James Lewis, longtime suspect in 1982 Tylenol poisonings of seven people, dies in Cambridge, officials say – The Boston Globe

James W. Lewis, who was long suspected of lacing Tylenol bottles in the Chicago area with poison in 1982, a crime that killed seven people and forever changed how thousands of products are packaged and sold, has died in the Cambridge condominium where he had lived since the mid-1990s, police said.

Lewis, 76, was found unresponsive at his home on Gore Street at 4 p.m. Sunday, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His death is not considered suspicious, Cambridge police said. The state Medical Examiner’s Office will investigate Lewis’s cause of death, a spokesman said.

Lewis’s wife, who was out of town, had asked a friend to check on him, police said.

In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after ingesting Tylenol laced with cyanide, and Lewis was the longtime suspect in their deaths. He was never charged with the poisonings but was convicted of trying to extort the Johnson & Johnson drug company out of $1 million and sentenced to 12 years behind bars.

In interviews with law enforcement and reporters over the decades, Lewis adamantly denied he was responsible for the killings but provided details on how someone could have added poison to Tylenol capsules without customers discovering the tampering, the Globe has reported.

The Chicago Tribune, which reported Lewis’s death on Sunday, said federal investigators interviewed Lewis last fall in Cambridge. According to the Tribune, Lewis spoke with three detectives from Illinois for several hours, a conversation they recorded. The conversation did not lead to any charges being brought against Lewis.

The seven victims — four women, two men, and a 12-year-old girl — died in 1982 after taking capsules that had been purchased from drug and grocery stores in the Chicago area. Someone had opened the capsules and replaced some of the acetaminophen with cyanide and returned them to the shelves.

Lewis was an out-of-work accountant at the time of the killings and was widely described as a prime suspect. He insisted he had nothing to do with the tampering and resulting deaths and said he was living in New York City at the time.

Lewis and his wife lived for years in the Cambridge condominium, which investigators searched in 2009.

Lewis created a website where he maintained his innocence and discussed his notoriety.

“Search the Internet for these three words James Lewis Tylenol. You will receive thousands of hits. Please read some of the other ugly comments, so you can see first hand how I was vilified, and called a mass murder[er], and worse, for over 40 years, without a shred of evidence,” he wrote. “Because I was living in New York, and NOT in Chicago, it was absolutely impossible for me to have committed those homicides. That means the FBI and Illinois authorities should, as a matter of law, drop all interest in me and leave me alone.”

In 2004, Lewis was indicted in Middlesex County on charges of aggravated rape, drugging a person with “intent to stupefy or overpower” for sexual intercourse, and four other charges. He was held without bail until 2007, when the victim declined to go forward with the prosecution, court records show.

“The Commonwealth cannot prove the charges in the complaint without the testimony of the complaining witness,” prosecutors wrote in court records.

Lewis served about 12 years in federal prison after being convicted of trying to extort Johnson & Johnson out of $1 million in connection with the Tylenol poisonings. He was released in 1995.

His death left Chicago-area law enforcement frustrated that they were never able to charge Lewis in connection with the poisonings.

”I was always hoping justice would be served, and this short-circuits it,” former FBI special agent Roy Lane, who worked the case for decades, told the Tribune.

Last year, the Chicago Tribune posted an multi-part investigation into the Tylenol murders that traced Lewis’s personal history, which included being charged in 1978 with killing an elderly client while working as a tax accountant. The charge was dropped due to a police procedural error.

The Tribune also detailed law enforcement’s 40-year effort to solve the Tylenol murders. According to the history of the FBI’s Chicago office, the Tylenol poisonings led to the enactment of federal anti-product tampering law in 1983.

Jeremiah Manion of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.

John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe.