The Tylenol Murders Cold Case: A Father's Deathbed Confession

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[SPEAKER_00]: In Chicago, 1982, fears swept across the country, and one of the most chilling crimes in American history.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The case began with the death of a 12-year-old girl who took Tylenol for a sore throat, after her parents purchased a bottle from a local store, later discovered to have been laced with potassium cyanide.

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[SPEAKER_00]: In the hours that followed, six more victims would die, after taking capsules traced to stores, including Walgreens and Dominics, across the Chicago area.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The terrifying discovery led to a nationwide recall of 31 million Thailand all-bottles and quickly became national news.

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[SPEAKER_00]: For decades, the cold case became one of the most haunting mysteries.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A crime that changed the way Americans lived, yet left behind, more questions than answers.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I'm joined by author Joseph Sebelli, who's deeply personal book the Tylenol murders a father's confession to his son explores the dark family secret his father carried for decades.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Join us as we step into the shadows of this infamous case.

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[SPEAKER_00]: retrace the clues and uncover how one's son spent years pursuing a dark hidden truth.

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[SPEAKER_00]: One finally revealed on his father's death bed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is death by Mr. Bencher.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Joseph.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being on death by Miss Adventure.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited to learn more about your book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Jay.

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[SPEAKER_01]: See it's good to be here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So for listeners who may not be familiar with the case, can you take us back to Chicago in 1982?

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[SPEAKER_00]: What happened during the Tylenol murders?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And why did the crime terrify the entire country at that time?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the Tylenol murders happened at the end of September

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[SPEAKER_01]: what happened was my father had tampered with the pills to put the cyanide into them and then redistributed them back out and I go very deeply into that in my book of how he did it about his deathbed confession and I think something that people need to know and understand and I tried to emphasize in the book that in 1982 our world was so different because we did

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, just in the news realm, things were so different, something like, you know, your amazing podcast wouldn't have existed them because there was just not the media for that, so it was a different era.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So seven people died after they took the cyanide lace Tylenol capsules.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the killer was never officially identified.

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[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, you were just a kid living in the Chicago area.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Where were you living and what was life like at home?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember the case?

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[SPEAKER_00]: I remember it when I was a little kid.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I believe people purchased the Tylenol through the grocery store.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That is correct.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, yes, seven people died from that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we were living in a town that puts almost right up against the city, and it's called Lyons, a Ly-O-N-S. And at the time my father was a police officer there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, we were living in our house, and we had moved into the house in 1976, from 1976 to about 1978, life was almost normal.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in 1978, my father started going down a downward spiral.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He became in rage.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He was flying off the handle.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He was volatile.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, volatile is a very broad description, but it is a description.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And our lives went from, like I said, somewhat normal to a point where we were walking on egg shells.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so at a young age, I learned to watch my father.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I trained myself to watch him and I could tell when his breathing changed or there was any slight little cracks in his facade.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I knew something was coming.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So my brother was born in 1978 and just prior to that, we had lost.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My cousin Karen was killed in a car accident.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then just a few weeks after my brother was born, we had the Jones Town Mass Accar, which I imagine,

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[SPEAKER_01]: plus of his followers using cyanide laced flavor drink.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't think it was actually cool aid, but people will use that term to drink the cool aid.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And at that point, I watched my father, and I could see him watching the news coverage about Jim Jones, and any articles that came out in the newspaper in the magazines, my father had kept those in his workshop, which in the book I entitled the Lair.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it was at this point when I really started watching him and trying to piece together, what was he up to, what is going on?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it progressively just got worse.

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[SPEAKER_00]: During the time of the Tylenol murders, was he like intently watching it on TV, was he also keeping track of the news and information about the case?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because like I said, I'm news at that point was a choice.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You had to be sitting in front of your TV at a certain time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He never talked about the murders ever.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There was no recollection of mine of him acting, the way that he did with the Jones Town Massacre to where he was talking about it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He kind of just kept it quiet.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And there is an instance in the book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We really didn't watch much news in our house.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And there's an instance in the book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And this was after the murders.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And what was happening on TV, and I was 11 at the time watching this, and there were three cascades on the TV, and they were in a Catholic church, St. Phil Amina's Catholic Church, and the Bishop was sprinkling holy water on the cascades.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sitting in the room and I'm a sensitive person and I can feel the sorrow and this pain coming through the TV and I realized that there were three caskets there and I had an understanding that they had died from the Tylenol, but I couldn't even say that I was 100% sure of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so sitting behind me is my father, and at this point, I really didn't want to be around him very often, and he was behind me, and I could hear the breathing change, like I said, I was very in tune to his his motions, and I heard the breathing change, and I'm thinking, oh, he probably feeling what I'm feeling like a sorrow for the victims, and he sits there, and I'm thinking, okay, maybe he is human after all,

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[SPEAKER_01]: And what he said, it hit me like an ax.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It has been etched into my being since 1982.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He said there, been very simply said, oh great, three-affing, holy Catholic martyrs.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as an 11-year-old thinking that my father might have sympathy for these victims, I was live it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I turned around and I said to him, what does that mean?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What are you saying?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, none of your business is what it means.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, no, honestly, seriously, what are you saying right now?

