By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 1 hour ago, updated 1 hour ago
After his release from prison in 1995, he worked as an accountant but complained that he kept the “Tylenol Man” label. SCOTT OLSON/Getty Images via AFP
James Lewis was the only one convicted in the unsolved case of cyanide poisoning from anti-inflammatory pills.
The prime suspect in a case of cyanide poisoning from the anti-inflammatory pill Tylenol, an unsolved story that has fascinated the United States for four decades, died this week at the age of 76, local police said.
James Lewis was the prime suspect in the Tylenol affair, which sparked a wave of panic across the United States and prompted drug companies to change the packaging of their drugs.
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“Tylenol Man”
In the fall of 1982, seven people living in a suburb of Chicago, including three members of the same family and a 12-year-old child, died after swallowing a pill of Tylenol, the world’s top-selling anti-inflammatory drug at the time, states. -United States. The investigation found that the victims had ingested cyanide, a potent deadly poison, in Tylenol tablets that were sitting on Chicago pharmacy shelves.
James Lewis, who has always denied authorship of the murders, was the only one arrested and convicted, albeit on charges of “extortion” in a case that remains unsolved more than 40 years later. After his release from prison in 1995, he worked as an accountant but complained, according to the Chicago Tribune, that he wanted to keep the “Tylenol Man” label.
He was found unconscious at his home on Sunday and was pronounced dead shortly after help arrived, police said in Cambridge, a city in northeast Massachusetts where he had moved to after his release from prison. This case had led to a change in drug packaging procedures in the United States so that each box was hermetically sealed. A warning has been added to the packaging, advising the consumer not to take a tablet from an unsealed box. In 2009, the US Federal Police resumed investigations into this unsolved “cold case”.