The Tylenol Mafia (44 page)

There were few professionals - if any - who ever thought the man in the Walgreens photo was Lewis. Nevertheless, the very same week that Fahner, IDLE, and the FBI secretly intensified their investigation of Roger Arnold, Howard Fearon Sr., and Ed Reiner, officials released that photo and suggested it showed James Lewis standing behind Paula Prince while she purchased a bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. Behind the scenes, however, authorities from the FBI and IDLE were getting ever closer to dropping their net on the three men they had targeted as the co-conspirators in their contrived Tylenol murder conspiracy theory.

On the same day authorities in Chicago confirmed that the man in the Walgreens photo was not Lewis, authorities in New York City said they had tracked James and LeAnn to the Hotel Rutledge on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, where they had stayed until four days ago. The police and the FBI had conducted an extensive investigation, reviewing hotel records, checking fingerprints, and interviewing witnesses at the hotel and at the real estate firm where LeAnn had worked until she called in sick on October 16
^th
and never returned.

Kenneth Walton, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, said the Lewises had stayed at the Manhattan hotel from September 6
^th
until October 16
^th
. Walton said that Mr. Lewis was last seen on Thursday, October 14
^th
, and Mrs. Lewis was last seen on Saturday, October 16
^th
, when she turned in her room key.
 
Jess Parker, an unemployed messenger who lived at the hotel, said that during the Lewises’ stay at the hotel, “I would see them leave at 7:30 in the morning, and they would come back after 11:00 at night.”

“We don’t think they were traveling back and forth during the period of time they were known to be in New York” from September 6
^th
to October 16
^th
, said James T. Sullivan, the New York City chief of detectives. He said that Mr. Lewis usually met his wife each day after she finished work as a bookkeeper at a Midtown real estate office and walked home with her. Kenneth Walton, the assistant director at the FBI’s New York City office, emphasized that there was no evidence that directly connected the Lewises to the murders. Yet Fahner said Lewis remained “a prime suspect” in the murders. “He is one of the more substantial leads or persons we are looking at.”

One reporter asked Fahner if Mr. or Mrs. Lewis could have made the two-hour flight to Chicago. The innuendo being that Lewis could have flown to Chicago, planted the poisoned capsules, and then returned to New York City. “That is one of the options,” Fahner replied. “Obviously, if they were there [in New York City] the whole time, they could not have been here [in Chicago]. But they have been seen at least in some reports to have moved around,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to find out which [Lewis-sightings] are real and which are imagined or fictitious.”

The “Lewis sightings” outside New York City, as Fahner must certainly have known, had all turned out to be bogus. Nevertheless, Fahner carried out his speculative rhetoric a bit further. “We obviously have not confirmed that they have been there - in New York - every minute during the time span involved here,” Fahner said. “And we will work that backward to find out.”

Fahner had now called Lewis a prime suspect, but Chicago police detectives still believed Roger Arnold was the only legitimate suspect. When the Tylenol murder conspiracy theory imploded and the investigation of Roger Arnold ended, the FBI and its little sister, the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement (IDLE), then targeted James Lewis. There was definitely a split along jurisdictional lines. Fahner, the FBI, and IDLE were on one side of that line, while rank-and-file Chicago police detectives were on the other side. Fahner denied reports that jurisdictional issues hindered the investigation, but his denial only strengthened that impression.

“I wasn’t the only one who had true jurisdiction,” Fahner said. “You don’t tell the feds what to do and they don’t like to be told what to do, Okay? And the same is true of the local police chiefs out there.” All in all, said Fahner, “It was truly a decent and very good and fine effort.”

 
“Everybody fought for a little place in the sun,” recalled Assistant U.S. Attorney, Jeremy Margolis. “You had literally hundreds of people working sometimes together and sometimes at odds under very difficult circumstances because nobody really knew what the heck was going on.”

Chicago Police Superintendent, Richard Brzeczek, provided a more realistic view of the discord between local cops and the FBI. “There is a general feeling of antagonism among local law enforcement against the FBI,” said Brzeczek. “We call them the one-way street. They want you to provide information, but refuse to divulge their own.”