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[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he told me, he said, you know what?

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[SPEAKER_01]: If you're so effing smart, you'll figure it out someday.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that was just about the only news coverage I remember seeing him looking at was that day.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he did insist on watching the news that night.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So to me, you know, all these years later, like, oh, yeah, I do.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So did your mom, did she express any fear towards your father or did she ever talk to you and your brother about his temper or, you know, sometimes it might be like, oh, leave your dad alone, he's not in a good mood or what was it like at home with your day-to-day life and family during that time?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Our day-to-day life, it was, I would always call it, it was like a battlefield.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't know from one day or one hour

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he was laid off a lot at that point from his primary job, so he was home a lot in this era.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as far as my mom went, my mom going through all of this with her, she always said, told me she's like, I understood how far or not to push him.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She said, and it wasn't a very far limit.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He was so volatile.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my father would beat my mother.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, I witnessed this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I saw this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I heard this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I was a witness to this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And at the time, you know, my mom, I think she was doing what she thought she had to do.

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[SPEAKER_01]: She had made a decision to go back to school.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My mom was a hairdresser.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in 1981, she made the decision to go into nursing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so she had started with classes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And my father, he absolutely lost his mind.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He did not want her to become educated.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He did not want her to be self-sustaining.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a time, and I talked about it in the book, and I remember it as if it was just today.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We had gone to a store, and we were in the parking lot, this is just me and my mother.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My mother just looks me in the eyes, and I can see her eyes still.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And she said to me, now I'm 10, and she said, if he starts beating on me tonight, I need you to call the police because I don't know how much more of it I can take.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I went into so much detail about this day in the book that, you know, it's only a couple of pages in the book, however, it took me over a week to write that because as I was reliving it in my head and putting it on paper, it was just so dark.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was definitely absolutely a time in my life where I thought, you know, things are not going to get better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So they had had an argument in the living room.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And our basement in the house was where my room was.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It sort of like an in-law apartment down there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I had moved into there, you know, not on my own.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I was 11.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I heard the fight.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I heard the yelling and the screaming and the thumping.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was just this one.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I know the sound is identifiable, thud.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that was my mother's.

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[SPEAKER_01]: body hitting the floor.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My father had punched her and she hit it around and I'm in the basement and I'm just recalling this conversation I had with her that exact day about calling the police.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I was in the basement and my brother and sister I have younger siblings and they were upstairs and I'm in the basement and I just I could not figure out how can I get up there get past this scene and get to my siblings and help my mom.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I put this in the book and I still feel like it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I did what was unthinkable and I called the police.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in that time, in our town, we didn't have 911.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So next to the phone, there was the Lion's Police Department and the Lion's Fire Department emergency numbers.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I had them memorized.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I called the police and I talked to a woman there I had the whole conversation in the book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, she said, what is your mother's name?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, are you Danny's son?

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[SPEAKER_01]: My father was Danny after all.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Are you Danny's son?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, yes, and she said they're already on their way.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't need an address.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This was the first time I had to intervene, but it was not the last.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And because my father kind of his side hustle was being a police officer, when he wasn't laid off,

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[SPEAKER_01]: He was a part-time police officer, and then when he was laid off from his full-time job, he did part-time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the officers all knew us, they knew our family, they knew things were not good there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And an officer came to the house, came to the door, my dad answered the door, and he said to my father, basically, Danny, whatever's going on in there, just knock it off.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That was in 1982, and I have always felt that when I was intervening,

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[SPEAKER_01]: with him.

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[SPEAKER_01]: If somebody would have listened to me, if somebody, if the police would have done something, if anybody would have done anything, the trajectory may have been different.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I, I 100% believe that, and I 100% believe that there is a what you would call the blue wall of silence there that's like it was like, we're not going to deal with this because he's one of us.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the way it has always been.

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[SPEAKER_00]: that's so traumatizing, especially as a young child.

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[SPEAKER_00]: When you got older, you chose to study criminal justice and forensic psychology.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think growing up in that environment pushed you towards trying to understand the psychology of crime, but also the psychology of predators versus victims?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, when I was young, I followed in my mom's footsteps, and I did here for over three decades, and along the way, I was peace-mailing to agree together, and that was my criminal justice to create.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, I have a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice, and as I was taking these classes and understanding the criminal mind, it was just so obvious to me that,

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[SPEAKER_01]: I witnessed so many things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I was living within a crime scene and I was like living evidence.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So when I got done with that, I immediately started working on forensic psychology.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then a couple of years into that is when I started law school.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I finished with my forensics psychology, PhD, last December, and I have one year left of law school.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I will tell you that living in that environment, I understand psychopathy at a level that I think most people don't understand it because I have read the case studies.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I have read everything that there is to know about this,

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like with my book and with what I'm working on, like I have lived inside of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, this is like a true crime story, but it's also told from the inside.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This is not somebody recounting something that happened.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like I witnessed what he was doing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: At the time, it did not make sense to me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: After studying violent offenders and different murder cases and cold cases, have you started to see any underlying themes or psychological traits that tend to show up in people who commit these type of crimes and and is there like a certain age that someone might be showing they might be a sociopath or something along those lines?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that if what I'm doing now, if no, I've done forensic psychology, I've been taking a couple of just online development psychology classes because understanding forensic psychology.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The way that I do forensic psychology is I look at the event, whatever that event might be, and I work backwards.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as I have done this, and I did this with my own father, and as I work backwards, I come to an area where it seems like something changes, and that to me is between the ages of 11 and 15.

