Murder With My Husband - 80. The Candyman - Halloween Candy Craze

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

On this episode of MWMH, Payton and Garrett discuss the origin of the halloween candy craze. LIVE ONLINE SHOW TICKETS HERE! https://www.moment.co/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/the-man-who-killed-halloween https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/halloween-non-poisonings/ https://jclass.umd.edu/archive/newshoax/casestudies/crime/CrimeHalTim7.html https://www.statesman.com/news/20161014/35-years-later-memories-of-notorious-halloween-candyman-murder-remain-vivid https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Man-Who-Ruined-Halloween-Recounting-the-14663666.php#photo-7073983 https://murderpedia.org/male.O/o1/obryan-ronald-clark.htm https://www.vice.com/en/article/8ge87v/halloween-killer-ronald-clark-o-bryan-candy-man https://groovyhistory.com/razor-blade-apple-halloween-candy-urban-legend https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-equation/201510/the-men-who-murdered-halloween https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pins-and-needles/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders Links: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband  Ads: Daily Harvest: www.dailyharvest.com/husband Magic Spoon: magicspoon.com/HUSBAND use code HUSBAND Betterhelp: www.betterhelp.com/husband Raycon: www.buyraycon.com/husband - 15% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yes, you energy. Energy for everything. Cathaban are now to learn more. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to our podcast. This is Myrta with my husband. I'm Peyton Morlin. And I'm Garrett Morlin. And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband. Boo. Just kidding. If you are watching it. Did you have that plan? No. If you are watching on YouTube, you can see right now that our set is very spooky. It is spooky. And if you're not watching on YouTube, our set is spooky.

Our set is kind of spooky. Maybe we'll do a picture or something. We'll post one on Instagram. Okay, well anyways, welcome to our first Halloween episode. We are super excited for the month of October. I did just want to remind everyone that we will be doing four bonus episodes this month for you guys. It's actually the first two.

We'll be for everyone. And then the last two will be Patreon exclusives. So if you want to check our Patreon out, that is patreon.com slash murder with my husband. And you can sign up to beginning two episodes episodes a week this month of October for Halloween. We are really, really excited about it. Okay, Gare, what's your 10 seconds? Alright, 10 seconds. I'm trying to think of like any life updates that have been going on in our life. First life update is probably that our entire

house is covered in Halloween decorations. I covered. True. They are all over the place. It's the only holiday or month or whatever that I decorate our home for, special. Second update is I hope that we go to the Cheesecake Factory after this because that sounds really good. Oh, okay. Just letting you know. We got a special occasion, I don't know about it.

Nope, the Cheesecake Factory just sounds delicious. Okay. That's actually not what I had in mind for lunch. Oh, really? I was wanting super chicks. Okay, well, we're gonna have to, well, we'll forget this out. The last one is someone asked me what brand of shoes I wear. I wear vans.

Just thought I'd shoot that out. Other than that, I think that's my 10 seconds. Maybe I can start doing longer ones on like our Patreon episodes, and less 20 seconds? Like 10 minutes, no, I think that's my 10 seconds. Maybe I can start doing longer ones on like our Patreon episodes, and last 20 seconds. Like 10 minutes, no, I'm just kidding. Unless everybody wants longer ones, but yeah, that's kind of what's going on in my life right now.

Okay. Still playing pickleball. Yep, still playing pickleball. All right, so our case sources, there are a lot for this week is atv.com, snopes.com, which it was actually very helpful for me. A lot of this information came from Snopes. So thank you.

jclass.umn.edu, statesman.com, ctpost.com, murderpedia, vice.com, groovyhistory.com, psychology today.com, and just Wikipedia as well. Before we hop into it, if that booth scared anyone on podcast, leave it in the comments, because I'm kinda curious. So I'm sure like me, most of you have heard

of Poisoned Halloween Candy. The terrible people out there who ruin what should be one of the funnest nights of the year for children, the awful people out there who turn a spooky night into an actual horror. We've all heard about these madmen who Poison poisoned Halloween candy and handed out to unsuspecting children as they trick or treat, but as I researched looking for these tales, I found nothing of concrete evidence to support these stories that we've all heard of.

