After tackling the haunting mystery of JonBenét Ramsey’s death, Netflix is now turning its attention to another infamous cold case: the Tylenol murders, a crime that shook America in the 1980s and changed the way medicine is packaged forever.
This brand-new three-part documentary, titled Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, revisits the shocking series of deaths that began when people suddenly started dying after taking Tylenol, a common over-the-counter painkiller. What authorities later discovered was horrifying: someone had tampered with the medication, adding lethal doses of poison to the capsules.
The docuseries not only walks viewers through the terrifying events, but also shines a light on how the case triggered major changes in how drugs are packaged and sold, introducing safety seals and tamper-proof containers that we now take for granted.
With powerful interviews from the victims’ families, investigators, and others who were directly involved, the documentary also brings forward new testimony and insights that could reignite interest in solving this decades-old mystery.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is now streaming on Netflix, and if you’re a true crime fan or just curious about how one terrifying crime changed an entire industry, it’s definitely worth a watch.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders: What were the Tylenol murders?
Back in 1982, something terrifying unfolded in the Chicago area, a series of sudden and unexplained deaths that all pointed to a common, everyday medicine: Tylenol.
People across the city were shocked to learn that Tylenol capsules, a household pain reliever, had been laced with deadly doses of potassium cyanide, a fast-acting poison. The tampered pills were behind the deaths of seven people, all of whom had taken Tylenol for routine aches and pains.
The first tragedy struck when 12-year-old Mary Kellerman took a Tylenol for her sore throat. Just hours later, she passed away. What initially seemed like a heartbreaking but isolated incident quickly escalated into a nightmare. The next day, six more people died after taking Tylenol, including Adam Janus, his brother Stanley, and Stanley’s wife Theresa, as well as Mary McFarland, Paula Prince, and Mary Reiner, all victims of a cold and calculated act of product tampering.
The incident sparked widespread panic. Stores immediately began pulling Tylenol off the shelves. Pharmacies and supermarkets stopped selling the product, and an urgent nationwide recall was launched. Every bottle was tested to make sure no others had been poisoned.
While the crime itself remains unsolved to this day, Johnson & Johnson, the company that makes Tylenol, was widely praised for its fast and responsible response. They cooperated fully with authorities, pulled millions of bottles from the market, and introduced tamper-proof packaging, something that was almost unheard of at the time, but has now become the standard for medications.
A company spokesman, Robert Kniffin, spoke about the tragedy, saying, “Though there is no way we could have anticipated a criminal tampering with our product or prevented it, we wanted to do something for the families and finally get this tragic event behind us.”
The Tylenol murders not only changed the way medicine is packaged but also became one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history, a case that, despite all efforts, remains officially unsolved.
Has anyone been convicted of the murders?
As of 2025, no one has ever been formally charged or convicted for the Tylenol poisonings. Despite decades of investigations, nationwide panic, and one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history, the case remains unsolved.
Authorities have followed multiple leads over the years and even had a few suspects, but no concrete evidence has ever linked anyone definitively to the crime. It’s one of those chilling mysteries where the “who” and “why” are still unanswered, making the Tylenol murders not just a landmark moment in consumer safety reform, but also one of America’s most haunting unsolved cases.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders: Who was James William Lewis?
James William Lewis, a man from New York, inserted himself into the Tylenol murder case by claiming responsibility for the poisonings back in 1982. He sent a chilling letter to Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million in exchange for stopping the murders.
However, investigations revealed that Lewis had no actual connection to the tampered Tylenol capsules. While he wasn’t the killer, he was convicted of extortion for trying to exploit the tragedy and was sentenced to prison.
Lewis remained a figure of suspicion over the years, with law enforcement revisiting his potential involvement multiple times, but no definitive proof ever surfaced to tie him to the actual poisonings.
He passed away in 2023 at the age of 76, and according to officials, his death was not considered suspicious.
Despite his headline-making involvement, Lewis goes down in history as a manipulator of the moment, not the mastermind behind it, and the true culprit behind the Tylenol murders still remains unknown.