The ‘Unknown Wanderer’ died nameless in a church. Decades later, his past is raising questions about the Tylenol poisonings

Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

As a small Catholic community in Boise, Idaho, was preparing for the Christmas season in December 1982, a man sitting in the back of the church collapsed.

First came the stunned churchgoers surrounding the lifeless body lying under a pew. Then came the rustle of investigators scouring the man’s belongings for any clue they might present.

Could the silver and turquoise bolo tie around his neck mean he had come from the Southwest? Did the empty wallet, still bearing faint indentations where cards once sat, mean he wished to hide his identity? Was his dyed hair a disguise?

And why was he carrying 29 keys attached to two metal rings?

The man didn’t look like he had been living on the streets, investigators thought as they pointed to his neatly filed fingernails and pressed pants. His deep, even tan also suggested he had been spending time somewhere other than frosty Idaho.

As questions piled up, investigators reached a single, clear conclusion. The man had come here to die.

ASCO/Unsolved Mysteries

He had $1,900 in cash and a typed note with instructions for his final arrangements, signed with a fake name, William L. Toomey. A coroner later determined the stranger had been poisoned by sodium cyanide, a highly toxic and fast-acting chemical compound.

At the time, the word “cyanide” was top of mind for many people in the United States. A few months earlier, seven people died in the Chicago area after ingesting Tylenol Extra Strength pills laced with potassium cyanide. Their deaths prompted one of the largest recalls in the nation’s history, and soon officials mandated tamper-proof caps on medication bottles and criminalized tampering with consumer products.

While many across America turned their attention to the widespread investigative effort to solve the Tylenol murders, the Ada County Sheriff’s Office worked to uncover Boise’s own mystery: Who was the “ Unknown Wanderer” ?

Both cases remained unsolved for decades. But now, a trail of breadcrumbs strewn across multiple states has led investigators to consider whether the two mysteries have always been intertwined.

The mystery of the “Unknown Wanderer” captured imaginations for years. In Boise, hundreds attended the nameless man’s funeral a few days after Christmas. The case reached a national audience when it was featured in a 1990 episode of the hit documentary series “Unsolved Mysteries.”

The case went cold for decades after the Ada County Sheriff’s Office worked to identify the man to no avail. That changed when Detective Tim Cooper, who watched that episode as a child, had a chance encounter in 2018 in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church parking lot.

He was drinking a cup of cheap gas station coffee when a parishioner approached him and started discussing the case, sparking his curiosity. Cooper got to work.

“He’s a smart guy. I mean, he tricked us for 43 years now. I knew he didn’t want us to know who he was. I knew he didn’t want us to know how he died. He didn’t want us to know a lot of things, and that, in itself, was a mystery that we needed to solve wherever it took us,” Cooper said in a new “Unsolved Mysteries” episode featuring his investigative efforts.

The detective approached the challenge as he had other cases. “He stumbles upon something and then starts drawing little red threads in his brain that connect the dots,” Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford said.

When reviewing nearly 17,000 missing persons reports left him with no leads, Cooper turned to the 29 keys that had been sitting in an evidence room for decades, collecting dust.

With the help of a magnifying lens and the trained eyes of Boise’s key experts, Cooper took a closer look at the small, jagged pieces of metal and found a hallmark in one of them, indicating it had been purchased at a hardware store in Jacksonville, Florida. Then, two words etched into its surface gave him a street name: Mills Court.

As he looked into who had lived in the cul de sac, which had fewer than a dozen homes in the 1980s, Cooper learned one of the residents had gone missing and was declared dead in absentia. A DNA test volunteered by the resident’s brother in Los Angeles gave Cooper a definitive answer.

The “Unknown Wanderer” had a name: Matthew Francis Betkowski.

From privileged beginnings to a promising career marred by mental health struggles, a picture of Betkowski’s life began to unfold.

“By all accounts, he was a brilliant man, but he struggled to connect with people in life,” Cooper said about Betkowski when law enforcement announced the identity of the “Unknown Wanderer” last month.

