Johnson & Johnson soon received a letter demanding $1 million to “stop the killings” that led investigators to James Lewis, a man with a history of violence that included the attempted ax murder of his mother and investigation for the murder of a former client. It sounded like an open and shut case, except Lewis wasn’t even in Chicago at the time, nor did he have any access to the bank account to which he demanded payment, which was owned by a travel agency that had recently fired his wife. He was apparently trying to frame them somehow. He still got convicted of extortion.
Next, they looked at a dock worker named Roger Arnold, who a local bar owner told them had recently bought a ton of cyanide. Arnold was cleared of suspicion for the Tylenol murders, though it’s unclear what legitimate reason a dock worker might need that much cyanide, and he was soon in prison anyway after shooting a man he thought was the bar owner who ratted him out.
Six years later, police thought Laurie Dann, a woman who shot up an Illinois elementary school in 1988, might have had something to do with it, but only because she was in the Chicago area at the time and apparently a murderer. They couldn’t find any other connection, but hey, it was worth a try.