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[SPEAKER_01]: In adolescence, something happens.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There are people I believe who are wired a certain way,

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[SPEAKER_01]: And if something triggers that between the ages of 11 and 15, they could snap, but then there are also people who are wired that way and nothing triggers that and they can live the rest of their lives and never commit a crime.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And you also have the opposite, where there is somebody who may not be necessarily predispositioned,

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[SPEAKER_01]: to commit crimes and something happens to them between 11 and 15.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the research that I'm working on now outside of finishing law school, outside of this book because I'm very intently researching that age group and looking at the traits for psychopathy.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And as I have, like I've mentioned before, I grew up in this, and so I have, I mean, I would call it a radar.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I can meet somebody, and I just kind of consents things about that, and be like, you know what?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that person should be trusted, or I think this person should be trusted.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But the ones that scare me the most are the ones that go beneath my radar.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My father was on my radar.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I had no words or ability to connect what he was doing, but now is an adult when I read something or when I meet somebody who is at say a criminal and they seem to me like they can get under my radar.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the ones for terrifying because that that was beyond any knowledge that I have.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of the traits that I see when I when I'm dealing in this subject

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[SPEAKER_01]: The true psychopaths, I mean, they are very cold and manipulative, and my father is a perfect example of that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he used calculated cold precision in what he did with the Tylenol, but yet on the outside, if you are outside of our house, you could see him and think like he's a great guy, because that's what he's showing people, and that's the manipulation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He would show people, like, hey, I'm a good guy.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Look at me, I'm a police officer, I protect people.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then as soon as you're buying clothes, doors, you get a completely different version of him.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, anybody who has ever been within our family circle would agree with that, that you saw two different versions of him.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, my father had come up with an ulterior name for himself, and that is factual.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he would call himself evil damn.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if evil Dan was around, like you could walk into the room and he would trip you and be like, what was that about?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he'd be like, oh, that wasn't me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That was evil Dan.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And he is, he referred to himself all the time as evil Dan.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He'd be like, oh, yeah, remember when that happened?

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[SPEAKER_01]: No, that wasn't me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That was evil Dan.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So he actually came up with another alternative personality for himself.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think that he created that secondary personality so that he didn't have to take responsibility for what he did?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I also feel like there really was a split there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I do feel like there was two.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There was definitely at least two.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel that he used evil Dan.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so he could throw evil Dan under the bus and it his own mind, though, he was fine.

18:52.953 --> 18:54.856
[SPEAKER_01]: He was okay because it was never him.

18:54.916 --> 18:56.939
[SPEAKER_01]: He was never the perpetrator of anything.

18:57.059 --> 18:58.101
[SPEAKER_01]: It was evil Dan.

18:59.262 --> 19:13.185
[SPEAKER_01]: and also with him having been a police officer, he had the mentality of, you know, I have a badge, I have a gun, I can do whatever, whenever, wherever, to who never I want with no accountability.

19:14.006 --> 19:16.791
[SPEAKER_01]: And then if it ever came to it, he could just blame people down.

19:16.811 --> 19:19.195
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this was our life in that house.

19:19.681 --> 19:23.688
[SPEAKER_01]: I had written a paper while I was still in school for psychology.

19:23.728 --> 19:40.496
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the paper, I couldn't use his name and I couldn't use it as a lot of specifics I could not use, but when I wrote the book, I took that paper that I wrote and I just re-adrossed it and made it a little bit more user-friendly and then incorporated his name and who I was talking about into it.

19:40.897 --> 19:45.064
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's in the book and I think it's an interesting read because you kind of see the

19:45.044 --> 19:52.931
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can read this part of the book and see what was going on behind the scenes in his mind, at least as far as I can explain.

19:53.572 --> 19:56.875
[SPEAKER_00]: So how did all of this impact your siblings?

19:57.876 --> 20:01.720
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my brother was born into this because my brother was born in 1978.

20:02.240 --> 20:06.064
[SPEAKER_01]: And through my years, my life, I've been through therapy.

20:06.104 --> 20:07.806
[SPEAKER_01]: And I talked a lot about my brother.

20:07.826 --> 20:11.389
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had a therapist one time asked me.

20:11.791 --> 20:14.274
[SPEAKER_01]: was your brother, what you would call a colloquy baby?

20:14.294 --> 20:18.458
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, oh, absolutely, he cried nonstop all the time.

20:18.518 --> 20:21.181
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, because he was born into trauma.

20:21.862 --> 20:24.604
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're more, I'm not going on prior to his birth.

