The Tylenol Mafia (46 page)

Michael Regal, a Cambridge police detective, had testified to a Grand Jury on September 9, 2004, that he had told District Attorney, Lee Hettinger, that the alleged victim told him, “No, there was no sex.” But the charges were not dropped, so Lewis stayed in prison until July 2007.

Meredith Lerner, a spokesperson for Middlesex County District Attorney, Gerry Leone, said the District Attorney would not answer any questions about the Lewis case beyond faxing the
nolle
prosequi
petition informing the judge that the Commonwealth could not prove its case without the testimony of the complaining witness, signed by Hettinger on behalf of Leone. Lewis was back on the outside, but he soon learned that he had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.

39

________

Jim Lewis threw on a jacket, grabbed his laptop computer, and walked out of his small apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, into the crisp early morning air on February 4, 2009. He could almost smell the freshly ground coffee as he neared his destination, the local Starbucks, when he was surrounded by seven FBI agents. One of the agents patted Lewis down and then four of the agents walked with Lewis into the Starbucks, ordered coffee, and found a comfortable booth. They were going to be there for a while. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, fifteen agents from the FBI and the State of Illinois served LeAnn with a search warrant and soon began hauling boxes of confiscated items out of the Lewises’ apartment. The 1982 Tylenol murders investigation had just been officially reactivated.

The FBI did not interrogate Lewis or read him his Miranda rights. They did, however, stay with him at the Starbucks from 8:30 a.m. to 7:20 p.m. and convinced him not to make any calls to his wife while the FBI searched his apartment and two storage facilities. They seized two iMac Apple computers, several pairs of blue jeans, t-shirts, running shoes, several books, and boxes of “privileged” legal documents. None of the seized items had even existed in 1982. There seemed to be no legal rationale for this search.

As officials stretched out the search of the Lewises’ 960-square-foot Cambridge apartment from early morning to well past sundown, the FBI released the following official statement regarding the reactivated investigation:

The FBI, in cooperation with the Illinois State Police [aka Illinois Department of Law Enforcement (IDLE)] and several local police departments, is conducting a complete review of all evidence developed in connection with the 1982 Tylenol murders. This review was prompted, in part, by the recent 25th anniversary of this crime and the resulting publicity. Further, given the many recent advances in forensic technology, it was only natural that a second look be taken at the case and recovered evidence.

In addition, the recent [25
^th
] anniversary prompted many people to call law enforcement agencies with tips relating to this crime. All of these tips have been or will be thoroughly investigated in an effort to solve this crime and bring some measure of closure to the families of the victims.

In the fall of 2008, several months prior to this official reactivation, authorities had secretly formed a new Tylenol task force of investigators from the FBI, the State’s Attorney Offices in Cook and DuPage Counties, and Chicago and suburban police. Grand juries were convened in Cook and DuPage Counties to review evidence from the Tylenol murders. Within five months of convening the grand juries, a judge in the 18
^th
Circuit Court in DuPage County granted the request of State’s Attorney Joe Birkett for a warrant to search Lewis’s home. Officials have never revealed the evidence they used to get a judge to grant that search warrant.

In June 2009, four months after searching Lewis’s apartment, FBI agents showed up on Lewis’s doorstep once again. This time the agents returned the computers, books, clothes, and other items they had confiscated in February. They even invited Lewis to join them for lunch. Lewis politely declined.

The press did not report on the return of Lewis’s items or the stupidity of confiscating items that did not even exist in 1982. The reactivated investigation was a complete bust, or so it appeared. It seemed that the only tangible outcome of the reactivated Tylenol murders investigation was that it kept the details of the case out of the public domain.

*****

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted in 1966, allows for full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government.
 
However, the act includes exemptions relating to information where disclosure would constitute a breach of privacy, relating to investigatory records where the information would harm the proceedings, and relating to the agency’s participation in legal proceedings. Between 1995 and 1999, President Clinton issued executive directives requiring the release of previously classified national security documents more than 25 years old and of historical interest.

In January 2009, the Obama Administration made it harder for the FBI to ignore FOIA requests for documents related to the Tylenol murders. A few days after taking office, President Obama issued executive orders and memoranda that he said were designed to improve government ethics and make the government more open. During a press conference on January 21, 2009, President Obama said, “I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this Presidency.”

President Obama’s memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies stated in part:

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.

Two weeks after President Obama declared, “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” the Tylenol murders investigation was reactivated, and it became readily apparent that the same old rules of secrecy still applied.

The Tylenol murders investigation, though never really closed, was essentially inactive by 1984. By 2009, documents from the FBI and IDLE investigation of the Tylenol murders should have been declassified and made available to the public under the FOIA, which requires the declassification of previously classified documents more than 25 years old and of historical interest. Nevertheless, in July 2011 the FBI denied an FOIA request for documents related to the Tylenol murders investigation. Even in 2007, as the 25
^th
anniversary of the Tylenol murders approached, the FBI, as will become apparent shortly, had already taken action to ensure that it would not have to declassify documents from the Tylenol murders case.

Officials from the FBI and the State’s Attorney Offices in DuPage and Cook Counties formed a new Tylenol task force in the fall of 2008 to take a new look at the Tylenol case. The secret formation of that task force, however, did not actually mark the birth of the renewed Tylenol murders investigation. An even more secret investigation, involving a rather novel approach, had been under way since two months before the 25
^th
anniversary of the 1982 Tylenol murders.

