Tylenol Murders Suspect Promotes Novel About Poisonings

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - James William Lewis, a longtime suspect in the 1982 Tylenol murders, made a rare public appearance on public access television near Boston on Sunday night, hoping to promote his new self-published novel, "Poison! The Doctor's Dilemma."

Instead, Lewis was met with a barrage of questions from the show's host and callers about whether he had a role in the unsolved cyanide poisonings that left seven Chicago-area residents dead almost 30 years ago, and if his novel had anything to do with the killings.

Lewis said during the 48-minute interview that he regretted having written Tylenol's manufacturer just after the deaths and demanding $1 million to "stop the killing" - for which he was convicted of extortion.

But he repeatedly deflected the host's pointed questions about why he would use the word "poison" in the title of a book of fiction when he remains under suspicion in the poisonings.

Lewis, 63, who gave DNA samples to investigators last week as part of an ongoing probe of the Tylenol murders, denied there was any link between his new book and the 1982 case in which at least 78 pain pills were laced with cyanide.

Calmly calling interviewer Roger Nicholson "totally delusional" and "nuts" during the interview, Lewis said, "I'm not going to talk to you or anyone else about any type of legal questions. ... This book is dealing with (fictional) tragedies that occurred in rural America, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the incident in Chicago in 1982."

The plot of Lewis' book is about people drinking water purposefully contaminated with lead in southern Missouri and dying or becoming disabled as a result.

After his extortion conviction in 1983, Lewis served more than 12 years in prison and was released in 1995. In the 1970s, Lewis was accused in Kansas City, Mo., of murdering and dismembering a client, but charges were dropped after a judge threw out most of the evidence against him.

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported that authorities in Massachusetts, where Lewis now lives, had swabbed his mouth for DNA and took his fingerprints in hopes of comparing the samples to physical evidence collected during the Tylenol investigation. The action was requested by officials in DuPage County, where a grand jury is weighing evidence in the case.

In a telephone interview Monday, Nicholson said that when he talked to Lewis last Friday, before the show, Lewis said he was not concerned about giving DNA because "if the FBI plays it fair, I have nothing to worry about."

Lewis has continued to maintain his innocence in the killings. He did not respond Monday to questions and his lawyer could not be reached.

Nicholson has hosted "The Cambridge Rag," a call-in show on cable television, on and off since 1998. He said some media outlets paid him for a tape of the Lewis interview. The Chicago Tribune obtained an audio copy from a local news outlet.

On the telephone, Nicholson acknowledged organizing the tough questioning of Lewis by arranging for journalists and friends to call in with specific questions about the Tylenol murders.

"Some of the calls were plants because I couldn't ask those questions directly," Nicholson said. "We (were) not going to have people call in and ask him about his stupid book."

Lewis merely referred Nicholson and callers to his lawyer.

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