20:25.465 --> 20:33.994
[SPEAKER_01]: I was born in 1971, by all recollections from 1971 until 1978, just for my brother, was born where somewhat normal.

20:34.935 --> 20:41.342
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had those seven years there, and I could base a little bit

20:41.761 --> 20:43.227
[SPEAKER_01]: based on those seven years.

20:44.171 --> 20:47.384
[SPEAKER_01]: But my brother and my sister, they did not have that opportunity.

20:47.424 --> 20:49.493
[SPEAKER_01]: They were both worn into this.

20:49.979 --> 20:56.447
[SPEAKER_00]: So in your book, one of the most chilling moments happens decades later when your father's dying.

20:57.128 --> 21:03.416
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you take us back to that night and what happened in that room in his confession?

21:03.436 --> 21:11.266
[SPEAKER_01]: So my father had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, which that is a terminal diagnosis.

21:11.606 --> 21:18.315
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's whether you have a few months or a year to live, that's debatable with what you have.

21:19.173 --> 21:28.347
[SPEAKER_01]: My father was evil and he was mean and they had in the living room and it's just such an odd how things work out.

21:28.528 --> 21:41.548
[SPEAKER_01]: So in the living room in that house where his chair was by the front window and that's where his hospital bed was or his hospice bed and he would drift in and out of consciousness and my father was always very calculating.

21:41.628 --> 21:45.214
[SPEAKER_01]: My father you could never ask him a question to get a straight answer.

21:46.088 --> 21:55.342
[SPEAKER_01]: So prior to what he said about 10 days before my father died, I had written him a text because I had no other way to get him to even see anything.

21:55.382 --> 21:56.965
[SPEAKER_01]: He did one thing to do with me.

21:57.686 --> 22:03.014
[SPEAKER_01]: So I sent him a text and there I said basically like, you know, I've become educated.

22:03.094 --> 22:04.036
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a good man.

22:04.096 --> 22:07.982
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've done all these things, not because of you, but in spite of you.

22:08.002 --> 22:14.712
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also told him because I had suspected

22:15.046 --> 22:22.697
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said in there, very almost under the radar in the letter, I said, the poison that you put out into the world did not kill me.

22:22.737 --> 22:27.985
[SPEAKER_01]: So 10 days later, he's kind of drifting in out of consciousness.

22:28.726 --> 22:33.653
[SPEAKER_01]: He sits up in his hospital bed and he just said, this is the words he said.

22:33.673 --> 22:37.358
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's in the book, he said, cyanide pills, I did it.

22:38.165 --> 22:45.714
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like I said, my father was calculating, he would have never come out and said, Thailand all pills I did it, but he said, cyanide pills I did it.

22:46.675 --> 22:49.038
[SPEAKER_01]: So after that, he kind of drifted off a little bit.

22:49.419 --> 22:51.101
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he was he came back again.

22:51.121 --> 22:55.526
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was just kind of staring down the hallway.

22:55.566 --> 22:57.068
[SPEAKER_01]: He was crying.

22:57.108 --> 23:00.512
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, the three marries should still be here.

23:00.573 --> 23:03.396
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them was so young.

23:04.270 --> 23:12.342
[SPEAKER_01]: If you read the book and if you investigate this, three of the seven victims were named Mary in one of them was 12 years old.

23:14.265 --> 23:24.519
[SPEAKER_01]: So if that isn't bringing you right where you need to see my father again sat there and he said, I'm going to be blamed for something.

23:25.180 --> 23:26.082
[SPEAKER_01]: It might be a year.

23:26.142 --> 23:27.784
[SPEAKER_01]: It might be 10 years.

23:28.205 --> 23:31.830
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just going to admit it now.

23:32.148 --> 23:32.829
[SPEAKER_01]: I did it.

23:32.849 --> 23:34.130
[SPEAKER_01]: It was me.

23:34.170 --> 23:37.915
[SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of in and out of consciousness again.

23:37.935 --> 23:39.978
[SPEAKER_01]: And now this was the message.

23:40.038 --> 23:42.961
[SPEAKER_01]: This one was for me and I was not there to hear this.

23:42.981 --> 23:45.444
[SPEAKER_01]: This was relayed to me what he said at this point.

23:46.185 --> 23:53.074
[SPEAKER_01]: He was back looking down the hallway and he said he was looking at an entity that was not there.

23:53.334 --> 24:00.062
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he was seeing things and he's looking and he said, if you saw what I did,

24:00.667 --> 24:07.620
[SPEAKER_01]: If you knew what I did, and you didn't say anything, you should be ashamed of yourself.

24:07.881 --> 24:09.043
[SPEAKER_01]: You would be the monster.

24:09.384 --> 24:10.306
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was for me.

24:10.786 --> 24:12.249
[SPEAKER_01]: That was his goodbye to me.

24:12.630 --> 24:17.379
[SPEAKER_01]: Was basically telling me right before that saying cyanide pills I did it.

24:17.459 --> 24:19.924
[SPEAKER_01]: And then giving me this

24:20.545 --> 24:25.031
[SPEAKER_01]: throwing it in my lap saying, if you know what I did and you don't say anything, you're the monster.

