Who Was The Tylenol Killer?

[akwilks]

NOTE: An edited, revised and improved version of this article can be seen here - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=63 .

WHO WAS THE TYLENOL KILLER?



By AK Wilks



On the morning of September 29, 1982, Mary Kellerman was suffering from a sore throat. The 12 year old took some Tylenol her mother had just purchased the other day. Within minutes she was dead, a victim of Cyanide poisoning. Over the next few days, six others would die in the Chicago area - three members of the Janus family, Adam, Stanley and Theresa; Mary McFarland, Paula Prince; and Mary Reiner. Seven murders, killed by a stranger they never knew. A near perfect crime, as there was no known motive, no crime scene, little evidence and no good suspects. A national crisis ensued, Johnson & Johnson issued a nationwide recall of Tylenol at a cost of $100 million, and hundreds of police detectives and FBI agents worked the case. But no one was ever arrested for these crimes, and 27 years later the case is still unsolved.



The Tylenol Murders of 1982 are the most horrific and baffling unsolved crimes in Chicago history, and one of the most puzzling unsolved murder cases in American history. Seven people died in the Chicago area, with three other seldom discussed but possibly related incidents that same year, Cyanide Tylenol deaths in Wyoming and Philadelphia, and a Strychnine Tylenol poisoning injury in California.



Lately the 27 year old unsolved cold case has been in the news again because of James Lewis. James Lewis was convicted of extortion for sending a letter to Johnson & Johnson stating the killings would stop if $1,000,000 was wired to a bank account. But the bank account was not his; it was the closed account of his wife's former employer. Lewis was angry at this employer for giving his wife a final paycheck that bounced, and he also accused the employer of being engaged in a massive fraud. Lewis states the Tylenol letter was designed to draw attention to the employer and get him in trouble. Instead, Lewis was charged with a federal felony. Lewis was convicted of extortion and served 13 years of a 20 year sentence.



Back in 1982, local and federal law enforcement authorities repeatedly made it clear that Mr. Lewis was not involved in putting the poisoned Tylenol on store shelves. James Murray, spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, stated that tests showed Cyanide eats through the plastic capsule shells within 14 days, and it had been 25 days since Mr. Lewis had been in the Chicago area. Hotel records and witnesses show Mr. Lewis and his wife at a hotel in New York during the relevant time period. A search of airline, bus, car rental and hotel records showed no evidence of Mr. Lewis returning to Chicago. And no fingerprint or other forensic evidence was found to link Mr. Lewis to the actual poisonings.


Another element that has not been mentioned in recent news coverage are the Cyanide - Tylenol Murders that occurred in 1986. At least four people died of Cyanide filled Tylenol or Anacin 3 capsules in the time period between February and May of 1986, another died of a Cyanide filled food product and one other person was sickened. The 1986 Tylenol Killer apparently defeated the new tamper resistant packaging, causing Tylenol to switch to tamper proof hard caplets. It seems possible if not likely that the Tylenol Killer of 1986 and 1982 are one and the same. But this would rule out Mr. Lewis, who was incarcerated in a federal prison in 1986 serving his sentence for extortion.


So the question today is the same as it was in 1982: Who was the Tylenol Killer?



A NEW SUSPECT



Information has developed concerning a possible new suspect in the Tylenol Murders. There are media reports about possible evidence connected to the Tylenol case, including partial fingerprints from the tampered bottles and new forensic evidence. If a match can be made between the suspected evidence left behind from the Tylenol Killer and this man, perhaps this case can finally be solved.



This suspect was later convicted of multiple murders, had a genius level IQ, sufficient knowledge of science, engineering and chemicals to create the cyanide filled tablets and defeat the tamper resistant packaging and when arrested had strychnine poison in his home. In addition, he had an intense hatred for the modern consumer system, despised large corporations and also expressed the desire to kill large numbers of random people to get his personal "revenge" on society. This suspect did do a little gold prospecting, and Cyanide is used for that purpose. This same suspect also had a family home in Lombard, Illinois that was within 20 minutes of all the known Chicago area tampering sites, at the exact epicenter in fact, and there is some evidence he was in the area at the time. The suspect is Theodore Kaczynski, the man later known as the "Unabomber".



Theodore Kaczynski grew up in suburban Illinois, in Evergreen Park, before his family moved to Lombard. It is stated he had a childhood IQ of 167; 140 and above is considered genius level, the top 0.5% of the US population. An IQ in the 167 area is beyond genius level - Albert Einstein is thought to have had an IQ in this range. Kaczynski grew up as a loner and shunned contact with children his age. Rather than participating in sports or dating, he was known to be a voracious reader in many subjects and to conduct science and chemistry experiments in his home. He started attending Harvard University at age 16. He was a participant in CIA sponsored psychological experiments while there, which may have had a profound effect on his mental health.



He later obtained a PHD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. While there he solved a complex math problem that had baffled his professors. As a student, he had work published in top mathematics journals, including his thesis on the boundary functions of circles. One fellow graduate student stated he thought Kaczynski would likely go on to win a Nobel Prize in math. But after two years teaching as a tenure track professor at the University of California Berkeley from 1967 to 1969, Kaczynski left the school and left the field of mathematics. He had made few if any friends and had almost no contact with women. He wrote in his journal that he suffered from "acute sexual starvation."



He spent most of the next two years traveling and looking for land, eventually buying property in Lincoln, Montana in 1971. For the first few years he would often spend winters and other short periods elsewhere, including living and working in the Chicago area in 1978 and 1979, but this cabin would be his primary residence for the next 25 years. From 1978 until his arrest in 1996, he killed at least three persons and injured at least 23 more in his actions as "The Unabomber". he became America's most wanted doemstic terrorist. The FBI had a $1,000,000 bounty on his head, hundreds of agents on the case, and a 25,000 name suspect list that did NOT have Theodore Kaczynski on it. David Kaczynski, Ted's brother, contacted the FBI after he and his wife were disturbed by similarities between the Unabomber Manifesto and Ted's own anti-technology writings.



The primary weapon Kaczynski used in his crusade against the twentieth century was the home made bomb, either mailed to victims or placed at locations, to be detonated by the random person who picked it up. Kaczynski also committed burglaries, arson and industrial sabotage. He is also suspected of shooting a miner with a high powered rifle and using Strychnine poison to kill a neighbor's dogs.



As mentioned above, this suspect had a family home within 20 minutes of all the known Chicago area tampering sites. In fact, if you were to draw a horizontal line from the tampering site at 1601 N. Wells St. in Chicago to the tampering site on N040 Winfield Road in Winfield, it would run right through the city of Lombard and the exact area where the suspect's family home on N. Ridge was in 1982. If you draw a vertical line through the tampering sites on N. Vail in Arlington Heights and the Grove Mall in Elk Grove Village and continue that line it again would literally go right through where the suspect's family home was in Lombard.



As strange as it may seem, it is an undisputable fact the Kaczynski family home on N. Ridge St. in Lombard is at the exact epicenter of the Tylenol tampering sites. While not conclusive proof of anything, it is consistent with a theory that if Kaczynski was the Tylenol Killer he was intentionally or unintentionally giving a clue as to his location. This is in fact something that Kaczynski did in his Unabomber crimes.