No news articles documenting such crimes not even unsolved ones. So you know, I asked snopes, have police in the United States ever documented cases of people randomly distributing poisoned Halloween candy to children on Halloween. Nope. So where does this rumor come from? We have all heard these stories. Was this real or did I really make all of this up in my head? Have you heard of like people handing out poisoned Halloween candy? I feel like though I've seen it on the news before that people have talked about it. Yes, same. But I looked it up and there is no documented case of someone handing out poison Halloween candy. As in like children coming up and they handed out to unsuspecting children.

Has there ever been people in the hospital because of it? We'll get there. Okay. So, Snopes says that every year there is reporting on radio, TV, you just said, and newspapers about the potential of tampered candy that parents should be checking their kids' candy before letting them eat after trek or treating. But legend has it, these rumors are not of late. Going all the way back to 1995, Anne Landers wrote an article that said,

in recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy. Jesus, we... We will note here that to qualify as like a Halloween poisoning, what we're talking about, poison candy has to be handed out on a random basis to children as part of their trek or treating ritual

inherent to Halloween. The act cannot be targeted to anyone or to one specific child. Okay. So really, where did this come from? Why have people been reporting about this happening for years, but there's no actual reports of this happening?

Well, if you've ever played a game of telephone, you know these horror stories aren't completely fabricated. Here are the cases that led to the tampered Halloween candy craze that we still see the rippling effects of today. The date is October 31, 1974. It's a spooky Halloween night, even spookookier as it just begun to rain as kids run from house to house in Deer Park, Texas. Which is goblins and monsters dash around outside as 30-year-old Ronald Clark O'Brien steps outside onto his porch and debates

whether he can still take his two children trick-or-treating in this weather. It's raining. But come on, it's Halloween. He had been displaying abnormal anticipation for Halloween this year to his friends and family, so he closes the door and gets them ready for what should be one of the best nights of the year. Eight-year-old Timothy and five-year-old Elizabeth O'Brien put on their costumes and head out with their eager father. They actually meet up with Jim Bates, who is a family friend, who also brings along his two children.

It might actually just be one son. It kind of depends on the source. But either way, they meet up with this family and they all decide to go trick or treating together. One of the houses the group arrives to goes unanswered. And the four discouraged kids walk back to the sidewalk like they didn't answer, they weren't home. They begin walking to their next house when Ronald disappears from the group, Ronald's

the dad. Moments later he catches back up and tells them that as they were walking away the homeowners of the last house actually opened the front door, they were actually home, they just didn't wait long enough up there. So he actually ran up and grabbed some candy from them for the kids, but the kids are already dancing around waiting to run up to the next house. So Ronald tells them, okay, I just go, I'll give you the candy that they gave us like when we get back to the house later tonight. So the night comes to a close for the small group. Smiling faces and bags full of candy. The four kids and two fathers make their way back to the baits home.

It's already getting suspicious. I feel like I am listening to a Goosebumps story. Mm. Once there, Ronald hands each of the three to four kids kind of depends on the candy that he collected from the home that night of the people who weren't home. And the candy was Pixie sticks. I'm on a big fan of Pixie sticks. Me either. Just a mouthful of sugar.

Is it anybody? Not my thing. I'm sure someone out there likes Pixie sticks. I feel like Pixie sticksicks will let us know. So he actually had a leftover Pixie Stick and he ends up giving it to the next Trick or Treater who knocks on the bait's door. And I guess rumor has it,

he knew this little boy from church. So he was like, oh, here we got this random Pixie Stick from a house here, you can have it. So as Ronald Timothy and Elizabeth leave the bait's home to go to their own home, and the knocks on their door grow further and further apart, the night coming to an end, Ronald gets Timothy and Elizabeth ready for bed. But it's not long before this Halloween night turns into a real-life scary movie for this family. Eight-year-old Timothy begins complaining

of a stomach ache. Oh, no, here we go. Ron Old would later tell police that Timothy was in the bathroom convulsing, vomiting, and gasping when he suddenly went limp. It was on the way to the hospital that eight-year-old Timothy O'Brien died on that Halloween night. What? He just, okay. Yeah. When the medical examiner looked at Timothy's lifeless body, they noticed the scent of almonds.

