The top suspect in a rash of unsolved 1982 murders in Chicago involving cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday, police said Monday. The poisoned Tylenol, which killed a 12-year-old girl and six other people over three days, led to a panicked nationwide recall and an overhaul of over-the-counter drug safety rules, including the introduction of tamper-resistant packaging and substitution of tablets for capsules.
James W. Lewis, 76, was charged and convicted of attempting to extort Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson after he confessed to sending the company a letter demanding $1 million to "stop the killing," and he gave the FBI a detailed account of how the killer might have put cyanide inside the painkiller capsules. But while he spent 12 years in prison for extortion charges, he was never charged in the murders.
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