In the summer of 1987, as Chicago was coming up on the fifth anniversary of the Tylenol murders, I interviewed Lewis at the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut.
It was the breadboard story that led me to believe James Lewis was most likely the Tylenol Killer.
In the summer of 1987, as Chicago was coming up on the fifth anniversary of the Tylenol murders, I interviewed Lewis at the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut, curious as to what he might want to say, which turned out to be a lot and nothing.
But I felt a physical chill when, in the tone of a man who thinks he’s clever, Lewis offered to explain to me how any mope — though certainly not himself — could have safely and efficiently filled Tylenol capsules with deadly cyanide. Opinion
It was simply a matter of drilling holes in a breadboard, Lewis explained, and inserting half a Tylenol capsule shell into each hole. Then, he said, the mope — certainly not him — would brush the powdered cyanide across the board with a table knife, letting it fall into the capsules.
But you didn’t do it, James?
“No,” he said. With a smile.
Now Lewis is dead, and with his death a near-dead police investigation into the Tylenol murders grows even deader, and were it not for the continued pain of the families of the victims — who still deserve answers to this day — you have to wonder how much it matters anymore.
Maybe Lewis was the Tylenol killer, as many investigators believe, or maybe Roger Arnold was the killer, as other investigators believe. Arnold was a sad sack who worked on a grocery store loading dock until investigators briefly held and questioned him as a possible suspect.