And apparently, this is a telltale sign of cyanide poisoning. Like, if someone's breath after they've died smells like almonds, it's like a hint that maybe it's poisoned. Oh my gosh, okay. And so it was after the autopsy that it was confirmed that Timothy had in fact consumed enough potassium cyanide to kill three grown men. Holy crap. So, thinking the worst, police immediately jumped to the unearthing conclusion that maybe possibly Timothy's Halloween candy had been poisoned. Some stranger had handed him poisoned Halloween candy and he had ate it and died.

Knowing the gravity of what they are suggesting, police immediately went back to the O'Brien's house and examined all of Timothy's candy. Now you tell me which candy was poisoned. Oh, for sure the pixie sticks. The pixie sticks. Police immediately confiscated Elizabeth's unean pixie stick and they warned the baits about the possible threat. Luckily neither of the baits kids had actually eaten

their pixie sticks yet. And the other boy kids had actually eaten their pixie sticks yet. And the other boy who had been given a pixie stick that night had also not eaten his, but that wasn't by his choice. He was found that night with the pixie stick in his hand while he slept. It looks like he fell asleep while trying to open it but was not successful.

Oh my gosh. So like, yeah. That is horrible that he just died. Like it killed him that fast. Upon examination of all the unearned sticks, it was determined that someone had dumped out the top two inches of each stick and replaced the powder with cyanide and then stapled the tube back shut again. So someone had in fact, hampered with his Halloween candy, police sit down with Ronald

Clark O'Brien and asked him to pinpoint exactly what hampered with this Halloween candy. Police sit down with Ronald Clark O'Brien and asked him to pinpoint exactly what house handed out the poise and candy. But he couldn't give them a straight answer. They were not in their own neighborhood when this had happened. Police actually made him retrace his steps and according to John Quaid with countdown to death, Ronald finally fingers C.E. Melvin of 4-1-1-2,

Donorelle Road as the house and man who gave him the pixie sticks. But when police check in with C.E. Melvin, they discover he was actually an air dispatcher at hobby airports and was working Halloween night. He wasn't even home. This is the reason this doesn't sound right to me is because I feel like he would remember. He would remember, oh, this is for sure the house. Like, I don't even know if it would be a question really.

And also, this was the house he ran up to the door and got the candy from because the kids left too early. So it's like, it's not even just like it was another house. I mean, super suspicious. Yeah. With not much to go on, police dive into Ronald's life as his inability to help find his son's murderer becomes a parent. Ronald lived in a middle-class suburb of Houston with his wife and two children.

He was an optician and deacon at a Baptist church. According to ATV.com, Ronald sang in the Choir at Church and also oversaw the Church's bus program. He seemed like a model citizen and was described as a good Christian man and an above average father. Which I want you to know you aren't above average. I'm above average. I was just thinking that when he said that. I just thought that was such a weird way to describe some of the average. So at the surface Ronald really seemed to have a good life. But the further police dug the deeper the whole went. They discovered that Ronald actually

struggled to keep a job. In the last 10 years, he had been employed by over 21 different companies. At each company, yeah. At each company, he was fired for negligence or fraudulent behavior. By the time of our story, the fall of 1974, Ronald was under suspicion at Texas State Optical

for stealing money. He was being paid $150 a week, but was in severe debt. Around $100,000, which in the 70s? It's a lot. Yeah, he had several bank loans and hadn't paid his car bill in a very long time. Almost not wanting to even look any deeper, police are disgusted when they discover that Ronald O'Brien had actually just taken out multiple life insurance policies on his children. The amount added up to $40,000 on Timothy.

Always, it's always the life insurance policies. With an impossible but clear suspect in mind, police also discovered that Ronald had gone to several chemical companies before the time of Timothy's death, and asked them questions about cyanide, where to buy it, and even how much it would take to kill somebody. What a loser. So after searching the O'Brien's home, they found a pocket knife or scissors kind of depends that had pixie dust on it. Okay, it's actually pixie stick dust.

