Full Recap
DEE: Hello, everyone.
DEE: Before we begin with today’s episode, we wanted to ask you, have you given us a rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you’re listening right now?
DEE: If not, please do.
JEFF: If you already did give us a rating, please tell your friends about our podcast.
JEFF: We really appreciate it.
JEFF: And thank you for listening.
JEFF: We’re going back to 1982, Chicago.
DEE: Seven people are killed by Tylenol that’s filled with cyanide.
JEFF: For the past 40 years, the FBI, the police, and a couple of reporters at the Chicago Tribune have been trying to bring the killer to justice.
DEE: But so far, justice has eluded them.
JEFF: We’re going to recap Unsealed, The Tylenol Murders on this episode of So Much Crime.
DEE: Welcome to So Much Crime, So Little Time.
DEE: I’m Dee.
JEFF: And I’m Jeff.
JEFF: And before we start, we just want to give a warning.
JEFF: This episode will have spoilers for the Chicago Tribune podcast, Unsealed, The Tylenol Murders.
DEE: This is one of our full recap episodes.
DEE: We’re gonna talk about all of the episodes in this series.
JEFF: If you’ve already listened to Unsealed, or if you know the story, then you’re all good.
DEE: And if you just want to hear us talk about it, fair warning for what’s to come.
JEFF: And as always, you can find the link to what we’re discussing in our show notes.
DEE: Before we get into our discussion, let’s take yourselves back to When the Crime Occurred, September 28th, 1982.
JEFF: All right, Dee, I have a quiz for you about some September 1982 facts.
JEFF: So we’re gonna cover some heavy stuff.
DEE: Just a reminder, Jeff, I was not born then.
DEE: So I may fail.
JEFF: So obviously we’re talking about a pretty serious podcast, so I thought before we get into the serious stuff, let’s do something a little bit lighter.
JEFF: So first off, I’m gonna tell you which, there’s three TV shows that came out that same week, actually, or thereabouts, in the end of September, 1982.
JEFF: And I wanna know your familiarity with these.
JEFF: First off, do you know what show David Hasselhoff is famous for?
DEE: Baywatch.
DEE: It was part of our Saturday routine.
JEFF: Okay, that was a little bit later.
JEFF: This show before that.
DEE: The one with the car?
JEFF: Yeah, the one with the car, Night Rider.
DEE: Night Rider, also part of our, I’m trying to remember, because Saturdays were like Baywatch and Gladiators featured, and something else.
DEE: I can’t remember when Night Rider was.
DEE: That might have been a Sunday thing.
JEFF: Okay, well, it came out, first episode, September 26th, 1982.
JEFF: September 22nd, a couple days before, Michael J.
JEFF: Fox, his TV show.
JEFF: Do you know what that was?
DEE: Oh, the one in, like, the workplace one?
JEFF: Mm-mm.
JEFF: No, that was the later one, yep, he had one before that.
JEFF: Where he was still a kid.
DEE: Yeah, reminder, I was not born.
DEE: Oh, I don’t know, he was still a kid?
JEFF: Family Ties, Family Ties.
JEFF: Yeah, it’s a great show.
JEFF: All right, one more TV show.
JEFF: This one’s with Ted Danson, set in a bar in Boston.
DEE: Cheers?
JEFF: Cheers, September 29th.
DEE: I’m sure lots of people were in that bar, but I was in that bar.
DEE: Spent my last few dollars buying myself and my friend a drink in that bar.
DEE: When we were finishing our American trip.
JEFF: All right, let’s go to music.
JEFF: Top three songs.
JEFF: Jack and Diane.
JEFF: John Cougar.
DEE: Jack and Diane.
JEFF: Steve Miller Band, Abracadabra.
JEFF: No, okay.
JEFF: What about this one, Survivor, Eye of the Tiger?
DEE: Never heard it before.
JEFF: This was, of course, yeah, the same year as Rocky III.
JEFF: So, also, around that same time, September 30th, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska came out, and a few weeks later, Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out.
JEFF: Okay, all right.
JEFF: Those are our 1982 facts.
DEE: I enjoyed those.
DEE: Thanks, Jeff.
DEE: Set in the scene, as we said before, this gets all serious, we’re set in the scene.
DEE: Our plan for some of these episodes is to give you a really in-depth, like, this is kind of what happened.
DEE: Sorry, not in-depth.
DEE: Woo!
DEE: A really high-level overview of what happened, and then we kind of delve into the pieces that we liked and didn’t like and give you some details.
DEE: This is very effing hard for this podcast.
DEE: Because so many details, so many things happened.
DEE: Jeff, you managed to get a timeline that you’ve pasted into our notes.
DEE: Tell us, tell us the length of that timeline.
JEFF: Yeah, so we’ll link to this in the show notes.
JEFF: The Chicago Tribune, the people who put out this podcast, made a timeline of the events that they cover.
JEFF: I took it and just pasted it into a Word doc, just to see kind of like how long it was.
JEFF: It was 13 pages, 13 single-spaced pages long.
DEE: And back, no, it wasn’t actually.
DEE: It’s probably like six pages front to back, and then one extra.
JEFF: So I thought we could just spend, For anyone who cares.
JEFF: I thought we could just spend the next, I don’t know how many minutes just reading.
JEFF: How would that be?
DEE: I think the people would really like to hear us just read, and then this happened, and then this happens.
DEE: That would make for a really good podcast.
DEE: It’s kind of like in The Simpsons, you know, when Homer, were you a fan of The Simpsons?
DEE: When Homer joins the barber, the barber street, Barbershop quartet.
DEE: Barbershop quartet, and then Barney goes off and does his own thing, and he like hooks up with, do you remember the Gothic woman?
DEE: And he produces like the song, and he’s like, this is gonna be a jam, and it’s just him burping and saying, number eight, number eight, number eight, number eight, that’s all that the song is.
DEE: That’s what I feel like people, that’s how I think people would view us reading that timeline.
JEFF: That’s amazing.
JEFF: I think this is, this recap is off to a great start.
DEE: We’ve really got into the deets there.
DEE: We also have often take note of like the important people that we come across in the podcast, and this list is so long.
DEE: I think Jeff just came up that way through was like, there’s too many names.
DEE: Like I’m terrible with remembering people’s names.
DEE: I’m often misnaming people in our podcast, but like this is wild.
JEFF: Yeah, can I just say, I think so I did this for a preview episode where we had six of the seven victims.
JEFF: So we didn’t get to the seventh victim until the, I think the second or third episode.
JEFF: And then there were a few other people related to some of the victims.
JEFF: A couple, there was like the fire lieutenant and the doctor, like a handful of people who were in the first episode, right?
JEFF: I think it was a total of six victims and about maybe six or seven other people plus the two co-hosts.
JEFF: So that was what altogether, that’s like 12 to 15 people in the first episode.
JEFF: So that’s the first episode.
JEFF: And I kind of expected the subsequent episodes would like come back to some of those people, kind of focus more on those people.
JEFF: I stopped adding names to this list, I think at about 30 or 40, no more than 30.
JEFF: I think it’s about 35 people.
DEE: And you’re only on what episodes?
DEE: Six, is something like, is it even six?
JEFF: Yeah, it’s an absurd amount of people.
DEE: It’s so many people.
DEE: And it was really, I don’t know about you, but did you find it hard to kind of remember who was who in the zoo?
DEE: It felt to me like I was…
JEFF: Yeah, no, I kept going back to this list and thinking, like, did I already write that down, this person’s name?
JEFF: Okay, this was another FBI agent.
JEFF: This was another cop.
JEFF: This was a different lawyer.
JEFF: This was, okay, no, this was that person’s cousin.
JEFF: This was that person’s friend.
DEE: And do you know what?
DEE: The thing that I found frustrating about it is like, I feel like they were trying to, like, obviously there was so many details in the story, but they introduced a lot of people that didn’t need to be introduced.
DEE: Like, they didn’t add enough value to the story, I didn’t think.
DEE: To warrant me trying to remember their name.
JEFF: No, because I think in other podcasts we’ve listened to, we really like when the story is kind of told through the people who were there and who were affected.