Acting as the Unabomber, Kaczynski committed bombings in Auburn, Washington and Salt Lake City, Utah. If you were to draw a horizontal line from Auburn extending east, it would go through Lincoln, Montana where the Kaczynski cabin was located. And if you were to draw a vertical line from Salt Lake City extending north, it would again go through Lincoln, Montana. Thus there is evidence to support a theory that Kaczynski, acting as both the Unabomber and the Tylenol Killer, selected targets that were geographically aligned with his home location. We can only guess at the psychology of WHY he would give clues like this - whether it was to mock the FBI, engage in an intellectual game by giving clues, make it more exciting by increasing the sense of personal risk involved and/or out of a conscious or even a subconscious desire to get caught.



There may be a more practical explanation as well. While he owned and used cars throughout the seventies, it is thought that Kaczynski did not own a car in 1982. Though he sometimes borrowed family cars or rented a car, he usually took the bus to commit his bombings and mailing of bombs. Salt Lake City, Utah is a direct stop on the major highway bus route south from Lincoln, Montana. And the Chicago area tampering sites are all on a circuit of major roads that are bus routes. Looking at a map with the Chicago area sites marked, it is consistent with a person staying in Lombard using a bus (or car) to make a quick and direct journey to all the tampering sites. See the map at: http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... ts%2C%20IL





It is well known that Kaczynski had a hatred for the modern technological system and all large corporations. Just based on this fact, along with the geographic data mentioned above, Kaczynski should certainly at least be considered a suspect in the Tylenol Murders. But in his famous Unabomber Manifesto, he also expressed a specific dislike for the manufacturers of drugs and pills. He felt that they played an essential role in sustaining the system he hated, as they numbed the pain of modern society to allow people to continue to function. He states:



Unabomber Manifesto Section 145. "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness."


In his Unabomber Manifesto, Section 190, he states that any kind of social conflict "helps to destabilize the system", and in Section 143 he states the best way to attack the system is not an armed uprising but striking at and through "technology and ECONOMICS (emphasis added), not politics." The Tylenol Murders, which resulted in Johnson & Johnson pulling all Tylenol products off the shelf, caused over $100 million in direct losses to one of the largest corporations in America, and a loss in stock value of over $1 billion. It was, in effect, an act of economic terrorism against the modern technological consumer system. It also terrorized the public and caused a lack of faith in modern manufacturing and packaging methods of consumer products. The Tylenol Murders had exactly the kinds of effects that Kaczynski sought and wrote about.


It should also be pointed out that while Kaczynski did have strong views about technology and these were part of his motive for committing the bombing murders he pled guilty to, in his secret coded journal he makes it clear that killing people gives him some kind of personal release from his anger (probably a sexual release) and that he desires revenge against all of society. Kaczynski wrote in the Fall of 1977:



"The technological society may be in some sense inevitable, but it is so only because of the way people behave. Consequently I hate people...Almost anyone who holds steady employment is contributing his part in maintaining the technological society...I emphasize that my motivation is personal revenge. I don't pretend to any kind of philosophical or moralistic justification."



Indeed, on November 15, 1979, Kaczynski put a bomb on United Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, DC. Had the bomb exploded properly, all on board would have died; as it only partially exploded into a minor fireball, the plane was able to make an emergency landing with passengers treated for smoke inhalation. And in October of 1981 Kaczynski placed a firebomb on the campus of the University of Utah. So while Kaczynski in most of his later crimes targeted specific individuals who worked or taught in fields like business or technology, in this time period of the late seventies and early eighties he was involved in actions that would have caused mass death to random citizens of all ages and all walks of life, just like the Tylenol Murders did. And the Unabomber, like the Tylenol Killer, wasn't present to watch his victims die - Kaczynski recorded in his journal his joy of reading the gory details of his bombings in the newspaper.



Though Kaczynski could have come and left the Chicago area without notice or detection by staying in a motel, there is some evidence he was in the area in the fall of 1982. While Kaczynski had a cabin in Montana that he was still developing, he lived and worked in the Chicago area in parts of 1978 and 1979. He did do bombings while he was there. His brother David also told the FBI he had a vague memory of Ted visiting in 1980 and perhaps at one or two later dates. And a neighbor named Roy Froberg told the Washington Post in an article printed on April 5, 1996 that Ted had last visited his family in Lombard "about 15 years ago", which would have been in or around 1981 or 1982.


Kaczynski made it clear in 1982 that he no longer wished to see his family - in fact he sent a note to his parents saying "I hope you both drop dead before Christmas." This note makes one wonder if his parents may have been a target of the poisonings, but were spared their lives when they threw out their Tylenol bottles along with the rest of the country. But it certainly does indicate that if he was in Chicago in 1982, as the neighbor seems to roughly recall and his brother indicates was possible, it was not for the purpose of a friendly family visit and was likely to be only for the purpose of criminal activities. But there were no Chicago area bombings in 1982. So what would Kaczynski been doing in the Chicago area in 1982?



THE CRIMINAL SIGNATURE OF THEODORE KACZYNSKI



"The MO is basically the way the predator commits the crime -- if he uses a gun rather than a knife or lures prospective victims by putting his arm in a fake sling. While the MO tells us something about how he did it, the signature gives us some insight into why. The signature is a ritual, something the subject does intentionally for emotional satisfaction -- something that isn't necessary to perpetuate the crime. Evidence of torture is a signature. Posing -- displaying the victims in a certain way -- is a signature. Signature is a way of linking cases. Like a real signature, it's a personal detail that's unique to the individual.



Sometimes there's a fine line between an MO and a signature.

I've found that signature is a more reliable guide to the behavior of serial offenders than an MO. That's because the MO evolves, while the emotional reasoning that triggers the signature doesn't. The method a killer uses to get women into his van may change, but the fact that he always tortures them once they're inside stays the same. One subject covered the faces of his victims. That was his signature. So you look for that in other cases in order to tie them together. A bomber used to spray black paint over the components inside his bombs. It wasn't necessary -- it didn't make the bombs any better. I don't know what it meant, but he did it anyway. He felt the need to do it."



Former FBI Special Agent and Serial Killer Profiler John Douglas



"In the Unabomber's case a large factor was his obsession with wood. Wood. Wood was everywhere. It haunted his mind, controlled his actions, wood was his goal and mode of attack. He selected as his enemies people who had wood - associated names, addresses, or businesses."



From "Unabomber: A Desire To Kill", By Robert Graysmith


Acting as the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski used a criminal signature utilizing nature themes such as water, ice, animals, hills, mountains and in particular TREES and WOOD. The NATURE, TREES and WOOD theme was a major focal point of the FBI investigation, as it was one of the few obvious clues Kaczynski left in his trail of bombings. Kaczynski of course lived not far from a stream in a wood cabin among the tree covered hills and mountains of Montana. The consistent references to Water, Trees, Wood and Mountains could have been a way to signal his belief in the primacy of nature over industrial technology, a taunting clue to his Montana location and/or a calling card link to claim credit for his crimes.



Kaczynski later targeted certain groups of people - business executives, professors in technological subjects, computer workers. But within these broad groups, he would usually select a specific person whose name, street or city had a tie to a Nature, Wood or Trees theme, or he would make the references in fake return addresses. It would take several pages to list in detail all of the examples of the Kaczynski Nature, Trees and Wood mania, so I will just mention the highlights.