This led police to think that the knife or the scissors were used to contaminate the candy. When police confronted Ronald with their evidence, he maintained his innocence and he also maintained his role as a father who just lost his child. He argued that a heartless monster had handed out poison candy to his son and killed him. I mean, you could get around that. Oh, I cut them open for my kids. Yeah, I use those scissors. There's so many ways. So despite this, he was still arrested on November 5th, 1974, and he was charged with his son's murder after failing a polygraph. Okay, we're in the 70s. So polygraphs are a little bit more like just a reminder, if you are new to the channel, do not take a polygraph. He had knowingly poisoned multiple pieces of candy in hopes of killing his children and getting money for it. He gave it to other children with the idea that it would make

it look like someone was actually giving out poisonous candy that night if more than just his kids died, which is just awful. He was like, well, it's worth the 40 grand if other kids die. Like as long as it doesn't make it look like I'm guilty. Holy crap. Yeah. So sadly Timothy was the only one to actually ingest the poisonous candy. Timothy complained that it tasted bitter after tasting it or like after eating it. I don't know, you don't really eat it. You kind of just pour it. But after pouring into his mouth, he said it tasted bitter. And so his father, Ronald, who poisoned the candy, gave him cool aid to wash down the bitter powder because he was literally just pouring cyanide into his.

What did the wife think? Nothing. I can't find anything. I can't find anything about her. Or you have to understand like this isn't a very covered case because it was back in the 70s. So there's not a lot of detail about it. But according to ATV.com, Joni Johnston, our forensic psychologist

and private investigator says, people who poison, so poisoners as a group, typically lack empathy, evidenced by the premeditated nature in which they kill and the cold calculating strategy they often use. Poisoning is also an instrument for someone who is kind of cunning and sneaky, not somebody who's going to be physically or verbally aggressive, right?

Like they don't go up and kill or like shoot or stab, they do it in a way that they don't even have to be there when it happens. They are also more likely to be polite behind the scenes and as a result they tend to fool people because they're just less aggressive than our normal murderers. Which makes sense considering he was doing fraudulent activities at all his jobs. Sneaky dad. On June 3rd 1975, a Harris County jury convicted Ronald of murder and he was sentenced to death. And it took only an hour of deliberation to decide this.

Ronald appealed his case twice to the Supreme Court, but all of his appeals were denied. On March 31, 1984, 10 years after he poisoned his son, Ronald Clark O'Brien was executed by lethal injection at this Texas state penitentiary. Wow, not many death penalties I feel like go through. Exactly. Ronald Clark O'Brien is known as the candy man now, or the man who killed Halloween. And the murder of his son on Halloween is rumored to be the story that has the biggest impact on the snowball effect of assumptions that random houses hand out poison candy, even though this is not actually what happened in this case.

But this case is one of the biggest reasons that that rumor exists now. This guy wasn't actually handing out poison candy to unsuspecting children, but he kind of helped launch this rumor that this happens. No way. Yes, and in Pasadena,

where everyone knew it wasn't really a stranger who did this, Halloween safety programs were still started and implemented to teach parents methods of evaluating the safety of door-to-door treats. So literally even his hometown was like, well, even though that's not what happened, we need to be putting programs of parents checking candy. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads unsure of which direction to take in life?

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Ronald truly was the biggest voice in the game of telephone about Halloween candy that we still here of today. That is so crazy. Also, so messed up, he killed his own kid and tried to blame it as someone else giving out poison Halloween candy, which is just like cruel. Like that's just like awful horrible. So this was not the only case though that has fed the paranoia around poisoned Halloween candy.

According to Snopes in Detroit in 1970, five-year-old Kevin Toston died of a heroin overdose four days after Halloween, five years old. When his family pointed to his Halloween candy as the source, like someone put heroin in his Halloween candy, police analyzed it and found that in fact, it had been sprinkled with heroin. There was heroin in his Halloween candy. It was somehow just laced with heroin. The case was heavily reported on.

This five-year-old dies after someone hands out candy full of heroin, and so parents began frantically throwing out their children's Halloween candy, like panic spread everywhere, but after some investigation, police concluded that Kevin had actually just found his uncle's heroin stash at home. Oh man.

