In September of 1982, a 12-year-old girl in suburban Chicago took a Tylenol for a cold—and never got back up. Within days, six more people would die the same way. The connection? A bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol and a horrifying dose of potassium cyanide.

In this first part of our two-part series, Johanna and Annie walk through the events that stunned the nation: who the victims were, how investigators started piecing it together, and how Johnson & Johnson handled the situation.

It’s a case that changed how we trust what’s in our medicine cabinets…

Tylenol murders, 1982 Chicago, Mary Kellerman, Janus family, Mary McFarland, Mary Reiner, Paula Prince, potassium cyanide, poisoned Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, product tampering, over-the-counter safety, unsolved true crime, corporate crisis response, FDA history, cyanide cases, public health scare, 1980s murders, Fresh Hell Podcast