JEFF: There’s just so damn much plot in this one, right?
JEFF: Like, it’s 40 years of plot.
DEE: But like, when we look back at Inside the Crime, the Unalinsky murder, like, there was a lot of people, there was a lot of happened.
DEE: Maybe there’s not obviously as much plot maybe involved in it, but like, I don’t know, it’s just told better.
DEE: Even the thing about Pam, like there was a load of people in it, actually, and the retrievals.
DEE: There was loads of people in there too, but they managed to focus in on the people that kind of made sense.
DEE: Like, if it’s spanning 40 years, there’s gonna be a lot of people.
DEE: What was interesting, I thought, with this podcast, was there was a lot of people who had a lot to say from all these different sides.
DEE: So in other podcasts we’ve reviewed, there isn’t that many people, so it feels slightly unbalanced, and you’re not sure if you’re really getting a full idea, like a full picture.
DEE: You’re not hearing from all sides.
DEE: We literally hear from all sides.
DEE: One person, like, main person, I suppose, in this, that we wouldn’t hear from is, is it Roger Arnold?
DEE: Because he’s passed away.
JEFF: One of the main suspects.
JEFF: So there’s two, I think, and I wanted to kind of just quickly kind of summarize this.
JEFF: So there’s two main suspects.
JEFF: Roger Arnold is the one that the Chicago police think did it.
JEFF: And then there is, oh my gosh, Jim Lewis or Robert Richardson.
JEFF: To make it a little extra confusing, he has multiple aliases.
JEFF: But Jim Lewis is, I think the name, Lewis is the name we’re going to probably refer to him as.
JEFF: So there’s the two suspects, then there’s the people in their various orbits, right?
JEFF: Like there’s a lot of circumstances around them.
JEFF: So, and I mentioned that Roger Arnold is the one that the Chicago police think did it, specifically Charlie Ford and Jimmy Gilday.
JEFF: So we get a lot from those two guys, especially Charlie Ford.
JEFF: But then there’s the ones that the FBI think did it, which is Jim Lewis.
JEFF: So we get a bunch of FBI agents, but then all the people kind of in Jim Lewis’ orbit, which is a lot of people, because he’s the one who is-
DEE: So many people.
JEFF: Yeah, I mean, he’s the guy who kind of like kept getting back into the spotlight over the four decades that this happened.
JEFF: So that’s like, I thought about like bucketing the characters by like doing like a graph or like a Venn diagram of them.
JEFF: And then I got tired and didn’t.
JEFF: That’s where we’re at.
DEE: Yeah, I mean, it was a lot.
DEE: I think that like, that was a good summary.
DEE: Like I really feel like it would be hard push to go through the summary of it before we delve into our conversation even further.
DEE: I do think it’d be just interesting to take a look at the episodes really, really briefly.
DEE: So we start off, obviously we’ve already gone through episode one, it focuses a lot on the victims and the circumstances around that day in September, 1982.
DEE: The second episode is Turf War.
DEE: It’s basically about police wanting, like, who owns what, that’s mine, that’s yours.
DEE: Sharing is caring, lads, move on and get on with it.
DEE: But anyway, so that’s what episode two is about.
JEFF: Just to elaborate on that just a little bit, so it’s-
DEE: Did I not give enough context there?
DEE: Because that’s how I felt about episode two.
JEFF: Okay, I did think that, well, just to, we can move on from this, but a couple things about episode two that I thought were interesting about the Turf War, so you’ve got the FBI versus the Illinois State Police, there’s the Chicago City Police, and then there is the, right?
JEFF: So these crimes, these murders, these deaths happen in a couple of different counties.
JEFF: So you’ve got the respective police from those different counties.
DEE: Sorry, for Irish people, the American police system is mad here.
DEE: They all, like, it’s like if you’re from Tallag, you have a different police force than if you’re from Tarrinure, and if a murder happens in one place and not the other, you know, they’re fighting over who owns it.
JEFF: Well, they all want to own it.
DEE: Context for how weird it is here.
JEFF: They all want to own it, and they don’t want to share leads, and they don’t want to help each other, basically.
JEFF: There is also significant conflict between the FBI, so the federal agents, and the local police because the FBI had been investigating the Chicago police for corruption, and so there’s a lot of friction that is sort of inherent there.
JEFF: That’s all I have to say about that.
JEFF: We can keep going.
DEE: Was, just while we’re on it, like, did it add to the episode?
DEE: Like, there’s turf wars going on all of the time with police.
DEE: Like, really, do you think it added to the podcast to know all of that?
DEE: Like, a full episode on it?
JEFF: I actually think it did because I think the conflict between the FBI and the Chicago police is how we get these two paths of Arnold versus Lewis, which one is, like, they both are convinced they have the right guy, and they can’t both be right.
DEE: Oh, I totally agree.
DEE: I totally agree that it should have been a segment.
DEE: It should have been like a conversation had in one episode, like, as part of an episode.
DEE: I just, I think I fell asleep a few times during this episode.
DEE: I found it very boring.
JEFF: The other thing that we get in this episode, though, is the seventh victim, Paula Prince, who is the flight attendant from United Airlines.
JEFF: We get her story, which is brief.
DEE: We do get her story.
DEE: I didn’t fall asleep during that.
DEE: Like, that was important.
DEE: But the rest of the episode.
JEFF: We can go on to three.
DEE: Episode three.
DEE: What’s the name of episode three?
JEFF: Suspects.
DEE: I put down Lewis versus Arnold.
DEE: I don’t know why, but I knew looking at it, it wasn’t right.
DEE: Give me your thoughts, Jeff.
JEFF: So episode three is where we get this handwritten letter that goes to Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol.
JEFF: And so that I thought was fascinating.
JEFF: I actually went and looked up that letter.
JEFF: I have it in my notes here.
JEFF: So it’s…
DEE: We can probably post that on our Instagram.
JEFF: We can.
JEFF: Yes, it’s pretty easy to find.
JEFF: But I feel like this is a pivotal turn in the whole investigation, right?
JEFF: So it comes out that Lewis sent this letter.
JEFF: He’s trying to set up Fred McCahey, who his wife used to work for.
DEE: Seemingly trying to set up.
JEFF: Maybe, yeah.
JEFF: The whole thing just seems like he’s just trying to get attention for himself ultimately, right?
JEFF: Which seems to be what he does for the next several decades.
JEFF: But, yeah, I mean, this is…
JEFF: A lot happens in this third episode.
JEFF: But I think the most pivotal thing is he sends this letter, which suddenly makes everyone look at this guy.
JEFF: Like, he becomes the number one suspect for the FBI.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: He puts himself in the center of it.
DEE: And then we also get introduced to Arnold in this episode.
JEFF: Yes, Roger Arnold.
DEE: And like, I mean, listening to it.
DEE: Okay, listening to episode three.
DEE: Jeff, who did it?
DEE: Just on episode three.
JEFF: Well, okay, so Roger Arnold…
DEE: Has cyanide in his home.
JEFF: Was known to have cyanide.
JEFF: Was worked with one of the victim, Mary Reiner’s father.
DEE: In a warehouse.
DEE: Or in the back of a shop that stocked the Tylenol, which was one of the places that it was bought from.
JEFF: Was known to be angry and disgruntled.
JEFF: When they searched his home, when Chicago police searched his home, they found a book on poisoning, four handguns, a rifle, and a plane ticket to Thailand.
DEE: A one-way ticket to Thailand.
JEFF: A one-way ticket to Thailand.
DEE: For four days later.
JEFF: Can I also say, so Ford and Gilday, the Chicago cops, arrest him, and one of my favorite things in the whole show, is they talk about how they’re going to get him to confess by buttering him up, and they take him out for a Chicago steak sandwich.
DEE: That’s so good.
DEE: Do you know what was so nice about that aspect of it?
DEE: I feel like anytime that the police have been involved, which is every episode we’re talking about, the majority of the time we’re like, they’re not doing a good job.
DEE: These two policemen seem to have their shit together.
DEE: They did a good job.
DEE: They were not like heavy handed and like going down like fist on table route.