And consumed it like candy because it was Halloween and he had been just eating candy like this. And when the family figured out what happened, they sprinkled heroin on the little boys left over candy to protect the uncle because like that's illegal. What you're kidding me. And tried once again to blame it on the fact

that someone was handing out poison Halloween candy. That is absurd. That is so messed up. But that wasn't actually what happened once again. So the conclusion of the story though, of it being just the family who done it, wasn't reported on as much as the first part, which was someone handed out heroin candy,

this just spread paranoia. And even in fact right now, if you Google Kevin Tossin's name, which is the five year old who died, you can actually see headlines still to this day that say Halloween candy suspected in death of boy. And five-year-old Kevin Tostin died after eating heroin lace candy. Despite the fact that that's not actually like no one actually handed him out candy that was laced with heroin. I can't believe anything online. I know. And then on Halloween in 1994, a three-year-old in New Britain, Connecticut, was diagnosed

with cocaine poisoning around Halloween and the media immediately ran with tampered Halloween candy in this area. It's happening here now. And about a week later, police announced that they found no trace of cocaine on any of the candy in the house. He probably just ran into it somewhere else. It was looking his hands. He put his hand in it, something like that. In 1982, a doctor, misread lab results, and told the public that he attended to a sick child

who had been fed cyanide-laced Halloween candy. So again, cyanide. Again, once again, everyone's freaking out, oh my gosh, someone's handing out points in candy. But later, FDA tests of the candy turned up no contamination at all. Although that wasn't published in the news the same way that the initial statement was. In 1991, 31-year-old Kevin Michael Cherry died after eating his child's Halloween candy. And once the news broke, parents around dumped out pounds and pounds of Halloween candy. After autopsy, they found that Kevin had just died of natural causes. No poison found. You have to understand, just

like any other day, people are going to die every single day. But I think when people die on Halloween, everyone's first conclusion is they were poisoned. Yes. So in 1997, your old aerial hats died in Santa Monica while trick or treating. The Santa Monica police announced a mass random poisoning and went door to door, blocking off streets and confiscating everybody's candy in the area. Why would they do that? It later came out that she had actually just died of congenital heart failure. No Halloween candy was involved, but for a week they had spread mass panic literally taken back Halloween candy. In 2001, four-year-old Tiffany

Trung died in Vancouver the day after Halloween. Police immediately issued an alert to get rid of any Halloween candy in the area. Everyone followed in a frenzy, but the cause of death was actually nothing to do with Halloween candy shoot just died of like random causes. So in 2000, kids came home from trick or treating in Hercules, California with snicker bars that had little packets of marijuana in them. And all the moms were like, someone was trying to make our kids eat a whole packet of marijuana. That's completely awful. Like, pull the Halloween candy, but the homeowner who handed out these snickers was dumbfounded when police came to him,

and was like, yo, you can't do this. And he was like, no, no, no, I had no idea that these snickers had marijuana, and I really didn't. And it wasn't until the homeowner told police that he was a postal employee who found the lost package of snickers at work. And brought them home, was like, oh, I'll hand these out.

Now, I don't have to go by Halloween candy. They realized someone was actually trying to smuggle weed in Snickers packages, but the package had gotten lost. So I didn't get to the dealer. And this guy handed it out. So he wasn't doing it on purpose, but all these little stories have led people to believe that this happens that people are randomly targeting like children on Halloween.

Also, very good idea. I'm putting the weeding there. The weeding the Snickers. Okay, okay. So, it's true. There really hasn't been one recorded random case of Poison Halloween candy being handed out. Fun fact, supposedly, Christian like trunker treats were designed after the candy tampering

myths became nationwide. So trunker treats were supposed to be safer ways, like, you know, filled with people that you could trust to hand out candy that wasn't poisoned, even though no one has ever actually handed out poisoned candy on Halloween. That is so crazy. I would, because growing up it was the same thing.

It was like careful. Like you gotta check your candy. Exactly. Check to see if it's been opened. But all of this doesn't mean that people don't do some wacky things, you know, even on Halloween. I mean, we spend every other day of the year

telling kids don't take any candy from strangers. But then on Halloween, we send them up to the doorsteps and do just that, like take candy from strangers. But then on Halloween, we send them up to the doorsteps and say, and do just that, like take candy from strangers. So in 1959, William Shine, a California dentist, handed out candy-coded, laxative pills to trick-or-treaters. OK, like obviously this isn't poison. It's not going to kill somebody. This is a lot different.

But what the fuck? It's still messed up. Like, he was charged with outrage of public decency and unlawful dispensing of drugs. He just got a kick out of. Yeah, which I mean, so this isn't going to kill you, but this is still weird. This one has done this.

