A lot of people wonder how or why Tamper Evident bags originated. It all started in 1982...

The news that shook the United States in 1982 involved a popular item that’s kept in nearly every household: Tylenol. Commonly used as a quick relief for headaches or low-grade fevers, no one ever thought twice about popping one of these little pills into their mouths; that is, until it caused the deaths of innocent people in a span of just a few days.

While your average extra-strength Tylenol is considered harmless if taken in the correct dosage, it’s extremely fatal when laced with potassium cyanide. In Illinois, during the fall of 1982, seven unsuspecting people unknowingly took these laced capsules, most likely thinking about nothing more than just relieving the headache they were having at the time.

Death tugs at the heartstrings of everyone but something inside of you breaks when learning a child’s life has cruelly been taken away. On September 19, 1982, a 12 year-old year old girl named, Mary Kellerman, was given an extra-strength Tylenol from her parents for her cold symptoms. Just a few hours later, Mary became the first victim of the Tylenol murders.

A day later, Mary Kellerman’s death was followed by Adam Janus. Mere hours after his funeral, Adam’s brother and sister-in-law, Theresa and Stanley Janus, also took Tylenol from the same bottle and died shortly after. Within the next day, Mary McFarland, Paula Prince and Mary Reiner also became victims of the deadly Tylenol tablets.

Obviously, when seven deaths occur in the same location, over just a few days and without any connecting relationships between the victims, the search broadened to look at what similarities these people had in common – to reveal the source of the deaths.

Once the toxicology reports were completed on all seven bodies, high amounts of potassium chloride were present in each of the victim’s blood work. Extra-Strength Tylenol was quickly identified as the culprit in all the cases and fortunately, before anyone else could take it, investigators immediately broadcasted a warning.

Soon after the broadcast, Johnson & Johnson recalled 264,000 bottles of Tylenol but this wasn’t enough for the retailers selling over-the-counter (OTC) medications. They took matters into their own hands and began taking all Tylenol products off their shelves.

Since Tylenol pain relieving products accounted for 35% of the pain reliever market at the time, Johnson & Johnson made the wise decision of nationally recalling of all Tylenol products which, in the end, totalled an estimated 32 million bottles.

The whole process cost Johnson & Johnson US$100 million to recall and recirculate but when they came back, they came back armed and prepared!

All of their products were now sold in tamper-proofed bottles, tamper-proofed seals and tamper-resistant locks.

And so the revolution of tamper-proofing came into existence.

There has been a lot of speculation as to who could have committed these crimes - from someone who was trying to cover up a murder all the way down to Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a., The Unabomber – the FBI has never solved the case.

The only factor officials did conclusively determine was that the extra-strength Tylenol capsules were never tampered with at the factories where they were made. This left only one probable hypothesis left: Someone went to random stores, bought bottles of Tylenol, took them home and popped the unsealed lid off to open up the capsules after which they dumped out the pain reliever medicine and refilled it with cyanide powder, sneaking it back into the stores for redistribution.

The only problem that remained was that there still wasn’t sufficient evidence to point officials in the right direction towards the mass murderer.

Throughout all the possible theories circulating police departments, one man, James Lewis, was named a top suspect although the only evidence found against him only proved attempted extortion.

Lewis was given a maximum sentence of 20 years and although he was scheduled for parole in 1989, he was denied and required to serve out the entire sentence, minus the reductions for good behaviour as required by law.

In 2009-10, a possible break in the case was reported in which Lewis and his wife, LeAnn, appeared at a closed hearing where they were ordered to comply with a grand jury’s subpoena to provide palm, fingerprint and DNA samples to investigators.

Though no further information has been released on the outcomes of the impending investigation, the FBI has openly stated that this case will remain open until it’s been solved.

Before these infamous murders were reported, commonly used medicine bottles were locked with a clicking twist of the cap but they didn’t yet contain the tamper-proof quality we’re now familiar with today.

While these crimes are, without doubt, horrendous, it did bring national attention to how important it is to protect ourselves, starting with something as simple as tamper-proofing a Tylenol bottle.

The silver lining that did shine through these poisonings brought an amazing change over consumerism as a whole because shortly after, in 1983, an anti-product tampering legislation was passed in the United States.

This Act was set into motion to protect both the retailers as well as the eventual consumers (patients) of the OTC medications. During the time of the murders, millions of people lost faith in over-the-counter medicine as a whole which led all pharmaceutical companies, beyond just Johnson & Johnson, to re-think their approach to security and tamper proofing.

When the Act was approved and released, companies quickly began repackaging all of their medicines in tamper-evident packaging and noticed an immediate spike in sales.

Following suit, just all major brand retailers of consumable health and food products beyond OTC medications began to tamper-proof their products, even including makeup products and CDs and DVDs. In fact, anything that in essence, could be packaged and protected economically.

Today, tamper-proofing all items sold by retailers is such a part of our daily lives that an automatic red flag goes up the moment an item with a broken seal is picked up from the rack. It causes us to wonder if that item is possibly faulty, damaged or perhaps tested by someone who was browsing the aisle before us and makes us set it right back where we got it and avoid the risk altogether. Mission accomplished!

Tamper-evident seals and bags can sometimes be an initial challenge or struggle, but every time you get a little annoyed, remember the Tylenol Murders and think of it as a gentle reminder that it’s only there for your security, health and safety!