The reality is that the relationship between the Chicago police and the FBI was dysfunctional. “People will withhold information, so they can be the ones who solve the case,” said Brzeczek. “They want their names up on the marquee. Some cooperation [existed] among a few chosen people, but the largesse did not extend to all participants,” he said.

In 2009, a Chicago police detective who was a member of the Tylenol task force in 1982, said, “Roger Arnold is without a doubt the real offender in this case.” He said the differing views are “likely a case of competing political venues and incompetence more than anything else.”

*****

The growing hysteria surrounding the manhunt caused Lewis to become more and more concerned about what he perceived as a witch-hunt. He was not about to turn himself in, but neither he nor LeAnn took extraordinary measures to avoid capture. Years later, Lewis reflected back on the time he and LeAnn spent in New York City. “[We] didn’t really run that much. We just moved to another hotel just a few blocks away; didn’t really hide. We were out on the streets in New York every day,” he said. “For example, the Thanksgiving Day parade, the Macy’s parade at Herald Square, there were about 400 policemen standing around waiting to get their orders about where they were going to be stationed. My wife and I walked hand and hand through all of those people at the time this big manhunt was going on. We did not hide.”

Hoping to cool down some of the negative rhetoric and explain his reason for writing the extortion letter, Lewis sent a letter to The
Chicago Tribune
. The letter was a public reminder of the embarrassing failure of IDLE and the FBI to locate Lewis. The
Tribune
published the letter’s contents in its Sunday edition on October 31
^st
, a portion of which read: “As you have probably guessed, my wife and I have not committed the Chicago area Tylenol murders. We do not go around killing people... Contrary to reports, we are not armed, unless one means in the anatomical paraplegic sense. We shall never carry weapons no matter how bizarre the police and FBI reports. Domestically, weapons are for two quite similar types of mentalities: (1) criminals & (2) police. We are neither.”

Lewis also sent an inch-thick packet of materials relating to his wife’s former employment at the now defunct Lakeside Travel Agency in Chicago. The package contained documents intended to support Lewis’s claims regarding Frederick McCahey’s alleged shady business practices. The package also included a second letter from Lewis. “Does the FBI and the Attorney General do the sensible thing and investigate the bona fide criminal?” Lewis asked. “No . . . these well-paid lawmen have needlessly made the informant’s name a household word . . . I, too, am a victim, but so what . . . I hope the law finds whoever poisoned those capsules . . . But what are the chances of that in the hands of the FBI and Fahner’s Fumblers?”

Tyrone Fahner did not appreciate the “Fahner’s Fumblers” label coined by Lewis. This derogatory moniker was even worse than the nickname that local cops had given Fahner – “Tylenol Ty.” Fahner reacted to Lewis’s letters by issuing a plea on Saturday, October 30
^th
, encouraging Lewis to surrender. “I would like to send a message to Mr. Lewis,” said Fahner. “We would like you to consider turning yourself in. I can understand your’ running if you are responsible, but that is all the more reason for you to turn yourself in. If you are innocent, your continued writing is pointless.”

Fahner assured Lewis that investigators would help him prove his innocence if he was in fact innocent. “In all our statements we have never said he did it,” Fahner declared. Then, in his next breath, Fahner made it apparent that he already considered Lewis a guilty man. “He says he has never killed anyone,” said Fahner. “But there are people in Kansas City who feel differently than that. All this [letter] demonstrates is [that] Lewis is an unusual person who writes a lot,” chided Fahner.

*****

On December 13, 1982, Librarian Donald Alexis, working at the New York Public Library annex at 40
^th
Street and Fifth Avenue, spotted a familiar-looking man walk by the librarian’s fourth-floor reference desk. “I just glanced up at him,” Alexis said, “and in a flash, something seemed familiar.” Alexis went into the staff room and took another look at the FBI poster tacked up on the bulletin board. He then called police. “There’s a look-alike of Mr. Lewis here,” he told them.