Kaczynski as the Unabomber mailed bombs to targets in Salt LAKE City, LAKE FOREST Illinois and Ann ARBOR Michigan. He included a copy of the novel "The ICE Brothers" in a bomb package, the story of which concerns a boat on OCEAN patrol near GREENland. Targeted persons named Patrick FISCHER, James HILL, Percy WOOD and Leroy WOOD Bearson. All of his bombs had parts made of WOOD and/or were concealed in WOOD boxes. Enclosed items within his bomb packages such as parts, sticks or twigs from TREES of Maple WOOD, Red WOOD, Cherry WOOD and Douglas Fir WOOD. Selected victims that lived on streets like FOREST HILL or ASPEN (a type of poplar TREE and a town in Colorado associated with MOUNTAINS). Used return addresses of OAKland California, RAVENSWOOD Street and BERG or BURG three times which is German for MOUNTAIN. There are many other examples with NATURE, WOOD or TREE themes, but one more will make the point rather clearly - a return address of Frederick Benjamin Isaac WOOD, 549 WOOD Street, WOODLAKE California.



In this respect, keep in mind that a "grove" is a group of trees, a "field" can be of grass, plants or trees, "heights" are the high points of hills and mountains, "burg" is German for mountain, "Vail" is another town in Colorado associated with mountains, "Wells" bring forth water and "green" is a term for plants and the color associated with the environmental movement. In the Tylenol Murders, out of the thousands of retail outlets to pick from, the killer chose the Osco store in the WOODFIELD Mall in SchaumBURG, the Jewel store at the GROVE Mall in ELK GROVE Village, a store on WinFIELD Road in WinFIELD, a Jewel store in Arlington HEIGHTS on VAIL Street, a WalGREEN on WELLS Street in Chicago and the last discovered store on ButterFIELD Road in WHEATon.



At least one other location was either not discovered or not disclosed publicly, that being where victim Mary McFarland purchased her Tylenol, but we known that she lived in ELMhurst. People usually shop near where they live (or work), and if the Tylenol was purchased in ELMhurst, that would be yet another NATURE-TREES-WOOD choice made by the Tylenol Killer. The Jewel-Osco chain seems to have been a particular target of the murderer. And there are two Jewel stores in Elmhurst, one of which is at 153 E. Schiller St., on an exact horizontal line with the tampering site at 1601 N. Wells St. in Chicago to the East and the Kaczynski residence on N. Ridge in Lombard to the West. Ms. McFarland also worked for Bell Telephone at the Yorktown Center in Lombard, the same city as the Kaczynski family home. There is a Jewel store on 1177 S. Main St. in Lombard, within walking distance (just over a mile) from the Kaczynski family home on N. Ridge in Lombard.



So there is a very clear pattern of placing the tampered Tylenol at sites with Nature themes, in particular Water, Mountains, Wood and Trees, just as we know Kaczynski selected bombing targets with similar names. The MO of the crimes are partially different - bombs vs. poison. But the criminal signature of Water - Trees - Wood - Mountains is the same. And the MO of both was to cause random death while the killer was away from the scene, and both targeted corporations and the modern technological society.

We can also ask why was Tylenol, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, chosen? There are of course many makers of pain killers and headache relief pills. Keeping in mind that the FBI believed Kaczynski selected bombing victims in part because of their names, such as Percy WOOD and Leroy WOOD Bearson, the founders of the Johnson & Johnson company were Robert WOOD Johnson and James WOOD Johnson. Just as in the targeted locations mentioned above, when it comes to the corporate victims, the Tylenol Killer operated with the exact same criminal signature Theodore Kaczynski used as the Unabomber. While anything is possible, it seems highly unlikely that there were TWO very intelligent, technically skilled, anti-corporate, revenge driven killers from a distance who selected locations and victims with Water, Tree, Wood and Mountain themes operating in the Chicago-Lombard area in 1982 and with probable ties to Wyoming or Montana.



THE CYANIDE TYLENOL DEATH NEAR THE WYOMING/MONTANA BORDER



Why the probable ties to Wyoming or Montana? Because of the death of Jay Mitchell, age 19, of Sheridan, Wyoming, on July 26, 1982. The coroner reported he had the exact same level of Cyanide in his body as the Chicago area victims. Though he had no Tylenol in his body, it is known that the killer emptied all of the Tylenol product out of the poisoned capsules before he put in the cyanide. The victim's family states he did take Tylenol just before his death, and that it was probably purchased at the local Jewel-Osco outlet, which is located on I-90, right by the Wyoming - Montana border.



What is also interesting is that the highway bus route from the Kaczynski cabin in Lincoln, Montana to the Chicago area, I-90, happens to run right through Sheridan, Wyoming. In his journal Kaczynski mentioned not wanting to commit any major crimes in Montana because people might remember him riding the bus the day that a murder in the state happened. Kaczynski would note the results of his actual bombings to learn how to do it better. If he wanted to do a "test run" to see if the Cyanide filled Tylenol capsules actually worked, but wanted a victim outside the state of Montana, Sheridan Wyoming is the first town across the border on the way to Chicago on I-90. See map here: http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... go%2C%20IL




THE OTHER 1982 TYLENOL CYANIDE AND STRYCHNINE TAMPERING INJURIES AND DEATHS



We also have the possibly connected cases of the death of William Pascual of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Cyanide in Tylenol on April 3rd, 1982, and the sickening of Greg Blagg of Oroville, California by Strychnine in Tylenol on September 30th 1982. The two cities of Oroville and Philadelphia, on opposite ends of the country, line up horizontally on a map. They also roughly line up with the South Chicago area on a cross country highway bus route.



Authorities considered the Philadelphia case as a possible suicide based on a questionable line in a letter to his mother, but Mr. Pascual's wife insisted he was not suicidal, not even depressed, and that he had simply said he was going to take a Tylenol because he was not feeling well. When she went to check on him, he was dead on the floor. It was also never explained why, how or when Mr. Pascual put the Cyanide inside a Tylenol capsule before taking it, or why he left such tainted capsules in the bottle.



The California case was considered a possible copycat or hoax. But Mr. Blagg stated the Tylenol was purchased before the Chicago deaths, and he did not profit by being hospitalized for Strychnine poisoning. It was said he purchased the tainted bottle at an unspecified Long's Drug Store in Oroville, and tainted bottles were found on the shelf at at least one Long's in the area. Currently the only Long's store in Oroville is on Oroville DAM Road. (a "Dam" being made of TREE parts to stop WATER; also, like WELLS, a "Dam" is a structure associated with WATER).



The authorities also never explained why the Chicago area murders are on the same interstate highway route with Oroville and Philadelphia, consistent with one man travelling by bus or car to do all the crimes in all three cities. Also never explained was how and why a man in Sheridan, Wyoming was murdered on July 26, 1982 by the exact same amount of Cyanide placed in a Tylenol as the Chicago area victims. Based on the known facts, it seems likely most or all of these crimes were committed by the same person. See map here: http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... ia%2C%20PA



We also know that Kaczynski was in California that summer. He placed a bomb that caused injury on the campus of the University of California Berkeley on July 2nd 1982. There was also a woman named Jennifer Holloman in Modesto, California who was killed by a bomb placed on WOODland Street on September 19th 1982, an unsolved crime that has not been linked to Kaczynski but has some of his trademarks. The bomb placed in Berkeley in July was confirmed as Kaczynski.