DEE: They were like, let’s bring them out.
DEE: Let’s chat to them.
DEE: Let’s like kind of butter them up and try and get them to talk to us.
DEE: Like, I don’t know.
DEE: I thought it seemed like really clever policing.
JEFF: But again, back to episode two, this is where that conflict comes in because what happens, they’re trying to butter them up.
JEFF: They’re trying to get them to confess.
JEFF: And then when it comes out to the other people on the task force that they’ve got this suspect, all the bigwigs come in and they take over the interrogation.
JEFF: And suddenly Roger Arnold like clams up, stops talking, right?
JEFF: So it’s one group of police getting it, or FBI agents getting in the way of the others and like taking over the investigation.
JEFF: That’s where that like, maybe this crime could have been solved if they just stayed out of each other’s way.
DEE: But like, could they not have said it in those two sentences?
DEE: Like, I don’t think that they needed a full episode to explain.
DEE: Like, it’s not as if a turf war or people like bigwigs coming in and trying to take the glory of a big case is like, oh, I’ve never heard that happen before.
DEE: People have heard that happen before.
DEE: So like, just put it as two sentences in.
DEE: Don’t make me listen to 35 minutes of it.
JEFF: Well, we got some other interesting things in episode three.
JEFF: If we can jump back to the letter, so the Lewis letter, the way he’s framing Fred McKayhee.
JEFF: First of all, Fred McKayhee, who owned this Lakeside Travel, where Lewis’s wife worked, also the heir to the Miller Beer fortune.
JEFF: That’s a fun fact.
DEE: That is a fun fact.
JEFF: Also, I think it was the FBI who was getting into the space of criminal profiling, which was a new thing at the time.
DEE: Some of it was so weird though, because I’ve seen a lot of criminal profiling, whether it’s documentaries or TV shows, but I feel like one of them was to do it like a blue suit and a red tie.
JEFF: Yeah, the blue suit and the red tie.
DEE: Okay, hurting animals when they’re younger.
JEFF: What was the context for that?
DEE: That he might be comfortable or something if you wear a blue suit or a tie.
DEE: It comes in a later episode, but I had to rewind and be like, are they saying that’s a profile?
DEE: That’s like something that would be on someone’s Tinder profile.
DEE: Like, I like someone in a blue suit and a red tie.
DEE: Anyway, you’d usually hear of they would hurt animals.
DEE: They might have had an estranged relationship with their mother or their father, or they might have not had any siblings, or they might have gone through trauma.
DEE: These are the things you hear, not that they might like someone in a blue suit and a red tie.
JEFF: Yeah, that was a little odd.
JEFF: But it does come back later.
JEFF: It becomes important later on.
JEFF: Should we talk about Four?
JEFF: Four is called Gone to the Lake.
DEE: Shocker.
DEE: Like, why is it that the episodes or the people in these podcasts that get me are always the older people?
DEE: I loved this episode.
DEE: Raymond West.
JEFF: Raymond West.
JEFF: You want to talk about Raymond West for a bit?
DEE: I don’t know if I can, Jeff.
DEE: I properly adored this episode.
DEE: I’d listened to it a couple of times over without listening to the rest of it.
DEE: I really like, sorry, I didn’t adore it.
DEE: I was really invested in it.
DEE: I liked hearing about him.
DEE: I can’t say I adored it because it’s horrendous.
DEE: It’s infuriating.
DEE: It’s bizarre.
DEE: OK, yeah, I do this.
DEE: I need to give the context.
DEE: You give the context.
JEFF: Let’s give some context Raymond West.
JEFF: All right, so we jump back in time, right?
JEFF: So the crime occurred in 1982.
JEFF: We’re going back to 1978.
JEFF: So we’re in Kansas City.
JEFF: Actually, we go back more between Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, which are just across the border from each other.
JEFF: So Raymond West is this guy.
JEFF: He’s in his early 70s.
JEFF: He’s described as a guy who wears a wig and glasses, counted his pennies, had a bunch of money saved up, Good Samaritan, walked around the neighborhood.
JEFF: One of the fun facts that I loved was he would give his old newspapers to the florist to wrap flowers in, which made me think, is that something I should be doing?
JEFF: Like, is that just a nice person gesture that maybe I should start doing?
JEFF: He collects figurines.
JEFF: Generally just like nice guy around the neighborhood.
JEFF: If he’s going to write a check for more than $100, he goes into the bank and tells them so that they know to expect that.
JEFF: So people knew him, but so he’s friends with Jim Lewis, right?
JEFF: Well, Jim Lewis is his…
DEE: Tax guy.
JEFF: Tax guy, right.
JEFF: But one of Raymond West’s friends, Charles Banker, gets worried about him, disappears.
JEFF: Raymond West disappears, and we get basically the story of how Charles Banker is convinced something went wrong.
JEFF: Turns out something went wrong.
JEFF: Raymond West gets murdered.
DEE: It was really like…
DEE: So basically…
DEE: What’s your aunt’s name, his mate?
JEFF: Wait, which one?
DEE: The guy.
JEFF: Charles Banker?
DEE: So Charles Banker goes up to the door of Raymond’s house when he can’t get him on the phone, and there’s a padlock on the door.
DEE: And he’s like, that’s weird.
DEE: And he goes and looks in the blinds, and he says, things just look off.
DEE: So then he goes and he comes back, like, I don’t know, a couple of days later, and he saw Jim Lewis and asked him about it, and he was like, oh, it’s all fine.
DEE: And then when he went back the next time, there was a note left on the door, like, gone to the lake with my girlfriend.
DEE: And Charles was like, you don’t have a girlfriend.
DEE: Doesn’t have a girlfriend, yeah.
DEE: And also, so then he takes a…
DEE: he basically goes to remove the padlock, and he’s like, this can’t be here.
DEE: And Jim Lewis sees him and comes up, and there’s a moment, he’s like, what are you doing?
DEE: He’s like, I’m removing it.
DEE: And Jim Lewis sees him and picks up a hammer.
JEFF: Picks up a hammer that Charles Banker was using to…
JEFF: he was actually replacing the padlock.
JEFF: Like, he was putting a different padlock on the door.
DEE: You’re right, yeah, he was replacing it.
DEE: And he stands there with the hammer, and then he leaves, but he doesn’t go too far.
DEE: He drives around the corner and waits and watches.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: Well, let’s keep going with that.
JEFF: So Charles Banker gets the police to come to break into the house.
JEFF: He goes in with the police, they look around.
JEFF: Charles Banker is like, hey, this chair wasn’t in this spot, and this all looks like it’s out of place, and there’s a weird other note that’s left on a table.
JEFF: And the police are like, eh, it’s fine, and they leave.
DEE: And the interesting thing about the note is it’s signed Raymond West.
DEE: And he’s like, he doesn’t sign his name Raymond West.
DEE: He only signs it Ray.
JEFF: Right.
DEE: Probably like, I feel like we’ve spoken about this far too many, far too many episodes.
DEE: It’s like he was trying to learn how to copy someone’s signature for a note.
JEFF: Also, like, everybody needs a friend like Charles Banker.
DEE: I know, right?
JEFF: Right?
JEFF: Like, is just not going to give up until he finds out what happened.
JEFF: So, yeah, all right, so Banker then convinces the police to come back.
JEFF: And on the second time they come back, suddenly they notice bloodstains all over the place.
DEE: I mean, come on.
JEFF: Then they go to the attic and that’s where they find the body.
DEE: And it’s gruesome, guys.
DEE: It’s really gruesome.
DEE: It’s dismembered.
DEE: Hips are broken.
DEE: Is it his left leg or his left arm?
JEFF: His legs are cut off.
DEE: But what was not there?
DEE: His hand?
JEFF: I don’t remember.
JEFF: I know there was a lot of description of the way the body was dismembered and tied up.
DEE: But the infuriating thing about it all basically was like he couldn’t, nobody could figure out what had caused his death because of the dismemberment and because it had been a long time, the body had decomposed.
DEE: So as much as it seems, so like…
JEFF: Well, yeah, and actually, hey, wait, we’re getting into stuff that happens in episode five.
