The 1986 Excedrin Murders
Did Washington State Have a Copycat or Did the Chicago Tylenol Poisoner Move West?
In Chicago in 1982, seven people died after ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol (see my article about the poisonings here). Although the guilty party or parties were never charged and brought to trial, the acts led to a product tampering legislation which would make any deaths that resulted from product tampering a federal offense.
King County, Washington in June of 1986 was a world away from Chicago and, like the rest of the country, four years past the Tylenol murders. Singer Randy Travis had just released his debut album, Danielle Steel was sitting atop the fiction bestseller lists, devastating details about the Chernobyl disaster were being released and the United Kingdom was preparing to celebrate the wedding of commoner Sarah Ferguson to Queen Elizabeth’s second son. A month earlier, in May, King County residents had turned on their TVs to NBC to watch Mark Harmon portray Ted Bundy in a two-part miniseries. Outside of the Green River Killer, Bundy was the area’s most notorious serial killer and in the early summer of 1986 was residing on Florida’s Death Row.
Sue
The city of Auburn is a suburb of metropolitan Seattle, roughly 20 miles south, liberally dotted with parks, open spaces and…