Also, in April 1982 Kaczynski mailed from Provo, Utah a bomb to Professor Patrick Fischer at Penn State University in State College Pennsylvania. Fischer had moved to Vanderbilt University in TN so the package was rerouted there. What is interesting is that there is evidence Kaczynski was in Chicago, near the sparsely populated Montana/Wyoming border and in Northern California - three locations of proven or suspected Tylenol tampering - in the Spring through Fall of 1982. How many other persons would fit that description? How many other known killers would fit that description? What is also interesting is that Kaczynski as the Unabomber had targeted the Chicago area from 1978 to 1980; in 1982 Kaczynski as the Unabomber targeted California and Pennsylvania, and in 1982 the Tylenol Killer also seems to have targeted Chicago, California and Pennsylvania.



OTHER POSSIBLE EVIDENCE





There was a very grainy photo printed in Chicago and New York newspapers of a bearded man who was perhaps watching Paula Prince purchase tainted Tylenol in 1982. This bearded man may have no connection to the case, or he may have been the Tylenol Killer watching to see the person who purchased his poisoned capsules. The man in the photo was first compared to the bearded James Lewis, and they do share some characteristics, but they did not appear to be the same person. The man in the photo does have some interesting similarities with the bearded Theodore Kaczynski. (Unfortunately, Lewis and Kaczynski do look somewhat like each other).



We must remember that Kaczynski used disguises when he purchased bomb parts. In one instance he records in his journal he wore several shirts to make himself look heavier, stuffed the shirt for the same reason, put cotton balls in his cheeks, wax in his nostrils to make them larger, gum under his lips and cut and dyed his hair and beard. The man looks very much like a moderately disguised Kaczynski, if Kaczynski also cut his hair. Perhaps a better version of the photo can be obtained, or other photos examined to see if Kaczynski is in any of them. A video of the man can be seen at about 50 seconds into the clip here: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/1 ... index.html

A photo of the man and photographs of Kaczynski are below. The only major difference is the man in the photo has a more receding hairline, which Kaczynski could easily have implemented as a disguise action, in effect making himself look older. There are many similarities between the two: Bearded white men of the same approximate age, same basic facial structure, eyes, nose, flat hair on the sides, bigger hair on top, beard, even the gray spot at the bottom of the beard matches.

Photo of Tylenol Suspect: http://profile.imageshack.us/user/akwil ... spect1.jpg

Photo of Kaczynski: http://profile.imageshack.us/user/akwil ... iphoto.jpg



THE 1986 CYANIDE AND TYLENOL DEATHS



In the three years after the 1982 Tylenol Murders, there were numerous tampering incidents and injuries. All of these were thought to be copycats, hoaxes or isolated acts. None were thought to be the work of the Tylenol Killer, and none were grouped together in time or region. That changed in 1986.



In 1986 from February to September, five people died of Cyanide poisoning and one other man was sickened. Of the six incidents, four involved Tylenol, one involved Anacin 3 and one involved Lipton Cup A Soup. Yet the FBI and FDA tended to downplay reports the incidents were linked, and local authorities eventually gave questionable cause of death rulings in many of the cases. In chronological order, the incidents were as followed:



* On February 4 1986 in Tyler, Texas - Bill Case, a 41 year old medical lab technician, took Tylenol, went into convulsions and was hospitalized. The Tylenol was tainted with an unknown substance and the incident was basically ignored.



* On February 8 1986 in Bronxville (Yonkers), New York - Diane Elsroth, 23, a secretary and daughter of a NY State Policeman, dies of Cyanide in Tylenol. Death is ruled to be a clear homicide, but is never solved. Nationwide press coverage sparks fears of a new series of Tylenol Murders. The killer was apparently able to defeat the new three layers of tamper resistant packaging. Poisoned bottles were purchased at the A & P grocery store on CEDAR Street in Bronxville, and another poisoned bottle was found at the nearby Woolworth store on PONDFIELD Road in Bronxville. A CEDAR is a type of TREE and a common WOOD, a POND is a small body of WATER and a FIELD can be of GRASS, PLANTS or TREES. Just like Kaczynski throughout his career as the Unabomber, and just like the Tylenol Killer of 1982, locations are selected that reference themes of Nature, here in particular Wood, Trees, Water and Fields. In fact, three of the Chicago area sites have the word "Field" in their street or city names, and others refer to Trees, Wood or Water.



* On February 23-25 1986 in Nashville, Tennessee - Timothy Green, 32, dies of Cyanide in Tylenol. An intact Tylenol capsule filled with Cyanide is found in a bottle under the bed. Homicide is suspected. There is no suicide note, history of suicidal statements or depression. But the case is ruled a probable suicide, calming fears of another nationwide Cyanide Tylenol murder spree. Mr. Green was an evangelist and part time jewelry salesman. It is stated he had purchased Cyanide shortly before his death, and this is the sole evidence of suicide offered. But Cyanide is used to clean jewelry, which is what Mr. Green stated to the salesman was his intended use of the purchase.



* On April 29 1986 in Pullman, Washington - Sandie Gregory, 21, a technician in the animal lab at Washington State University, dies of Cyanide in Tylenol. There is no suicide note or history of suicidal statements. Yet police say she was "depressed" and probably killed herself, stating she had access to Cyanide at the lab were she worked. It is also stated that empty capsule shells with traces of Cyanide are found in her apartment. This could be consistent with suicide, though no reason is given why she would place Cyanide in Tylenol before taking it. The shells could also be consistent with the lab tech investigating other capsules after becoming ill, or a killer creating and placing the tainted capsules in her apartment.



* On May 22 1986 in Austin, Texas - Kenneth Faries, 24, a University of Texas chemistry student and lab worker, dies of Cyanide in an Anacin 3 capsule. A Cyanide filled capsule is still in the bottle. The capsules were purchased at a WalGREENS, a store that was also targeted in the 1982 Tylenol Murders, though the exact location is not disclosed. (The only Walgreens in Austin now is on East RIVERside Street). The first ruling is that Mr. Faries was murdered. On June 1, 1986 the Travis County Medical Examiner Dr. Bayardo stated "There is nothing, nothing at all that indicates to me that this is a suicide." Investigation revealed that the Cyanide did not match any that Mr. Faries could have had access to on campus, and there was no suicide note, history of depression or suicidal statements. But on June 18, 1986, it was stated that the Cyanide did match some found on campus, and Dr. Bayardo declared the case a probable suicide. No reason is given as to how or why Mr. Faries placed Cyanide in an Anacin 3 capsule he left in the bottle. For the third time in a row, what is at first thought to be an apparent Cyanide tampering murder is declared a suicide, and a natiowide scare is largely averted.



* On June 6 1986 in Auburn, Washington - Bruce Nickell, 52, dies after taking a Cyanide laced Excedrin capsule.



