Tylenol murders: Netflix doc explores the killer who put cyanide in the medicine cabinet and tamper-proof seals on everything
James Lewis eyes the Tylenol bottle placed in front of him.
Once considered a suspect in the deaths of seven people who died in 1982 after taking the medication that had been laced with cyanide, Lewis was sitting for a rare on-camera interview with Netflix for a new docuseries, Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders.
“You think I’m going to open this and get my fingerprints all over it?” Lewis asks as he struggles to open the tamper-evident bottle seal.
“Everybody who tries to open these bottles swears my name,” he admits with a smile.
Lewis eventually breaks through the seal with his long nails and rolls a capsule between his fingers.
“Well, they’re considerably smaller than they used to be. I haven’t had one of these in my hands for a long time.”
After breaking it apart, he pushes it away and says, “OK, let’s put that away. That might scare people.”
Before 1982, nobody thought twice about opening a bottle of Tylenol, but when seven people who took cyanide-laced medicine in the Chicago area died within a span of just a few days, it sparked panic, triggering a nationwide recall of the product.
The poisonings eventually led to tamper proof packaging for over-the-counter medications.
Lewis quickly emerged as a suspect after investigators determined that he had sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to stop the Tylenol murders. But there was not enough evidence to charge him and he was instead convicted of attempted extortion and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
“They make it look like I’m the world’s most horrible, dangerous person ever,” Lewis said in an interview with Netflix in 2023, not long before his death.
“And I wouldn’t hurt anybody,” he then added with a chuckle.
Nearly two years after Lewis’ death at age 76, his interview, along with interviews with the victims’ families and people close to the investigation, will be featured on Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, which will be available to stream on May 26.
But why now?
