The Tylenol Mafia (45 page)

Lewis did not testify, but he has always maintained that Rea alone had carried out the credit card fraud scheme. Lewis’s only witness, Kansas City investigator, Gary Compton, told the court that the handwriting on the credit-card applications belonged to Rea – not Lewis. In his closing argument, Willard B. Bunch, one of Lewis’s court-appointed attorneys, called Rea “a master conman who is trying to send another man to jail for what he did.” Bunch said there was no evidence that Lewis actually mailed the credit card applications, a necessary element of the alleged offense. “Mr. Rea cut a deal so he won’t be prosecuted. He should have been a defendant, not a witness,” said Bunch. Lewis was convicted on May 26, 1983, of six federal counts of credit-card fraud, and later sentenced to a 10-year prison term.

Lewis’s trial for attempted extortion began on October 21, 1983, in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois. It lasted five days. As the trial came to a close, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Jeremy Margolis, called Lewis a “diabolical” schemer who preyed on fear and grief and “turned the world on its ear” by writing the Tylenol letter. “All that matters in this case is when he wrote the letter, he recognized... he intended Johnson & Johnson would part with $1 million.” It is improbable that Margolis really believed that J&J would wire money to a closed account, or that Lewis could have gained access to that account, which had been in another man’s name.

U.S. Attorney Dan Webb provided the final monologue in the Justice Department’s closing argument against Lewis. Rather than summarize the mundane facts about the extortion letter, Webb chastised Lewis for not turning himself in. “When Mr. Lewis found out that he had a warrant out for his arrest for attempted extortion...what did he do? He went underground.... He changed his name, they changed their jobs, they did everything they could to avoid detection at that point in time,” declared Webb.

Webb continued his closing argument, seemingly far less concerned about convicting Lewis for attempted extortion than convincing the jury that Lewis was the Tylenol killer: “Mr. Monico said that it is because he [Lewis] read the newspaper that people were speculating that he might have done the Tylenol murders. By the way, he confesses being the murderer in the letter. I mean, is that our fault that he, in order to play upon a tragedy, confessed to the murder, so somebody said, ‘Maybe he did it,’ since people who confess to things sometimes do it. But think about it.... Why would you do what he did unless you had guilt on your mind?”

Webb closed his oration by declaring, “The man who wrote that letter was a premeditated manipulator of the fear of Johnson & Johnson. And the man who wrote that letter is an evil and depraved opportunist who was trying to turn a tragedy to his own benefit. That man was mean, he was vicious - That man, who was insensitive to human suffering - That man, who was a premeditated manipulator of fear - That man, who was an evil and depraved opportunist for his own benefit, that man is you, James Lewis.”

Lewis’s defense attorney, Michael Monico, said the government had failed to prove that Lewis intended to receive the money, saying Lewis only wanted to embarrass his wife’s former employer because he had failed to meet his last payroll. Monico argued that because the account had been closed and Lewis had no access to it, he could not have intended to obtain the money.

“This case is bizarre, but it is simple,” Monico said in his closing argument - an hour-long speech that was itself, truly bizarre in its denigration of Lewis. Monico said Lewis was guilty of an “immense overreaction” to his anger at McCahey - and that Lewis was a ‘bizarre” person who often overreacts - but is not guilty of attempted extortion. “The government mischarged this man in their rush to judgment,” Monico said. “You may convict him of being stupid and foolish and reckless, but you cannot convict him of this crime.” The letter “may be a crime, but it’s not the crime he is charged with,” said Monico. Then, standing inches away from Lewis, Monico stared at him and shouted, “You wrote a letter and because of it you were hunted like a dog.”

A federal jury of eight men and four women found Lewis guilty of attempted extortion after deliberating for three hours on October 28, 1983. Eight months later, at his sentencing hearing, Lewis acted as his own attorney. He addressed U.S. District Chief Judge, Frank J. McGarr, for almost an hour. Lewis ridiculed federal prosecutors and police for failing to solve the Tylenol murders. “The FBI and the Department of Justice simply blew it,” he said. “They desperately crave a scapegoat, and they’ve got me.”