* On June 11 1986 in Auburn, Washington - Sue Snow Webking, 40, dies after taking a Cyanide laced Excedrin capsule. Stella Nickell, the wife of Bruce, is convicted of the tampering deaths of her husband and Ms. Snow Webking. The motive is said to be insurance money, with the death of the woman designed to make it look like part of a random attack. The evidence used to convict Mrs. Nickell, while all circumstantial, seems fairly strong, and these two probable copycat murders are NOT considered part of the series this article examines. But Mrs. Nickell, currently serving a long prison sentence, still maintains her innocence, several prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony, some of the evidence used against her has since been challenged and it is worth noting that unidentified finger prints, not matching Mrs. Nickell or any other known person, were said to be found on the tainted bottle purchased by Ms. Snow Webking.


* On September 1 1986 in Runnemede, New Jersey - Louis Denber, a 27 year old electronics technician for the RCA corporation, sits down with his wife and mother to eat. His wife pours hot water into his Lipton Cup A Soup bowl. He takes a swallow, and states "This doesn't taste right. This really doesn't taste right." He gets up from the table, throws out the soup and says "I don't feel well". He falls on the floor and goes in to convulsions. He is declared dead of Cyanide poisoning a few hours later at the hospital. His death is ruled a homicide, and is never solved. The soup was apparently purchased from a store on Clements BRIDGE Road. Like WELLS Road (Chicago 1982), Oroville DAM Road (Oroville 1982) and PONDfield (Bronxville 1986), a BRIDGE is associated with WATER.



Austin, Tyler, Nashville, Runnemede and Bronxville are all roughly aligned on the interstate highway system, going in a Northeastern direction from Austin to Bronxville. This is consistent with a theory that one person travelling by bus or car did the crimes. And Tyler, Nashville and Bronxville are actually perfectly aligned on the map - you can draw a straight line and go through all three. The I-90 Highway route from Pullman, Washington to Austin, Texas goes right through the Deer Lodge - Helena Montana area, just one hour from the Kaczynski cabin in Lincoln, and it was at a Helena hotel Kaczynski would usually stay on his way to, or coming back from, his criminal acts. In the Elsroth case, the CEDAR Street and PONDFIELD Road locations of stores with tainted bottles clearly matches the criminal signature of both Kaczynski and the 1982 Tylenol Killer. See map here: http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... le%2C%20NY





Let us review the other known facts in the 1986 deaths. There were six poisoning victims and five people who died of Cyanide filled products between February and September of 1986, four along the same Austin, TX to Bronxville (Yonkers), NY highway corridor. The authorities say these six incidents of Cyanide inside painkillers or food were unrelated - two homicides, three probable (but based on the evidence questionable) suicides, and one unknown. So six random people out of America. But look at the last names of the victims:

Case
Denber
Elsroth
Faries
Green
Gregory

Of the six victims, four were technicians, three worked in a laboratory, and two worked for universities - all groups targeted by Kaczynski. If you put the names of every American in a hat, and drew out six names, how many technicians would you expect to get? How many lab workers? University lab workers? What would the odds be that all six names would fall from "C" to "G" in the alphabet? We don't know the answers to these question, but they are interesting enough to cause one to wonder if the some of the tamperings were done by placing bottles on store shelves (as clearly happened in the Elsroth case), but other persons were targeted by tamperings done in their homes. In 1986, of course, Jim Lewis was inside a federal prison, so he could not have been responsible for these deaths.



True crime researcher and writer Doug Oswell discovered one very interesting piece of evidence collected from Kaczynski's cabin that might pertain to these 1986 deaths. Found in Kaczynski's cabin (and included in the prosecutorial documents in U.S. v. Kaczynski) was a single loose-leaf notebook page containing the redacted names of persons living in the Austin and Houston areas, along with a map pinpointing the addresses associated with the Houston names. Yet Kaczynski never did any bombings in Texas. It would be interesting to see if any of those names are Case or Faries, or the names of other businessmen, scientists or lab workers who might have died young of a "heart attack", "stroke" or "suicide", all common misdiagnoses for Cyanide deaths.

But the somewhat debatable suicide verdicts largely defuse another nationwide panic. Johnson & Johnson acted responsibly and ends capsule production, shifting to tamper proof hard caplets. But it may be the case that federal and local law enforcement do not want the pressure of more unsolved cases on their hands, and the suicide verdicts make everyone happy, except of course the families, who are left only with doubt. James Lewis can be ruled out as a suspect in the 1986 crimes because he was in federal prison in 1986. Yet there are strong reasons to think the 1982 and 1986 murders were done by the same person. And once again, significant signature, direct, circumstantial and geographic evidence points to Theodore Kaczynski as a viable suspect.



CODED MESSAGES ABOUT THE TYLENOL MURDERS?



It is true that Kaczynski does not mention the Tylenol incidents in his journals which proudly record his deadly bombings in detail. He does mention that certain incidents will not be recorded in his journal, but rather accounts of them have been buried or burned, because they would be "dangerous", "embarrassing" and/or "very bad public relations". Considering that 12 year old Mary Kellerman was the first Tylenol victim, and the random killings of ordinary citizens provoked mass outrage, these may have been acts that Kaczynski at some point in time realized he did not want to be directly associated with, as he built his reputation as a political terrorist and anti-technology activist with his later, more targeted attacks.



There are however two cryptic messages, and though both may be simple coincidences, as Kaczynski was both a known expert code maker, leaver of clues and game player, I will mention them.



Remembering that Kaczynski loved seeing his words in the newspaper and leaving taunting clues, consider that "CYANIDE TYLENOL" when spelled backwards creates, exactly, "LONELY TED IN A YC". Of course this could be a complete coincidence, but the killer did select both Cyanide and Tylenol, and those two words appeared on front pages across the country. Kaczynski often complained of being lonely and unloved. "IN A YC" could mean a Yellow Cab, a yellow car or the Yorktown Center (where victim Mary McFarland worked). The five letters that make up "IN A YC" all also appear in the name KACZYNSKI; in fact the only letters missing are KZSK. Giving us "LONELY TED _AC_YN__I". Again, perhaps nothing more than a strange coincidence, but it does catch the eye.



The second is potentially much more interesting. Kaczynski states in his journal that certain entries contain what he calls "hints" of crimes but not actual "accounts" of them. He had both a mania for secrecy and a mania to record events. Parts of his thousands of pages of journal entries were recorded in Spanish, parts in an elaborate numerical code that was so personal to him that the FBI admitted they probably would never have been able to decode were it not for the code key found in his cabin. There may have been other codes, systems or words hidden in the journals that have yet to be detected. His neighbor and sometime friend Chris Waits states that:



"Ted explained in his journals that the reason he kept such meticulous notes was to prove that his acts were planned and were not random acts committed by a crazy person, or as he labeled it, a 'sickie'. Yet he was writing his own detailed expose about a secret world that he also tried so diligently to conceal. There was a conflict raging inside his mind, pitting Ted the master criminal, who was making every effort to deceive, and Ted the scientist and historian, who wanted to archive his work so that at some point the world could marvel at his ingenuity and see him as a jungle fighter in a war against the modern world." Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski, p. 240.