Lewis was at a table quietly reading two reference books,
Newspapers of the
Southwest
and
Largest Corporations in America
, when FBI agents surrounded him. Lewis was led away peacefully at 2 p.m., ending the 10-week manhunt. Kenneth Walton, Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI’s New York City office, told reporters that there was no evidence to link Mr. Lewis or his wife, LeAnn, directly to the seven deaths caused by cyanide-filled Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules bought in Chicago area stores.

Fahner, ignoring the statements of the authorities in charge of the Lewis manhunt in New York City, said Lewis “is high on our list of people.” Fahner said, “We have to determine whether or not he’s responsible. I hasten to make clear: He is a suspect, but we have others as well.” However, it was clear even then that Fahner had no legitimate suspects.

On October 26
^th
, Fahner had exonerated suspects Ed Reiner and Howard Fearon Sr., and chose not to pursue a case against suspect, Roger Arnold. Fahner had zero legitimate suspects, so Lewis became the “prime suspect” by default. Maybe Fahner figured that the only way he could save face for the truly abysmal investigation he had led was by convincing the public that Lewis was responsible for the Tylenol murders.

Some reporters did question Fahner’s characterization of Lewis as a “prime suspect.” They asked Fahner how Lewis could possibly be a suspect in the Tylenol poisonings in light of statements from the FBI and New York City Police that Lewis had been in New York City since September 6, 1982. Fahner explained his apparent flight from logic by citing the “many people” who supposedly believed in Lewis’s guilt. “If he’s not guilty of the Tylenol murders, as many people believe that he is,” said Fahner, “he can absolve himself by accounting for his whereabouts. He can prove his own innocence.”

If Fahner could be taken for his word, it appeared that he was actually going to take an honest look at the facts. Sadly, the word of a lawyer-lawman, well versed in the ways of the shadow legal system, is not worth much. Fahner had dared Lewis to “prove his own innocence” by accounting for his whereabouts, but Lewis had already done that.

Records at the Hotel Rutledge showed that Lewis had stayed there from September 6 through October 16, 1982. Kenneth Walton, the deputy assistant director of the FBI office in New York City, said the Lewises had been staying in Room 200 and the FBI had found their fingerprints in that room. James and LeAnn were seen leaving Hotel Rutledge every morning at about 7:30 a.m. and returning after 11:00 p.m. every night during their entire stay at the hotel. Walton said LeAnn had reported to work every day between September 20
^th
and October 14
^th
and that she usually met James at lunchtime and after work. LeAnn’s co-workers saw Jim every day when he met her for lunch, and at the end of the work day. Walton said the evidence showed that Lewis was in New York City from September 6
^th
until his arrest on December 13
^th
. The New York City police agreed. Authorities checked all available bus, train, and airline records and found no evidence that Jim or LeAnn had ever left New York City during that period. To anyone interested in the truth, Lewis had already proven that he had been in New York City from September 6, 1982, to the day of his arrest on December 13, 1982.

Lewis was arraigned in Federal Court in Manhattan before United States Magistrate, Ruth V. Washington, on charges of extortion and unlawful flight. His bail was set at $5-million, and he was held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal facility in downtown Manhattan, until December 27, 1982, when he was transferred by “special security measures” to Chicago.

Before facing charges of extortion in the Tylenol case, Lewis was tried on charges of credit card fraud in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri. Police had investigated Lewis and searched his Kansas City home in December 1981, but a grand jury did not indict him until eleven months later, after he was identified as the writer of the Tylenol extortion letter. Prosecutors said Lewis had used the mail to obtain credit cards from 13 different banks and businesses, using the name and background of his former tax client, John E. Ryan.

The key testimony in the trial came from prosecution witness, George W. Rea, a former deputy sheriff who had rented a small office in Lewis’s business. Rea testified that he and Lewis together had committed the credit card fraud scheme. Rea testified that he needed the money because his real estate appraisal work had dried up. Assistant U.S. Attorney, Robert Larsen, who prosecuted the case, had granted Rea immunity from all charges in exchange for his testimony against Lewis.