The Tylenol Mafia (11 page)

It is a longstanding myth that Johnson & Johnson inspected most or all of the Tylenol capsules that were in Chicago area outlets at the time of the Tylenol murders. This myth is debunked by one of Johnson & Johnson’s own documents.

Thomas N. Gates, the Medical Director for McNeil Consumer Products, wrote a “Dear Doctor letter,” dated October 13, 1982, in which he said J&J, the FDA, and the local authorities had tested two million Tylenol capsules nationwide. Gates wrote:

The Food and Drug Administration, the investigative authorities in the Chicago area, and McNeil Consumer Products Company scientists have collectively examined over 2 million individual capsules collected randomly throughout the country and have found no evidence of cyanide contamination.

The final count of inspected Tylenol capsules was two million; the same amount cited in Gates’ October 13
^th
letter. Of those 2 million inspected capsules, 1.5 million were from outside the Chicago area; 500,000 were from inside the Chicago area. FDA Deputy Commissioner, Mark Novitch, confirmed that the FDA had randomly tested a total of 1.5 million Tylenol capsules nationwide, primarily from outside the Chicago area.

The
New York Times
reported on October 7, 1982 that Chicago authorities had tested more than 310,000 Tylenol capsules from about 6,200 bottles, and 170,000 tablets from about 3,400 bottles turned in by Chicago area residents. Of the 500,000 capsules tested from the Chicago area, 310,000 were tested by Chicago authorities, meaning 190,000 were tested by Johnson & Johnson. At 50 capsules per bottle, Johnson & Johnson tested just 3,800 bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules out of about 10,000 bottles tested in the Chicago area and about 40,000 bottles tested nationwide.

There were about 165,000 retail outlets nationwide selling Tylenol products in 1982. About 11,000 were in the Chicago area; 2,000 were in the city of Chicago. If each of the 11,000 Chicago-area stores had 20 bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules on hand, then about 220,000 bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules were in Chicago area stores on the day of the murders. J&J tested just 3,800 of those Chicago Tylenol bottles, representing about 1.72 percent of the Extra Strength Tylenol capsules in Chicago area stores on the day of the Tylenol murders. J&J may have actually inspected fewer than 3,800 bottles of Tylenol capsules.

United Press International (UPI) reported on October 22, 1982, that “authorities said workers at J&J’s temporary lab in the company’s Lemont distribution center had examined more than 100,000 Tylenol capsules from the Chicago area, representing about 70 percent of those Tylenol capsules that had been shipped to Lemont.” This UPI report indicated that J&J inspected a total of only about 143,000 capsules from about 2,857 bottles (100,000 / 0.70 = 142,857; 142,857 / 50 = 2,857).

By Saturday afternoon, October 2
^nd
, local residents had turned in about 1,500 bottles of Tylenol to authorities in Chicago’s suburbs and an unspecified number of bottles to authorities in the City of Chicago. They continued to turn in Tylenol capsules for several more days, so it appears that all 2,857 to 3,800 bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules inspected by J&J had been turned in by Chicago area residents, meaning J&J must not have inspected any of the Tylenol capsules from Chicago area stores. The Tylenol capsules from Chicago area hospitals, repackaging facilities, and distribution centers were also not inspected.

The statistical analysis done in the previous chapter further suggests that hundreds of bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules had been distributed to Chicago area stores. Yet authorities will admit to finding only eight Tylenol bottles containing about 55 cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules.

In J&J’s letter to its shareholders, released in early 1983, James Burke wrote, “It is well to remember that two unused bottles of poisoned Tylenol [the seventh and eighth bottles] were recovered as a result of the withdrawal, so lives may have been saved.” According to officials, those two bottles, which were turned in by Chicago area residents, plus one unsold bottle recovered from an Osco Drug store, were the only bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules discovered during the inspection process.

J&J executives and government officials went out of their way to ensure that they did
not
find bottles of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. J&J brought in 30 toxicologists to test Tylenol capsules at the company’s temporary lab in Lemont. The testing procedure consisted of dropping a cyanide-detecting strip of litmus paper into each bottle and then checking the litmus paper a few minutes later to see if it had turned blue. If each J&J toxicologist inspected two bottles per minute and worked twelve hours per day, then each could have tested 1,440 bottles per day. At this rate, J&J’s 30 toxicologists working at the Lemont plant could have logically tested 43,220 bottles per day, and 302,400 bottles per week. In the entire inspection period, however, they tested only about 2,857 to 3,800 bottles of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules.

Authorities also could have used the imaging machine produced by
Lixi
Inc., in Downers Grove, Illinois, to inspect the Tylenol capsules rapidly. The
Lixi
device, a low-intensity fluoroscope, could detect as little as 20 milligrams of “foreign matter” in a 500-milligram Tylenol capsule without removing the capsules from the bottles or boxes. Joseph E.
Pascente
, the president of
Lixi
, later said that his fluoroscope was used by Bristol-Myers in October 1982 to screen for tainted Excedrin after a man in Denver swallowed an Excedrin capsule that had been filled with mercuric chloride. Authorities in Seattle also used this device to inspect bottles of Excedrin and Anacin capsules after tampering incidents in June 1986 involving those products.
Pascente
offered the
Lixi
device to Illinois authorities to search out the cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules after the Chicago area poisonings, but he said “nobody listened.”

In J&J’s 1982 Annual Report, James Burke commented on the cooperation among officials during the Tylenol crisis. “The public was served well because of the extraordinary cooperation that occurred among all the responsible elements of society,” said Burke. “The regulatory agencies, the wholesale and retail parts of the distribution system; the various medical professionals, the local federal and state law enforcement agencies … all worked together with the media to alert the public to the danger and to protect them in the process.”