We know that on July 26, 1982, Jay Mitchell of Sheridan, Wyoming died from Cyanide placed in Tylenol. From the journal of Theodore Kaczynski, as recorded in the book Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski, p. 281, Kaczynski states he is camping out by the McClellan stream near his Lincoln, Montana cabin, not far from Helena, Montana, and records the following incident:

July 25, 1982



Since the weather appeared to be good when I was going to bed, I did not unwrap my coat cloth. It rained during the night; I had to get up, make fire, and unwrap my cloth; and I was wet nevertheless.





The journal entry is dated July 25, so that likely means he wrote it that day, ostensibly describing the events of the night of the 24th and early morning of the 25th. There is a website, called the Old Farmer's Almanac, that gives the recorded temperature and weather conditions for any location, any day, any year. It is at: http://www.almanac.com/weatherhistory/o ... type=place





The site gives this data for the nearby Helena Montana Regional Airport:



July 24, 1982

Low Temp 55 High Temp 88 Precipitation: 0.00 Inches



July 25, 1982

Low Temp 55 High Temp 87 Precipitation: 0.00 Inches







0.00 inches of rain for both key days. (The next day, July 26, had the same temps and a miniscule 0.03 inches, or 3/100 of an inch, of rain). High temps of a very hot 88 and a low of just a mild 55. Yet Kaczynski says it "rained" during the night, he got "wet" and it was so wet and cold he had to "make fire". He is apparently describing events that never happened. Why would he do that? And it is out of the words used to describe these fake events, with some odd and contrived language, that we get words related to the crime that happened the next day. Let us look again at the seemingly trivial yet apparently fake entry, and then with certain letters highlighted.



July 25, 1982



Since the weather appeared to be good when I was going to bed, I did not unwrap my coat cloth. It rained during the night; I had to get up, make fire, and unwrap my cloth; and I was wet nevertheless.



Since the weatHER AppeareD to be good wheN I SHERADNI = SHERIDAN



was going to bed, I did not unWrap MY cOat cloth. It rained durING the night; WMYOING = WYOMING



unwrAp mY Coat cloth. It raINED during the night; AYCINED = CYANIDE



I had to get up, make fire, and unwrap mY cLOTh; and I was wet NEvertheLess. YLOTNEL = TYLENOL





SHERADNI SHERIDAN

WMYOING WYOMING

AYCINED CYANIDE

YLOTNEL TYLENOL





"Sheridan, Wyoming, Cyanide, Tylenol." The first Cyanide Tylenol death was in Sheridan, Wyoming on July 26, 1982. In Kaczynski's journal for July 25, 1982 in a mere two sentence entry we can get "Sheridan, Wyoming, Cyanide, Tylenol." The entry describes a night of rain that got him wet and temperatures so cold he had to make a fire. But the weather for the Lincoln-Helena, Montana area that day was 0.00 precipitation, a high of 88 and a low of 55. Thus the entry appears to be fake, raising the question why would Kaczynski write a fake journal entry describing events that never happened? The most logical answer is that the discovered words are not a coincidence, but are likely intentional coded entries.



Keep in mind that Kaczynski constructed elaborate codes to disguise some of his writings. His brother David said Ted, an expert Scrabble player, loved to create "puns" and play "word games". In one documented instance Kaczynski hid all the letters of his first and last name, backwards, in the notes of a musical composition he wrote and gave to a friend.





Interestingly enough, there was 0.16 inches of rain recorded in Sheridan, Wyoming on July 25, 1982. Since Sheridan, Wyoming is only 8 hours away from Lincoln, if Kaczynski was camping out near Sheridan, he may have thought Lincoln would likely be getting the same weather (0.16 inches of rain). So perhaps he created this entry that had the coded words, thinking it would not stand out as being fake. Then again, it is possible it is jusy a coincidence, though if so it is a very odd one.



ANOTHER MURDER

One other item. We know that Kaczynski sent a bomb to Thomas Mosser, an executive at the public relations firm Burson-Marstellar, which killed Mr. Mosser on December 10, 1994. "MOSS", of course, grows on TREES, which is thought to be why this man was selected. But why that firm? Kaczynski later briefly mentioned the work of that firm on the Exxon Valdez incident, though it was said that they did not play a significant role in the PR for that incident. But look what major corporate crisis they did work on - from wikipedia:



"Burson-Marsteller’s strong position in crisis management has resulted in its identification with many major corporate crises of the past half century. It is well known for assisting Johnson & Johnson in the two Tylenol crises in 1982 and 1986."


Thus it appears that Kaczynski later targeted and murdered a man who worked for the firm that handled public relations for Johnson & Johnson during both Tylenol tragedies.

A SPECIFIC MOTIVE?

We have already seen that Kaczynski had general motives of a rage against people, a desire to damage the modern technological system and a targeted hatred for drug companies. But why would he have decided to use Cyanide in 1982? Could there have been a specific motive, arising out of a grudge? Cyanide is used in gold and silver mining, something that Kaczynski himself, as well as some of his neighbors, engaged in. There are also many industrial mining operations that use mass quantities of Cyanide. THERE WERE SEVERAL MAJOR SPILLS AND LEAKAGES OF CYANIDE IN MONTANA IN 1982. These actions would be deplored by most citizens of Montana, but they would have ENRAGED Kaczynski, who would regard it as a personal assault on him and the area he loved. He might very well have been inspired to turn Cyanide, the agent of death to his beloved nature, against the very system he hated. This is the record of problems by the Pegasus Company at the Zortman/Landusky Mine in Montana:

1982

Zortman/Landusky Ruptured pipe caused 1,200 gallons of cyanide to be spilled.
Zortman/Landusky 50,000 gallons spilled into Alder Gulch contaminating Zortman's community water supply. Pegasus was required to replace the drinking water source. The State issued a $15,000 fine against the company.
Zortman/Landusky 75 gallons of cyanide solution spilled.
Zortman/Landusky 300 gallons of cyanide solution was spilled when the top of a leach pad froze and cyanide flowed over the top onto the ground.
Zortman/Landusky 4 pounds of cyanide spilled, contaminating groundwater.
Zortman/Landusky 780 gallon leak in the gold recovery system. Soil contamination resulted.
Zortman/Landusky Bighorn sheep found dead at cyanide ponds.

These spills and leaks killed TREES and ANIMALS and affected FIELDS and groundWATER. There was specific concern about the Cyanide getting into WELL WATER. CROPS and LIVESTOCK were affected. A local Indian tribe complained that a sacred site, Spirit MOUNTAIN, was damaged. The damage also affected an area known as the Little Rocky MOUNTAINS. The tampering sites in 1982 included WOODFIELD, the GROVE Mall in ELK Grove Village, WELLS Street, WinFIELD, BUTTERFIELD in WHEATon, VAIL Ave., Arlington HEIGHTS, possibly ELMhurst, etc. WELLS draw WATER from the ground, BUTTER comes from Cows (LIVESTOCK), WHEAT is a CROP, VAIL is a town in Colorado associated with the Rocky MOUNTAINS, HEIGHTS are the high points of MOUNTAINS, a GROVE is a group of TREES, ELK are a common Montana animal species. The other matches are self explanatory. Several of the selected stores were JEWEL stores - and the primary use (85%) of mined gold is for JEWELRY, and it is mass quantities of CYANIDE that was spilled or leaked to cause the damage, and it was CYANIDE used as a weapon by the Tylenol Killer.