Betkowski, who was 39 when he died, was born to a prominent Southern California family, helmed by a father who worked as a senior Los Angeles Department of Water and Power official and a grandfather who served as president of the Los Angeles City Council, at times serving as mayor.

As a child, Betkowski displayed a morbid curiosity with chemicals and explosives, Cooper learned. He once built a makeshift bomb with his brother, putting the life of another child at risk with the shrapnel from the explosion. His high school friends spoke about how he liked to “blow up” cats, and some called him “the bomber,” Cooper recalled.

As an undergrad at Loyola University, the young man’s penchant for explosive materials earned him a reputation. When there was a large explosion in the dorms, eyes turned toward Betkowski.

The depression and mental health issues he struggled with for most of his life seemed to deepen after falling off a fence at a pool in Austin, Texas, in 1974, which left him with a traumatic brain injury.

When his professional career took him to Jacksonville in 1975, his coworkers at a flavors and fragrances company described him as having “bizarre” behavior. They overheard him talking about “the perfect crime” and on a separate occasion, Betkowski made a comment about how cyanide was a “less messy” option for taking one’s life.

Betkowski temporarily stepped away from the role in 1978 and returned to California for a couple months to receive psychiatric treatment at the then-UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. His supervisor told “Untold Mysteries” the treatment did little to help, and his employment was severed shortly after.

Writings from around that time, Cooper said, appear to show Betkowski was resistant to taking prescribed medications for his mental health issues. He “sought to find other ways of self-healing,” including alcohol and opiates, and expressed the belief that violence could bring on feelings of euphoria to help manage depression and schizophrenia.

Betkowski traded the sun-drenched, seaside Jacksonville for the dusty desert and mountain canyons of southern New Mexico along the US-Mexico border. For nearly three years, he worked on a NASA-related project at the White Sands Test Facility.

The year 1982 marked “the beginning of the end” for Betkowski, Cooper said, noting a string of tragedies, including the loss of his parents and marriage, leading up to his firing.

He was terminated following a disturbance at a Las Cruces pharmacy where Betkowski attempted to obtain some kind of capsules after which someone found he had been taking home unauthorized materials from his lab, conducting experiments in his home garden.

Not long after, Betkowski left Las Cruces, Cooper believes. He sold his car more than 800 miles away, near the Mexican border in Brownsville, Texas, before vanishing. He was found dead that December in Boise.

So many themes related to the Tylenol poisonings seemed to emerge as Cooper investigated Betkowski’s life, but no direct evidence materialized to link him to the crime or place him in Chicago during the time of the poisonings.

During the time Betkowski lived in New Mexico, police in Las Cruces reported an unsolved cyanide poisoning, in which the victim had capsulized medication, Cooper said. Testing was never done on that medication and was never determined how cyanide entered the victim’s body, but cyanide-related deaths in the US are rare enough that the Ada County Sheriff’s Office took interest.

Then there were the possessions investigators found in Betkowski’s old desk in Los Angeles: among old photos and letters were a map of Chicago and a small homemade bottle of sodium cyanide, which is distinct from the potassium cyanide used in the Tylenol murders.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Cooper next enlisted the help of Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic expert who had contributed to the Tylenol poisonings investigation in 1982, to review his investigation. Dietz, who says he believes Cooper solved the Tylenol poisonings, went on to share the findings with several expert groups, including forensic psychologists, some of whom believe they were on to something.

“Overwhelmingly they regarded him as a viable suspect. A few were convinced that he was the killer,” Dietz said at a news conference last month.

In the weeks since Idaho law enforcement made their findings public, no new suspects have been announced in the Tylenol poisonings. The Chicago and Arlington Heights Police Departments told CNN they have been in touch with the Ada County Sheriff’s Office about their findings. The Chicago FBI office, which remains the lead on the case, said the investigation is ongoing.

Betkowski’s brother, who gave the DNA sample, died in 2021. CNN could not identify other relatives or reach the brother’s estate. A search of records in the places where Betkowski was known to have lived found no criminal history.

