BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A man found dead in an Idaho church decades ago may be connected to unsolved poisonings in 1982 that were dubbed the Tylenol murders and ushered in child safety caps for medicines, authorities announced Wednesday.
Detective Tim Cooper of the Ada County Sheriff’s Office reopened a cold case investigation in 2019 that led authorities to identify Dr. Mathew Francis Betkouski posthumously. He fatally poisoned himself with cyanide more than 40 years ago and was buried anonymously.
Once detectives identified Betkouski and began to learn about him, they came to believe he was a possible suspect in the killings of seven people in the Chicago area with cyanide-laced Tylenol, Cooper said.
No one was ever charged in those killings, which triggered a widespread recall of the over-the-counter painkillers.
An engraved key found with the body in the Boise church led investigators to a street in Jacksonville, Florida, where a property owner disappeared in 1982. They used photos and DNA testing to confirm his identity.
Investigators then learned that Betkouski worked in drugstores. Former colleagues and acquaintances said he had a history of volatility, was fascinated by the idea of a “perfect crime” and once said cyanide was a means to kill without detection, authorities said.
Detectives found cyanide in Betkouski’s desk, which Cooper said appeared to be homemade and was a different compound than what was used in the 1982 killings.
Betkouski lived in five states throughout his life but never in Illinois or close to Chicago, according to investigators. Photos showed that Betkouski visited the Chicago area a year before the killings, but it was not clear if he returned the following year.
The Chicago Police Department said in a statement that its detectives have been in contact with Idaho authorities to determine whether their findings are connected to the Tylenol murders investigation, which remains an open cold case. It did not say whether they consider Betkouski a suspect.
Investigators long believed a man named James Lewis was responsible for the killings, though he was never charged. Lewis died in 2023 after serving more than 12 years in prison for sending an extortion note to Johnson & Johnson, the drug's manufacturer at the time, demanding $1 million to “stop the killing.”
When Lewis was arrested in 1982, he gave investigators a detailed account of how the killer might have operated. He always denied involvement, however.
FILE - Bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol are tested with a chemically treated paper that turns blue in the presence of cyanide at the Illinois Department of Health in Oct. 1982, in Chicago. (AP Photo/John Swart, File)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man was executed Wednesday evening in Texas for a triple killing committed during a robbery attempt at a rural home, one week after the other man convicted in the case was put to death.
Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was the sixth person to be put to death so far this year in Texas, with three more executions scheduled in the state over the next two months.
In the execution chamber, a prison chaplain rested his left hand on Ramey’s right shoulder and offered a brief prayer before the warden asked the prisoner if he had any last words.
Ramey then praised God and thanked friends and family and “brothers on death row” who he said “grew up with me” and helped him become a man.
“I came in young and didn’t understand,” he said in his statement, moments before the injection got underway.
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, Ramey took a deep breath, sputtered and then began snoring. After 10 loud snoring sounds and two that were nearly inaudible, all movement ceased.
Afterward, a physician examined Ramey and pronounced him dead before the body was covered with a white sheet.
A jury had convicted Ramey of capital murder and sentenced him to death for the August 2005 shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, at the home they shared in Edna, a small rural city some 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Houston.
Ramey and LeJames Norman believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, according to court records. The men entered the home with guns, found none and fatally shot the three residents, who lived just across the street from Norman, the records show.
Norman was executed on Sept. 16 at the Huntsville prison, where all Texas executions are carried out.
Including Ramey's execution, a total of 28 inmates have been put to death in various U.S. states so far this year. Florida leads all those states by far with 15 executions to date in 2026 as the nation's busiest death chamber.
Hours before Wednesday's execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ramey's final appeal.
His attorneys had argued that jurors had never heard about how Ramey suffered physical abuse as a child and grew up in poverty. State prosecutors told the court the appeal was “meritless” and argued that the evidence showed Ramey had “an escalating pattern of criminal behavior.”
Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the U.S. from Mexico, where he had fled. He went on to testify during Ramey’s trial in January 2007 that both he and Ramey shot the victims. Ramey’s attorneys blamed the shootings on Norman.
Ramey’s former girlfriend testified that she was with Ramey when he threw two pistols into a lake after the killings, and that he told her in detail about his involvement.
Lopez was shot four times, including in the back of the head; Peacock was shot twice in the head; and Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.
Norman was sentenced to death in December 2008 after pleading guilty to capital murder.
This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Ker'Sean Ramey on Oct. 31, 2022. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)
FILE - The state of Texas execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas, is seen on May 27, 2008. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
