{"id":424647,"date":"2026-10-11T04:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/424647\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T04:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:26:19","slug":"first-key-unlocks-local-mans-tie-to-1982-tylenol-poisonings-now-more-tamperings-in-jacksonville-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/424647\/","title":{"rendered":"First, key unlocks local man\u2019s tie to 1982 Tylenol poisonings; Now, more tamperings in Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Ada County Sheriff\u2019s Office cold case detective responsible for linking a Jacksonville man to the 1982 Tylenol poisonings<\/a> says tampering was also taking place here in Florida.<\/p>\n

ACSO Detective Tim Cooper<\/a> linked Dr. Matthew Francis Betkouski, a chemist, to the infamous cold case after one of 30 keys found on the man previously known as the \u201cUnknown Wanderer,\u201d opened a door off Mills Court in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

The \u201cUnknown Wanderer,\u201d now identified as Betkouski, was found dead inside of a Boise Catholic church in December of 1982, just a couple of months after seven people died from ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules.<\/p>\n

The Chicago Tylenol poisonings have remained a cold case for more than four decades.<\/p>\n

Although Betkouski has not been officially named a suspect, Cooper discovered newspaper clippings from the late 1970s that show Jacksonville was experiencing tampering of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody had gone around tampering with eye drop products and nasal spray products,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cEssentially, what they were doing was putting in acid-based chemicals as well as chlorine, which, my understanding from speaking with chemists, can really add to the agitation, the effect of the acid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The news clippings, dated May 15, 1979 \u2014 three years before the Tylenol poisonings \u2014 show that six people were hurt after using Murine eyedrops, a company based out of Chicago.<\/p>\n

According to the articles, the eye drops contained hydrochloric acid.<\/p>\n

The clippings say that bottles were purchased from four different stores along US 1 from Jacksonville all the way up to Waycross, Georgia, during March and April of 1979.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a manufacturing error,\u201d said U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokesman Ed Nada to the Fort Pierce Tribune in 1979. \u201cSomeone came in and got hold of the Murine and substituted acid for it. It was done sporadically \u2014 we don\u2019t know how.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper said the tampering took place while Betkouski was living in Jacksonville, shortly before he was institutionalized.<\/p>\n

He says he discovered the incident while investigating Betkouski.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started learning that Dr. Betkouski had made comments related to capsule tampering, and that he may have had a history with other types of pranks or nefarious chemistry-related incidents,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI was just curious if there had been any others around the country around that time, and the only ones that I found actually were in Jacksonville, Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says they also discovered photographic material that indicated Betkouski had lived in Waycross around the same time.<\/p>\n

Cooper also says they discovered tampering out of Betkouski\u2019s hometown of Los Angeles, California, through newspaper clippings dated August of 1982 \u2014 just two months before the Chicago Tylenol poisonings and four months before Betkouski\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he was alive, he would return to his home in Hollywood,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cIn fact, he spent holidays and time off that he had going back there to see his father and his brother until his father passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite what Cooper described as an interesting timeline, Betkouski has not been named a suspect in any of these cases, including the Chicago cold case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the absence of being able to compare modern technology with 1982 evidence collection, it\u2019s a difficult case, and there\u2019s a lot of report material to comb through,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cSome handwritten, a lot of it\u2019s archived at different agencies, and so forth. So, my hat\u2019s off to the investigators for trying to look into this, and I know they have been for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper said his hope in sharing these discoveries is that they\u2019ll learn more information about the Chicago Tylenol poisonings, and whether Betkouski is guilty or not, that people will learn of his story and realize there\u2019s a better way forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing I can prove is that Dr. Betkouski suffered from mental illness bad enough, tragic enough, that he took his own life,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cIf there\u2019s people out there who are having those kinds of thoughts they don\u2019t want, or they\u2019re struggling with mental illness, we have so many resources, not just here in Ada County with the sheriff\u2019s office, but all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can learn more about the different mental health resources around Jacksonville here<\/a>. You can also call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.<\/p>\n

Anyone with information related to this case is asked to contact the Ada County Sheriff\u2019s Office at ACSOtips@adacounty.id.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Ada County Sheriff\u2019s Office cold case detective responsible for linking a Jacksonville man to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[21176,41284,982,166889,162483,55102,88568,2063,1749,18687,28,166891,63295,123368,116,118,117,634,87281,162480,166890,135,166888,162479,40950,45843],"class_list":["post-424647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-_california","tag-_georgia","tag-action_news","tag-ada_county_sheriffs_office","tag-bukowski","tag-casey","tag-casey_stone","tag-chicago","tag-cooper","tag-dr","tag-florida","tag-fort_pierce","tag-idaho","tag-jack_casey_stone","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-local","tag-los_angeles","tag-matthew_francis_bukowski","tag-matthew_francis_pakowski","tag-tampa","tag-tim_cooper","tag-unknown_wanderer","tag-us_1","tag-waycross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}