A MAN has claimed that his father made a chilling deathbed confession in 2023 that he was responsible for the Tylenol murders – one of America’s most notorious unsolved cases.
Joseph Cibelli, a former hairdresser and law school student in Sacramento, California, said his father, Daniel Raymond Drozd, admitted to lacing the Tylenol capsules with cyanide.
Daniel Raymond Drozd and his wife, Mary[/caption]
The dark moment in American history occurred between September and October 1982 when poisoned capsules of the over-the-counter pills killed seven people in the Chicago area.
Drozd, who died at age 73 in 2023, was 32 years old at the time, Cibelli said.
The Chicago Tylenol murders sparked fear across the nation, leading to widespread changes in pharmaceutical packaging.
However, more than four decades since the killings, the case remains unsolved.
Cibelli, 54, who is working on a memoir about his experiences, said he found evidence to support his claim that his father was allegedly responsible for the killings.
The list is long, including his father’s proximity to purchase sites, access to cyanide through work, a capsule-filling device, and extremist how-to books.
“On his deathbed, he came right out and said it,” Cibelli said.
“He told a hospice worker that he had planted cyanide pills, and then he told my brother that he had put out cyanide pills.”
After his father’s death in October 2023, Cibelli researched the locations where the poisoned bottles were purchased.
“When I started researching where all the bottles were placed, I had been to all of those locations with my father right before the murders happened,” Cibelli said.
The family lived in Lyons, Illinois, at the time – a town that “butts right up to the city” placing them in the heart of the affected area.
Cibelli’s father served in the Army from 1969 to 1971 and worked multiple jobs, including as a police officer for the Lyons Police Department and at Electromotive, performing steel plating on engine parts.
“One of the key things they use in that kind of electroplating is cyanide,” Cibelli said.
“He used to always bring stuff home from there.”
‘BROKEN HOME’
As a child, Cibelli carefully monitored his volatile father’s behavior.
He recalls a mysterious pink cup his father brought home from work and hid.
“That pink cup is massive in this whole thing because there was cyanide in that cup,” Cibelli said.
Cibelli’s 75-year-old mother, Mary, was allegedly abused by his father throughout their marriage.
“My father used to beat her constantly, and as a child, I was calling the police a lot,” he said.
“Because he was a cop, the police would show up and be like, ‘Okay, just knock it off.’”
Cibelli said his sister died at age 31 from a pulmonary embolism, while his brother, a lifelong addict, heard their father’s deathbed confession.
Cibelli claimed that his father “said to my brother, ‘I put those suicide pills out there.’”
The most haunting evidence came during news of the victims’ funeral, Cibelli claimed.
Joseph Cibelli as a toddler with his father, Daniel Raymond Drozd[/caption]
ENGRAVED MOMENTS
On October 5, 1982, the family watched a funeral for three Janus family members who died after taking poisoned Tylenol.
Three members of the Janus family — Adam, his brother, Stanley, and his sister-in-law, Theresa — died from the cyanide-laced Tylenol.
“They showed three caskets in the church, and [Catholic prelate] Joseph Bernardin was sprinkling holy water onto those caskets,” Cibelli said.
“Behind me, my dad said, ‘Great, three holy f**king Catholic martyrs.’”
When a young Cibelli asked what it meant, his father allegedly responded, “If you’re so f**king smart, you’ll figure it out someday.”
“Those six words are burned into my being,” Cibelli added.
“It’s not even a memory — it’s like eyewitness testimony.”
The poisoned bottles had been placed back on store shelves at multiple retailers in the Chicago area.
Besides seven confirmed deaths, several others were seriously injured, accelerating the recall of over 31 million bottles nationwide.
Cibelli believes his father thought he could commit the perfect crime, never expecting authorities to identify Tylenol as the cause.
“He did not expect they would even figure out it was Tylenol,” Cibelli said.
“Within two days, they figured out it was the Tylenol. That’s when he started panicking.”
‘PERFECT CRIME’
Cibelli claimed his father destroyed evidence by burning everything in a barrel, including the pink cup that allegedly contained cyanide residue.
In his father’s workshop, Cibelli found disturbing reading material, including The Anarchist Cookbook and The Poor Man’s James Bond, publications with instructions for bombs and poisons.
“This whole plan is laid out in The Poor Man’s James Bond,” Cibelli said.
“It says if you want to try using poison, put it in people’s capsules.”
Cibelli also found what he believes was his father’s cyanide dispensing device — a small container with holes sized for filling capsules.
“Each one of those holes, if you put cyanide in each one, it’s more than a lethal dose,” he said.
“He’d take the pills, take out some of the acetaminophen, line up the hole, put the half-empty capsule right up to the hole, turn it over, dump it in, and reseal the Tylenol.”
The motive, Cibelli believes, stemmed from a traumatic childhood incident when his father nearly died from drinking flavored medication.
Cibelli said, “He saw flavored children’s medicine and thought, ‘I don’t care how many people die.
“They’re going to end up putting safety seals on things because people are going to die from this.”
“My father was psychotic,” he added.
Cibelli suspects his father may have been responsible for other deaths.
“At the end of the day, he knew he could do this and he knew he’d get away with it,” he said.
The Chicago Police Department said there were no updates on the case and did not respond to a request for comment about Cibelli’s allegations.
