Nigel Cawthorne - The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

But two years later, doubt was cast on the verdict. On 11 February 2000, the Chicago Tribune carried a story on its front page about the Geralds case, pointing out that his conviction of two of the murders were based solely on his confessions, despite the fact that he was mildly mentally retarded. One of those cases was that of the murder of Rhonda King. By then the Cook County State’s Attorneys Office had come to believe that Rhonda King had been killed by Andre Crawford, who had recently been charged with 10 murders in the Englewood and New City neighbourhoods. Crawford confessed on videotape to King’s murders and he provided more compelling detail than Geralds’ confession did. The State had to move to vacate all six of Geralds’ murder convictions, though it planned on retrying him in at least five of these cases.

Then there was the case of 32-year-old Gregory Clepper, of the 8300 block of South Carpenter Street, who was also charged with killing 13 women in the Englewood area between 1991 and 1996. When he went on trial in October 2000 for the murder of 30-year-old Patricia Scott, who lived on the 8300 block of South Halsted Street, four years previously, a Cook County judge ruled that prosecutors would not be allowed to tell jurors about 12 other first-degree murder charges Clepper was facing.

The prosecution maintained that Scott was killed in April 1996 at Clepper’s home. They had been doing drugs together and were having a dispute over sex and money when she was killed. He then dumped her body in a dumpster at Calumet High School, prosecutors said.

The judge also approved a motion to allow defence attorneys and their expert witnesses to go to laboratories in Springfield and Chicago, where DNA tests were conducted on Clepper and the victims. The defence questioned the methods used and the validity of the test results. Outside the court Clepper’s attorney said that prosecutors had DNA evidence linking Clepper to Scott, but he insisted that DNA evidence could prove Clepper was innocent in six or seven of the other cases.

As a result Cook County prosecutors dropped charges in 12 of 13 murder cases pending against killer Gregory Clepper because laboratory tests have failed to confirm his alleged confessions—indeed, in some cases the DNA specifically excluded him. Chicago police had said he admitted to killing 40 women, making him Chicago’s most prolific serial killer since John Wayne Gacy, who was executed in 1994 for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men.

The Clepper cases had began crumbling a year before when the Chicago police Cold Case Homicide Unit turned up evidence implicating another suspect in one of the killings. Clepper had been charged with the murder of an unidentified African-American woman whose body was found in an alley in the 4900 block of South Champlain Avenue on 24 May 1994 after detectives said he confessed. DNA evidence matched Earl Mack Jnr, who was arrested and gave a tape-recorded confession. The charge against Clepper in that case was then dropped. As a result the Cold Case Homicide Unit began an extensive re-examination of all remaining Clepper cases.

The question must be asked: if Geralds and Clepper are not responsible for these killings, who is? And why have they not been arrested?

In autumn 1982, seven people in the Chicago area collapsed and died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol. The capsules had been laced with cyanide. Those who died were the first victims to die from a new type of murder known as “product tampering”.

The poisoned capsules had been placed on shelves in six different stores by a person intent on killing innocent people at random. One victim was a 12-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, who had a sore throat and a runny nose. On 29 September 1982, her parents gave her an Extra Strength Tylenol capsule to ease her symptoms. At 7 a.m. they found her lying on the bathroom floor. She was rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead. The doctors initially thought that she died from a stroke.

Later that day, an ambulance was sent to the home of 27-year-old postal worker Adam Janus in Arlington Heights. He was found lying on the floor, his pupils fixed and dilated. His blood pressure was dangerously low and his breathing laboured. He was rushed to the emergency room at Northwest Community Hospital. The doctors attempted to resuscitate him, but it was too late. Adam died shortly after arrival of what the doctors thought was a massive heart attack.

But the tragedy was going to take more of a toll on the Janus family. That evening the grieving family gathered at his house to discuss funeral arrangements. The shock of the sudden bereavement hit hard at Adam’s 25-year old brother Stanley and his 19-year-old bride, Theresa. They suffered headaches. On the kitchen counter, Stanley found a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol. He took a capsule from the bottle, then handed one to his wife.

Soon after, Stanley and Theresa collapsed. Scarcely able to believe what was happening, other family members called an ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, they found the couple in a critical state. They were rushed to the hospital. Stanley died later that day; Theresa two days later.

The three sudden deaths of members of the same family can hardly be ascribed to natural causes. Dr Thomas Kim at the Northwest Community Hospital initially suspected that a gas leak in Adam’s home had killed them. He consulted John Sullivan at the Rocky Mountain Poison Center, who said the symptoms suggested that their deaths might have been caused by cyanide. Blood samples were taken from the victims and sent to a lab for testing.

News of the deaths quickly circulated among the emergency services. By chance Elk Grove firefighter Richard Keyworth was talking to his friend Philip Cappitelli from the Arlington Heights station about the Mary Kellerman case. It was known that she had taken Tylenol before she died and Keyworth suggested the Janus deaths could also have been related to the tablets. So Cappitelli called the paramedics who had attended the Janus family. They confirmed that they too had taken Tylenol. The police were called and they went to the Kellerman and Janus homes to retrieve the remaining Tylenol.

The next day, Cook County’s chief toxicologist, Michael Shaffer, tested the capsules and found that some had been tampered with. Instead of being filled with a harmless proprietary pain killer, they contained some 65 milligrams of deadly cyanide. Only five to seven microgrammes are needed to kill the average person. The victims had given around 10,000 times the lethal dose. Blood samples of all four victims then confirmed that they had all been poisoned with cyanide.

The authorities contacted McNeil Consumer Products, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson who made Extra Strength Tylenol. They immediately warned pharmacists, established a crisis hotline and began a massive product recall which cost $125 million. But for other victims it was too late.

That day, a United Airlines stewardess Paula Prince, aged 35, was found dead in her suburban Chicago apartment. An open bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules were found nearby. Meanwhile 27-year-old Mary Reiner was recovering at home in Winfield, Illinois, after the birth of her fourth child when she too turned to Tylenol for relief. She took two capsules and died soon after in the hospital where she had just given birth to her son. Thirty-five-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, Illinois was the seventh victim of the cyanide-laced Tylenol.

Nobody could be sure that seven would be the total body count of the “Tylenol Terrorist” and police drove through Chicago issuing warnings over loudspeakers and sending people rushing home to dispose of bottles. That evening the nightly news on all three US national television networks reported the deaths from the contaminated drug. A day later, the Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to avoid the Tylenol capsules, “until the series of deaths in the Chicago area can be clarified”. This caused a nationwide panic. A hospital in Chicago received 700 telephone calls about Tylenol in one day. In Washington state, Seattle’s Poison Control Center informed citizens that, if they had indeed been poisoned with cyanide, they would be dead before they were even able to make a telephone call to a hospital or the police. Nevertheless people in cities across the country were admitted to hospitals on suspicion of cyanide poisoning. Despite the panic, there were no further cases.