While the answer to the puzzling case of the “Unknown Wanderer” was revealed to the world in Idaho, more than 1,350 miles away, Kasia Janus was in the midst of a particularly challenging September.

“There’s just a heaviness in my soul,” said Janus, who was 4 years old when her father, aunt and uncle died within the span of a day in September of 1982.

Adam Janus, Stanley Janus and Theresa Tarasewicz Janus were three of the seven victims who died after taking the cyanide-laced Tylenol pills, in the high-profile mystery that left consumers around America holding their breath, wary of a faceless perpetrator who could be placing poison in everyday products.

Like grief itself, Janus’ Septembers have long been up and down.

This year was no exception. Janus faced the month as an empty-nester, with her son away at college as she braced for another frenzied look back at her family’s tragedy in the media.

As a child, Janus tried to make it through school everyday, and her family hoped she was too young to understand or remember the pain of losing her relatives.

“But the thing is I do,” Janus said. “I think people forget that kids are smart. They know and they feel just as much as adults – or even more.”

In a sea of students, Janus would let out a sigh of relief whenever she saw another member of Rainbows for all Children , a program her mother enrolled her at aimed at helping children who needed somewhere to belong.

Some of the students, like Janus, had experienced the death of a family member. Others were dealing divorce, custody issues or other difficult life events. They had each other’s backs. She wasn’t alone.

Jamie Kelter Davis for CNN

As Janus grew, so did America’s fascination with serial killers. While the true crime industry has reexamined and sometimes helped solve cold cases, critics say that a healthy fear of danger has curdled into a morbid fascination with serial killers – the business of which has proven to be quite lucrative. Serial killer parties encourage true crime fanatics to gather in person – often with themed costumes, snacks and drinks winking at the tragedies they’re examining.

The sometimes-flippant enthusiasm with which people devour people’s real stories of loss can sting, Janus said.

That enthusiasm picks up with each potential development in a cold case. For a time, investigators in the Tylenol murder case suspected James Lewis , a Massachusetts man who served time for extortion after sending Johnson & Johnson a letter in 1982 claiming he would stop the killings in exchange for $1 million. Lewis, who died in 2023, later denied being responsible for the poisonings. At one point, authorities also looked at Ted Kaczynski , the Unabomber, who also denied any connection with the poisonings.

Janus prefers to keep the conversation focused on the memory of those who were lost to the crime.

Courtesy Kasia Janus

Her father, Adam Janus, who was only 27 when he died, had a sense of wisdom and ambition far beyond his years. He was the heart of the family, and had a way of bringing people together – friends, family, coworkers – he was always willing to lend a hand.

“I’ve always wished I had a chance to know him longer and to learn more from him,” Kasia Janus said. “It would have been amazing to see him in action.”

Janus’ uncle and aunt had a way of making people feel welcomed and seen, she said. She still remembers how they embraced her in the moments after her father’s death – before they, too, took the Tylenol that poisoned him.

Her family and her community, the one that embraced her through her heartbreak and loss, are her focus now. As an adult, she is a board member for Rainbows for all Children and has started training to work directly with the children in her Wisconsin neighborhood.

“It’s the light at the end of the tunnel for me,” Janus said.

CNN’s Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to this report.

Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

1982 年 12 月，爱达荷州博伊西的一个小型天主教社区正在准备迎接圣诞节，一名坐在教堂后排的男子突然倒地。

先是惊愕不已的教徒们围在躺在长椅下的尸体旁。随后，调查人员开始翻找死者的遗物，希望能从中找到任何线索。

他脖子上那条银色和绿松石色的波洛领带，是否意味着他来自美国西南部？他那空空如也、还留着卡片痕迹的钱包，是否意味着他想隐藏身份？他染过的头发，是否也是一种伪装？

他为什么带着29把钥匙，钥匙用两个金属环拴着？

调查人员指着他修剪整齐的指甲和熨烫笔挺的裤子，心想这人看起来不像流落街头。他黝黑均匀的肤色也表明，他并非一直生活在寒冷的爱达荷州。

随着疑问越来越多，调查人员最终得出了一个明确的结论：这名男子来这里是为了等死。

ASCO/未解之谜

他身上有1900美元现金和一张打印的遗书，上面写着他的身后事安排，署名是假名威廉·L·图米。验尸官后来确定，这名陌生人是因氰化钠中毒身亡，氰化钠是一种剧毒且速效的化学物质。