And then in 1964, a Long Island New York woman gave out Halloween packages of inedible objects to teenagers who she believed were too old to be trekker treating. Oh my god. So to children she liked handed out candy, but if a teenager came, she was trying to teach them a lesson and she would give them a package that had dog biscuits. So when they bit them, it wasn't actually candy. Still wool balls. Oh my god. Obviously they're'm not gonna bite that. And then also, ant buttons that were covered in poison, which no one's gonna eat a button. So it's a little weird.

But she was prosecuted either way because she had tried to make someone eat inedible objects, and that would have been unpleasant. Speaking of unpleasant, so it seems pretty rare that someone will be giving poisonous candy out based on statistics, but it's actually more probable that you will bite down on a needle hidden in Halloween candy than actual poison because this has happened.

According to Professor Joel Best, there have been approximately 80 reports of sharp objects inserted into Halloween candy since 1959, but the majority of these, like instances, turned out to be pranks. Most cases of objects like razors or needles in candy came from family or friends trying to play a very distasteful prank on someone. Like, please don't pull that prank, but it's happened, which is weird.

But I do need to mention in 2000, 49-year-old James Joseph Smith placed needles in snicker bars and handed them out to children on Halloween, which what's with the snicker bars? Weed snickers, needle snickers. So James Smith did this in Minneapolis and was charged with one count of adulterating a substance with intent to cause harm, death or illness.

Can that kill you? Do you know? No. So only one boy was actually hurt by these needles, and it was just kind of like sharp in his mouth when he bit down. If you swallow a needle. I don't know. No one, it said that no one was actually hurt. I'm assuming that like, depending on how big the needle is, like you take one bite and you're going to be like, there's a needle in here, you know what I mean? But if it was a small needle, then I would assume that that would be harmful.

So I think though that the real case that has scared everybody, the case that enables these rumors to keep rumoring actually happened in 1982 and it was the Tylenol murders that happened in Chicago a month before Halloween. On September 29th, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois died after taking a capsule of extra strength Tylenol. Have you heard of these? On the same day, Adam Janice and his brother Stanley and sister-in-law Teresa of Illinois also died after all taking Tylenol out of the same bottle. The next few days, Mary McFarland, Paula Prince, and Mary Reiner all died after taking Tylenol in their own separate lives.

So it took a minute, but once the connection was made that all of these people were dying after ingesting Tylenol, panic, and fear set in. Tests were carried out which soon revealed that each person's bottle was filled with cyanide capsules instead of Tylenol. What is up with the cyanide? Right. Well, because it can kill you. Yeah. Immediately. But like, where's everyone getting this from?

Yes. Right. And like, where was the idea? Where was the idea to like poison someone through Tylenol? Yeah. So immediately warnings were sent out to the media and even patrol cars like drove around using loudspeakers, warning residents in Chicago, don't take any more Tylenol.

Stop taking your Tylenol, throw your Tylenol out. Investigators actually ruled out the production company being the ones who tampered with medicine because the tampered with bottles actually all came from different companies and different stores. And so police concluded that whoever did this made their way to different supermarkets and drug stores, like CVS Walgreens, over several weeks,

and they bought different, like bottles of Tylenol. They then took them home and switched out the Tylenol capsules with cyanide capsules. They then took them home and switched out the Tylenol capsules with cyanide capsules. They then sealed the bottles back up and periodically went back to the stores and put these bottles back on the shelf to be resold again to someone else. So what was the reason? Like why did they have any reason? No, just to kill someone. What?

Like to kill randomly, kind of like the unibomber. Horrible. He just kind of bombed me. Yeah. I think it's the same thing. Like there, this is a specific type of killer who does this like psychologically they've determined. It's got it. But yeah, just to kill random people.

That's so horrible. In addition to the five bottles that were sold to the different victims, police also found a few more contaminated bottles on shelves in the Chicago area that had not been bought yet. Johnson and Johnson actually distributed warnings to hospitals and distributors and Tylenol, halted production, and all advertising when this happened. Finally, on October 5, 1982, a nationwide recall of Tylenol products was issued, and 31 million bottles were in circulation, which led to a retail

value of over $100 million of Tylenol being recalled. Advertisements also went out nationwide to not consume Tylenol products like you literally saw ads on TV saying don't take Tylenol anymore. I'm scared to take Tylenol now. Well, we're ibuprofen people, so I don't really ever take Tylenol. That's true. You know. So according to Wikipedia, during the initial investigations, a man named James William