JEFF: There’s a tangent at the end of episode four.
JEFF: So before we get into kind of the further investigation of Raymond West, we get a little other backtrack where we go back to Jim Lewis’s childhood.
JEFF: And we kind of get his life story, which is, I think, I found this part fascinating.
JEFF: I know you’re critical of the structure of this overall podcast, and I agree with you there, but if you extract some of these bits and pieces, I think there’s some really interesting content.
DEE: Oh, I totally agree.
DEE: I think it sounds like, and it sounds like we could have got more about Jim Lewis’s background, like from what they said, he grew up in a tumultuous family situation.
JEFF: Yeah, both of his parents, I think, at different junctures, abandoned him.
JEFF: He ended up adopted.
JEFF: At 19, he goes missing.
JEFF: They find him in a pond.
JEFF: He becomes violent.
JEFF: So his…
DEE: He was seemingly trying to attempt suicide.
JEFF: Right.
JEFF: So, okay, and actually a little bit for that.
JEFF: So, yeah, he had gotten adopted, but his adopted father dies and his adopted mother remarries.
JEFF: So his stepfather, I don’t know what you would call that anyway, and Jim Lewis have conflict.
JEFF: After he goes missing, he basically threatens his stepfather.
DEE: He was annoyed that they found him.
JEFF: Yes.
DEE: And he beats him up, basically.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: He beats his stepfather up.
JEFF: But then we get some positive things in his life.
JEFF: So he does go to college for a little bit.
JEFF: That’s where he meets his wife, Leanne.
JEFF: They have a baby, Tony, in 1969.
JEFF: But she has Down syndrome and a heart defect.
JEFF: She has a first surgery for the heart defect, which she comes through.
JEFF: She has a second surgery.
JEFF: She’s five years old, and she dies, I think, shortly after or during the surgery.
DEE: And by all accounts, he was an excellent father and very into Tony’s life and into making her happy.
DEE: And it seemed to be the light that he may be needed.
DEE: Tony seemed to be the light that he needed in his life.
DEE: And that’s something that ends up seemingly being very important at the end of this podcast.
DEE: So we will come back to that.
JEFF: Right.
JEFF: Just to be clear, so Tony is born in 1969.
JEFF: She dies at five, so I presume that’s around 1974 or so.
JEFF: So 1974, we’re in Kansas City.
JEFF: 1978 is when the whole Raymond West bit happens.
JEFF: And it seems like after his daughter’s death, Jim Lewis starts up this tax business.
JEFF: And that’s how he connects with Raymond West.
JEFF: Raymond West apparently used to always come by, like walk by his house.
JEFF: They were neighbors and was very friendly with Tony.
JEFF: Like he would always wave because he seems like the kind of guy who would wave to anybody, definitely to a little girl.
JEFF: So just a friendly neighbor guy.
JEFF: All right, that’s four.
JEFF: So then we get five, which is called Breadcrumbs.
JEFF: And this is where we get the bit about Raymond West, all the things that happened to him.
JEFF: And then we get a lot more.
DEE: Like, basically, more or less, the police find a shared load of evidence against Raymond West.
DEE: Like, was it 200 checks?
DEE: 200 of Raymond West’s checks written out to Jim Lewis in his car.
DEE: They find like the twine that was used, that Raymond West, his body was tied up with.
DEE: They find that in his car.
DEE: They find blood, I think, at one point.
JEFF: They find a hair in the bathroom on the soap that matches Jim Lewis.
JEFF: Yeah, there’s, I think Jim Lewis, there’s blood that matches.
JEFF: There’s also a nylon rope in Jim Lewis’ car with slip knots, like he was practicing slip knots.
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: But then basically, it turns out, the police forgot to read him his Miranda rights, and so all of the evidence has to be thrown out and destroyed.
DEE: It didn’t have to be destroyed.
DEE: I felt like it didn’t have to be destroyed, but anyway, it was all destroyed.
JEFF: There was a bit here.
JEFF: So James Bell, who’s one of our cast of 1000 characters, who was the prosecutor working this case in 1979, he was fresh out of law school, and they asked him, okay, so how many cases have you worked where basically, because of a failure to read the Miranda rights, was it dismissed basically, when it would seem like a slam dunk case?
JEFF: And he said, only one.
JEFF: His whole career, only one.
JEFF: It’s the only time that ever happened to him.
DEE: Wild.
DEE: And then, I was thinking, I know we’re in the 70s and 80s and this, most of it, but I’m like, geez, if only they had Google locations or GPS or CCTV, like he could have been a great way to find him.
DEE: Anyway, then we jump back to Arnold.
DEE: And basically, Arnold gets out of prison after being put in prison for pulling a gun on someone.
DEE: When they had arrested him, originally in Chicago, they didn’t have enough to try him for the Tylenol Murders, but they did have like a few things that they could put him away for.
DEE: So they did.
DEE: And then he gets out, and then he’s annoyed because someone had told the police, tipped them off to where he was, which allowed them to catch him, which allowed them to put him behind bars.
DEE: This guy is Marty Sinclair.
JEFF: Marty Sinclair is the guy that Roger Arnold, that tipped up the police about Roger Arnold.
DEE: So Arnold is in a pub, he’s drinking a lot.
DEE: Someone says, that’s Marty Sinclair drinking over there with his mates.
DEE: He turns around, he looks, he goes out off for, I don’t know, did they say a burger?
DEE: Which is very random.
DEE: He goes off for a burger or something.
DEE: And then he comes back.
DEE: The supposed Marty Sinclair leaves the pub with his mates.
DEE: Arnold follows him, more or less.
DEE: Says like, why did you tip off the police and shoot them?
DEE: More or less, it turns out this was mistaken identity.
DEE: This was not Marty Sinclair, it was Jack Stannis.
DEE: I have Stannis law down, and then later on I’m like, is it Stannis Hall?
JEFF: I think it’s Stannis Shaw.
DEE: Stannis Shaw, okay.
JEFF: I’m not sure exactly, but yeah, the wrong guy, not Marty Sinclair.
JEFF: He shoots the wrong guy and kills him.
DEE: One tidbit that’s an aside that came from this is Jack Stannis Shaw’s daughter, one of his daughters, speaks.
DEE: And it was really touching and interesting to hear her speak.
DEE: And one thing that she said is like at the funeral, like as people are coming up to like give their condolences, she said, I’ll never forget the last person that came up to see me.
DEE: I had a double take.
DEE: It was Marty Sinclair.
DEE: So the guy that Arnold thought he was shooting.
DEE: And she said, he was so like my dad.
JEFF: Yeah, she’s like, what, six years old.
JEFF: She’s young at the time.
JEFF: Yeah, that was really tragic.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: First of all, that Roger Arnold goes and hunts down this guy that he feels like turned him into the police and shoots him.
JEFF: And it’s the wrong guy.
JEFF: It’s a guy who looks like him.
JEFF: And then we cut to, yeah, his, the victim’s daughter talking about it.
JEFF: I mean, this, yeah, that was rough.
DEE: And like then Arnold is like, so then basically he runs away for like a night, calls his lawyer, and then it’s like, he hands himself in.
DEE: So I know he was drunken in a pub, so I didn’t know whether to drink off the better of him.
DEE: Like if he was gonna hand himself in anyway, it just seems silly.
DEE: Anyway, he went away for the murder.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah, okay.
JEFF: So that’s the end of episode five.
JEFF: So there’s six, seven, and eight still to come.
JEFF: And I feel like this is where it kind of, to me, this is where it takes a turn.
JEFF: Like I feel like the last three episodes are where we get a lot more just sort of rambling around.
JEFF: I mean, we’ve already covered a significant amount of plot.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: But episode six is walking crime wave.
JEFF: That’s the name of the episode.
JEFF: And there’s a point at the beginning of this where they say, we’re gonna divide the story into three chapters.
JEFF: And I’m like, wait, we’re on episode six, and now you’re dividing it into chapters.
JEFF: And then the first chapters, most of the episode six, I’m like, what?
JEFF: I don’t understand what’s happening in the organization of this podcast.