24:25.111 --> 24:26.814
[SPEAKER_01]: And that would very much be like him.

24:27.274 --> 24:28.236
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to put it on me.

24:28.296 --> 24:32.782
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so at that point, I mean, I knew what he was saying.

24:33.543 --> 24:40.453
[SPEAKER_01]: The version of the book that you got, that was the media copy, I strategically did not put one thing in there.

24:40.833 --> 24:42.496
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one picture that's in there.

24:43.497 --> 24:46.401
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very interesting because it's very relevant to this.

24:46.752 --> 24:50.078
[SPEAKER_01]: in the hard cover of the book, the final book, it's on page 209.

24:51.541 --> 24:56.069
[SPEAKER_01]: So after my father died, the last few months of his life, he would not speak to my mother.

24:56.089 --> 24:59.455
[SPEAKER_01]: He would not give for any of the passwords to any of the accounts.

24:59.475 --> 25:04.103
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had a lot of work to do with hitting things organized after he died.

25:04.893 --> 25:10.859
[SPEAKER_01]: So I took a little trip up to our attic and I mentioned in the book that my father was a hoarder.

25:11.319 --> 25:18.126
[SPEAKER_01]: So if my father would clean out his car, he would just take all of the garbage out of it, put it into a box or a bag and then put that in the garage.

25:18.846 --> 25:24.071
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you work your way up into our attic, there was just boxes and there's just layers.

25:24.151 --> 25:27.074
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom calls it like layers like rings on a tree.

25:27.815 --> 25:33.280
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was up there actually I was looking for some things of mine that I had left in the house

25:33.563 --> 25:39.730
[SPEAKER_01]: that was the excuse I was going up there for, but I was going up to find anything that I could find that would connect him.

25:40.751 --> 25:48.941
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was up there probably an hour and a half and I was digging through boxes of his and I would open up a box and there would just be receipts and garbage.

25:49.722 --> 25:54.868
[SPEAKER_01]: So I opened up one of the boxes and sitting right in the box and I get goosebumps with this.

25:55.729 --> 26:02.777
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a bottle of it was a sample bottle of extra strength, Tylenol, that would have

26:03.331 --> 26:10.461
[SPEAKER_01]: In the expiration date on it was from 1987, all of the tainted bottles had an expiration date of 1987.

26:10.962 --> 26:19.875
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was a very small little sample bottle and I have a theory in the book about one of the deaths and I won't get into that now because you got to read the book for that.

26:20.296 --> 26:24.802
[SPEAKER_01]: But I looked at this and I said, oh my god, he kept a trophy.

26:25.543 --> 26:28.107
[SPEAKER_01]: He's literally, this has a trophy.

26:28.407 --> 26:38.606
[SPEAKER_01]: When I talked to my brother about this, my brother had said that my father before he really started going downhill was obsessed about getting into the attic because he needed to find something.

26:39.046 --> 26:43.995
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was having my brother go into the attic and bring boxes down for him to go through it.

26:44.015 --> 26:46.961
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, nope, not in this box and he would just dump it on the floor.

26:47.001 --> 26:50.187
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was not able to actually get up the stairs at this point.

26:50.207 --> 26:51.529
[SPEAKER_01]: So my brother would pick

26:51.509 --> 26:55.354
[SPEAKER_01]: up the garbage from the box, move it over, go up and get another box.

26:55.494 --> 26:59.759
[SPEAKER_01]: My father was tearing through boxes looking for something, and he didn't tell my brother what it was.

26:59.819 --> 27:00.821
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, nope, not in here.

27:01.381 --> 27:07.168
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother said this one on for a few days, where my father wanted boxes to be brought down, so he could go through them.

27:07.268 --> 27:09.311
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm telling you, he was looking for this bottle.

27:09.371 --> 27:12.555
[SPEAKER_01]: This was his souvenir, his trophy.

27:13.261 --> 27:14.404
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fascinating.

27:14.484 --> 27:21.803
[SPEAKER_00]: So after you've heard his confession, he's passed away and you're going through the boxes.

27:21.863 --> 27:24.590
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you talk to your mom about it?

27:24.710 --> 27:26.796
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you think about going to the police?

27:26.836 --> 27:29.683
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what did you do next?

27:29.782 --> 27:32.687
[SPEAKER_01]: When he said what he said, I knew instantly.

27:32.707 --> 27:34.550
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, I knew this at the time.

27:35.151 --> 27:41.181
[SPEAKER_01]: I had suspected him briefly in 1982 for this, and I had started keeping a journal in 1986.

27:41.241 --> 27:49.815
[SPEAKER_01]: I started to write a journal where I was going into the journal, and I was going back and writing down these very strange expressions he took us on.

27:49.795 --> 27:51.678
[SPEAKER_01]: the strange places we went.

27:52.038 --> 28:03.316
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost any behavior from him that seemed out of the ordinary, which that's hard to tell with him, but anything that didn't seem right, I was writing it down, and that journal disappeared in 1988.

