The Tylenol Poisonings – Episode 5 (Part One)

Dan Keeney joins Tim for the first in a two-part series that starts with a comprehensive look at the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area and has been described by the New York Times as “The Recall that Started Them All.”  But it was much more than just a recall. It’s the story of unsolved set of murders, product tampering, and a change in the way we think about product safety and how companies should respond in a crisis. In the end, it's about rebuilding trust.

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It started on Sept. 29, 1982. Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl who lived in a suburb of Chicago called Elk Grove Village told her mom and dad she had a sore throat and runny nose. She took one extra-strength Tylenol capsule. What no one knew then was her medicine was laced with potassium cyanide poison. Mary died that morning.

Later that day, a 27-year old mail man named Adam Janus of Arlington Heights, Illinois, died from what was at first believed to be a heart attack, but soon later, the cause would be discovered to be cyanide poisoning.

Adam’s brother Stanley and Stanley’s wife Theresa came over to grieve with family that day. Given the stress of the situation, both Tylenol Extra Strength capsules from the same bottle Adam had used earlier that day. Stanley died the same day and Theresa died two days later. Three members of the same family dead.

In the end, seven people had died over a period of just a few days, and all of them had taken Tylenol Extra Strength. All were in the Chicago area.
Meanwhile at the Company....
The first call came in to Johnson & Johnson the next morning. It was from a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times. He needed information about McNeil Consumer Products’ history and current sales. Johnson & Johnson owned 150 companies and one of them was McNeil Consumer Products, the maker of Tylenol.

When a PR manager checked for the info by calling down to McNeil, he learned that some people were poisoned with Tylenol capsules. By then, that Sun Times Reporter was back on the line. He told the company that the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office reported three people died in Chicago after being poisoned by Tylenol capsules. He wanted a comment now.

Inside of J&J word traveled fast. Johnson & Johnson’s Chairman James Burke was brought up to speed quickly and he assigned McNeil’s chief David Collins to handle the immediate crisis response.

Things unfolded quickly.

The phones were ringing like crazy at both McNeil and Johnson & Johnson.

The company realized it needed the media to accurate information to the public as quickly as possible and prevent a panic. And it needed the media as a source of information itself.

In those first hours, the company fielded calls from everywhere, learned of false reports of other poisonings, and spent large amounts of time and resources checking and verifying facts and rumors.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
Collins and the management team did not believe the poisonings did not occur at their plant. Based on what they knew of their own processes, if someone had dumped a dose of cyanide so small it could not be detected into a drug mixing machine, the poison would have been so diluted to the point of being almost harmless. In addition, there would have been contaminated pills all over the country. Instead, the poisonings were traced only to Chicago.

When on Friday morning the company learned that a sixth victim had been poisoned with Tylenol capsules from a lot manufactured in Round Rock, Texas, this proved that the tampering had to have taken place locally in Chicago and not in the manufacturing process, because poisoning at both plants would have been almost impossible.

In the first 48 hours, James Burke, the chairman of all 150 companies decided to captain the crisis team and took personal charge.