No matter what we buy, whether it is a food product or something else, there is some kind of film or foil that must also be removed before the product can be used because there are lives at stake.
But this has not always been the case. Literally, every manufacturer on earth quickly changed their packaging after what came to be called the Tylenol murders, not to mention the Stella Nickell case.
Nobody wanted to end up in the same nightmare that the company Johnson & Johnson had to go through, as well as the makers of the painkiller Excedrin.
The Tylenol Murders
In 1982, six adults and one child died in Chicago. There was no connection between the people, but they all had in common that they had taken capsules of the painkiller Tylenol.
Later, it turned out that someone had introduced cyanide into the medicine capsules. Medicines ingested by people came from different factories and were sold in different pharmacies in the city.
It was therefore considered certain that the capsules had not been poisoned during the production process. Most likely, someone went from pharmacy to pharmacy and slipped the poison into the medicine.
Victims of the Tylenol Murders
In 1986, James E. Burke, president of Johnson & Johnson, announced that production of over-the-counter capsules had been discontinued.
Shortly after the investigation into the case began, the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson received a letter from a man who confessed to poisoning the drugs.
He demanded a high payment, otherwise he would continue to do so. A police investigation revealed that it was a hoax.
The case is still unsolved today.
And It Was Stella
Next, let’s move on to a woman named Stella Nickell and her connection to the Tylenol murders.
Stella married a man named Bruce Nickell in 1976, and this was her second marriage. Stella was no angel; she had been in prison for embezzlement and had been sent to counseling for the mistreatment of her ex-husband, which must have hit her like a hard fish.
Stella met Bruce two years earlier. He worked driving machines, but in the meantime, he drank a lot, which was fine with Stella because she herself thought the sip was good.
Bruce Nickell
During their decade-long marriage, Bruce started taking drugs but soon realized it wasn’t doing him any good.
Bruce went to treatment and stopped using drugs and alcohol.
Stella
Stella was not happy and thought Bruce was boring after the treatment. He became interested in fish and installed aquariums in the house, which Stella could not bear.
Things didn’t improve when Bruce started complaining about his wife’s pub crawls.
Boring Alive But Much Better Dead
Stella’s daughter from a previous marriage, Cynthia Hamilton, later said that her mother had wanted Bruce dead since their honeymoon.
And when the Tylenol murders were front-page news and on every TV station, Stella had an idea.
In 1985, Stella insured her husband’s life for a large amount, and the amount was even higher if Bruce died in an accident.
Stella’s Plan
Stella then waited patiently for a full year before adding cyanide to Excedrin, a pain reliever primarily for migraines, which Bruce took regularly. Bruce fell seriously ill and was sent to the hospital where he died shortly after arriving.
Doctors were unaware of the cyanide poisoning, and his death was believed to be caused by emphysema.
Stella was clearly not content. Her death had not been ruled an accident, which meant she had not received the $100,000 in life insurance.
Stella thought about it and thought she had found a solution to the problem. She went from pharmacy to pharmacy, putting cyanide in five bottles of Excedrin, because the medicine bottles had not yet been protected as we know them today.
The Horrible Death of Susan Snow
Six days later, a woman, a 40-year-old bank clerk named Susan Snow, died after taking two pills of the drug, as she did every morning. Her husband, Paul, also took two pills but escaped. Susan had just been unlucky.
But unlike Bruce, Susan was autopsied, and the cyanide that had killed her was found.
Suzanne Snow
When the media reported Susan’s death, Stella called the police and said her husband likely died of the same causes. She then called the insurance company and said Bruce’s death was an obvious accident and they would now have to pay $100,000. But the insurance company was suspicious and wanted to wait while the investigation unfolded.
The police decided to pay a visit and talk to Stella better.
She said she bought two bottles of medicine every day from every pharmacy. Upon examination, cyanide was found in both bottles.
Cynthia Hamilton
The FBI Is Suspicious
The case was then brought to the attention of the FBI, who found it more than a strange coincidence that the two bottles Stella bought contained cyanide. All the bottles had been recalled, and cyanide had only been found in two of them.
How come the same woman ended up buying two of the only four bottles containing poison?
The FBI was almost certain that Stella put the poison in the drug and came up with the idea after the Tylenol murders.
But it was almost impossible to prove it.
An undated but fairly recent photo of Stella.
The Girl, the Trial, and the Verdict
That is until 1988, two years after the murders.
Cynthia Hamilton, Stella’s daughter, stepped forward—most likely due to the amount of money available at the time for solving the case—and said that her mother had told her the whole story. She also showed her a book about poison, which Stella had gotten from the library but never returned.
The police went to the relevant library and searched for all books on cyanide. Stella’s fingerprints turned out to be on all of them.
Stella was arrested and charged with the murders of Bruce and Susan.
She was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
The saddest thing is that Stella’s greed killed not only her husband but also an innocent wife and mother.
If Stella had been content with what the insurance company paid her, and she hadn’t demanded another hundred thousand dollars, it’s almost certain that she would have gotten away with killing Bruce.