28:04.758 --> 28:11.348
[SPEAKER_01]: So when he made the confession, when he said, cyanide pills I did it, I knew exactly what he meant.

28:11.429 --> 28:20.057
[SPEAKER_01]: I kept it close to my vest at first because honest to God when I started working on this, I wanted to find any exculpatory evidence that I could.

28:20.518 --> 28:29.827
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything that would say he didn't do this and I knew that he did it but I needed to put that case together before I started openly talking about it.

28:30.407 --> 28:38.635
[SPEAKER_01]: So I laid the timeline of the murders down next to the timeline of events with him and throw that in with his deathbed confession.

28:39.323 --> 28:54.163
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I got most of my timeline laid out before the book was in the form of a book, I am a hundred percent certain that he did this and I reached out to a survivor of the victims who were three victims who died in Arlington Heights.

28:54.924 --> 28:56.906
[SPEAKER_01]: I was able to contact Denise.

28:57.207 --> 29:01.332
[SPEAKER_01]: She's about the same age as I am and we had a very long conversation.

29:02.037 --> 29:15.416
[SPEAKER_01]: So I told her what I have and I laid it out for her and she listened to what I had to say and you know she is crying and she said, you know, if your father did this, he destroyed my whole family and I said, I am so sorry for that.

29:15.477 --> 29:23.208
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I cannot apologize for him, but I hold space for that and I said, so I want to give you some of your power back.

29:23.528 --> 29:27.454
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, what would you like me to do with this information that I'm sharing with you?

29:28.362 --> 29:44.295
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said to me, she said, if you really feel like your father did this, please contact the Arlington Heights Police Department, so Arlington Heights Illinois, she told me that they have a Tylenol task force, they would believe investigators in this case.

29:45.237 --> 29:48.281
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had watched a documentary of one point and saw that as well.

29:48.341 --> 29:54.208
[SPEAKER_01]: So I reached out to Arlington Heights police and just said, you know, I need to talk to somebody from the Tylenol Task Force.

29:54.228 --> 29:57.251
[SPEAKER_01]: The gentleman who answered said, oh, we don't have a Tylenol Task Force.

29:57.271 --> 29:59.114
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't worked on that case in like 20 years.

29:59.775 --> 30:08.245
[SPEAKER_01]: So at this point, I'm feeling so sad for this woman who I just talked to because in her mind, she has faith that they're actually working on this case.

30:09.106 --> 30:11.008
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I would talk to them with

30:11.512 --> 30:15.058
[SPEAKER_01]: very good information and they don't have a Tylenol task force.

30:15.138 --> 30:18.785
[SPEAKER_01]: So it took a few rounds to get any phone calls back.

30:18.805 --> 30:22.531
[SPEAKER_01]: So I finally did, and I gave everything that I had to an investigator.

30:22.551 --> 30:28.802
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, he said, can you put like a very complete timeline of everything together?

30:28.822 --> 30:29.664
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I'm on it.

30:29.804 --> 30:30.325
[SPEAKER_01]: I have it.

30:30.405 --> 30:33.250
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me just put it into a format that I can give to you.

30:33.922 --> 30:36.765
[SPEAKER_01]: So I reached out to a friend of mine in Illinois who's in a attorney.

30:36.805 --> 30:42.552
[SPEAKER_01]: She was a criminal defense attorney and I said, Kelly, I said, this is what's going on.

30:42.993 --> 30:44.094
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what I need.

30:44.815 --> 30:48.740
[SPEAKER_01]: And at this point, I kind of had the book into almost a beta first version of it.

30:48.860 --> 30:51.763
[SPEAKER_01]: And I sent it to her because she was going to extract everything.

30:51.803 --> 30:55.368
[SPEAKER_01]: And she reached out to me and she said, Joe, you have my blessing.

30:55.788 --> 31:00.474
[SPEAKER_01]: Go ahead and just send this whole thing to them because she said every page of this is evidence.

31:00.814 --> 31:02.376
[SPEAKER_01]: She said.

31:02.508 --> 31:07.877
[SPEAKER_01]: been working with them, and then not working with them, and it's been a back and forth.

31:08.237 --> 31:20.357
[SPEAKER_01]: I always feel like, again, it's the blue wall, like they don't want to put one of their own under the bus, and I honestly also feel like they must have sat there on the phone with me thinking, you know what this guy's just crazy, he's going to go away.

31:20.397 --> 31:25.866
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the reason why I ended

31:26.234 --> 31:31.182
[SPEAKER_01]: that lays out a case so that I'm not just coming out of the gate or my father was a murderer.

31:31.403 --> 31:36.071
[SPEAKER_01]: I put it all into words so that it could be presented and shown.

31:36.091 --> 31:44.886
[SPEAKER_01]: And so to be determined if they are going to close this case, if they will even discuss this further with me, I don't know that's up to them.

31:45.828 --> 31:51.938
[SPEAKER_01]: I've reached out as much as I possibly can and I get once in a while I get a response and then sometimes I get nothing.

