imprisonment.
But there was still no smoking gun. Cindy had not seen her mother put the cyanide in capsules, administer them to her husband or place the contaminated bottles in stores. In court, her testimony could be dismissed as a feud between mother and daughter. Indeed, the maternal bond was strong and she might deny everything in court.
As the grand jury began hearing testimony in February 1987, the FBI team had shrunk to just three men— Cusack, Nichols and a rookie named Marshall Stone. Desperately they tried to put together the last link in the chain of evidence against Stella Nickell. But most of the leads they checked out went nowhere. Then Cusack remembered that Cindy had told him, in the months before her stepfather’s death, her mother had been researching in libraries. Stone headed for Stella Nickell’s local library in Auburn.
“Do you have a library-card holder by the name of Stella Nickell?” he asked the librarian. She searched the files and handed to Stone an overdue notice for a book Stella had borrowed and never returned. Its title:
Armed with the number Stella Nickell’s library card, Stone combed the aisles for other books on toxicology. He found a volume on poisonous plants called
On 9 December 1987, Stella Nickell was charged with the murder of her husband and Sue Snow. When her trial began four months later, she pleaded not guilty. It took 31 witnesses to piece together a portrait of a woman whose unhappy marriage and financial desperation led to her to see random acts of murder as a solution. The prosecutor called her an “icy human being without social or moral conscience”.
The jury found her guilty on 9 May. Saying her crimes exhibited “exceptional callousness and cruelty”, Judge William Dwyer sentenced her to 99 years, with no consideration of parole for 30 years.
As a result of the case, the FDA tightened its regulations, setting national requirements of anti-tampering protection for over-the-counter medicines. The maker of Excedrin, Tylenol and other non-prescription drugs stopped using two-piece capsules that could easily be pulled apart, refilled and pushed back together. They were replaced with one piece “caplets” in an attempt to prevent tampering by crazed killers. It failed.
On the evening of 2 February 1991, Jennifer Meling collapsed in the apartment she shared with her husband Joseph in Tumwater, Washington, after taking the decongestant Sudafed. Earlier the couple had been separated and Jennifer had filed for divorce, but now they were now reconciled. When she lapsed into unconsciousness, her 31-year-old husband called 911.
Rushed to hospital, emergency room staff had trouble identifying what was wrong with her. Joseph Meling then suggested that they look for signs of cyanide poisoning. Cyanide was found in her blood, but Jennifer recovered. Unfortunately that was not the end of the matter. In attempting to murder his wife to cash in on a $700,000 life assurance policy he had taken out on her, he had tried to cover his tracks with more product tampering.
On 11 February, 40-year-old Kathleen Daneker died of poisoning in Tacoma. The Pierce County coroner found cyanide in her body on 1 March. In her home, the police found Sudafed capsules which they took to Seattle where they confirmed they had been tampered with.
By then 44-year-old Stanley McWhorter of Lacey, Washington, had died shortly after taking a Sudafed capsule on 18 February. Once the Pierce County findings came to light, the Thurston County coroner checked McWhorter’s body and found cyanide.
The following day, nearly all of FDA’s Seattle district’s employees, along with investigators from the agency’s offices in Spokane, Yakima and Portland, Oregon, started removing Sudafed capsules from store shelves. Over the next three weeks, district investigators worked around the clock collecting the drug from all stores along the 47- mile stretch of Interstate 5 from Olympia, Washington, north to South Seattle. Some 248,000 capsules were collected and screened.
One contaminated Sudafed capsule was found at a Pay ’n’ Save Drug Store in Tacoma, about 30 miles from Tumwater. Two consumers returned packages each containing one cyanide-laced capsule that they had purchased at the Drug Emporium Store No. 6 and a K-mart Discount Store, both in Tacoma.
Although Jennifer Meling stood by her husband and testified for the defence at his trial, Joseph Meling was found guilty of two counts of murder, one attempted murder, six counts of product tampering and three counts of mail fraud. On 8 June, he was sentenced to two concurrent life terms plus 75 years in prison, with no possibility for parole.
The judge said that Meling’s “planning and preparation for the crime was extraordinary, detailed and elaborate, and it was only through good fortune that more persons didn’t die”.
In addition, Meling was ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution to Burroughs-Wellcome, the manufacturer of Sudafed, and $4,794.29 to Blue Cross for his wife’s medical bills. Any money Meling earns through media contracts and book royalties will be used to make the restitution.
Many of the product-tampering cases that have resulted in death have, for the most part, led to the successful conviction of the perpetrator. Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s best efforts to make their products tamper-proof, incidents of product tampering have continued all over the US, with a surprising concentration in the Chicago area. Some 53 threats of product tampering have been received by the FBI with a postmark from south Chicago or Gary, Indiana which is part of the Greater Chicago area. Other cases of tampering—in some cases using cyanide—have occurred in North Chicago, Lombard, Chicago proper and outlying areas.
Although some culprits have been brought to book, the man who started it all—the Tylenol Terrorist—is still at large. He had no simplistic motive like that of Stella Nickell or Joseph Meling. There has been another unsolved product-tampering cyanide poisoning in Detroit and one in Tennessee. The Tylenol Terrorist is still at large and could be at work, attempting to bypass the latest tamper-proof devices. If, as seems likely, he was in his 20s in 1982, he will only be in his 40s or 50s today.
The Cincinnati Carbon-Copy Killings
A serial killer seems to be stalking the Cincinnati area. Since 1996 numerous women have simply vanished and about a dozen female bodies have been found in the counties of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana that surround the city. The victims all have a similar in age and appearance.
The disappearances began on 28 August 1996. That evening 22-year-old Carrie Culberson and two friends from Blanchester, Ohio went over to the town of Morrow, some nine miles away, to play in a volleyball march. After the game, Carrie rode around town with her friends looking for something to do, but it was a quiet Wednesday night in a small town in the Midwest and a neighbour saw Carrie being dropped off at around 11.30 p.m. at the home she shared with her mother, Debbie Culberson, and her teenage sister, Christina. A few moments later that same neighbour said they saw Culberson’s 1989 red Honda CRX reverse out of the driveway and head down the block.
Debbie Culberson noticed her daughter’s car was not in the driveway at around six o’clock the following morning and began driving around Blanchester looking for her daughter. First she checked out the house of Carrie’s long-term boyfriend, 24-year-old Vincent Doan, but he was not home. Nor was Carrie’s Honda in the driveway where it would normally have been if Carrie had spent the night away from home.
Debbie found Doan later that morning at the home of his father, Lawrence Baker. She said that Vincent first told her he had not seen Carrie for three days, but later he changed his story. He then said that Carrie had driven by his house at around 12.30 a.m., honking her horn. She had plainly been drunk, so he just closed his door and ignored her. However, Carrie’s companions at the volleyball match said she only had one beer.
Debbie Culberson maintains that Doan changed his story a second time, when she went to see him again. This time, she said he told her that he had come out of his house wrapped in a towel to talk to her—and when he told her that he did not love her any more, she sped off.
Far from not loving her any more, Carrie’s friends said that he was obsessed by her. He would call the beauty parlour where she worked as a nail technician at least five times a shift, co-workers said. Relatives, friends