It appears that the Tylenol Killer, by virtue of the poison used and the sites selected, was conveying not just a idea of the primacy of nature over the industrial consumer system, but a specific message about the massive recent Cyanide damage done to nature in Montana. Looking at the fact that it is Lombard IL that is the only site on both the vertical and horizontal lines of tampering sites, this would create a potential geographic profile of the Tylenol Killer being a person who was a resident of Montana, who traveled through the Sheridan WY area, and had lived in or had ties to Lombard IL. The profiles mentioned over the years also generally mention a loner, intelligent, some technical skill, filled with hatred for the world and a desire for revenge. Not only does Theodore Kaczynski fit all the geographic, skill and psychological elements of these profiles, it is difficult to imagine that there is anyone else who would.

There were more problems in 1985 and 1986:

1983
Z/L Mine A leak in the pond liner was discovered after cyanide contamination was identified in the nearest monitoring well.

1985
Z/L MineStorm event caused mining company to land apply process water on 17 acres of land. Tree kills resulted.
Golden Sunlight Mine 19 million gallons of cyanide solution leaked when a tailings impoundment failed. Resulting groundwater contamination affected the Jefferson River alluvium. Four domestic wells and a well at the veterinary clinic were contaminated. Placer Dome was sued by neighboring landowners. The company eventually bought out the landowners.

1986
Z/L Mine A storm caused Pegasus to spray 20 million gallons of process water on a hillside, resulting in tree kills. This event involved a nearly catastrophic failure of the pond system.
Golden Sunlight Mine A pipe fitting split and discharged approximately 2,000 gallons of cyanide solution.

So we have damage to a HILL side FIELD, TREE kills and twice damage to a POND system. In 1986 the Bronxville (Yonkers) Cyanide Tylenol tampering sites were at CEDAR Street and PONDFIELD Road.

See website here, scroll to bottom: http://www.nocyanide.org/faq.htm


A ZODIAC KILLER CONNECTION?

There is at least one other major unsolved criminal case where Theodore Kaczynski has been mentioned as a suspect, and that is the case of the Zodiac Killer. The Zodiac Killer killed at least 5 persons in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1968 to 1969, matching the exact time period that Kaczynski lived in the area, mostly as a Professor at the university of California Berkeley. The Zodiac Killer took credit for 37 murders, and was suspected by police and/or journalists of up to 49 murders from 1966 until 1974. Kacsynski appears to have visited and interviewed at U CAL Berkeley (and possibly other schools) in the Fall/Winter of 1966, when the first possible Zodiac murder, of Riverside College student Cheri Jo Bates, took place. So it seems the Zodiac murders happened when Kaczynski visited or lived in the SF Bay area, and stopped when he left. Both killers were interested in codes and bombs, both wrote letters to the paper demanding they be published on penalty of death for innocent citizens if they were not, both threatened to bomb mass transit, both made references to opera, both drew symbols of crossed lines inside a circle at crime scenes, etc. Kaczynski looks very much like the Zodiac sketch, and the similarities in handwriting and word usage are uncanny.

Comparisons of Writing Style of Kaczynski and Zodiac: http://www.unazod.com/style.html

Other Info on Kaczynski/Zodiac Connection: http://www.unazod.com/essay.html


Interestingly, the Zodiac Killer said in one of his later letter letters that his future killing would be disguised as "routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc,", which fits the Tylenol Murders. At first, many of the 1982 and 1986 Tylenol and Cyanide deaths were thought to be of natural causes, accidental overdoses, suicides or killings by family members. Zodiac was also suspected by some of killing a woman in Sonoma County, California named Caroline Davis by Strychnine poison, and in perhaps the first ever case of product tampering, the sickening of a Martinez, California man named Daniel Williams of BUSH Street who drank Arsenic put into a Seven Up soda pop bottle.

Zodiac "Killings of Anger + A Few Fake Accidents" Letter: http://img4.imageshack.us/my.php?image= ... neverc.jpg


CONCLUSION


The Tylenol Murders are the most brutal and baffling unsolved crime in Chicago history, and one of the most puzzling and frustrating unsolved murder sprees in American history. They have resisted all efforts at a solution. And despite the recent flurry of renewed interest in James Lewis, there has never been any evidence to link him to the actual murders, and a lot of evidence to suggest that he did not and could not have done the murders. And we have the enigma of the 1986 Cyanide and Tylenol Deaths, which Lewis could not have done, as he was incarcerated in federal prison at the time.



There is a great deal of signature, direct, circumstantial, geographic, operational and psychological evidence that suggests that Theodore Kaczynski may have been the Tylenol Killer. Depending on the available physical evidence in the case, including hotel records, travel records, photographs, finger prints on tampered bottles and new forensic evidence, if the police and/or FBI follow up on the evidence and leads generated in this story, it may yet be possible to bring justice, or at the very least some sense of closure, to the victims and families affected by this case.



Copyright 2009 By AK Wilks
Pursuant to the "Fair Use" provisions of the Copyright Laws, this article may be freely quoted from, recopied, reposted and/or republished, in part or in whole, without notice or payment, for news reporting, comment, research, criticism, debate and all other Non-Commercial uses, so long as proper credit is given.

[akwilks]

I welcome any comments, questions or criticisms.

Included below are side by side comparisons of Ted Kaczynski and the Zodiac, and Ted Kaczynski and the bearded man observing Paula Prince buy tainted Tylenol. This bearded man was considered a suspect by the FBI and has never been identified.

[akwilks]

A SPECIFIC MOTIVE?

We have already seen that Kaczynski had general motives of a rage against people, a desire to damage the modern technological system and a targeted hatred for drug companies. But why would he have decided to use Cyanide in 1982? Could there have been a specific motive, arising out of a grudge? Cyanide is used in gold and silver mining, something that Kaczynski himself, as well as some of his neighbors, engaged in. There are also many industrial mining operations that use mass quantities of Cyanide. THERE WERE SEVERAL MAJOR SPILLS AND LEAKAGES OF CYANIDE IN MONTANA IN 1982. These actions would be deplored by most citizens of Montana, but they would have ENRAGED Kaczynski, who would regard it as a personal assault on him and the area he loved. He might very well have been inspired to turn Cyanide, the agent of death to his beloved nature, against the very system he hated. This is the record of problems by the Pegasus Company at the Zortman/Landusky Mine in Montana:

1982

Zortman/Landusky Ruptured pipe caused 1,200 gallons of cyanide to be spilled.
Zortman/Landusky 50,000 gallons spilled into Alder Gulch contaminating Zortman's community water supply. Pegasus was required to replace the drinking water source. The State issued a $15,000 fine against the company.
Zortman/Landusky 75 gallons of cyanide solution spilled.
Zortman/Landusky 300 gallons of cyanide solution was spilled when the top of a leach pad froze and cyanide flowed over the top onto the ground.
Zortman/Landusky 4 pounds of cyanide spilled, contaminating groundwater.
Zortman/Landusky 780 gallon leak in the gold recovery system. Soil contamination resulted.
Zortman/Landusky Bighorn sheep found dead at cyanide ponds.