31:52.171 --> 32:02.626
[SPEAKER_00]: So how have you dealt emotionally with coming to terms with, you believe your father was responsible for the Tylenol murders and then doing the research and writing the book.

32:03.407 --> 32:06.772
[SPEAKER_00]: How's that impacted you and how long did it take you to write the book?

32:07.493 --> 32:15.124
[SPEAKER_01]: So I started writing the book actually was putting my timeline together was not long before he died after he made his first before he contest it.

32:15.695 --> 32:26.149
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was in October of 23 and this September beginning of October of 23 and I had the book completed in mid September of 25.

32:27.330 --> 32:38.445
[SPEAKER_01]: So it took me, you know, say two years to put it all together and to refine it into double and quadruple check everything that I had I interviewed people who may have known our family.

32:39.050 --> 32:43.714
[SPEAKER_01]: Who may have worked with my father, who may have been neighbors, who may have gone to school with us.

32:44.275 --> 32:45.877
[SPEAKER_01]: I reached out to so many people.

32:46.037 --> 32:47.898
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not tell them what I was researching.

32:48.019 --> 32:52.082
[SPEAKER_01]: I just said, I'm just getting some background information, put together about my father.

32:52.183 --> 32:53.724
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you remember about him?

32:54.044 --> 32:57.207
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would never mention that it was the Tylenol markers I was looking into.

32:57.608 --> 33:00.250
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got some very interesting responses from people.

33:00.390 --> 33:02.753
[SPEAKER_01]: And a couple of times, they're here on the back right next to it up.

33:02.793 --> 33:08.398
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, I'm glad to have heard this because, you know, we can check that off the box now.

33:09.003 --> 33:10.005
[SPEAKER_01]: It's affected me.

33:10.025 --> 33:17.677
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, this has been for me the most terrifying and also the most freeing thing I could have done.

33:18.258 --> 33:25.509
[SPEAKER_01]: I have carried this and I've carried the weight of not just this, but everything that had to do with my father.

33:25.529 --> 33:27.051
[SPEAKER_01]: I've carried this my whole life.

33:27.933 --> 33:31.298
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the book, I talk about his workshop and I call it Lair.

33:31.868 --> 33:48.190
[SPEAKER_01]: So in my own life, I compare it to like I had my own internal layer, I had my own locked up area inside of me with the darkness and the secrets and everything that we were we were supposed to keep in and by writing this book.

33:48.710 --> 33:56.439
[SPEAKER_01]: I took the door off the layer, I took everything out of the layer, I scrubbed it down, I gave it a fresh coat of paint in the sun is coming in now.

33:56.599 --> 34:07.471
[SPEAKER_01]: So I now at 54 years old, I have the opportunity to refill that part of me with good things because I have let all of the darkness out.

34:07.931 --> 34:12.857
[SPEAKER_01]: So writing this book, you know, we were never allowed to talk about anything that would happen in the house.

34:13.017 --> 34:15.780
[SPEAKER_01]: As far as anybody was concerned, our lives were perfect.

34:16.064 --> 34:18.067
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was definitely not that way.

34:18.788 --> 34:21.412
[SPEAKER_01]: So I went from keep it quiet.

34:21.872 --> 34:23.014
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a nice veneer here.

34:23.054 --> 34:24.636
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not getting past it too.

34:25.297 --> 34:26.138
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's everything.

34:26.258 --> 34:28.662
[SPEAKER_01]: I put it all on the table, literally everything.

34:29.483 --> 34:31.606
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's been the most freeing thing for me.

34:31.626 --> 34:34.771
[SPEAKER_01]: In my heart, just breaks every day.

34:34.851 --> 34:37.975
[SPEAKER_01]: My heart breaks for the victims.

34:39.237 --> 34:41.640
[SPEAKER_01]: My heart breaks for the families of the victims.

34:41.740 --> 34:43.523
[SPEAKER_01]: There were victims who died

34:44.077 --> 34:46.902
[SPEAKER_01]: who had young children who are younger than I am.

34:47.583 --> 34:49.366
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just my heart breaks for that.

34:49.446 --> 34:52.370
[SPEAKER_01]: My heart breaks because of what happened with my sister.

34:52.791 --> 34:59.242
[SPEAKER_01]: My heart breaks for my brother because he's doing well now but it's taken a long time to get him to this point.

34:59.662 --> 35:05.171
[SPEAKER_01]: And my heart actually it breaks for myself too because I can look back in this book and through my notes.

35:05.292 --> 35:08.076
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can kind of see the child that I was.

35:08.478 --> 35:14.444
[SPEAKER_01]: who got lost that child I put in the book that child was lost in that labyrinth.

35:14.604 --> 35:17.647
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm kind of refining myself now.

35:18.448 --> 35:23.793
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, it's been a terrifying thing, but it's also been the absolute best thing I could do.

35:24.754 --> 35:28.878
[SPEAKER_00]: Besides writing the book, and it's also like a personal memoir.

35:28.898 --> 35:34.924
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you hope that other victims of violence?

35:35.630 --> 35:41.902
[SPEAKER_00]: will receive the book and what impact it means has anybody reached out to you since the book has been released.

