The Tylenol Mafia by Scott Bartz Read Free Book Online

long-time Attorney General, William J. Scott, was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 11 months in prison. Having never run for office, Fahner was a political neophyte when Thompson appointed him Illinois Attorney General. Fahner had been a virtual unknown 26 days ago, even to the residents of his home state. That anonymity had changed instantly when he became the official spokesperson for the task force charged with solving the Tylenol murders.
    Fahner was in the midst of a seemingly hopeless campaign to be elected to the Attorney General position he’d been handed about two years earlier. A Chicago Tribune Poll released on October 2, 1982, showed Fahner trailing former Lieutenant Governor, Neil F. Hartigan, by 20 percentage points. After Fahner became the official spokesperson of the Tylenol task force, he was seen on television every day and his standing in the polls steadily improved.
    One of Fahner’s first official acts as head of the Tylenol task force was to recommend that Illinois residents gather up all of their Tylenol capsules and flush them down the toilet. Chicago police officers were also advised on Thursday, September 30 th , to ask Chicago area residents to destroy all of their Tylenol products. On Thursday night, NBC’s Chicago affiliate, WMAQ-TV, aired a video clip of a Chicago police dispatcher announcing over the police radio that Tylenol products “may be contaminated with cyanide, and should be destroyed.” Fahner’s recommendation that local residents flush their Tylenol capsules down the toilet was the first of his many miscues. Some of the destroyed capsules surely contained cyanide and could have helped investigators track down the Tylenol killer.
    Late Thursday morning, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy of Mary McFarland’s body ruled that her skull examination for CVA (Cerebral Vascular Accident, i.e., stroke) was inconclusive. By mid-Thursday afternoon, authorities had come to suspect that the deaths of Mary McFarland and Lynn Reiner might have been caused by cyanide-laced Tylenol. The Winfield police had already recovered the Tylenol capsules from Lynn Reiner’s home late Thursday morning.
    The Lombard police called Mary McFarland’s father Thursday afternoon and asked him to check Mary’s belongings for analgesic capsules. When he looked through her purse, he found a small Dristan bottle. The bottle held ten Extra Strength Tylenol capsules - five contained cyanide.
    Authorities then also found a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules marked with the lot number 1910MD in the medicine cabinet at McFarland’s home. Of the remaining 33 Tylenol capsules in that 50-count bottle, one contained cyanide. Police also found an empty Extra Strength Tylenol bottle, bearing lot number MB2738, in the trashcan at McFarland’s house. Police determined that the cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules in Mary’s Dristan bottle had come from the Tylenol bottle marked with lot number 1910MD.
    Authorities never disclosed the location where McFarland bought the poisoned Tylenol. However, they did in fact determine that she had purchased it at the Woolworth store in the Yorktown Mall where she worked. Detectives had checked the lot numbers on the bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules in the stores surrounding McFarland’s home and work. The only local store carrying Tylenol from Lot 1910MD was the Woolworth store in Yorktown Mall. A lawsuit filed by the Tylenol victims’ families named Woolworth as a defendant and as the source of McFarland’s bottle of cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. That lawsuit, as well as McFarland’s coroner’s report, confirmed that she had indeed purchased the poisoned Tylenol at the Woolworth store.
    The Tylenol containers recovered from the homes of Reiner and McFarland were turned over and to the Illinois Department of Public Health in Wheaton early Thursday evening. Joerg Pirl , the assistant chief toxicologist for the Illinois