Lewis often turned to confront U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, who sat a few feet from him. At one point Lewis said, “I do not lie, I do not cheat, and I do not steal.” Then, motioning toward Webb, he added, “I will leave that to other people.”

Judge McGarr quickly jumped in, stating, “In the face of two felony convictions, that’s a pretty hollow declaration.”

Lewis shot back, “Under the circumstances, with the pretrial publicity, you can get a conviction for anything. The government fabricated not only this case, but the two cases in Kansas City.”

Before sentencing Lewis, Judge McGarr assured him, “The emotional associations that go with the word Tylenol in connection with this case cannot be allowed to rub off on Mr. Lewis since there is no shred of evidence that he is guilty of the Tylenol murders and no suggestion along those lines should be allowed to influence my judgment in this matter.” McGarr then sentenced Lewis, who was 37 years old at the time, to ten years in prison for attempted extortion. The sentence would begin after Lewis completed his 10-year sentence for the prior fraud conviction in Missouri.

Even though the sentences ran consecutively, the maximum time Lewis could possibly have served was slightly less than 13 years. He would be eligible for parole in 1989, after serving 80 months - about 6 ½ years. He would have to serve 2 ½ years for the credit card fraud conviction, and 4 years for the attempted extortion conviction.

During his incarceration, Lewis was a model prisoner. He garnered exemplary ratings as a GED tutor; he painted murals with sports themes; he taught himself Latin and improved his French and Spanish skills by reading classics in the original languages; and he received no misconduct reports. The Parole Commission recognized Lewis’s good behavior by informing him on January 6, 1988 that it would grant parole after he had served his minimum sentence of 80 months. On March 9, 1989, Victor Reyes, the regional commissioner for the South Central Region in Texas, affirmed Lewis’s release date of August 27, 1989, by signing a “no change” notice. Big Jim’s boys, however, had other plans for Lewis.

When Jeremy Margolis and FBI Special Agent Roy Lane had flown to Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 10, 1986 to question LeAnn Lewis, Margolis had told her that if she didn’t answer his questions, her husband would stay in prison for a long time. Margolis was now going to make good on that promise.

On the same day Reyes affirmed the order granting Lewis’s parole, Jeremy Margolis sent a letter to Parole Commission Chairman, Benjamin Baer, in Maryland, urging an extension of Lewis’s parole date. Three weeks earlier, another one of Big Jim’s boy’s, U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas, had sent a letter to Baer urging the parole board to keep Lewis in prison for the maximum allowable time. Baer forwarded the letters from Margolis and Valukas to Reyes. Based on these letters, Reyes recommended that the National Parole Commissioners reopen Lewis’s case. The Commission said that it was asked to extend Lewis’s parole on the basis that he was the Tylenol murderer. But Lewis had never been charged with the Tylenol murders, and no evidence implicating him in the murders had ever been presented in a court of law or anywhere else.

What a jury could not do, and was not asked to do, was done easily within the United States shadow legal system. The U.S. Parole Commission “convicted” Lewis for the Tylenol murders in a kangaroo court.

The Commission, following a hearing on August 21, 1989, ruled that Lewis was indeed the Tylenol murderer, and accordingly, raised his “offense severity level” from Category 6 (for extortion) to Category 8 (for murder). Placing Lewis in Category 8 permitted the Commission to deny him parole. Six days before his scheduled release from prison, the Commission revoked Lewis’s parole, forcing him to serve the maximum sentence of nearly 13 years.

Lewis appealed the Parole Commission’s decision in the Tenth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Federal Appeals Court determined that to uphold the Parole Commission’s “murder conviction” of Lewis, all of the following questions had to be answered in the affirmative:

1. Can evidence that was known by investigative agencies but not by the United States Parole Commission (“the Commission”) at the time of a prisoner’s initial parole determination be considered “new information” sufficient for the Commission to reopen the prisoner’s case under 28 C.F.R. § 2.28(f)?

