Joe Janus, who lost 3 family members in 1982 Chicago area Tylenol murders, dies at 73
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Forty-two years ago, a serial murder in the Chicago area stunned the nation—as seven people died after taking Tylenol pills laced with poison.
Three of those people were from the same family—and the brother of two of those three victims died this week without ever seeing the crime solved.
Joe Janus died Thursday night at the age of 73, two years after he sat down with CBS News Chicago Investigator Dave Savini to talk about the tragedy.
Janus' brother, 27-year-old mailman Adam Janus, wasn't feeling well when he woke up for work on Sept. 29, 1982, so he unknowingly bought tainted Tylenol at a Jewel Osco store in Arlington Heights—and collapsed later at home.
Joe and Adam Janus' brother Stanley Janus, then 25, and newly-wedded wife Theresa, then 20, went to Adam's house afterward. The cyanide-tainted bottle of Tylenol was still there, and they weren't feeling well, so they reached for pills not knowing yet what had caused Adam's death.
Joe and Stanley owned an auto parts store together, and he was with Stanley at the home as the poison kicked in.
"He just fell down," Joe remembered, "and when he fell, his mouth – this white stuff was coming out from his mouth. His eyes turned backwards, I seen, you know – so they called the ambulance."
Joe said his family came to Chicago from Poland for a better life.
"My brothers were everything to me," Joe said. "We all loved each other."
The three members of the Janus family all died shortly after the first tainted Tylenol victim—Mary Kellerman, 12, of Elk Grove Village. She had taken some Tylenol for a head cold.
New mother Mary Reiner, 27, of Winfield; Lombard phone center employee Mary McFarland, 31; and flight attendant Paula Jean Prince, 35, of the Old Town neighborhood also died or were found dead suddenly within the next few days.
Savini asked Joe Janus in 2022 if he thought the crime would ever be solved.
"I hope so, before I die," Joe said as he broke down. "I hope I see the person."
But Joe has now died without that happening.
On July 9, 2023, prime suspect James Lewis was found dead in his Cambridge, Massachusetts residence.
Lewis was charged, tried, and convicted on extortion charges after he was linked to a letter to Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson—in which further cyanide poisonings were threatened unless $1 million was placed in a postal box at Continental Bank in Chicago. But Lewis was never charged with committing the murders and denied he had done so.
You can learn more about the Tylenol murders in a five-part docuseries from CBS News Chicago. "PainKiller: The Tylenol Murders" is streaming on Paramount+.