The question I repeatedly asked the FBI during the latter course of the 18-year Unabom investigation was, “Considering how you’ve already convinced a former roommate that I’m the bomber, what on God’s green earth makes you think we’re good enough to get away with this?” The effect was short lived, but it always stopped them in their tracks because the truth is we weren’t good enough to get away with it.
With no real suspect in sight and the tantalizing prospect of breaking a career-making case, those agents lost all sense of perspective, and despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, they chose to believe we were that good.
The only reason Ted Kaczynski was “that good” is he lived in a small cabin in a remote area of Montana with no electricity. But regardless of those deliberate or accidental precautions, the second he opened his mouth, i.e., released the manifesto, it was all over.
So please rest assured, I’m not defending James Lewis, the only major suspect in the seven 1982 Chicago Tylenol tampering murders, but my unique role as a major subject in a major manhunt, uniquely qualifies to call out the investigative agencies for blowing this one on every level.
But instead of taking responsibility for their willful incompetence, they continue to take their misplaced anger out on Lewis even after his death earlier this week at the age of 76. Not that he was any paragon of virtue, mind you.
Lewis was charged with the dismemberment murder of Raymond West in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1972 after West hired Lewis as an accountant. Those charges were dropped because the cause of death could not be determined and critical evidence against Lewis was illegally obtained.
Then Lewis was convicted of six counts of mail fraud in a 1981 Kansas City scheme in which he stole the identity of a former tax client to obtain 13 credit cards. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for that one.
Long after the Tylenol murder, Lewis was charged with the 2004 rape and kidnapping of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, woman and he spent three years in jail awaiting trial. Prosecutors dismissed the charges the day of the trial after the victim refused to testify.
Of course, he was convicted of sending Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson a letter demanding a million dollars to “stop the killing” and served 12 years for extortion.
To say this poor excuse for a man lacked subtlety would be the most massive of understatements. And it takes a special kind of subtlety to get away with a series of bombings or blackmail on a national scale. He may have enjoyed some lucky legal breaks, but it’s clear Lewis couldn’t get away with jaywalking in his own neighborhood.
So, for anyone, and particularly an FBI agent, to believe this man could get away with murder is the height of lunacy.
Those investigators blew it from day one when they laughed at the nurse who suggested it was a product tampering case. Then, just like a spouse is always the prime murder suspect, this case SCREAMED disgruntled J&J employee. But for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, the FBI gave the Fortune 500 company permission to conduct their own internal investigation of the poisoned bottles. As I remarked in a previous column, “Talk about a case of economic self-preservation trumping the truth at every turn.”
They couldn’t place this “criminal mastermind,” who’s specialty was getting caught, in Chicago at the time of the poisoningss, either.
Then there’s the DNA testing. It’s hard to believe now, but DNA evidence was just a gleam in the best investigator’s eye back in 1982. Even the FBI couldn’t predict the incredible advances in the field over the next decade, but somehow Lewis foretold the scientific future and took the appropriate precautions before he struck? Right!
He provided the FBI with DNA samples in 2010 and they still couldn’t connect him to the tampered Tylenol bottles.
As they persisted in questioning him over the years, investigators claimed Lewis admitted guilt after he made statements regarding the timing of specific events that were more than suspect. It’s called interview fatigue. When I sat down to do the Project Unabom podcast with Pineapple Street Studios, I was convinced that I had the timing down pat. But I didn’t. After being questioned over and over again, my dates were frequently a year or more off.
The fact the FBI resorted to trying to entrap Lewis during interviews demonstrates what kittle evidence they had against him.
One of the victim’s daughters recently told the Tribune, “Lewis was convicted of his opportunistic act (writing the letter) and spent 12 years in prison for it. I am appalled that they (the FBI) still circle back to him as the possible murderer. This inhibits the investigation and influences the public into believing a false narrative.”
Yes it does!
Meanwhile, with the FBI putting all their eggs in the now-deceased Lewis basket, the real killer, who ‘s singular goal was to exact revenge against his employer, kept his mouth shut as he watched J&J hemorrhage $665 million through Tylenol recalls and lost sales. That’s 2.1 billion in 2023 dollars, by the way.
And now it’s too late. Forty-one long years have passed since that tragic day rendering any once-promising lead ice cold. The only way we’ll ever learn who really did it is through a Brown’s Chicken-esque revelation, a deathbed confession, or a well-hidden diary discovered years after the real killer’s death. I wouldn’t count on any of those possibilities, either.
In the end, the Tylenol tampering case changed the planet in ways Ted Kaczynski could never have imagined. Every time we open certain food or over-the-counter pharmaceutical products we’re reminded of that terrible September when seven people lost their lives to a man bent on revenge against Johnson & Johnson.
But it wasn’t James Lewis because he wasn’t good enough to pull it off.