These spills and leaks killed TREES and ANIMALS and affected FIELDS and groundWATER. The tampering sites in 1982 included WOODFIELD, the GROVE Mall in ELK Grove Village, WELLS Street, WinFIELD, ButterFIELD in WHEATon, possibly ELMhurst, etc. WELLS draw WATER from the ground. The other matches are self explanatory.

There were more problems in 1985 and 1986:

1983
Z/L Mine A leak in the pond liner was discovered after cyanide contamination was identified in the nearest monitoring well.

1985
Z/L MineStorm event caused mining company to land apply process water on 17 acres of land. Tree kills resulted.
Golden Sunlight Mine 19 million gallons of cyanide solution leaked when a tailings impoundment failed. Resulting groundwater contamination affected the Jefferson River alluvium. Four domestic wells and a well at the veterinary clinic were contaminated. Placer Dome was sued by neighboring landowners. The company eventually bought out the landowners.

1986
Z/L Mine A storm caused Pegasus to spray 20 million gallons of process water on a hillside, resulting in tree kills. This event involved a nearly catastrophic failure of the pond system.
Golden Sunlight Mine A pipe fitting split and discharged approximately 2,000 gallons of cyanide solution.

So we have damage to a HILL side FIELD, TREE kills and twice , in 1983 and 1986, damage to a POND system. In 1986 the Bronxville (Yonkers) Cyanide Tylenol tampering sites were at CEDAR Street and PONDFIELD Road.

See website here, scroll to bottom: http://www.nocyanide.org/faq.htm

[Doug]

Good observations, all. Kaczynski hated mining at least as much as he hated logging, and what better way to get back at the system than to hoist it on its own petard by using cyanide as an agency of destruction?

[linda]

Great job on your essay, AK! One question - Where was headquarters for the Pegasus Company?

I know when Doug had proposed the idea that Kaczynski should be looked at as the Tylenol Killer, I had thought maybe TK was angered with Johnson & Johnson themselves - I seem to remember reading somewhere that he would take some type of headache medication for the headaches he would get... I thought that maybe they didn't work as well as they were advertised (weren't they extra-strength?) and it made him so angry he wanted to get even with J & J for putting out such an inferior product by trying to destroy their reputation...and doing it through tampering with the pills with cyanide certainly would (and did) create major country-wide trauma and potentially could have destroyed J & J...

[AweShucks]

Nice work AK! Definitely a good read and a lot of possibilities to look into. The most intriguing thing about TJK is with all the possible crimes he may have committed one can't include or exclude him in any involvement. Just what he wanted. His trail is very faint and his movements near impossible to track. Finding just one small piece of the puzzle could open the flood gates. Your work and others is truly a step in the right direction hopefully someone finds the missing piece somewhere.

[Drew]

Very nice work, AK. I never knew about a tampering location on Butterfield Road in Wheaton -- that's incredible. Was this in the Chicago area as well? One other thing about Ted is that his Chicago driver's license expired in 1982 -- I think it expired on or around July 25th of that year. So that may have been another reason for him to choose tampering locations on a bus route if his car options were few and far between. Also with a car, there's always a chance someone could remember a license plate and trace it back to the owner/renter. I'm leaning towards the surveillance photo not being Ted, but he would also be smart enough to realize that this particular criminal act (if he were responsible) would require his greatest disguise since he would be appearing in multiple stores under possible surveillance. The Montana environmental damage related to cyanide makes a lot of sense as an inciting incident for the Tylenol crimes -- did this occur in the spring or summer of 1982?

[akwilks]

Thanks for the comments and ideas everyone.

I am trying to find the dates of the 1982, as well as 83-85-86, Cyanide spill and leakage incidents. But I am working on a lot of stuff right now. Anyone who can help me out, please do!

By the way, my tip on the Cyanide spills and leakage came from a very interesting source, but I will keep his name confidential for now.

[akwilks]

http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... rd%2C%20IL

I also added in the Howard Johnson Motel in Elgin, the location of the strange incident on September 28, 1982 at 2:30 am. Two police officers saw hundreds of Tylenol capsules in the parking lot, next to a pile of white powder, as if someone opened the capsules and emptied out the Tylenol medication, and likely put in the Cyanide. The officers touched some of the materials, and got very ill, with symptoms consistent with Cyanide poisoning through skin exposure.

463 N. Ridge in Lombard is equidistant from the Elgin and Chicago sites (25 and 27 miles), equidistant from the Winfield and Elk Grove sites (10 miles each), and is the ONLY location anywhere that aligns both vertically and horizontally with the tampering sites.

That Howard Johnson is also right off I-90, the route from Lincoln, MT to Chicago, IL. The same I-90 that has the store in Sheridan, Wyoming where a man bought poisoned Tylenol and died on July 26, 1982. The geographic evidence is consistent with a very intelligent, skilled, anti-corporate killer, who selects targets with nature themes, from the Montana-Wyoming area, coming into the Lombard area on I-90 and intentionally making Lombard the epicenter of the tampering sites.

Not only would Theodore Kaczynski exactly fit this profile, it is hard to believe that it fits anyone other than Theodore Kaczynski. I can't believe there were TWO such killers in Chicago in 1982.

[akwilks]

And whoever the Tylenol Killer was, by likely starting the placement of the tampered bottles on or around September 27-28, he was acting on the 13th anniversary of the Zodiac Killer attack at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, CA, which took place on September 27, 1969. Interestingly, Kaczynski as the Unabomber placed a bomb in Berkeley on July 2, 1982, very close to the 13th anniversary of the Zodiac Killer attack in Vallejo, CA, which took place on the Fourth of July Holiday in 1969. And on the 26th anniversary of that July 4, 1969 Zodiac attack, Kaczynski disrupted nationwide air traffic over the Fourth of July holiday period in 1995 by sending in a threat to bomb an airliner out of LAX. Kaczynski also mailed letters on April 20, 1995, the 25th anniversary of the April 20, 1970 Zodiac "My Name Is" letter.



Doug Oswell had noted that the shape of the tampered sites with the TJK home looks, very roughly, something like an Old Norse symbol called the Yggdrasil, also represented as a Germanic Rune called Algiz. It symbolizes the "Great World Tree". The Norse Pagan tribes would hold meetings and ceremonies there. It was also where court was held, and executions and ritual sacrifices carried out. It also translates as "tree of terror - gallows." As a Germanic Rune it symbolizes "Elk" and "Yew" (Evergreen Tree). Kaczynski grew up in Evergreen Park, IL, and one of the tampering sites was in ELK Grove Village. And as a Rune Poem it means an "Elk Plant" in the Pond, that grows in Water, and for those who try to grab it "marks with blood" and "wounds severely". (Note: ELK PLANT = ELK GROVE?). As a Rune Alphabet letter it translates as the letter "Z". Kaczynski drew this symbol at the university of a targeted professor, along with the words "FC" (the name of the fictional terrorist group - Freedom Club [or F%$# Computers] - that he signed to his letters) and the word "ANARCHY".

This is what it looks like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiz

If you take Regent St. in Berkeley, California as a center point, plot out the Zodiac murder sites, include as murder sites Santa Rosa/Sonoma County and Mt. Diablo, you also get a Yggdrasil Symbol - Algiz Rune. Which is also identical, by the way, to the Zodiac Symbol with two Radian angles extending upwards.

http://maps.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTExNmI ... ca%2C%20CA