当时，“氰化物”一词在美国引起了广泛关注。几个月前，芝加哥地区有七人因服用掺有氰化钾的泰诺强效止痛药而死亡。他们的死亡引发了美国历史上规模最大的药品召回事件之一，随后，政府强制要求药品瓶盖必须防篡改，并将篡改消费品的行为定为刑事犯罪。

当全美各地许多人的注意力都集中在侦破泰诺谋杀案的广泛调查工作上时，艾达县警长办公室却致力于揭开博伊西自己的谜团：谁是“未知的流浪者”？

这两个案件几十年来一直悬而未决。但现在，散落在多个州的一系列线索让调查人员开始考虑，这两个谜团是否一直都相互关联。

“无名流浪者”之谜多年来一直吸引着人们的想象。圣诞节后几天，数百人在博伊西参加了这位无名男子的葬礼。1990年，热门纪录片系列《未解之谜》的一集报道了此案，使其引起了全国观众的关注。

在艾达县警长办公室努力寻找该男子身份却一无所获之后，这起案件搁置了数十年。直到2018年，蒂姆·库珀警探在圣心天主教堂停车场偶然遇到此人，案件才得以转机。库珀警探小时候曾看过这集节目。

他当时正在喝一杯廉价加油站咖啡，一位教友走过来和他谈起这起案子，引起了他的好奇心。库珀开始着手调查。

“他很聪明。我的意思是，他骗了我们43年。我知道他不想让我们知道他的真实身份。我知道他不想让我们知道他是怎么死的。他不想让我们知道很多事情，而这本身就是一个谜，我们需要不惜一切代价去解开它，”库珀在最新一期的《未解之谜》节目中说道，该节目讲述了他的调查过程。

这位侦探处理这起案件的方式和他处理其他案件的方式一样。“他偶然发现了一些线索，然后就开始在脑海中画线，把这些线索串联起来，”艾达县警长马特·克利福德说道。

库珀查阅了近 17,000 份失踪人口报告后仍然一无所获，于是他转向了在证据室里存放了几十年、积满灰尘的 29 把钥匙。

借助放大镜和博伊西几位专家的精湛技艺，库珀仔细观察了这些细小的、参差不齐的金属片，并在其中一片上发现了一个标记，表明它是在佛罗里达州杰克逊维尔的一家五金店购买的。随后，金属片表面刻着的两个字让他找到了这条街的名字：米尔斯街（Mills Court）。

库珀调查了这条死胡同的居民情况，这条街在20世纪80年代只有不到12户人家。他发现其中一位居民失踪了，并被缺席宣布死亡。这位居民的兄弟在洛杉矶自愿提供的DNA检测结果，为库珀提供了确凿的答案。

这位“无名流浪者”其实有个名字：马修·弗朗西斯·贝特科夫斯基。

从优渥的出身到充满希望却因心理健康问题而受阻的职业生涯，贝特科夫斯基的人生图景开始逐渐展开。

“据各方评价，他是一位才华横溢的人，但他在生活中很难与人建立联系，”库珀在执法部门上个月公布“无名流浪者”身份时谈到贝特科夫斯基时说道。

贝特科夫斯基去世时年仅 39 岁，他出生于南加州一个显赫的家庭，父亲是洛杉矶水电局的高级官员，祖父曾担任洛杉矶市议会主席，有时还担任市长。

库珀了解到，贝特科夫斯基小时候就对化学品和炸药表现出病态的好奇心。他曾和哥哥一起自制炸弹，爆炸产生的弹片危及了另一个孩子的生命。库珀回忆说，他的高中朋友们说他喜欢“炸”猫，有些人甚至叫他“炸弹客”。

