Caso no resuelto: Los asesinatos del Tylenol

This isn't just a documentary. It's a postmortem on trust.

Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders revisits the 1982 cyanide poisonings that shook Chicago and reshaped consumer safety. But it doesn't just track capsules and suspects-it interrogates silence, bias, and the cost of narrative control.

The series opens with ordinary mornings turned fatal. Sirens, seizures, and grief ripple through neighborhoods. And while the facts are chilling, what lingers is the emotional residue: families who lost loved ones to a product they trusted, investigators chasing ghosts, and a public forced to fear its medicine cabinet.

What It Does Well

• Human-centered storytelling: Survivors and first responders speak not in soundbites, but in heartbreak. Their testimony reframes headlines as private devastation.

• Bias as character: The FBI's tunnel vision becomes its own antagonist. The series doesn't just ask who did it-it asks who got ignored.

• The shift to tamper-proof seals becomes a symbol of lost innocence. Safety, once assumed, now must be engineered.

What It Misses

• Alternate suspects: The omission of Stella Nickell-a convicted cyanide poisoner-feels like a missed opportunity for deeper context.

• Emotional pacing: The score sometimes clashes with the gravity of the story, leaning upbeat when it should lean reverent.

This series isn't just about murder. It's about the fragility of systems we trust. It's about how grief gets archived, how bias becomes policy, and how silence can be louder than evidence.

If you're healing from betrayal-personal, institutional, or systemic-this documentary might feel like a mirror. Not because it offers closure, but because it names the ache.

The docudrama skipped over all the other products that were tainted with cyanide, not connected with J&J. There were other states involved. Little mention was made of copycat possibilities, though this was known to have occurred. There was no mention of the investigations in these other suspects, including those involving Ted Kaczynski. Lab chemicals 500 feet from manufacturing seem like a large separation, not a small one. I would like to have seen a Netflix investigation into the retail and wholesale parts of the product chain. I don't recall if the murder in Kansas City was ever solved or if that was dropped. Certainly, the issue was left dangling, leaving the viewer to jump to conclusions.

This Netflix documentary began very well and, in the first episode, presented a fair and balanced and reasoned telling of the facts of this case.

Then, they introduced two 'reporters' with axes to grind and a relative who decided to play the true-crime game, and it all spiraled into conspiracy theories and let's bring down a big corporation.

Clearly, if Johnson & Johnson had been responsible for the contamination in the McNeil plants, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, would have died nationwide.

In addition, J&J's response is still taught in business schools and crisis management as a model for how to deal with catastrophic situations like the deadly tampering in this case.

Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is, without exaggeration, one of the most captivating and well-produced true crime documentaries I've seen in a long time. From the very first scene, it grabs you with a sense of dread and intrigue, and it doesn't let go. The story, already infamous in true crime circles, is presented with such nuance, care, and compelling structure that even if you think you know the case, you'll be surprised at how much you didn't know - and how much the mystery still lingers.

What sets this docuseries apart is its atmosphere. The direction leans into cinematic storytelling, with eerie visuals, chilling audio design, and a level of production quality that rivals high-end scripted thrillers. The tone is somber without being sensationalistic, which I really appreciated. This is a story about real people, real loss, and real consequences - and the filmmakers never forget that.

The pacing is excellent, slowly peeling back layers of the case while maintaining steady momentum. You're not just bombarded with dates and names; instead, you're drawn into the timeline and psychology of the case through thoughtful interviews and carefully curated archival footage. The series strikes a rare balance between investigative detail and emotional depth.

The interviews are among the strongest aspects of the series. Survivors, journalists, law enforcement, and even people loosely connected to the case all offer a wide range of perspectives. There's a deep respect in how these people are portrayed, and the documentary doesn't push a single narrative. Instead, it presents the information and lets the viewer draw conclusions, which to me is the mark of truly intelligent storytelling.

Also worth noting is how the series explores the broader implications of the case - not just the horror of the poisonings, but how it changed consumer safety, packaging regulations, and even the psychology of public trust. It situates the murders in a wider cultural context that makes the story feel even more relevant today, decades later.

Another strength is how the filmmakers deal with the unresolved nature of the case. There's no neat conclusion, no tidy ending - and yet, it never feels unsatisfying. On the contrary, it leans into that ambiguity in a way that's haunting and powerful. You leave the series feeling unsettled, not just because of what happened, but because of how little closure there really is - for the families, for the investigators, and for society at large.

This isn't just a recounting of a crime; it's an exploration of the ripple effects of fear, trauma, and unsolved justice. It respects your intelligence as a viewer, doesn't spoon-feed you theories, and trusts you to engage deeply with the material. For me, that's what elevates a documentary from good to unforgettable.

Michelle Rosen, daughter of one of the victims, suspects Johnson & Johnson of accidentally lacing Tylenol with cyanide. J&J lying about possessing cyanide, keeping it within close proximity of production of Tylenol suggests that this is possible. J&J itself seems to aware of this by testing a portion of and subsequently destroying the product.

But if this were an issue why didn't pop up before then? The argument that accidental cyanide poisoning was somehow missed isn't real convincing. People would have noticed other people dropping dead after taking Tylenol. More than just old people take Tylenol.

There is no evidence that Tylenol was tainted in that factories where it was produced.

Meanwhile we have James Lewis, a man accused of murder and rape and who served time for extortion. For reasons not explained the murder case against him is dropped. All we know is that he fled Chicago just after Raymond West's death.

There is no evidence that Lewis laced Tylenol bottles with cyanide. There is no evidence that he even possessed cyanide.

The testing of medication and subsequent destruction of 22 million pills, while responsible behavior, does also hint at concerns about possible contamination. The last death occurring 4 years later further strengthens this suspicion.

On one hand we have a corporation, institutions well known for covering up blunders. But on the other we have what appears to be a psychopathic criminal. Both parties seem adept at covering their tracks based on their respective histories.