Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

Summary

When Barton and Moore got off their flight from Kansas City to Chicago in October of 1982, the Tylenol investigation was in full swing. They were immediately introduced to the Tylenol Task Force. Barton couldn’t wait to tell Chicago PD and the FBI about James Lewis’ past. He’d even brought along the game hoist pulley from the West case hoping the FBI could positively identify the smudged fingerprint on it with their superior technology. Moore was sent to the crime lab at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, along with the pulley. Coordination among the many agencies involved in the Tylenol investigation had been smooth thus far, though the number of leads they were running down was becoming exhausting. A few arrests were made, but they led nowhere. John Douglas, the legendary FBI behavioral profiler, suspected that the Tylenol perpetrator would be trying to follow the crime investigation from a distance. The best way to do that back then was to read reports in the local Chicago papers, which could only be done from afar in public libraries. The task force created posters and sent them to public libraries across the country.In the wake of Barton’s arrival, attorney general Fahner announced at a press conference that he was taking Lewis’ involvement in the murder case in Kansas City seriously, even if it wasn’t proof that he was the Tylenol killer. One puzzling–and critical–question about Lewis remained: Had he tried to use the horrible Tylenol tragedy simply to get revenge on McCahey, or did he create the tragedy?As investigators dug deeper, they learned that Leann Lewis, as Nancy Richardson, had taken more than a few pre-stamped envelopes from McCahey’s Lakeside Travel office before it shut down. She’d also pilfered a number of blank airline tickets that she could handwrite herself and use to travel anywhere within the U.S. Back in 1982, there was no ID requirement for travel domestically. As such, she knew she could choose a destination and be Leann, Nancy or an...