Netflix has added Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, a new three-part docu-series about the unsolved deaths of at least seven people in Chicago in 1982, which fascinatingly features an interview with a key suspect.
The victims, including a 12-year-old girl, died after they took Tylenol, a brand of paracetamol, laced with cyanide. The series, added today [Monday, May 26], reopens the case and investigates the various theories behind what actually happened.
The makers interview families of the victims who talk about the horror of what happened and various people involved in the case..
"Innocent people were poisoned for no reason, there was terror, there was fear," comments one contributor in the trailer.
The suspect: James Lewis
James Lewis was a suspect in the poisonings, and he gave the makers of Netflix's new documentary an interview, aiming to clear his name shortly before his death aged 76 in 2023.
He always denied having played any part in the Chicago deaths. He did, though, serve 12 years in jail for sending an extortion note to the manufacturers demanding $1 million to stop the killing.
The makers told Fox News Digital that this is James Lewis's last known interview about the case. Director Yotam Guendelman told Fox News Digital: "For those two days, the vibe in the room was good. We asked him the hard questions, and we talked about it. But there was a moment when we started asking harder questions, one after the other. We caught him in a few lies, and [he] then snapped for a couple of minutes.
"It became really scary. And for the first time, you can see someone who, even though I do think he tried not to do the worst in his life, when you put him in a corner, when he feels he’s up against the wall, he becomes scary for a second. And then he changed back to his sweet, weird self a few minutes later."
In the trailer, James Lewis is seen with a bottle of Tylenol and says to the interviewer: "You think I'm going to open this and get my fingerprints all over it?"
The docuseries also explores other theories about what might have happened and the possibility that there were more victims who are unaccounted for. Someone comments in the trailer: "The investigation was problematic from the start."
It remains unclear if the case will ever be solved.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is on Netflix now.
