 per share to $48. With the drop in share price and a scheduled appearance by Burke on the
Donahue
show on Tuesday, J&J decided to announce the discontinuation of Tylenol capsules on Monday while the stock market was closed for the President’s Day holiday. This way, when the stock market reopened on Tuesday, Burke would be seen across America promoting Tylenol caplets and discussing J&J’s “quick” response to the tampering problem on
Donahue
. The recall announcement also was timed to keep competitors from grabbing the empty shelf space created by the recall of Tylenol capsules. Before rack jobbers had a chance to put a competitor’s product in that empty shelf space, Burke wanted to make it clear that J&J would fill that space, but with Tylenol caplets.

The President’s Day weekend marked the beginning of a media blitz that included 12 appearances from Burke on shows like ABC’s
This Week with David Brinkley
,
Nightline
,
World News Tonight
, and WABC-TV News in New York City, as well as NBC’s
Donahue
show in New York City. Other J&J executives and FDA officials, including J&J President David Clare and FDA Commissioner Frank Young, also participated in this media blitz.

On February 16, 1986, Burke appeared with Frank Young and Westchester County Executive, Andrew O’Rourke, on ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs talk show,
This Week
With
David Brinkley
. Burke was on friendly turf. His brother, Daniel Burke, and his long-time friend, J&J Board-member, Thomas Murphy, had bought ABC in 1985, merged it into Capital Cities, and changed their company’s name to Capital Cities/ABC.

Burke must have been taken aback when in the midst of a nationally broadcast program on the network owned by his brother Daniel and J&J Director Tom Murphy – Andrew O’Rourke scolded him for failing to prevent the second Tylenol poisoning incident. O’Rourke’s tongue-lashing was probably motivated by his desire to score political points. O’Rourke, a politician through and through, thus directed his ire at both Burke and Frank Young.

“You’ve had this happen twice now,” said O’Rourke. “I think it’s time that the government came up with some type of a plan to prevent it from happening in the future. We don’t learn from history only because people are dumb,” he said. “You’ve got to learn from experience.”

O’Rourke proposed the elimination of all unsealed OTC capsules nationwide. Failing that, said O’Rourke, pharmacists should sell them behind counters or the capsules should be made tamper-resistant. “I’m no believer in more federal regulations,” said O’Rourke, “but in this case it would make all of us safer, and I, for one, am willing to give up convenience to feel that the stuff I get from the pharmacy is safe.” O’Rourke’s point was moot, of course, because the tamperings had occurred before the Tylenol bottles were delivered to the retail stores.

Burke, playing the role of the capitalist-patriot, countered O’Rourke by saying, “The only way that could be done, and I think it would be an overreaction, is to take the product and put it behind the shelf in the pharmacy stores. That would deprive the public of the freest system in the world in terms of marketing consumer products.”

During the panel discussion with the heads of both J&J and the FDA, O’Rourke took advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring up previously undisclosed information about the second bottle of poisoned Tylenol. O’Rourke said, “This particular package in the Woolworth store had a different lot number than the rest of the packages in that same store. That would appear to be reverse shoplifting,” said O’Rourke. “Somebody came in and actually put it on the shelf.”

O’Rourke had now unknowingly disclosed a bit of information that J&J and the feds did not want publicized. The public knew nothing about this lot number discrepancy. And neither Burke nor Young were interested in discussing any of the actual evidence; especially not evidence that the public was not supposed to know about in the first place.

Rather than engage O’Rourke in a conversation about the source of the second bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol, Burke ended the discussion by dropping the name of one of his powerful friends. Burke casually brought up a conversation he’d had that very morning with FBI Director William Webster. In talking to Mr. Webster this morning, said Burke, he informed me that “unfortunately, there’s nothing new at this time.”

Burke then went into a monologue designed to mitigate Carl Vergari’s contention that the poisoned capsules in both bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol had been put into those bottles at a McNeil manufacturing plant. Burke skirted the true focus of Vergari’s allegations though, commenting only on J&J’s Montgomeryville distribution center.

“Even if you could tamper at the distribution center,” said Burke, “the culprit would have to deal with the individual bottles’ seals.” In addition to the three layers of tamper-resistant packaging, the individually sealed bottles are “packaged in six-packs, elaborately wrapped in plastic, and they’re packed in a case,” said Burke. “You’d have to get through an awful lot of material.” Burke had now actually underscored the absurdity of his contention that the Tylenol killer had somehow gotten though all of the elaborate packaging without leaving any sign of tampering.

*****

On President’s Day, Monday, February 17
^th
, four days after the second bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol had turned up, and seven days after J&J had learned about the death of Diane Elsroth, Burke announced that Johnson & Johnson would no longer sell over-the-counter drugs in capsules. J&J did continue to manufacture its patented prescription drug, Tylenol with Codeine, in unsealed capsules, sold only from behind the pharmacy counter.

The decision to withdraw capsules from the marketplace was made to “protect the public,” said Burke. Once again, Burke had positioned Johnson & Johnson as the protector of America, carrying on the tradition of his mentor, “General” Robert Wood Johnson. In 1947, Johnson had urged Congress to approve taxpayer dollars to fund the construction of underground manufacturing plants for Johnson & Johnson - rhetorically asking, “Who will protect America if we don’t?

“We feel the company can no longer guarantee the safety of capsules to a degree consistent with Johnson & Johnson’s standards of responsibility to its consumers,” said Burke; though he evidently felt no such compunction after the 1982 Tylenol murders or in the first several days after Diane Elsroth’s death. “We take this action with great reluctance and a heavy heart, but we cannot control random tampering with capsules after they leave our plant. Therefore, we feel our obligation to consumers is to remove capsules from the market to protect the public.”