1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders

Murder fascinates a lot of people. I usually don't buy into the circus; I like to imagine myself as being above perverting others' tragedies into my entertainment. But there is no denying that people's fascination with death is central to our humanity. Nothing is more human than fear of death.

Before today, I had never heard of the Chicago Tylenol Murders. The idea definitely struck a nerve. There is something truly twisted about using something innocuous like Tylenol--a medicine--as an instrument of indiscriminate death. The killer took the lives of seven different people in Chicago with cyanide laced Tylenol capsules, and was never caught.

The most striking part of the whole ghastly affair was how the police notified people of the danger once the link to Tylenol had been discovered:

Urgent warnings were broadcast, and police drove through Chicago neighborhoods issuing warnings over loudspeakers.

The image of police slowly trolling through neighborhoods warning the public with loudspeakers is reminiscent of something from Don Delillo's White Noise. Although it's been over a year or so since I've read the novel from 1985, I would not be surprised if the Tylenol murders were a source of inspiration for the "airborne toxic event" in the novel.

I don't really know how to describe it, but the parallel between the murders and the novel has affected me in a weird way. Both the real life and fictional events manifest death in its crudest form: anonymous, arbitrary, and inevitable. Anyway, I suggest checking out White Noise. Delillo describes ordinary folks dealing with the specter of death in a way that challenges the reader to reevaluate views on both death and life.