Excerpts
Chapter 3
Paula Prince was an attractive United Airlines stewardess who had arrived home from a long day of flying. She had a headache. The scene was soul‑crushing. She lay on the bathroom floor in her nightgown, white makeup remover covering half her face, giving her a hauntingly peaceful, almost spectral appearance. On the bathroom sink counter sat an open 24‑count bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength Capsules. Two of them were gone. She had been getting ready for bed when she swallowed the capsules, started to remove her makeup, and never finished.
Chapter 10
Ray West’s friend Charles was worried. He had not heard from Ray for three weeks. Charles entered Ray’s home and discovered a foul odor. He called the police when he discover a blood stain on the bedroom floor. The detectives also found a bullet hole in the wall of the bedroom and extracted a .32 caliber bullet. They discovered his body in the attic dismembered.
Chapter 16
On February 24th, 1983, Michael C Sawyer Jr., was in the prime of his life and owner of Winchester Adjustment Services. At the age 42, was pronounced dead at Holden District Hospital, Princeton, Massachusetts. His dentist had prescribed Zomax for dental pain. Michael took one tablet in the dentist’s office and had an immediate severe anaphylactic reaction and dropped dead outside the dental office.
Chapter 23
On April 3, 1982, William Pascual, a dental student at the University of Pennsylvania, was found motionless on the bedroom floor of a second‑story apartment in the 400 block of South 43rd Street around 4 a.m. His wife returned from a party and discovered him dead. Philadelphia police were called, and a member of the medical examiner’s office pronounced him dead at the scene.
Pascual had been struggling with his coursework and friends said, he sometimes used marijuana and complained of headaches. When detectives searched the apartment, they found a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol capsules hidden inside a shoe in the bedroom closet. The capsules looked normal, and investigators quickly assumed death resulted from an intentional overdose.
Chapter 31
Johnson & Johnson received an extortion note demanding $440,000 with the threat of poisoning Tylenol capsules if the ransom was not paid.
In February 1979, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol was found in a Red Owl Grocery store, tampered with and laced not with cyanide but strychnine and a bitter substance.
Fortunately, no one died in this 1979 case. The adulterated capsules were discovered before any death occurred. The culprit was a man named William T. Post, a 32-year-old pharmacist from Minneapolis. He owned his own drugstore and apparently was in debt.
In a bench trail he was sentenced to 5 years in jail and was released in 18 months.
Chapter 34
On December 4th, 1982, Boise, Idaho at about 5:30 PM in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the body of Wm. L. Toomey was found in the fifth pew lying face down across the kneeler next to the Confessional booth.
It is not known if Father Faucher, pastor of the church heard his confession before he died. If he had, Father Faucher was bound by the privacy of the confessional not to disclose what “William” confessed. The Chief Deputy Coroner for Boise County, Erwin Sonnenberg pronounced him dead at the scene.
Wm L. Toomey never existed. It was a fictious name and the man who took his life by swallowing a cyanide capsule had erased his past and to this day they do not know who he really was.