Extra Suspects

The Tylenol probe continues

Every promising lead in the Tylenol case that caused the death of seven Chicago-area residents led to more frustrations last week.

In New York City, some 300 police and FBI agents searched unsuccessfully for Fugitives James Lewis, 36, and his wife LeAnn, 35, after it was reported that they had lived in a rundown Manhattan hotel from mid-September until Oct. 16. The two, also known as Robert and Nancy Richardson and by more than a dozen other aliases, are being sought by federal authorities for an attempt to extort $1 million from McNeil Consumer Products Co., the makers of Tylenol, with a blackmail note saying that the payoff could "stop the killing." Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fanner has called Lewis "a prime suspect" in the murders as well. Lewis was already wanted in Kansas City on charges involving credit-card and land swindles last year. In 1978 he was freed on a legal technicality despite evidence linking him to a Kansas City mutilation slaying.

With New York authorities convinced that Lewis and his wife had slipped through their fingers, hundreds of sightings were reported nationwide. In Boston, Miami and several other cities, men and women who looked like the couple were detained, then released. Said an investigator at task-force headquarters in Illinois: "Callers have spotted them in Hartford and Honolulu the same day, and in Miami and Missouri the same day. As of now, the hard info is zilch."

Meanwhile in Chicago, police chemists discovered another cyanide-laced bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol among those returned by stores on the Near North Side after the deaths. This development came a few days after police released a blurred photograph taken in a pharmacy in that neighborhood on

Sept. 29 by an automatic store camera. In it, a woman tentatively identified as Flight Attendant Paula Prince, who died later that evening after taking contaminated Tylenol, stands at the check-out counter while a burly, bearded man looks on. Suggestions that the man might be James Lewis raised the chilling possibility that the Tylenol killer put the poisoned capsules on the shelf, then watched an innocent shopper buy them. But despite efforts by FBI specialists and NASA space scientists employing sophisticated computer-enhancement techniques to clarify the image, the man could not be identified as Lewis.

With the killer or killers still on the loose and copycat poisonings continuing--a bottle of mouthwash laced with sulfuric acid was bought in an Oak Park, Ill., store--officials were increasingly concerned. One special worry: adulteration of Halloween trick-or-treat favors. In Chicago, Mayor Jane Byrne ordered distribution of a million leaflets urging parents to keep a close eye on whom their children visit and what they bring home to eat.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.