JEFF: But chapter one in episode six is called Doodling.
JEFF: So at this point, Jim Lewis is in prison.
JEFF: This is 1983.
JEFF: So we’re sort of moving in a linear way although we jump back and forth a little bit.
JEFF: He’s in prison because he sent a letter, he sends a lot of letters, but he sent a letter to President Reagan.
JEFF: So Ronald Reagan, who was president at the time, like an extortion letter, basically.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: While he’s in prison, he writes another letter to the FBI saying, hey, I could be helpful to you.
JEFF: Let me help you solve crime.
JEFF: I know a lot about fraud.
JEFF: I know a lot about a lot of things.
JEFF: Let me help you.
DEE: I felt like this is basically the plot for White Collar.
DEE: Do you know?
DEE: Have you seen White Collar?
JEFF: Mm-mm, no.
DEE: It’s like terrible and great all at the same time.
DEE: Basically, a criminal is turned and he’s used by the FADs to solve different high-falutin crimes.
DEE: But anyway, it also jumps and it’s like Tylenol, they get a new seal and a new cap and their numbers are up.
DEE: And I was like, cool, good to hear a Tylenol investigation was dwindling.
JEFF: I want to say though, so I take issue with some of the ways this was structured and some of the pacing of it and the amount of detail, the amount of people in it, but this section, chapter one of episode six, has some of the most fascinating things in it.
JEFF: All right, so we get these FBI agents, Lane and, I forget the other one, but Lane is one of the ones we hear the most from.
JEFF: And so there’s a couple of things that they say.
JEFF: One is that they’re like, yeah, we’ll meet with this guy.
JEFF: And they’re hoping that he has what they call a psychotic leak, which is one of the things I Google to be like, what’s a psychotic leak?
JEFF: Basically, if they just keep talking to this guy about the crime, they think eventually he’ll just let slip that he did it.
JEFF: And they have this thing, this move, they call a bank shot, which is one of my favorite things to do when I’m playing pool, is the bank shot, where instead of just like kind of asking him point blank about what he did, they say something like, oh, you know, Jim Lewis couldn’t do this crime, he’s not smart enough.
JEFF: And then Jim will be like, oh, no, no, no, this is how you would do it.
JEFF: Like that kind of like indirect way of like almost like insulting him so that he feels like he has to prove and explain himself.
JEFF: And they also say to him, they ask him like, why do you think it was, why do you think that the person who did these Tylenol Murders used extra strength Tylenol?
JEFF: Like, was it so that the kids wouldn’t take it?
JEFF: Like, cause they, you know, kids would take more like children’s Tylenol.
JEFF: It’s like, no, no, cause there’s something extra in the capsule, which I don’t know, like clearly he’s thought about it.
JEFF: Like clearly he’s, I don’t know, this, and then, then he gets some paper and he does these drawings, which, did you look at these drawings?
DEE: No.
JEFF: You should look at these drawings.
JEFF: They’re in the notes and we’ll, well, they’re linked in the Chicago Tribune has them.
JEFF: First of all, he’s a really good artist.
DEE: Oh, he is.
JEFF: But he basically, he does these drawings that he describes.
DEE: Not drawn to scale.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: They say not drawn to scale, but he describes basically how one would, if he were one to do this, fill these Tylenol capsules with cyanide.
JEFF: What, like different methods of doing it, different ways of filling them, as though he has spent a significant amount of time thinking about it.
JEFF: And yeah, it’s kind of like terrifying and amazing.
JEFF: And yeah, so those drawings are all available.
JEFF: You can check those out.
DEE: But like he’s just spent a bit of time in prison, and he’s inserted himself into a crime, and he gets fixated on stuff.
DEE: So I don’t think it’s that shocking.
DEE: I feel like it fits his profile.
DEE: He likes blue suits, red ties, and drawn pictures.
JEFF: Do you remember?
JEFF: I don’t remember when this happened, but there was one point in the early 2000s where OJ Simpson did that.
JEFF: It was like a book.
JEFF: In an interview, it was like, if I did it.
JEFF: And it was basically like him basically saying like, if I killed those two people, here’s how I would have done it.
JEFF: I feel like this is the exact same thing where it’s like, he’s not saying he did it, but if he did it, here’s exactly how he did it.
DEE: I don’t know.
DEE: It makes me feel like you think Jim Lewis did it as opposed to Arnold.
JEFF: I do think Jim Lewis did it.
JEFF: Do you not?
JEFF: Do you think Roger Arnold did it?
DEE: I’m just like, they found cyanide, the one way to take it to Thailand, like, there’s so much up against him.
JEFF: Do you think Jim Lewis just loved the attention?
DEE: Yeah, I think like I think from his MO from previous scenarios, taking away the Raymond West thing, which I have some thoughts on on that.
DEE: But I think he just wants to either extort money or insert himself where he’s not needed because he wants attention and he wants a focus in his life.
DEE: And that’s what I feel about him.
DEE: I mean, even his friendship in the next episode, which we’ll get to like, like even the jailhouse niche, right?
DEE: So apparently there’s five people across in different places.
DEE: So apparently the significance increases that Jim Lewis has said, like, I did the Tylenol Murders.
JEFF: Right.
JEFF: So that’s chapter two of episode six, which is about two.
DEE: Is it even two sentences long?
JEFF: No, it’s real short.
JEFF: And then chapter three is also very short.
JEFF: Chapter three is parole, maybe, where basically Jim Lewis is up for parole in 1989.
JEFF: And then…
DEE: Okay.
DEE: So I have questions about this.
DEE: In the middle of the parole, they’re like, actually, we’ll also consider whether you might have been involved in the Tylenol Murders.
DEE: And they said, yeah.
JEFF: Right.
JEFF: So to be clear, he’s in prison for attempted extortion, the letter he sent to Ronald Reagan, not for the Tylenol, so no one was ever officially charged with the Tylenol Murders.
JEFF: And then, yeah, this panel that is reviewing whether he should be put up for parole is like for what…
JEFF: I didn’t understand the law around here, but they’re willing to basically consider whether he is the most likely person to have committed the Tylenol Murders.
JEFF: They say, yes, you are.
JEFF: Therefore, we’re not going to be parole for this other crime.
DEE: Like, is this normal?
DEE: Two lads just sitting there decide.
DEE: Seems like unlawful and like…
DEE: Bizarre.
JEFF: But anyway, so that was 1989.
JEFF: 1995, he does get out of prison.
DEE: Starts speaking to the reporters.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: That’s the end of six.
JEFF: We go on to seven.
DEE: Oh, my God.
DEE: This is going to be so long.
JEFF: We’re almost there.
DEE: This is what I said we shouldn’t do.
DEE: And then I was the one to launch in to doing it.
JEFF: Here we are.
JEFF: We’re at seven.
JEFF: Seven is called Friendship.
DEE: I do have to say I loved the little snippet introducing like a lot of change in Chicago between 1982 and the 1990s.
DEE: Like, there’s all these snippets from like different things, like even Oprah introducing herself and spelling out her name.
DEE: I’m Oprah Winfrey, O-P-R-A-H.
DEE: Or she probably said R-A-H, but she didn’t sound like a pirate.
JEFF: No, although you just sounded like a pirate.
DEE: I know, that’s because Americans sound like pirates when they say the letter or.
JEFF: R.
JEFF: Also H.
JEFF: H.
DEE: O-P-R-A-H.
DEE: Is that how you say it?
DEE: H.
JEFF: H.
DEE: Anyway, H.
JEFF: Anyway, Oprah.
JEFF: We all know Oprah.
DEE: So anyway, I did like the little snippet at the start of that.
DEE: So Arnold in the mid 90s, like he’s let out.
DEE: He’s he serves half of a 30 year sentence for murdering someone.
JEFF: Gets out in 1988 and gets a job.
DEE: Half of his 30 year sentence for murdering someone in Cold Blood, murdering the wrong person in Cold Blood.
JEFF: He was very apologetic.
JEFF: He also got his bachelor’s degree in prison, which was a fun fact.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: It, the way it’s presented in the show, Roger Arnold, I understand you think he was the Tylenol Murderer.