在洛约拉大学读本科时，这名年轻人就因对爆炸物的嗜好而小有名气。宿舍发生大爆炸后，所有人的目光都转向了贝特科夫斯基。

他一生中大部分时间都在与抑郁症和精神健康问题作斗争，但在 1974 年，他在德克萨斯州奥斯汀的一个游泳池边从围栏上摔下来，导致脑部受到创伤性损伤，之后这些问题似乎更加严重了。

1975年，他的职业生涯将他带到了杰克逊维尔。在一家香精香料公司，他的同事们形容他的行为“古怪”。他们无意中听到他谈论“完美犯罪”，还有一次，贝特科夫斯基评论说，氰化物是一种“不那么脏乱”的自杀方式。

1978年，贝特科夫斯基暂时卸任，返回加州几个月，在当时的加州大学洛杉矶分校神经精神病研究所接受精神治疗。他的主管告诉《不为人知的秘密》节目，治疗收效甚微，不久后他就被解雇了。

库珀说，贝特科夫斯基当时的文字似乎表明，他拒绝服用医生开的治疗精神疾病的药物。他“试图寻找其他自我疗愈的方法”，包括酗酒和吸食鸦片类药物，并认为暴力可以带来欣快感，从而帮助他控制抑郁症和精神分裂症。

贝特科夫斯基放弃了阳光普照的海滨城市杰克逊维尔，来到了美墨边境新墨西哥州南部尘土飞扬的沙漠和山谷地带。他在白沙试验场参与了一个与美国宇航局相关的项目，工作了近三年。

库珀说，1982 年是贝特科夫斯基“走向终结的开始”，他指出，一系列悲剧接踵而至，包括失去父母和婚姻破裂，最终导致他被解雇。

在拉斯克鲁塞斯的一家药店发生骚乱后，贝特科夫斯基被解雇了。当时他试图从药店购买某种胶囊，之后有人发现他从实验室带回了未经授权的材料，并在家里的花园里进行实验。

库珀认为，不久之后，贝特科夫斯基离开了拉斯克鲁塞斯。他在800多英里外的德克萨斯州布朗斯维尔（靠近墨西哥边境）卖掉了自己的车，之后便销声匿迹。同年12月，人们在博伊西发现了他的遗体。

在库珀调查贝特科夫斯基的生活时，似乎出现了许多与泰诺中毒事件相关的线索，但没有直接证据将他与这起犯罪联系起来，也没有证据表明他在中毒事件发生时身处芝加哥。

库珀说，贝特科夫斯基在新墨西哥州居住期间，拉斯克鲁塞斯警方报告了一起未破的氰化物中毒案，受害者服用了胶囊状药物。警方从未对该药物进行检测，也从未确定氰化物是如何进入受害者体内的，但由于美国氰化物中毒致死案例十分罕见，因此艾达县警长办公室对此案产生了兴趣。

然后，调查人员在贝特科夫斯基位于洛杉矶的旧办公桌中发现了一些物品：在旧照片和信件中，有一张芝加哥地图和一小瓶自制的氰化钠，这与泰诺谋杀案中使用的氰化钾不同。

贝特曼档案馆/盖蒂图片社

接下来，库珀请来了法医专家帕克·迪茨博士，他曾参与1982年泰诺中毒案的调查，请迪茨博士审查他的调查。迪茨表示，他相信库珀已经破解了泰诺中毒案，并将调查结果分享给了包括法医心理学家在内的几个专家组，其中一些专家认为他们的发现很有价值。

“绝大多数人都认为他是一个可能的嫌疑人。有些人甚至确信他就是凶手，”迪茨上个月在新闻发布会上说。

自爱达荷州执法部门公布调查结果以来，泰诺中毒案尚未公布新的嫌疑人。芝加哥和阿灵顿高地警察局告诉CNN，他们已就调查结果与艾达县警长办公室取得联系。负责此案的芝加哥联邦调查局办公室表示，调查仍在进行中。

贝特科夫斯基的兄弟提供了DNA样本，他已于2021年去世。CNN未能找到其他亲属，也联系不上其兄弟的遗产管理人。对贝特科夫斯基已知居住地的记录进行搜索后，未发现任何犯罪记录。

