Could Boise's "Unknown Wanderer" be linked to Chicago Tylenol murders?

Police in Boise, Idaho, announced Wednesday they had identified the "Unknown Wanderer," a man found dead in a church in 1982, and revealed a surprising possible connection to the still-unsolved Chicago Tylenol murders.

Investigators with the Ada County Sheriff's Office said they cannot place the man in the Chicago area during the final week of September 1982, when the poisonings happened, and they are not naming him as a suspect.

But they laid out a trail of evidence that includes a hand-drawn map of Chicago, photos of him in the Chicago area and a bottle of homemade cyanide. They have shared that evidence with Chicago police.

The mysterious death of a mysterious man

On Dec. 4, 1982, a man was found dead in Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise. He had no name and no identification. His wallet was empty, but sweat marks showed where cards had once been placed. He had an ink marker, a lighter, a Seiko wristwatch, a leather belt with a distinctive buckle, wore a bolo tie made with turquoise and silver, had two keyrings with nearly 30 keys between them and an envelope with $1,900 in $100 bills.

He also had a typed note signed William L. Toomey, which police determined had been a fake name.

His fingernails were finely filed, his hair dyed and styled, and his pants had either never been worn or were freshly pressed. He had a deep, even tan, the kind police said comes from living somewhere warm, and did not appear to have been living in the streets.

Investigators worked the case for years. His fingerprints did not match anything on file in Idaho or with the FBI. They traced his bolo tie to a silversmith in the Southwest, but that didn't produce a name. A 1990 episode of "Unsolved Mysteries" featuring the case generated thousands of tips but no real leads.

Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford said detective Frank Richardson worked the case for decades until he retired. In 2019, Tim Cooper, a detective with 24 years on the job, reopened the case. He would be the one to find the break.

Key evidence: How they identified the wanderer

Cooper explained in a news conference Wednesday that while examining the nearly 30 keys that the wanderer had on him when his body was found, he discovered one that had a marking indicating it came from a hardware store in Jacksonville, Florida.

Cooper also spotted an etching on that key that had been previously misidentified and appeared to have been made with a sharp instrument.

Investigating the marking and etching led Cooper to a street in Jacksonville called Mills Court. He got the property deeds from the late 1970s and 1980s, and noticed that one property was owned by a man who had been reported dead in 1989. Cooper found his sole surviving family member,  a brother living in Los Angeles, who confirmed his brother had lived in Jacksonville until he went missing in 1982, and had been declared dead in absentia years later.

Investigators compared the brother's DNA with DNA from the wallet and found a conclusive match showing the two men shared a father.

The Unknown Wanderer, Cooper said, was Dr. Matthew Francis Betkouski.

A privileged man with a preoccupation with poison

Betkouski came from a prominent Los Angeles family, investigators said. His grandfather had been president of the Los Angeles City Council and at times served as interim mayor. His father was a senior official with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Betkouski had a documented fascination with chemistry and explosives from a young age and struggled with mental illness throughout his life, Cooper said. A traumatic brain injury in 1974 worsened his mental illness and caused "some of his problems to manifest in more concerning ways than they had before," Cooper said.

Betkouski moved to Jacksonville in 1975 to work for a flavors and fragrances company. Coworkers there reported him to management for talking about how to commit the perfect crime with poisons, and for talking about suicide, Cooper said.

His paranoia grew more pronounced during that time, and coworkers sometimes saw him talking to himself, investigators said. In 1978, he returned to Los Angeles for two months of inpatient and outpatient mental health care. When he came back to Florida, he was fired from his Jacksonville jobs.

After his mother died in 1979, he spent more than a month in psychiatric treatment at a Florida state hospital, and likely at other places in the state, investigators said.

His personal writings from those years show he was preoccupied with managing schizophrenia and depression, and with the possibility of achieving euphoria through "imaginary thoughts of violence."

In late 1979, Lockheed hired Betkouski to work at its test facility in White Sands, New Mexico. Fellow scientists there recalled him talking about how poison could be introduced into capsules of over-the-counter medication.

Lockheed fired him in March 1982 after an altercation at a local pharmacy, investigators said. He allegedly tried to get pills or capsules "for an experiment." When police were called, they found he had been conducting experiments in his home garden.

A link to the Chicago Tylenol murders?

Police said Betkouski was fired from his Lockheed job in March 1982 after getting into an altercation at a local pharmacy in which he allegedly attempted to get pills or capsules "for an experiment." When police were called, they discovered he had been conducting experiments in his home garden.

In 2021, after Betkouski's brother died, his remaining relatives allowed Idaho police to go to Los Angeles where they found personal items belonging to Betkouski his brother had kept in his childhood bedroom.

Among those effects were photos, letters and a hand-drawn map of Chicago that police believe was made in the 1970s. There was also a small bottle of cyanide with a handwritten label.

The bottle contained sodium cyanide, Cooper said, not the potassium cyanide used in the Chicago Tylenol poisonings. Testing found the bottle contained peach and apricot pits, leading police to believe the cyanide was homemade by Betkouski himself.

Police also said that writings from the late 1970s and early 1980s revealed Betkouski had an interest in visiting Chicago. Some of the photos found were of him in the Chicago area, which they initially thought were taken in late 1982 but were instead likely taken in December of 1981. Police are unsure if he returned to Chicago for subsequent trips after the photos were taken, and cannot place him there in the final week of September 1982, when the poisonings were carried out.  

Boise police said they are not naming Betkouski as a suspect in the Chicago Tylenol murders because they cannot say for sure that he was there, but are still looking for further links between him and the Chicago area at that time.

Boise police said they have shared everything they learned that could be related to the Chicago Tylenol murders with the Chicago Police Department, which has reviewed their findings.

Chicago police released a statement, writing, "Chicago Police Department detectives have been in contact with the Ada County Sheriff's Office regarding its investigation to determine whether there is a connection to the Tylenol murders investigation, which remains an open cold case. Anyone with information that may assist in this investigation is asked to submit an anonymous tip through CPDTip.com or Cook County Crime Stoppers at 800-535-7867."

The Arlington Heights Police Department said it received and reviewed the information from the Ada County Sheriff's Office and would keep working with other agencies to identify "the individual or individuals responsible for the 1982 Tylenol murders." The department said it had nothing more to release because the investigation remains active.

Chicago Tylenol murders' prime suspect died in 2023

On Sept. 29, 1982, a 12-year-old girl in Elk Grove Village took two Tylenol capsules before going to school because she had a cold. She collapsed and died.

Six more people died in the days that followed, including two other family members of the first victim. The poison would be traced to Tylenol capsules in bottles in their homes. Johnson & Johnson soon issued a nationwide recall, and consumers were told to throw out any Tylenol they had.

For years, the prime suspect was James Lewis. Soon after the murders, Johnson & Johnson received an extortion letter demanding $1 million to stop the killings.

The letter was traced to Lewis, who later spent more than a decade in prison for attempted extortion. He was never charged with the murders.

Lewis was found dead at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in July 2023. He was the only person considered a prime suspect since the day of the poisonings. CBS Chicago's past reporting uncovered that some officials believed they had enough circumstantial evidence to charge him.