A Replay of the Tylenol Scare

By Spencer Davidson.

As she prepared for bed during an overnight stay with her boyfriend's family in Yonkers, N.Y., last week, Diane Elsroth, 23, complained of feeling ill. Her solicitous companion, Michael Notarnicola, also 23, brought her two capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol from what he said was a previously unopened bottle purchased a week earlier by his mother. Twelve hours later, the stenographer, daughter of a New York State trooper, was found dead of what was later diagnosed as acute cyanide poisoning. Her death touched off a new scare, reminiscent of the still unsolved Tylenol panic of 1982, in which seven people in the Chicago area died after taking tainted capsules. Once again the capsule form of the leading nonprescription pain-relief medicine in the U.S. was stripped from store shelves across the nation as Tylenol's manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, offered a $100,000 reward for help in tracking down what seemed to be a random killer. Said Company Chairman James Burke: "This is an act of terrorism, pure and simple."

Authorities at first described the tampering as a local incident. The cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules were traced to an A & P supermarket in Bronxville, a well-to-do bedroom community (pop. 6,000) adjacent to Yonkers. Officials ordered Tylenol capsules removed from all stores in the area for examination.

Detectives quickly excluded the Notarnicola family as suspects. In nearby New Rochelle, Secret Service agents arresting three suspects for credit-card fraud inadvertently discovered a letter threatening further poisonings unless the three were paid $2 million. Investigators believed the note was a fraud, an attempt to cash in on a tragic situation, as happened after the Chicago killings, when Con Man James W. Lewis went to prison for ten years for sending a $1 million extortion note to Johnson & Johnson.

Since the poisoned painkiller had been enclosed within Tylenol's three tamper-resistant seals, investigators turned their attention to the plant in Fort Washington, Pa., where they were manufactured by a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, McNeil Consumer Products. The poison, with a different chemical makeup from the cyanide involved in the 1982 killings, differed as well from the cyanide stored at the plant for testing. The company also began a review of its storage and distribution facilities and personnel files of about 30,000 U.S. employees.

Concern widened five days after Elsroth's death, when five more cyanide capsules were found in a Tylenol bottle taken from a Woolworth store just two blocks from the Bronxville A & P. The second group of contaminated capsules contained the same chemical "fingerprint" as was found in the bottle opened for Elsroth. And as with that deadly container, the tamper-resistant seals on the second bottle appeared untouched. Some of the capsules inside, however, had been opened and reclosed. This bottle, from a different lot, had been filled at a McNeil plant in Puerto Rico.

New York, followed by 13 other states and the District of Columbia, banned the sale of all Tylenol capsules, and 15 other states urged their voluntary withdrawal from stores. Johnson & Johnson, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, issued a national alert against using Tylenol in capsule form. Surveys conducted by the company, which spent an estimated $300 million to reclaim Tylenol's market position after the 1982 killings, indicated that so far, Tylenol users were not as alarmed as they had been four years ago. That was heartening news for the pharmaceutical giant, since Tylenol alone accounts for some 20% of profits from total company sales of $6 billion. Even so, Johnson & Johnson stock fell nearly 6 points during the week, a drop of almost 11%.

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi/New York