Copycats Are on the Prowl

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Emulators of the Tylenol killer made this Halloween truly scary

Pain relievers, nasal spray, candy, orange juice. Poisons, acids, pins and needles. There seems to be no limit to the numbers, targets or methods of copycats seeking to emulate their demonic hero, the still unknown poisoner who murdered seven people (and, it was disclosed last week, might have come hair-raisingly close to killing an eighth) by placing cyanide in Tylenol capsules.

The Food and Drug Administration in Washington counts 270 incidents of suspected product tampering that have been reported around the country in the month since those Chicago-area deaths, and the total swelled rapidly last week. It clearly has been inflated by the hysteria of consumers who blame any nausea or headache on poisoned food and medicine; the FDA so far judges only 36 of the incidents to be "hardcore, true tamperings." Still, that was more than enough to send real rather than make-believe chills coursing through many parents as Halloween approached.

The main concern was a spate of incidents involving candy that had been tampered with. In the Long Island suburbs of New York City, two women discovered straight pins in Candy Corn and Baby Ruth bars. Another straight pin turned up in a KitKat bar in Norwalk, Conn., and a sewing needle in a candy bar in Pensacola, Fla. In Chicago, three children became ill after eating KitKat bars.

Provoked by such incidents, and the prominent display they got almost nightly on TV news last week, more than 40 communities in the U.S. banned Halloween trick-or-treating. "I feel like the Grinch--you know, the one who stole Christmas," said Councilman Paul Sharp of Hammond, La., which enacted a ban. Rhode Island Governor J. Joseph Garrahy urged parents to substitute Halloween house parties for trick-or-treating, and New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean signed a law mandating six months in jail for anyone convicted of contaminating Halloween candy, even if no one was harmed.

For all the fear, the copycats have not yet killed anyone. But whoever put mercuric chloride into Excedrin Extra-Strength capsules purchased by William Sinkovic of Aurora, Colo., narrowly missed. Sinkovic, 34, suffered acute kidney and liver failure. Emergency surgery saved his life, but he is still in serious condition.

Pain relievers and other over-the-counter medicines are a major target of the Tylenol killer's admirers. Rat poison was discovered in an Anacin capsule in Grand Junction, Colo. Two people suffered fever and nausea after taking Anacin in St. Albans, Vt. In Mills, Wyo., Brian Leyba, 25, suffered acid burns after using Sinex nasal spray, and in Grand Junction, Larry Tingley, 38, a patient at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, is being treated for corneal burns caused by hydrochloric acid in Visine eye drops.

But copycats seem to be turning to food products too. In Minneapolis, 14-year-old Marlon Barrow fell ill after drinking chocolate milk from a carton that proved, on analysis, to contain traces of sodium hydroxide, a caustic chemical. In Juno Beach, Fla., Policeman Harry Browning, 27, began vomiting within seconds of drinking Tropicana orange juice that could have been injected with insecticide. In the Detroit area, two razor blades and one nail were found in packages of Ball Park Franks within 24 hours last week.

Though none of the copycats has yet been caught, the phenomenon is chillingly common enough--in the rash of airplane hijackings, for instance--to give psychologists ideas about what kind of personalities are involved. Says Arthur Schueneman, senior clinical psychologist at the Northwestern University Rehabilitation Institute: "These people are often stirred to excitement by news reports. They may have longstanding impulses, barely contained, that are triggered by these events: anger, thrill seeking, retribution against injustice, real or imagined." Helen Morrison, an authority on mass murder, sums up their motives: "Better to be wanted by the police than not to be wanted at all." Morrison and other psychologists are virtually sure that no copycat is the Tylenol killer.

That killer remained elusive last week. There were no new leads and no real suspects. The major development was a brief flurry about a "mystery woman" who had turned in a bottle of cyanide-poisoned Tylenol to Chicago police on Oct. 14. The mystery, police later confessed, was actually a "clerical error" that had caused them to misidentify which judge of the Du Page County, Ill., circuit court was her husband. The woman turned out to be Linda Morgan, 35, wife of Judge Lewis Morgan.

Mrs. Morgan said she had bought the Tylenol on Sept. 29, the day before the first deaths were reported, and that very day wanted to take some at a family gathering. Her sister offered Bufferin, she said, and she decided to take that instead. She escaped death, she says, by "blind luck."

For three weeks, the police have been searching for Chicago Con Man James Lewis, also known as Robert Richardson, who is accused of trying to extort $ 1 million from the makers of Tylenol in the wake of the killings. The Chicago Tribune received a letter, postmarked from New York City last Wednesday, that apparently came from the fugitive. "My wife and I have not committed the Chicago area Tylenol murders," the author wrote. "We do not go around killing people."

Efforts to protect the public from the Tylenol killer and his imitators are lumbering along. The FDA last week submitted a proposed regulation on tamper-resistant packaging of over-the-counter drugs to the Office of Management and Budget for approval. The regulation would not specify which of many types of packaging the industry should adopt; it would set a standard for the industry to meet in any way that companies might choose. Estimates are that new packaging will cost the industry between $20 million and $30-million a year and will add anything from a penny to a dime to the price of nonprescription drugs.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, wrote off $50 million (net after taxes) as the expense of recalling all Tylenol capsules. J & J nonetheless resumed advertising of Tylenol, which is currently available only in tablet and liquid forms, and promised to have repackaged capsules back on the market soon.

But is there any comfort for consumers who now hesitate to pick any sort of product off a grocery or drugstore shelf? Psychologist Schueneman, who predicted the wave of copycat tamperings, provides a kind of backhand reassurance. He says, "I think it will be short-lived." His reasoning: before long, copycat tamperings will become so common that they will no longer provide thrill seekers with the excitement that they crave.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Lee Griggs/Chicago and Rita Healy/Denver

With reporting by Lee Griggs, Rita Healy

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