JEFF: I guess I don’t, but he seems incredibly apologetic.
JEFF: And like he made a drunken mistake and he regretted it the rest of his life.
JEFF: Once he gets out too, like he’s apparently like haunted by what he did.
DEE: Yeah, I really enjoyed hearing that about Steve Shulman.
DEE: Basically this guy loves Steve Shulman.
DEE: He basically owns like a company and Arnold starts working for him.
DEE: He didn’t realize about his murder conviction before he hired him.
DEE: But when he found out, he was like, it’s fine.
DEE: He worked for about seven to eight years.
DEE: And then Arnold came to him and said, like, I’m having a really bad time.
DEE: I can’t stop seeing Jack Stanislaw.
DEE: He’s having hallucinations.
DEE: Turns out he wasn’t able to get like his prescription for…
DEE: Depression.
JEFF: Yeah, it was depression meds.
JEFF: I think so.
DEE: And someone had said, like, I think it’s that hallucinations are part of like the withdrawal for that.
DEE: I thought it was…
DEE: Anyway, Stanislaw’s daughter as well comes back here, which I thought it was really interesting to hear, like her point of view on him, which is basically like, I don’t want someone else to more or less suffer if like they’re apologetic.
DEE: I don’t know.
DEE: I thought it was really nice that she came back in at this point.
DEE: Anyway, he quits his job.
DEE: Steve Shulman starts to have a weird feeling about him, feels like maybe something’s wrong and like goes and finds him in his apartment.
JEFF: Yeah, so he apparently fell, hit his head, and he died.
JEFF: But that was it.
JEFF: If I have this right, that was in 2008.
JEFF: So there’s a big time jump there.
DEE: Well, because that starts off being like 1990s.
DEE: I mean, he got out mid 1990s.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Okay.
JEFF: And then we jumped back to Jim Lewis, who we basically stick with for the rest of the show.
JEFF: Yeah, there’s a couple of things here that happen in episode seven that I feel like we should talk about.
DEE: Oh, Nicholson.
DEE: So he becomes mates with this lad who owns a grocery store.
DEE: Who hosts a public access show.
DEE: Is that how you say it?
DEE: Public access show.
JEFF: Yeah, public.
DEE: Is that like?
JEFF: Called the Cambridge Rag.
JEFF: This is in Boston, I presume.
JEFF: Cambridge.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Before that, though.
JEFF: Louis goes back to prison.
JEFF: Well, he goes back to jail, not prison, in 2004.
JEFF: So he started up this business with, there’s this woman involved in the business, and he gets arrested.
JEFF: And I wrote this down because this is the list of charges.
JEFF: So he was arrested in 2004 for aggravated rape, kidnapping, assault and battery, indecent assault, drugging for sexual intercourse, and drugging to confine.
JEFF: He served three years in jail.
JEFF: Well, he was in jail for three years, and then eventually the woman decided not to press charges.
JEFF: Charges were dropped.
JEFF: So that was his 2004, I guess, about 2007.
JEFF: So Jim Lewis is back in jail, which…
JEFF: Yeah, and then he gets out, and Roger Nicholson is like, hey, man, come sleep on my couch, come hang out in my apartment.
DEE: Watch me play online poker.
DEE: We can verbally spar.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, Nicholson plays online poker.
JEFF: They eat McDonald’s.
JEFF: They watch MSNBC.
DEE: What’s here?
DEE: What do you make of this relationship?
JEFF: I mean, it seems like Lewis loves attention, and Nicholson also loves attention, and these two guys find each other.
JEFF: Nicholson is much younger, much younger guy.
JEFF: At this point, Lewis is older, right?
JEFF: This is the mid-2000s.
JEFF: And Nicholson seems really, like, keen on getting Lewis onto his TV show.
JEFF: I think he thinks it’s like a big get for his show.
JEFF: That’s my read on it.
JEFF: I don’t think they’d come out and say that.
DEE: No.
DEE: That seems so odd.
JEFF: It was odd, yeah.
DEE: It’s very odd.
DEE: So we jump back.
DEE: So now Lewis is back in contact with Lane, who is the FBI agent.
DEE: FBI agent.
DEE: We’re in 2006 now.
DEE: And Task Force 2 is established.
JEFF: Right.
DEE: And it’s deemed like Tylenol Murders is a good cold case to reopen.
DEE: Side note.
DEE: Did you ever watch Cold Case?
JEFF: I think I’ve seen a couple.
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: Great show.
DEE: Loved it because they used similar to like this episode at the start where they talk like they do the news snippets, but like with Cold Case, whatever year it happened in, they use the music throughout from that year, which I really liked.
JEFF: That’s a nice touch.
JEFF: I like that.
JEFF: Okay.
DEE: Anyway.
JEFF: Task Force 2.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: So there’s this like ruse where they pretend that they’re writing a book and they kind of wine and dine Lewis.
JEFF: They’re all just trying to get him to confess, right?
JEFF: Like they’re trying to get information out of him.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: There’s also like one point the FBI raids Lewis’s condo and his like storage, whatever kind of storage he has.
JEFF: There is a piece of paper that where it’s like the headline is like it says, yes, I am a killer, but I have 10 good reasons.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: That was a little odd.
DEE: That’s very odd.
JEFF: Also, he has like a detailed like diary of some sort of where he was in 1982, but there’s this gap from September 25th to September 28th, which would be when the Tylenol, the cyanide placement was happening.
JEFF: There’s a lot of evidence, right?
JEFF: There’s a lot of evidence that’s sort of like around him.
DEE: And then he goes on to Nicholson’s show.
DEE: And one of the quotes from it is he said, I think Nicholson asks Lewis, do you think they’re ever going to solve it?
DEE: And he said, if the FBI are playing fair, they won’t find anything.
DEE: And then we’re left.
JEFF: What do you make of that?
DEE: Is it attention seeking?
DEE: It’s just so hard to know.
JEFF: Why go on the show?
JEFF: Why write all these letters?
JEFF: I know you’re skeptical.
DEE: He’s inserting himself because he knows they have nothing.
DEE: Yeah, I don’t know.
JEFF: I don’t know.
JEFF: All right.
JEFF: Can we jump to eight or is there anything else on seven?
DEE: Yeah, like towards the end of seven, they’re like, and then we have this new evidence at the PowerPoint.
DEE: This is the softest, like, dramatic end to a sentence ever.
DEE: Like, what’s the new evidence?
DEE: A feckin PowerPoint.
DEE: Like, this is the most boring thing I’ve ever heard.
DEE: Oh, no, not the PowerPoint.
JEFF: Hey, I’m a real big fan of PowerPoint.
DEE: It’s not that I dislike PowerPoint, but I’m like, you’re not going to…
DEE: Like, how is that your dramatic end?
DEE: And then we realized it was the PowerPoint.
JEFF: Well, actually, I don’t remember exactly, but I think in…
JEFF: Was it Macbeth or Hamlet?
JEFF: I think Act 5 is called the PowerPoint.
DEE: Sounds right.
DEE: Accurately.
JEFF: Yeah, that sounds right.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah, to go from, like, all of this kind of activity in episodes like one, two, three, four, five, and then seven is called friendship.
DEE: And then eight is called second PowerPoint.
DEE: Like, Jesus.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah.
JEFF: It’s a bit of a…
DEE: My first note on episode eight is, Jesus, I’m bored by the name of it.
DEE: So what I really disliked about episode eight is we’re back to the same vibe that we were at the start of episode one where they’re just stalking him.
DEE: They’re like sitting in the McDonald’s parking lot across the street from his apartment.
JEFF: These are the hosts of the show.
DEE: Oh yeah, sorry, the hosts of the show.
DEE: They tried to FaceTime him.
DEE: Like, why did they have all his info?
DEE: Like, did he just give it to police and police have just leaked it?
DEE: Then they’re like outside his apartment block or whatever and his neighbor lets them in.
DEE: I’m like, maybe don’t do that neighbor.
DEE: Like, you see all these people like huddled together wanting to get in.
