THE TYLENOL MAFIA: Marketing, Murder, and Johnson & Johnson (Revised 2nd Edition) by Bartz Scott

Author:Bartz, Scott [Bartz, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: New Light Publishing
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

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Big Jim’s Boys

“Big” Jim Thompson, when he was the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Illinois from 1971 to 1975, hired Dan Webb, Tyrone Fahner, and Anton Valukas as his assistant U.S. attorneys. Thompson, Webb, Fahner, and Valukas became loyal lifelong friends. These men all had roles in the investigation of the 1982 Tylenol murders. Journalist Cheryl Lavin wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 1990 that these former federal prosecutors dance at each other`s weddings, commiserate over their divorces, and refer cases to one another.

Commenting on his decision to hire Dan Webb as an assistant U.S. attorney, Thompson said, “I saw a very bright, ambitious, appealing kid who I thought could make a great trial lawyer. It turns out I was right. He`s one of the toughest, smartest ones I know. That`s how I raised him.”

Dan Webb was appointed to serve as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Illinois in 1981. He led the prosecution team that convicted James Lewis for extortion. James Margolis, an assistant U.S. attorney at the time, was also a member of that team. In 1984, Big Jim appointed Margolis to the newly created position of state inspector general. In that position, Margolis continued to investigate only one Tylenol suspect – James Lewis.

Even Michael Monico, the lawyer who represented Lewis in his extortion trial, was one of Big Jim’s boys. Monico had worked as an assistant U.S. attorney under Thompson in the early 1970s. The National Law Journal, in an article about the Tylenol extortion case, noted the intensity between “the strikingly handsome” Michael Monico and the “boyish” Dan Webb. Before the ruling came down against Lewis - Monico told Webb, “after this is all over, I’ll still be ‘strikingly handsome’ and you’ll still just be ‘boyish.’”

Jim Thomson, as the U.S attorney in Illinois in the early 1970s and as the State’s governor from 1977 to 1991, surrounded himself with like-minded Republican loyalist. On November 12, 1980, Governor Thompson, by Executive Order, instituted a hiring freeze for all state agencies, boards, bureaus, and commissions under his control as governor. The order affected approximately 60,000 state positions. These positions could only be filled if the candidates were first approved by the Governor’s Office of Personnel, an office created by Thompson. The practice essentially consisted of denying the hiring of persons not affiliated with the Republican Party. Thompson’s Republican patronage mill rivaled even the Democratic patronage mill in Cook County, known as “The Chicago Democratic Machine.”

Near the end of Thompson’s fourteen-year reign as Governor, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Thompson’s policy of doling out state jobs to the party faithful violated the U.S. Constitution. The court ruling affirmed what critics had said all along: The hiring freezes Thompson imposed, more or less continuously, throughout his tenure were merely patronage tools used to ensure that Republicans got available state jobs.

In 1982, Big Jim’s boys handled the Tylenol murders investigation in a manner that reflected the homogeneous thinking of the administration in charge at the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield, Illinois.

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