400: What if you suspected your father was the infamous Tylenol Murderer?
This Is Actually Happening
Audible
4.6 • 10.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A man grows up in a home defined by violence, secrecy, and fear, and decades later a deathbed confession confirms his belief that his father was responsible for the Chicago Tylenol murders, forcing him to reckon with a lifetime shaped by trauma and silence.
Today’s episode featured Joseph Cibelli. Joe is a former salon entrepreneur turned author, legal scholar, and forensic psychologist. He wrote The Tylenol Murders: A Father’s Confession to His Son, which investigates the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders.
If you’d like to contact Joe, you can email him at jcibelli71@gmail.com. Joe is on Facebook @JosephCibelli and on Instagram @jcibelli71
You can visit Joe’s website at josephcibelli.com.
Producers: Whit Missildine, Andrew Waits, Jason Blalock
Content/Trigger Warnings: child abuse, domestic violence, psychological and physical abuse, sexual abuse, child endangerment, murder, poisoning, death, terminal illness, and threats of violence, explicit language
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of This Is Actually Happening, |
| 0:04.4 | ad free right now. |
| 0:06.4 | Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. |
| 0:09.4 | This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. |
| 0:13.7 | Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode, |
| 0:17.0 | and for more information about support services. |
| 0:20.1 | Hi listeners. Today we reach an incredible milestone on the show, celebrating our 400th |
| 0:26.4 | episode. When I first started this work, I thought I'd be lucky if I made it to 50 or maybe 100 |
| 0:31.6 | episodes, and here we are 14 years after the show was launched, with still many, many more |
| 0:37.4 | stories to come. With each |
| 0:39.0 | episode, each season, and each year, my gratitude for being able to do this work and for all |
| 0:44.1 | of you only continues to grow. We have a very special episode today to mark this occasion, |
| 0:49.5 | but it requires a little context as it involves the infamous Tylenol murders of 1982. |
| 0:56.1 | In September and October of that year, seven people died after ingesting over-the-counter |
| 1:00.9 | pills of Tylenol that had been laced with potassium cyanide. |
| 1:04.8 | This led to a nationwide panic, and immediately after, the introduction of sweeping regulations |
| 1:10.2 | mandating tamper-proof safety seals |
| 1:12.2 | on all pharmaceutical packaging, which are still required today. |
| 1:16.2 | Despite extensive investigation, the case of who poisoned the pills remains unsolved, |
| 1:21.6 | and it's considered to be one of the most consequential unsolved crimes in American history. |
| 1:26.9 | But today's storyteller, Joseph Chabelli, |
| 1:29.6 | believes his father was the killer. He's written a book about it called The Tylenol Murders, |
... |
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