35:42.603 --> 35:45.348
[SPEAKER_00]: I just like curious about what your hopes are for the book.

35:46.030 --> 35:51.640
[SPEAKER_01]: My hopes for the book, so when I wrote the book, I did not want to make a litany of woes about myself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to put enough of the background information about my father and our life in there to paint the picture.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So everybody I know who was right the book has said, you know, it was very hard to read because of the darkness and the violence that was going on.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But the underlying message that I want to put out there is that as a child.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I survived this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I fought.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I had to dig my heels in the dirt and I had to fight to survive.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And when I say fight, I don't mean physically necessarily, but mentally I had to fight him.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was a psychological warfare and a physical warfare daily in our home.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And you know what?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I did it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I did it because I dug my feet in and I just had a faith in something bigger than myself that you know what?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get through this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I did and I'm standing here at the other end of this now and hopefully shining a light for other people to see that you know what you can you can absolutely 100% do this whatever the situation is you just stand firm and that's what I did I stood firm I would watch my father and say am I the only one who sees this and I the only one who thinks this is wrong.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and I never wavered from that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I have always kept that with me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, no, this was not right.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And now I understand it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I hit with that in the book that first I didn't want to write a book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of dove into this so that I could understand him and understand what I lived in.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I did it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I am 100% certain that people can do this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: People can get through whatever their situation is.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That is actually other than solving this crime other than my personal memoir about what I survived is that underlying message of, you know what, you can do it, you can do it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So where does the case stand today?

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[SPEAKER_00]: You said you have interaction on and off with the cold case unit in Chicago.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Are they aware that you release this book?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I know Narlings and Heights, they're the ones who had the lead for this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: All of the poisonings happened in the suburbs except for one.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There was one death from in the city.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And if you saw where our house was at on a map and you saw where they were all at, it's almost like a perfect semi-circle around where we lived.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So our Narlings and Heights took the lead on this and they are the ones that I've had the most communication with.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And also a gentleman who used to work with my father,

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[SPEAKER_01]: has friends that are on the Arlington Heights Police Department, he said they have been very interested in this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have dealt with certain people within that department, and it seems like now there is a new crop of people coming along who have an interest in this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I've told them, I'm like, here's my number, I sent them, you know, the copy of the book, I said, here you go, read this, call me anytime.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we will see where it goes.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's fascinating.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a powerful story and you're so brave to tell the story of your father, but also at the same time come to terms with what happened to you growing up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure it's very inspirational for others that have experienced that type of trauma growing up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Where can listeners get your book?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Where can they purchase your book?

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[SPEAKER_01]: My publisher is Wild Blue Press, and if you go to their site, it will just direct you to Amazon.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so on Amazon, if you look Joseph Chiballi, if you just put the Tylenol markers into Amazon, it'll come up.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the Tylenol markers, a father's confession to his son by Joseph Chiballi, and there is the Kindle version.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a paperback, a hard cover, and there's also an audio book.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I love audiobooks, the session you're doing on my trips.

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[SPEAKER_01]: When I got my first version of the audiobook, I said in my living room when I'm listening to somebody because I tell the story as if it's me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm telling the story and to hear somebody else reading my story back to me was mind-blowing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Just set there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I was like,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Who is this?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I can't believe it's like so weird to hear somebody else reading my story so that was an interesting moment and I told my brother that too I said so when you listen to this you got to be prepared at some person we don't even know reading our story It's weird, but I'm happy for that and I do love the audio post and I love podcasts too

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so do you have any plans to write any more books you mentioned that you are finishing up your law degree?

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[SPEAKER_00]: What's next for you?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as I was uncovering this whole scenario with the Tylenol martyrs, as I was digging and digging and digging.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and looking for a sculptoria evidence and looking for anything.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I went to complete opposite.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I found more things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There are more things my father was involved in.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Not on the scale of the Tylenol murders.

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[SPEAKER_01]: However, there are a few murders that occurred near our home that are unsolved in their cold cases and they are also cases that my father talked to me about and talked to my brother about and he had a very deep knowledge of these cases.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So my brother

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[SPEAKER_01]: as a team to investigate these other cases.

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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a few of them, and there are two of them that I know that he was either involved with or he committed himself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And again, it goes back to this blue wall of corruption.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was while he was on the police department.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a totally different story that was put out by the police department than from what I heard behind closed doors.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So those are in the process now.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Those will take me longer.

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[SPEAKER_01]: to write than this book did because those are, I have to go in and I actually investigate where is in this book.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I just took what happened to me as a child and laid it next to the murderers and everything.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, every line connected, every dot connected.

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[SPEAKER_01]: These will be a little more um, we'll call it old fashioned detective work to get to the bottom of these, but my brother and I are on it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds very, very interesting.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Joseph, thank you so much for being on the show.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate you sharing your story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The book is fascinating and also your great guests as far as explaining what happened.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, I appreciate that, Jason.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed this episode.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow us on YouTube at death by misadventure.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Podcast.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm JC Nova, thanks for listening.