The cooperation between J&J, the FBI, and the FDA was, according to Burke, “A demonstration without parallel of government and business working with the news media to help protect the public.”

The victims’ families, however, did not benefit from this cooperative effort. They have never had access to pertinent information or documents related to the Tylenol murders investigation. Johnson & Johnson, on the other hand, had access to anything it wanted. The company’s executives talked daily with officials at the crime scene and at both FBI and FDA headquarters.

“
Bob Andrews [assistant director of public relations at J&J] spent maybe three to five weeks at the scene in Chicago, following the story day to day,” said Larry
Foster.
“He knew the reporters that were covering [the story]. He knew the FBI and the other authorities who were working on the solution, and his information - the feedback - was invaluable,” Foster said.

Johnson & Johnson hired the powerful public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to help shape public perception about its handling of the tampering incident. The firm’s chairman, Harold Burson, later praised Burke’s handling of the Tylenol tamperings, saying, “The real Tylenol hero was Jim Burke.”

Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol crisis quickly became the primary case study that experts in the public relations industry now point to as the perfect example of how a widely publicized crisis should be handled.
J&J hired public relations firms, lawyers, and advertising agencies from outside the company to help manage the situation and the media. Johnson & Johnson also had a slate of influential Board members, including powerful media executives, who were capable of influencing what was reported in the media as news.

Joan
Ganz
-Cooney was a member of J&J’s Board of Directors from 1978 to 2001. She was a
Trustee for the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, WNET, in New York City. WNET is the flagship station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming.
Ganz
-Cooney was also on the Executive Committee of the Children’s Television Workshop from 1968 to 1990. Early in her career, she was a newspaper reporter, a publicist for NBC, and a television consultant for Carnegie Corporation.

Thomas S. Murphy sat on Johnson & Johnson’s Board of Directors from 1980 to 1998. He was the chairman of Capital Cities/ABC from 1966 to
1996
. Tom Murphy and Jim Burke were longtime friends. They both received MBAs from the Harvard Business School in 1949, and were even roommates for a time.

Burke had an even closer relationship with Murphy’s long-time business partner, Daniel Burke, the president and future CEO of Capital Cities/ABC. Daniel Burke is the younger brother of James
Burke
. Daniel had joined Capital Cities in 1961 as the general manager of WTEN-TV in Albany, New York. There he rose to the rank of executive vice president and director in 1967. From 1969 to 1972, he served as the president of the Capital Cities’ publishing division before being named the president and chief operating officer of Capital Cities. He continued in that position when Capital Cities acquired ABC in 1985. In 1990, Daniel took over as Capital Cities CEO. He retired four years later, and Murphy, who had maintained his position as chairman, stepped back into the CEO position. Daniel Burke has been a director at Consolidated Rail Corporation, Darden Restaurants, Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., and Rohm and Haas Company.

The Burke family became one of the most powerful families in the media industry. While Daniel was running Capital Cities/ABC, he brought his son, Stephen, into the business. Stephen was the president of ABC Broadcasting when he joined Comcast in 1998. He is currently the president of Comcast, which acquired NBC in 2010. Stephen is a member of the Board of Directors at
JP Morgan along with J&J’s current CEO, William Weldon
. Daniel’s
youngest
son, Bill Burke, has worked for Ted Turner, the owner of Turner Broadcasting (TBS) and founder of CNN. Bill was named President of TBS
in 1995,
a position he retained when Time Warner acquired that company
in 1996
. Bill left the company shortly before the AOL merger and went on to write Ted Turner’s biography
,
Call Me Ted
. Daniel and James Burke were both directors of
The Washington Post Corporation
in the 1990s.

Tom Murphy, James Burke, Daniel Burke, and Daniel’s sons - Stephen and Bill - all received MBAs from Harvard Business School. Another notable alumnus of the Harvard Business School was Don S. Perkins, the CEO of Jewel Companies, Inc., from
1970 to 1983. Perkins received an MBA from Harvard Business School
in 1971. David Collins, J&J group company chairman and chairman of McNeil Consumer Products, was also a Harvard graduate, having received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in
1959.

In 1982, Daniel Burke and Tom Murphy controlled an impressive array of news outlets, including television stations, magazines, newspapers, radio networks,
and radio stations
. Capital Cities owned the ABC television stations in Houston, Buffalo, Hartford, New Haven, and Philadelphia. At the time of the Tylenol murders, Capital Cities also owned the
Fort Worth Star Telegram
, the
Kansas City Star
,
Kansas City Times
, and
TIME
magazine
. Murphy said he liked the newspaper business
because “In a sense, it’s a monopoly business like broadcasting, and it is advertiser supported.”

Johnson & Johnson, through its powerful connections in the media industry, successfully promoted its version of events regarding the Tylenol tamperings. Johnson & Johnson also had powerful friends at the FDA. The most important of these friends was FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. In the days following the Tylenol murders, Hayes helped J&J executives convince consumers that Johnson & Johnson was just another victim of the Tylenol killer.

Hayes had received an M.D. from Cornell in 1964. He was a captain in the U.S. Army’s Chemical Weapons Division from 1965 to 1967, and then went on to hold several posts at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) – the alma mater of J&J’s Vice President of Public Relations, Larry Foster. At PSU, Hayes was an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology and director of the division of clinical pharmacology from 1972 to 1977, and a professor of medicine and pharmacology from 1977 to 1981.

During his stint in the Army’s Chemical Weapons Division, Hayes was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal at Fort
Detrick
, Maryland, the Army’s chemical warfare base of operations. Hayes was, according to
The Washington Post
, “one of a number of doctors who conducted drug tests for the Army on volunteers … to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR-301,060.” According to a declassified 1976 report prepared by the Army Inspector General, Hayes had planned a research study to develop the mind-altering CAR-301,060 as a “crowd control agent.”