DEE: Maybe don’t let them in.
JEFF: So yeah, there’s a prolonged bit where they’re like, they go into a McDonald’s and they’re just like going up to like old men asking, are you Jim Lewis?
JEFF: My two all caps notes from this section of this episode are, first of all, my first note is UGH and my second note is uncomfortable.
DEE: UGH, as in like?
JEFF: I don’t like this.
JEFF: I don’t like what’s happening.
DEE: Like, UGH, E-U-G-H.
JEFF: I always spell that UGH.
JEFF: Same, same thing.
JEFF: That’s what you said.
DEE: UGHs are like shoes.
DEE: They’re boots.
JEFF: UGH boots.
JEFF: Yes.
JEFF: I was thinking about the shoes with like the fur linings.
DEE: Where are you going with this?
DEE: Winter in Boston.
DEE: I was actually literally talking to someone at work today about like how I pronounce it, because I obviously say it quite often in our DMs and work.
JEFF: UGH.
DEE: E-U-G-H.
JEFF: You’re talking about the boots.
DEE: And someone said to me like, what do you mean by that?
DEE: And they were like, do you mean like UGH or do you mean like UGH?
DEE: And I was like, oh no, I mean like UGH.
DEE: It’s so annoying.
JEFF: It’s an amazing conversation.
DEE: I’m so, yeah, you’re welcome everyone for that tidbit.
DEE: But anyway, UGH.
JEFF: I think we just found our like poll quote from this episode.
DEE: Anyway, like it was boring first of all.
DEE: And then I have to say like at the end of it, after they’re stalking him, he said like, and they’re like, talk to us, talk to us.
DEE: And he’s like, I don’t want to talk about it.
DEE: I don’t want to talk about it.
DEE: And he says, ladies, I hope you don’t think I’m being too rude to you.
DEE: But he’s like, I want to go.
DEE: Like, I haven’t done, by the sounds of it, a lot of what Jim Lewis has done in my life, but I would be like, feck right off.
DEE: Like, leave me alone.
DEE: Like, it was so uncomfortable.
JEFF: Yeah, I mean, they’re like, they’re out of breath, basically, like chasing him down.
DEE: They ask him to slow down at one stage.
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: Which also is funny because, like, he’s fought in his 70s and something at this stage.
JEFF: I will say, I listened to a lot of the NPR Politics Podcast, and their reporters who work on Capitol Hill talk about how, when you do that job, where you’re, like, chasing senators and congresspeople around on those, like, marble floors, that you got to wear comfortable shoes.
JEFF: You got to be in shape.
JEFF: Like, several of them are, like, runners.
JEFF: They do races.
JEFF: And they’re like, yeah, that’s part of the training for the job as a reporter is you got to be able to keep up with the people you’re trying to interview.
JEFF: It’s very important.
DEE: That’s fair.
JEFF: Anyway.
DEE: Anyway.
JEFF: All right.
JEFF: And then we get to the PowerPoint, which the PowerPoint is basically the FBI’s collection of evidence in 10 points, which they delineate one by one.
JEFF: We’re not going to…
JEFF: Do you want to go through that?
JEFF: I don’t want to go through that.
DEE: Letters, aliases, inmates that he spoke to, cyanide knowledge.
DEE: Apparently, he wanted to start a…
DEE: There was a company plan for a pill press business.
DEE: Fingerprint on the cyanide book, which he didn’t talk about.
DEE: They found a book on page whatever it was talking about cyanide, potassium cyanide, and they found his fingerprint on it.
DEE: But it was a book in his house.
DEE: So like, to be honest, he was coming true.
DEE: I don’t think that’s good enough evidence.
DEE: But anyway, the drawings.
DEE: And then a toxicologist was saying that the drawings made sense.
DEE: And then we got two new points.
DEE: So our two main points that they’re speaking about in this episode is nine and ten.
DEE: Nine is the motive.
DEE: And in this part, we’re coming back to Tony.
DEE: So reminder, Tony is Jim Lewis’s five year old daughter, who died after having a surgery on her heart.
DEE: And apparently in the autopsy of Tony, it reveals that the sutures in her heart had torn.
DEE: And at that stage, the sutures, when that had happened, the sutures, I can’t remember what they were called.
DEE: There was like a name on them, but they were also trademarked by J&J or Johnson & Johnson.
DEE: That was one time when I paused.
DEE: I paused it and I was like, whoa.
DEE: But then they follow it up by saying, like from what they’ve spoken to friends and family or whatever they’ve spoken to of Jim Lewis’s, they didn’t think that he was aware of that around the time of the Tylenol Murders.
JEFF: No, they said that he would have had access to the autopsy report.
JEFF: But yeah, I mean, that’s the, I think the FBI’s presumption is that that’s the motive.
JEFF: It’s a revenge motive against Johnson & Johnson.
JEFF: But it’s a little thin.
DEE: It’s very thin.
JEFF: I mean, obviously like the death of his daughter is a tragedy.
DEE: Oh, 100%.
JEFF: But the connection there, I mean, this is.9 of 10 in this PowerPoint.
JEFF: And I actually thought.10, which was this video or a couple of videos from this like sting operation by the FBI was also to me sounded thin.
JEFF: So there’s two videos.
JEFF: The first video is where they take Lewis into one of the Walgreens where the Tylenol was sold.
JEFF: So this happens sometime in the recent past, but they go into this Walgreens from where in 1982 the Tylenol was sold.
JEFF: And the sort of suspicious part is that Lewis goes to the back wall of the Walgreens, which is where the Tylenol used to be, right?
JEFF: In 1982, that’s where they kept the Tylenol.
JEFF: It’s not where they keep the Tylenol now, and that somehow is suspicious.
JEFF: And then the second video is…
DEE: Well, sorry.
DEE: Then he leaves the Walgreens and apparently says, that was just like deja vu, and I haven’t had this sense of excitement since I met my birth mother.
DEE: So, like, that was a bit weird, but also I just think he’s…
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: I thought he was very thin still.
JEFF: I agree.
JEFF: And the second video is him in a hotel, like Sheridan or something, where an agent is talking to him about the timeline of the extortion letter he sent, where they’re able to date that that letter was sent on October 1st.
JEFF: Killings happened on September, like, what, three days before September 28th.
JEFF: But he said he spent three days working on the letter.
JEFF: And so the whole premise of this being like motive or whatever is he spent three days working on it, but that means he would have started working on this letter the day the killings happened, but that day it wasn’t in the news yet.
JEFF: Therefore, like, he couldn’t have been working on it for three days.
JEFF: I don’t know.
DEE: I didn’t think that was interesting-ish.
DEE: Like, it wasn’t in the news yet.
DEE: So it happened on a Wednesday.
DEE: On the Thursday, it was released to the news media, but seemingly Jim Lewis had always said he heard about it first from the afternoon paper on the Friday.
DEE: So he would have only had one day, and there was a lot of research and stuff that went into the letters.
DEE: So I found that like, I mean, slightly interesting, but the end of the day, it’s all circumstantial.
DEE: And like, there’s just so much missing evidence.
DEE: They can’t even place him in Chicago.
JEFF: So yeah, so they list this at the end.
JEFF: I thought this was interesting.
JEFF: So the FBI says they have what they call chargeable circumstantial case from this task force too.
JEFF: But at the same time, the reason that they never actually pursued it was there’s no physical evidence that ties them to it.
JEFF: There’s no actual like fingerprint or everything.
JEFF: There’s no DNA.
JEFF: There’s no witnesses.
JEFF: Yeah, they can’t actually put Jim Lewis in Chicago.
JEFF: They tried real hard and they couldn’t actually say that he was definitely there.
JEFF: Plus, there is the second suspect, Roger Arnold.
JEFF: So like if they were to bring this to some sort of trial, like if you’re the defense attorney, you can have a field day with that, right?
JEFF: Like so that was so this this happened all in 2022, which is the same time that the this podcast Unsealed comes out.
JEFF: And yeah, that’s kind of the end of it.
DEE: That was exhausting.
JEFF: Can I?
JEFF: So do you know what happened after the podcast came out?
