Hey, Netflix, if the goal was to have me throw out every medicine in my house after watching this documentary, you succeeded. I will be clearing everything out ASAP. I’m sure most of it is expired anyway, but that’s besides the point.
“The Tylenol Murders” isn’t a typical story of a person using Tylenol to Murder a bunch of folks. It’s a documentary resurfacing a mystery in the late 80s as to what happened to almost (and allegedly) 1,000 bottles of Tylenol. Like most documentaries I’ve watched, I had never heard of the Tylenol murders, but what I learned is that because of this issue, Tylenol medicine bottles were triple sealed. Now, the mystery here is was this a terrible accident on Johnson & Johnson’s part or a crazed man who tampered with random bottles on shelves? The answer is left to the viewer but let’s chat about it.
The doc starts with a bang. Three murders in the same family off top. Now, death is not normally funny, but I find the funny in anything. They tell us that two people in the family die mysteriously, to start, and then, while at the repass, basically, another family member dies in the middle of the living room. Imagine you’re at a funeral for someone, and you end up watching another person die in front of you. All three people had one thing in common–they all took an extra strength Tylenol. Eventually, this issue become big enough for the FBI to get involved, and now, we’re up a hill.
In episode two, we’re introduced to a suspect or the accused. I was floored at this point because I’ve never watched a documentary (besides the Robert Durst doc) where the alleged is in the doc. So now, I’m thinking, “This can’t possibly be the guy.” Spoiler alert: This was not the guy and they almost had me. They started by making it seem like this man had probable cause to commit this crime. This was the probable cause. James Lewis and his wife provide a tax service. Prior to this business, Lewis’ wife worked at a company where she was let go. In order to get back at the owner of that business, Lewis wrote an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson that said something to the effect of, “You know these deaths are happening and they can stop if you wire one million dollars to [insert wife’s ex boss’ account].” You almost had me, but then, I started to use common sense. This is a lot of work just to get a man in trouble, and he only asked for one million dollars from a company who is worth billions. Also, he just didn’t seem smart or cunning enough to commit this crime. In addition, none of the many victims bought their extra strength Tylenol from the same place. Want to know something else? Lewis and his wife fled to New York because they were in trouble for their own bucket of mess. So, he couldn’t have done it.
Then, they introduce us to Roger Arnold. Arnold had been reported to police as someone who talked about killing multiple people with a white substance. His own troubles land him in prison for 15 years for shooting who he thought was the person he wanted revenge on. Trying to convince me that Arnold was the killer was worse than telling me Lewis did it.
THEN, they start to talk about the inconsistencies with the story Johnson & Johnson was telling people. I’d like to say this first. Anyone who sees this from Johnson & Johnson, I want you all to understand that I am only putting together what was given to me from these lovely documentary people. Please don’t shut my site down. Honestly, I think there could have been an accident in one of the labs or factories that big wigs didn’t know about until these deaths in Chicago happened. I think once they found out it came from them, they knew they had to contain it and make themselves seem as if they were also victims in this case. No, I don’t believe they were running an experiment that went wrong or that they knew and turned a blind eye to the fact that people would die from ingesting their medicine. I think it was an honest accident coupled with damage control. Do I think they could have just explained that to the public? Yes and no. Trust was already gone because after you introduce this tamper-free, tripled sealed bottle more people continued to die. Do I see why they took the damage control route they did? Yes.
I think about our world now and how so much has happened since this incident. We’ve had accidents everywhere. We fuss about it as a people, and later, we get over it. Have we lost that as time has gone one? I think I can make a case to say that when things happened back in the day, it was more memorable. More impactful. Nowadays, so much as happened so we’ve become desensitized.
How do you think something like this would play out today? What would be the outcome? Would it still be unsolved? Sound off!
