CHICAGO -- The woman who bought the eighth known bottle of poisoned Tylenol said Wednesday night she didn't know she could have been killed when she opened one of the capsules to examine it.
'I opened the capsule,' not knowing cyanide could be absorbed through the skin, Linda Morgan told reporters.
'I was very lucky I didn't take the Tylenol,' Mrs. Morgan said. She purchased the bottle Sept. 29, the first day some poison victims died.
She said she has provided samples of her fingerprints to the FBI for comparison with prints found on the box of the bottle she turned in, and said her husband, Du Page County Circuit Court Judge Lewis V. Morgan Jr., would provide his fingerprints Thursday.
Seven Chicago area people died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol contained in five bottles. Three more poisoned bottles sice have been discovered in laboratory testing.
Wheaton Police Chief Carl Dobbs said Mrs. Morgan called at 4p.m. Wednesday to say she had returned the bottle of Tylenol to the Wheaton police station Oct. 4 about 1:30 p.m. He said Mrs. Morgan reported she had purchased the bottle from Frank's Finer Foods in a Wheaton shopping center.
Mrs. Duane Walter of West Chicago, wife of another Du Page County judge, earlier was wrongly identified by police as the person who turned in the Tylenol bottle.
Earlier reports said the Tylenol had been purchased from Frank's Finer Foods in Winfield, the same place where the fatal bottle used by one of the victims, Mary Reiner, was purchased.
Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fahner, head of the task force investigating the killings, said testing of bottles turned in by consumers should be completed by the end of the week.
Six people have cleared themselves in the case by undergoing lie tests, the Chicago Sun-Times said Wednesday.
Fahner was quoted by the City News Bureau of Chicago as saying investigators were 'closer than we have ever been' to making an arrest.
However, Paul Zemitsch, spokesman for Fahner, said he doubted Fahner made such a statement.
'I don't think he said that,' Zemitsch said.
In Philadelphia, police ruled University of Pennsylvania graduate student William Pascual, 26, committed suicide in April by swallowing a Tylenol capsule containing cyanide. Police said Pascual put the cyanide in the capsule himself.
Police continued the investigation of Roger Arnold, 48, who initially was questioned in the case after a Jewel Food Stores co-worker said Arnold had a white powdery substance in his home, along with books on how to kill people.
Arnold appeared Tuesday in court on weapons and assault charges unrelated to the Tylenol case. The case was continued until Nov. 22.
Police re-investigating 17 unexpected deaths since August said they found cyanide in the body of a Chicago woman who died Aug. 15, but 'we don't know for sure if this death is related to the others,' a spokesman for Fahner said.
The nationwide search continued for James W. Lewis and his wife, Leann, also considered suspects in the case. Lewis is wanted on federal charges for writing a $1 million extortion letter to the makers of Tylenol.
The last confirmed sighting of the Lewis couple was in New York City.