40

________

James Lewis had walked out of the Middlesex County jail in July 2007 after prosecutors dropped their trumped-up charges against him of kidnapping and rape. During his incarceration, Lewis had begun writing a novel under the working title,
The Doctor’s Dilemma
. He published the novel in January 2010, changing the title to
POISON! The Doctor’s Dilemma
. Lewis calls the novel a psychological fantasy that is both twisted and surreal. The story’s hero is the world famous Doctor, Charles “Chuck” Rivers, who battles the supreme evil doer, Agua
Naranja
.

Lewis had been out of jail for only a few days when he received a call from former Chicago FBI Special Agent, Roy J. Lane. Lane had retired from the FBI in 1996 and then took a job at U.S. Robotics in Schaumburg, Illinois. Lane had been a member of the team of FBI agents and federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago that had handled the extortion case against Lewis. Lane and Jeremy Margolis had gone to Cambridge, Massachusetts to question LeAnn Lewis in October 1985, and again on February 10, 1986 when they learned about the cyanide-laced Tylenol poisoning death of Diane Elsroth in New York. When Lane called Lewis in 2007; it was to propose a collaborative project.

Lane told Lewis that he was now running a private security business, and was working for several nuclear power generation facilities. He was also working on a project with Sherry Nichols, a freelance journalist who was writing a book about the Tylenol murders, and he wanted to interview Lewis. Nichols would cover all of Lewis’s expenses to fly him and LeAnn out to New York City and Chicago to be interviewed by Nichols and Lane. Lewis agreed to give them several interviews. Nichols later paid Lewis a few thousand dollars for his troubles. In addition, Lane offered to provide his expertise as a 25-year veteran of the FBI to assist Lewis in writing
POISON! The Doctor’s Dilemma
. On a website for the book, Lewis thanked Lane for his help:

Without Roy Lane, this book could never have been written. Formerly a supervisor of a multi-jurisdictional, FBI-Directed Task Force investigating the cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules which killed seven victims in Chicago in 1982, Roy has been very insightful, making many useful suggestions for the
Doctor’s Dilemma
and in guiding me, and in helping me edit this fictional work…

On several occasions Nichols paid airfare, hotel, and other travel expenses to fly Jim and LeAnn to Chicago and New York City. She also paid for Jim’s one-week road trip through Missouri, where he did research for his novel. One of the computers confiscated by the FBI agents who searched Lewis’s apartment in February 2009 was purchased with money Lewis received from Nichols. Lewis wrote a brief comment on his website, praising Nichols:

Sherry’s experience as a writer, her encouragement, and her substantial financial support during some of my darkest hours energized me when I felt like giving up.

In 2008, Roy and Sherry took Jim to the Chicago location where Paula Prince’s high-rise apartment building, demolished years earlier, once stood. Then they walked to the pharmacy where Prince had purchased her bottle of poisoned Tylenol.
 
Roy and Jim walked to the back of the pharmacy to the shelves where the Tylenol was currently displayed. “There,” said Lewis, “standing side-by-side in total silence we stared at the displayed merchandise.”

Roy and Sherry also flew LeAnn and Jim on separate occasions to New York City. On separate days, they took Jim and LeAnn to the Manhattan buildings where the Lewises had lived from September 6 to December 13, 1982. They visited the Western Union office where LeAnn’s father had wired them rent money for a room at Hotel 17. They visited the New York City Public Library annex where Jim was arrested, the building where LeAnn had worked, and the place where Jim met LeAnn each evening from September 20
^th
to October 14
^th
to walk her home from work, an event witnessed each and every day by at least a dozen of LeAnn’s co-workers.

Lane and Nichols conducted many interviews with Lewis. They also exchanged dozens of emails discussing travel plans, politics, jurisprudence, the Tylenol extortion letter, and various theories about the Tylenol killer’s possible motive and modus operandi. They also communicated by phone, and from time-to-time they all got together for dinner. Nichols’s book about the Tylenol murders had been in editing for a couple of months when agents from the FBI and the Illinois State Police searched Lewis’s apartment on February 4, 2009. That search marked the end of the collaboration between Nichols, Lane, and Lewis.

As it turned out, Sherry Nichols – if that is her real name - was not really writing a book about the Tylenol murders. “Sherry Nichols” was evidently an undercover operative working with “retired” FBI agent, Roy Lane, in a futile attempt to dig up dirt on Lewis. The business address Nichols had given Lewis was for a post office box at Mail Plus in Winfield, Illinois, located one and a half miles from the Central DuPage Hospital where Lynn Reiner was taken after swallowing a cyanide-laced Tylenol capsule on September 29, 1982. What Sherry Nichols saw in James Lewis was not a bestselling expose’ about the Tylenol murders – instead, she apparently saw the fame that would come from pinning those murders on Lewis. From August 2007 through the end of 2008, Nichols and Lane taped 80 hours of interviews with Lewis, hoping to get some kind of incriminating statement that prosecutors could use against him.

It is noteworthy that Lane and Nichols began their sting operation just two months before the 25
^th
anniversary of the Tylenol murders. When the Tylenol case was publicly reactivated, the FBI said that tips generated by the publicity surrounding the 25
^th
anniversary, along with advances in DNA technology, had led to the reactivation of the Tylenol case. In reality, those “tips” were nothing more than bits of email conversation regarding the character, Dr. Charles “Chuck” Rivers, the hero of Lewis’s fictional novel,
Poison!
The Doctor’s Dilemma
.