Lewis was accused of actually sending a letter to Johnson and Johnson demanding $1 million to stop the cyanide induced murders. So he was like, I'm the murderer. And if you give me $1 million, I won't do it anymore. Got it. Which is traceable. So Lewis was obviously arrested. He was tried and convicted of extortion and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

But during the trial, attorneys for Lewis claim that he intended only to focus the attention of the authorities on his wife's former employer. So he blamed someone else during it. And then investigators concluded Lewis still was responsible for the poisonings despite the fact that they did not have enough evidence to charge him. So he ends up getting off because they're like, we don't actually have enough physical evidence to charge him for it. And in January 2010, both Lewis and his wife submitted DNA samples and fingerprints to

authorities when they reopened the case once again. Lewis said, if the FBI plays it fair, I have nothing to worry about. And Lewis still to this day continues to deny all responsibility for the poisenings. So you got off? Yeah, because all they had was that he wrote them saying, I'll do this and I'll stop. But when they get front him, he's like,

no, no, no, it was joke. I was just trying to get money out of it. It was actually someone else who did it. They didn't have any actual evidence to prove it was him. So although never charging a suspect, these murders planted a seed for future killers. So three more deaths actually occurred in 1986 using the same strategy poisoning medicine that's at stores. Because of this incident medicine like this now has tamper resistant packaging or is locked up, which is why it's so freaking hard

to open these medicine bottles, which I know we have one upstairs that has that weird thing on it, this is why, this exact case is why. But hey, if it might save my life from weirdos wanting to poison random people, I'll do it. I'll take 10 minutes to open a bottle. So in conclusion, I don't think you have to worry about your Halloween candy single-handedly

leading to your death this year. Although spooky, no one has actually died from a stranger poisoning their Halloween candy. And if your candy is poisoned, it's probably by somebody you know, not someone random. You might get a scratch or an unpleasant bite from a needle in your candy, but once again, statistically, it's someone you know, playing a bad prank, so get new friends if this happens to you. When it comes to medicine there's something sadistic about poisoning the thing that's supposed to physically make strangers feel better

and I think that tells us all we need to know about that. So urban legends, folklore and tall tales it's all one big game of telephone. So have fun this Halloween and that's our episode on Halloween candy tampering. First of all, number one, why is there so many weird crazy people out there? Right. Like the, the laxative one, the needle one, and then like the Tylenol murders, which really did kill people. Two, I had no idea that I honestly thought people poised in candy. I've been telling people that people poised in candy, like I've looked at people and been like, oh well, people hand out poison candy on Halloween.

And then I went to research it because I was like, oh, I want to do a case about or just spreading false light. Literally, I was like, I'm going to do a case about all the people who have died via Halloween like poisoning, candy poisoning. And then I went to look it up and I was like, this is a lie.

I had no idea. This is never actually, there's no, there's not an actual reported case of a random stranger poisoning, another random stranger via Halloween candy. It's all very targeted and specific. Yes. Yeah. It's either someone you know, it's a family member trying to blame it like we saw or it's the things we've heard over like needles or laxatives. And those aren't actually going to kill you. That's not actual murder. It's so crazy. Did any of you guys know this?

Did anyone else know this? Because I had no idea. I'm going to fill them if everyone's like, yeah, we all know that this wasn't anything. But watch, watch the news. I promise you, we're going to see things this year about check your Halloween candy for razor blades or poison candy.

But it's not like. I'm curious how many articles or how many things people send that, I don't know, I'm curious if we see anything different. Someone does send something that's like, well, no, actually this person has died or something. But all the research I've done, I mean, people have died of poison Halloween candy. We just went over. But it's all too hard to get it in specific. And in order for it to be like a random Halloween candy poisoning

They've had to have handed out multiple poisoned pieces of Halloween candy to strangers. Yes Not knowing who was gonna take it not knowing who was gonna die That would what it would have to be to be classified as that got it which is just crazy so crazy Okay, you guys well We have our bonus episode coming out midweek this week and it is going to be spooky stories reminder that you can submit that via the Google form in the link in our bio or in this like episodes notes. But we will be reading those and we are super excited for that bonus episode and there will also be another added on surprise during that episode.

So tune in to figure out what that is and we will see you guys this week with another episode. I love it And I hate it. Goodbye