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the sheets were ripped from the easel and pinned on the walls in a large conference room. Soon the walls were covered with dozens of sheets of paper, each containing disparate bits of information with arrows drawn between them: victims, causes of deaths, lot numbers on the poisoned Tylenol bottles, the outlets where they’d been purchased, dates when they’d been manufactured, and the route they’d taken through the distribution system. The data on those sheets of paper were never disclosed to the public, and the secrets they held never left the McNeil conference room.
    A two-way video conference link was established between J&J headquarters in New Brunswick and McNeil headquarters in Fort Washington to facilitate face-to-face meetings between the executives at the two sites. Chicago-area sales reps from numerous J&J operating companies were put on alert to make sure that Extra Strength Tylenol capsules had been moved from the shelves to the stockrooms of the local retail stores and pharmacies. Twenty-five public relations employees from other J&J operating companies were recruited to assist the public relations staff of fifteen at J&J headquarters.
    Public relations personnel from both McNeil and J&J quickly coordinated a media response to minimize any suspicion that the company was at fault. Larry Foster took care of the media for Johnson & Johnson. J&J Public Relations Director, Robert Kniffin, went to Fort Washington to handle the calls that came in to McNeil headquarters. Robert Andrews, the assistant director of public relations for J&J, was put in charge of handling the media in Chicago.
    Andrews, along with security and public relations personnel and 30 toxicologists were immediately dispatched by corporate jet to Chicago to work with the authorities there and to establish their own lab. Upon their arrival at O’Hare International Airport, Andrews and two other J&J executives drove to Elk Grove Village and met for an hour-and-a-half on Thursday afternoon with Elk Grove Village detectives and evidence technicians. On Thursday evening, Andrews told reporters in Chicago that his firm was “collectively shocked.” He said Johnson & Johnson had launched an investigation that morning to track down the capsules from Lot MC2880.
    Regarding the possibility that the cyanide had been put into the Tylenol at the manufacturing plant, McNeil Communications Director, Elsie Behmer, proclaimed, “We were clean.” Behmer said some of the bulk Tylenol powder from the recalled MC2880 batch still at the plant had been tested, and it was uncontaminated. She further stated that the company did not work with cyanide, and Tylenol was the only product produced at the plant. Much of that work was done by machine she said, thus lessening the possibility of employee sabotage. Larry Foster also assured reporters that cyanide was not stored at the Tylenol manufacturing plant or used in the production of Tylenol. “Whenever the poisoner is caught,” said Foster, “the problem will remain; how to protect the public against deranged people who might follow his ghastly example.”
    On Thursday afternoon, before officials linked the deaths of Mary McFarland or Lynn Reiner to cyanide-laced Tylenol, James Burke decided to recall Tylenol capsules from Lot MC2880, which had been linked that morning to the cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules that had killed Mary Kellerman and the Januses. The recalled lot consisted of 93,000 bottles with 50 Extra Strength Tylenol capsules each, representing 0.85 percent of the 11 million bottles of Tylenol capsules in the company’s distribution channel, either in retail stores or in distribution centers.
    Illinois Governor, “Big” Jim Thompson, put Tyrone Fahner in charge of the investigative team, now dubbed the Tylenol task force, which quickly grew to 140 local, state, and federal investigators. Thompson had handed the job of top Illinois lawyer-lawman to Tyrone Fahner in July 1980 when the immensely popular,