当“神秘流浪者”的谜团在爱达荷州揭晓时，远在 1350 英里之外的卡西亚·雅努斯正经历着一个格外艰难的九月。

“我的灵魂感到无比沉重，” 贾努斯说道。1982 年 9 月，她的父亲、姑姑和叔叔在一天之内相继去世，当时她只有 4 岁。

亚当·雅努斯、斯坦利·雅努斯和特蕾莎·塔拉塞维奇·雅努斯是服用掺有氰化物的泰诺药丸后死亡的七名受害者中的三位。这起备受瞩目的谜案让全美消费者屏息凝神，警惕着可能在日常用品中投放毒药的匿名作案者。

就像悲伤本身一样，雅努斯的九月总是起伏不定。

今年也不例外。儿子上大学后，贾努斯成了空巢老人，她不得不面对媒体对她家悲剧的又一次疯狂回顾。

小时候，雅努斯每天都努力上学，她的家人希望她年纪太小，无法理解或记住失去亲人的痛苦。

“但事实是我确实这么认为，”贾努斯说。“我觉得人们忘记了孩子们很聪明。他们知道的事情和感受与成年人一样多——甚至更多。”

在熙熙攘攘的学生中，每当 Janus 看到“彩虹儿童计划”（她母亲为她报名参加的一个旨在帮助需要归属感的儿童的项目）的成员时，她都会松一口气。

有些学生，比如雅努斯，经历过亲人去世的痛苦。还有一些学生正在面对离婚、子女抚养权或其他人生困境。他们互相扶持，她并不孤单。

杰米·凯尔特·戴维斯（Jamie Kelter Davis）为CNN撰稿

随着雅努斯的成长，美国人对连环杀手的迷恋也与日俱增。虽然犯罪纪实产业重新审视了一些悬案，有时甚至帮助侦破了悬案，但批评人士指出，人们对危险的正常恐惧已经扭曲成对连环杀手病态的迷恋——而这种迷恋也已被证明有利可图。连环杀手主题派对鼓励犯罪纪实爱好者们线下聚会——他们通常会穿着主题服装，享用零食和饮料，以此来影射他们正在研究的悲剧案件。

Janus 说，人们有时以一种轻佻的热情来津津有味地讲述别人真实的失落故事，这可能会让人感到刺痛。

每当一桩悬案出现新的进展，人们的热情就会高涨。泰诺中毒案的调查人员一度怀疑詹姆斯·刘易斯，这位马萨诸塞州男子曾因勒索罪入狱。1982年，他给强生公司寄了一封信，声称只要支付100万美元就能停止投毒。刘易斯于2023年去世，后来否认自己与投毒案有关。此外，当局一度还将“大学炸弹客”泰德·卡钦斯基列为嫌疑人，但他同样否认与投毒案有任何关联。

Janus 更愿意将谈话的重点放在缅怀那些在犯罪中丧生的人身上。

承蒙卡西亚·雅努斯惠允

她的父亲亚当·雅努斯去世时年仅27岁，却拥有远超同龄人的智慧和抱负。他是家里的顶梁柱，总能把朋友、家人、同事凝聚在一起，乐于助人。

“我一直希望有机会能更长时间地了解他，并向他学习更多，”卡西亚·雅努斯说。“如果能亲眼目睹他的风采，那该有多棒啊。”

雅努斯说，她的叔叔和婶婶总能让人感到宾至如归，倍感温暖。她至今仍记得父亲去世后，他们是如何拥抱她的——就在他们也服用了泰诺，导致父亲中毒身亡之前。

她的家人和社区，在她心碎和失去亲人时给予她支持和关爱，如今是她生活的重心。成年后，她成为“彩虹儿童之家”（Rainbows for all Children）的理事会成员，并开始接受培训，以便直接为威斯康星州社区的孩子们提供帮助。

“对我来说，这是隧道尽头的曙光，”雅努斯说。

CNN的凯瑟琳·E·肖切特对本报道亦有贡献。