2. Once a prisoner’s case is reopened, can the Commission consider information in a sentencing transcript where

A. The transcript, though previously unseen by the Commission, was not the basis for reopening;

B. The information pertains to a crime for which the prisoner was not charged, but which was related to the crime for which he was convicted; and

C. Did the district judge decline to consider the information at sentencing?

3. Was the district judge’s statement during sentencing that there was not a “shred of evidence” that the Petitioner-Appellant (Lewis) committed the Tylenol murders merely a reiteration of his assurance that he was not going to consider any evidence of that crime since Lewis was not so charged, rather than a finding on the merits of such an allegation pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(c
)(
3)(D)(
i
)?

4. Did the Commission act within its discretion in determining that Lewis committed murder by lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide?

“We answer all of these questions in the affirmative,” the Appeals Court declared, thus affirming the kangaroo court’s prior verdict.

Lewis was released from the Federal Corrections Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma on Friday, October 13, 1995. A long-time friend and childhood sweetheart of Lewis’s, who was living in Dallas at the time, met him at the airport in Oklahoma City and joined him on a flight to Boston. Lewis arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport that evening and reunited with LeAnn, the love of his life. The next night James and LeAnn went to the Boston opera for a pleasant evening of culture and anonymity. For nearly a decade, they led a quiet, relatively normal life. Then, in the summer of 2004, Lewis came under fire again.

On a hot August afternoon in 2004, Police knocked on the door at Lewis’s Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Lewis opened the door and was immediately tackled and handcuffed. The police told Lewis that he had held his business partner hostage and drugged and raped her. Police found no bruises, cuts, or contusions on Lewis. When the alleged victim was examined, she too had no bruises, cuts, or contusions. The woman’s father had visited her apartment earlier that day and found that she was sick. The woman, an immigrant from China who spoke marginal English, had vomited all over the apartment. Her father thought something was not right, so he called police.

When the police arrived, they had a hard time communicating with the woman because she spoke only broken English. She did the best she could to answer their questions, though she was feeling very ill and was also very intimidated by the police officers. The police did glean one piece of information that caught their attention. Her business partner was James Lewis, whom they quickly connected to the Tylenol murders – or, maybe they had already made that connection before they talked to her.

The Middlesex County prosecutor charged Lewis with rape, kidnapping, and other offenses for the alleged attack. The County judge set Lewis’s bail at $1 million. Lewis could obviously not raise anywhere near that much money, so for three years he sat in a jail cell awaiting trial. On the day his trial was to begin, Lewis was escorted to the courtroom. Prosecutors approached the bench and had a short conversation with the judge, after which Lewis learned that they had dismissed all of the charges against him. The reason, according to the office of Middlesex District Attorney, Gerard “Gerry” Leone, was that the alleged victim refused to testify. This came as no surprise to prosecutors. They had known for three years that the woman was not going to testify against Lewis. They had also known all along that there was no physical evidence to indicate that a crime had even been committed.

In an August 2004 email, Middlesex County District Attorney, Lee Hettinger, had pressured the crime lab to expedite the test results from the rape kit and the toxicology screen. Hettinger had no actual evidence that there had even been a crime, but in his email to Gwen
Pino
, the forensic expert handling the case, he suggested otherwise. “As you may recall, this is the case where the suspect was involved in the
tylenol
[sic] tampering cases of 1982-1983. He recently drugged, kidnapped, and possibly raped our victim,” Hettinger wrote.

The tests were expedited, as Hettinger had requested, but the results were not what he wanted. There was no evidence of rape and no evidence that the woman had been drugged. Confirming the results of the lab findings was the alleged victim herself. She had told investigators repeatedly that there was no rape – there was no assault. Prosecutors had no forensic evidence and no witnesses. They didn’t even have a victim.