IDAHO POLICE LINK 1982 CHURCH SUICIDE VICTIM TO TYLENOL POISONINGS

The Ada County Sheriff's Office has identified a man found dead inside a Boise church in 1982 as Matthew Francis Betkouski, a former chemist with potential ties to the unsolved Chicago Tylenol poisonings. His body was found beneath a pew at Sacred Heart Catholic Church on 4 December 1982, alongside a suicide note signed "Wm. L. Toomey" and $1,900 left for his funeral and cremation. An autopsy found he died from cyanide ingestion. For more than 40 years he was known only as the "Unknown Wanderer". The identification was announced at a news conference on Wednesday.

Detectives reopened the case in 2019 and traced a key found on Betkouski's body to an address in Jacksonville, Florida, leading them to a family whose relative had disappeared in 1982 and was later declared legally dead. DNA testing confirmed his identity. Officers said Betkouski held a PhD, came from a prominent Los Angeles family, had suffered a brain injury in 1974, and had a history of severe mental illness and a fascination with chemical compounds. Former colleagues recalled him discussing cyanide, including a co-worker who remembered him describing "the perfect crime involving cyanide", and while at Lockheed Martin he reportedly discussed hiding poison in medication capsules.

A search of Betkouski's childhood bedroom found writing from 1980 and 1981 about a wish to travel to Illinois, a 1970s map of Chicago, and photographs placing him there in December 1981. Detectives also recovered a bottle of sodium cyanide derived from fruit pits, a different form to the potassium cyanide used in the poisonings. Authorities described the link as potential, not confirmed. The case, reopened in 2019, remains officially unsolved.