JEFF: Did you look this up?
JEFF: No.
JEFF: Jim Lewis, he died shortly after this came out.
JEFF: He died in his age 76.
JEFF: He died in July of 2023, so roughly six months after the podcast comes out.
JEFF: So they kind of end the podcast saying like, well, so far, no one’s been charged.
JEFF: Roger Arnold is dead.
JEFF: Jim Lewis hasn’t been charged.
JEFF: And now Jim Lewis is dead too.
JEFF: So presumably no one’s ever going to get charged in this crime.
JEFF: It’s just going to remain an open case.
DEE: Which is infuriating, obviously.
DEE: I can only imagine.
DEE: It did circle back to the victim’s family at the end of episode eight, which I liked.
DEE: I thought it was important to bring it back to the victim’s families at the end.
DEE: And basically how it’s just so upsetting that no one has ever been found out for this.
DEE: And to be fair, it didn’t seem like it was horrendous policing at the very start.
DEE: There was obviously a few missteps, but it didn’t seem to be horrendous policing at the start.
DEE: I think it was just, I don’t know.
DEE: Who do you think did it?
DEE: So you think Jim Lewis did.
JEFF: It?
JEFF: I feel like the podcast is kind of designed to make you think that Jim Lewis did it.
JEFF: I feel like the two reporters are convinced that he did it, and that the Roger Arnold thing is more of a distraction of the Chicago police go down.
JEFF: But you think Roger Arnold did it?
DEE: I mean, like, I just think it feels more aligned with, like…
DEE: Yeah, I think it was him.
DEE: I think it was Arnold.
DEE: I don’t know.
DEE: If I had to guess.
DEE: But tell me now, what about the hosts?
DEE: Do you think they did a good job?
JEFF: No?
JEFF: I think…
JEFF: I mean, I don’t know.
JEFF: I feel like this…
JEFF: There’s so much plot.
JEFF: There’s so many people.
JEFF: There’s so many details.
JEFF: And it’s spread across so many episodes.
JEFF: I mean, I listened to this whole podcast start to finish twice.
JEFF: And I still struggled to keep track of who everybody was, what was going on.
JEFF: There were a lot of, I think, really interesting, really memorable points.
JEFF: I think some of it was presented really well.
JEFF: I think on the whole, like, I struggled with this one.
JEFF: I think the…
JEFF: Like, I thought about it a couple points of, like, would I be more engaged with this if it was just presented a little bit differently?
JEFF: Like, if it was presented in a little bit more kind of, I don’t know, like, lively, exciting way.
JEFF: Not that I’m, like, wanting them to, like, hyper, like, dramatize it, but I thought it was a little flat at times, where I just sort of, like, zoned out a little bit, and realized I had to, like, jump back and listen to a section again.
DEE: Yeah, it’s interesting.
DEE: I kind of have some similar notes on it.
DEE: Like, I think they, like, seemed good overall.
DEE: Like, I don’t necessarily have any negatives on them, but I think maybe they were a bit too polished.
DEE: Like, they’re obviously reporters.
DEE: I didn’t feel like we got any of their, like, personalities coming out in it, which I feel like previously we’ve seen it done really well, where you get some personality plus the story being told.
DEE: And I totally agree.
DEE: There was far too much plot.
DEE: There was far too much they were trying to cover, far too many characters they were trying to bring in and give backstories for this and the other.
DEE: It was just all too much.
JEFF: So, I agree with most of that.
JEFF: I don’t fault them for not putting their personality in it.
JEFF: Like, we’ve listened to what, I think Keith Morrison and the thing about Pam is the most personality you can probably get, right?
DEE: I know, but we love Keith Morrison.
JEFF: We adore Keith Morrison.
JEFF: He’s amazing.
JEFF: But I think some of the other ones, I think we talked about this, I want to say we talked about this with The Retrievals, I know we talked about this in the first episode of The Retrievals, where the host really kind of like was in the background.
JEFF: Right?
JEFF: I don’t think, I think what they were trying to do could have worked.
JEFF: I think it could have worked better.
JEFF: I think my main problem was just that it was, like what you said at the beginning of this episode, where it was too many people who were too tangential, just too many of them, right?
JEFF: Like it would be better if they maybe cut the number of people they interviewed in half.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: Cut maybe the number of episodes by some amount, maybe not half, but like, Okay, so I have a reform asked for us.
JEFF: I feel like, Oh, this is becoming a theme of what we do.
JEFF: We sent some notes over.
JEFF: Do you want to write to the Chicago Tribune?
DEE: I feel like the first episode was good.
DEE: It was solid.
DEE: We felt good about it.
DEE: Like we were intrigued.
DEE: So the first episode is focused on the victims and the story mainly focused on the victims.
DEE: I think we should have done suspect one, all we know about Jim Lewis from start to finish or Arnold from start to finish.
DEE: Suspect two, all we know about the other guy from start to finish.
DEE: A little bit about the police.
DEE: Maybe they’re like, not like all about their turf war down here, but like a little bit about them.
DEE: And then like the where are we now?
DEE: I think the rest could have been caught.
JEFF: I think that’s a good suggestion.
DEE: Yeah.
JEFF: Do you want to let them know?
DEE: Yeah.
DEE: I’ll send them a strongly worded email.
DEE: I’ll cc you and us.
JEFF: You could send a handwritten letter where it’s all caps and letters slope to the right or the left.
DEE: Will I draw a picture?
DEE: I’ll get my son to draw a picture.
JEFF: Actually, wait, no, better idea.
JEFF: Make a PowerPoint.
JEFF: All right, wait, so would you recommend that people, if they haven’t listened to this, go and listen to this podcast.
DEE: I don’t know.
JEFF: I don’t know.
DEE: I would say, I would recommend people to listen to it, but maybe put like episode two, three, five, six, seven, eight on like times two speed to like brush through it really quickly.
DEE: One and four are solid, they were my faves.
DEE: And I thought those episodes were done really well.
JEFF: I agree with that.
JEFF: I actually think back to what we said about one, like I think I was, and this happened, this happens, I think a fair amount, and this is becoming a bit of a trend where episode one is sort of an outlier.
JEFF: And episode one is really well produced, really engaging.
JEFF: I would not speed that episode up.
JEFF: I would listen to that at just one speed.
JEFF: And maybe that’s like, is that symptomatic of just episode one focusing more on the victims and that’s the most compelling thing?
DEE: I don’t know.
JEFF: That’ll be interesting to see going forward if we see that come up again.
JEFF: Because I also think, I mean, the other thing that you said that you were really intrigued by was the Raymond West story, right?
DEE: Loved that, that’s episode four.
JEFF: Hearing the stories of some of these, and then also the person that Roger Arnold killed.
DEE: Yeah, Jack Stunt as well.
JEFF: Yeah, like those stories.
JEFF: I mean, those, the same thing for me.
JEFF: I think those are the stories that stand out.
JEFF: I think hearing about some of these, these victims is the most captivating thing.
JEFF: More so than the police sort of struggling to solve.
DEE: Sharing is caring.
JEFF: Sharing is caring.
DEE: I’m going to leave it here.
DEE: Next time, we’re going back to Ireland.
DEE: Yay.
JEFF: Specifically, Tormor?
JEFF: Skull?
JEFF: County Cork, Ireland.
DEE: Why did we give you that?
DEE: We’ll preview the Audible original podcast, Wes Cork.
JEFF: How does someone get murdered in a small town, in an isolated part on the edge of Ireland, and no one can solve the case?
DEE: Join us next time on So Much Crime.
JEFF: So Little Time.
JEFF: So Much Crime, So Little Time is a production of MindGlobe Media.
JEFF: The executive producer is Paxton Calariso.
JEFF: Our associate producer is Blythe Tai.
JEFF: Our theme music was composed by Vicheslav Starostin.
JEFF: If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe to this show on your podcast app.
JEFF: Don’t forget to give us a five-star rating and a review.
JEFF: Even better, tell your friends.
JEFF: To join the discussion, look for us on social media.
JEFF: Check out the show notes for all the links.
JEFF: Thanks for listening.
