Post by Admin Horan on Dec 7, 2020 10:51:07 GMT -6
Another bottle of Tylenol was laced with cyanide in YONKERS in 1986:
NEW YORK TIMES
Feb. 11, 1986
TYLENOL IS LINKED TO A CYANIDE DEATH IN YONKERS
By Peter Kerr
The A.&P. supermarket chain removed all containers of Tylenol capsules from its shelves late yesterday after a woman in Yonkers died of poisoning from cyanide believed to have come from an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule.
The Yonkers police said last night that a 23-year-old Peekskill woman died Saturday after taking the nonprescription pain reliever. The woman, Diane Elsroth, who was visiting a friend in Yonkers, had bought the drug at an A.&P. store in Bronxville.
In reaction to the incident, the Federal Food and Drug Administration warned Yonkers-area residents to avoid using all Tylenol capsules and warned consumers not to use Tylenol from 200,000 bottles with the lot number ADF 916 and an expiration date of May 1987. The New York City Health Department last night also advised consumers to avoid all Tylenol capsules.
Victim Died Saturday
Clare Palermo, a spokesman for Westchester County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke, said last night that the county had embargoed the sale of Tylenol and Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules and asked consumers to return containers bought within the last two months.
Officials, including the Yonkers police, stressed that it was too early to know whether the incident indicated that other bottles of Tylenol might be tainted.
Nonetheless, the death concerned police and health officials. In 1982, seven people died in Illinois from Tylenol capsules poisoned with cyanide. According to Johnson & Johnson, the product's manufacturer, Tylenol sales total about $500 million annually.
A spokesman for the company, James A. Murray, said that the cyanide must have been added to the Tylenol recently because the poison would corrode through the gelatin capsule within about two weeks. Visiting a Friend
According to the Yonkers police, Miss Elsroth went to bed shortly after 1 A.M. Saturday and was found dead a little more than 12 hours later. An investigation by the Westchester County Medical Examiner's office found traces of Tylenol and cyanide ''in close proximity,'' indicating that the poison was ingested with the drug, the police said.
''It is not known where or when the cyanide may have been introduced into the Tylenol capsule,'' said Commissioner Joseph V. Fernandes of the Yonkers Police Department at a news conference last night.
Another Yonkers police official, Deputy Chief Owen McClain, said that Miss Elsroth was visiting a friend at his parents' home on Ardell Road in the Northeast section of Yonkers.
''She took a couple of tablets the night before because she was not feeling well,'' Chief McClain said.
Her friend, who was not identified, he said, last saw her alive before she went to bed at 1 A.M.
Chief McClain said that Miss Elsroth did not seem to have any enemies and that the police believed she did not commit suicide. The police, he added, were investigating the case as a homicide.
The police said that Miss Elsroth was the daughter of a New York State Police investigator.
A source close to the investigation said that the friend told the police he had opened the sealed bottle and that on the night of her death Miss Elsroth had taken two of the 24 capsules. When Miss Elsroth was found dead the next day, the source said, the friend's mother, upset by the news, took a Tylenol capsule. She was unharmed.
Investigators found three other capsules in the bottle that were brown and discolored and preliminary tests indicated that they contained cyanide, the source said. Definitive tests on the capsules were scheduled to be conducted today by a county toxicologist.
The autopsy was unable to find a cause of death, according to the source, but a test of tissues proved cyanide was the cause of death. The cyanide was found in her bloodstream and stomach, the source said, ''in large quantities.'' Precautionary Measures
Yesterday afternoon, the police entered the A.&P. supermarket in Bronxville where the suspect bottle had been purchased and removed all Tylenol capsules from the shelves. Within hours, both the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and the Food and Drug Administration said they were taking precautionary measures.
''Although incidents of this type have invariably proved to be localized, we do feel that area residents should avoid taking Tylenol capsules until more is known,'' said William Grigg, a spokesman for the F.D.A in Washington. ''We are investigating and working with thepolice.''
Mr. Grigg said that since 1982, when the seven deaths in Illinois led to the removal of all Extra Strength Tylenol from retail stores, there had been several incidents in which people were poisoned with Tylenol capsules.
In those cases, Mr. Grigg said, there were no indications that bottles being sold to the public had been tampered with. Mr. Grigg said he did not know how many cases there were involving Tylenol, but said he believed some turned out to be suicides.
When Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were returned to the market in late 1982, the product had a triple-seal, tamper-resistant packaging designed to assure consumers that the drug was untouched after it left the factory. The Tylenol is now sealed inside a bottle, wrapped in bright red plastic and placed into a box that is glued shut.
A spokesman for A.&P., Michael Rourke, said his company decided to remove all Tylenol capsules from 850 stores in 26 states as soon as it learned of the Yonkers investigation.
''It is just a precautionary measure,'' Mr. Rourke said, ''until we know more.''
Tylenol, was pulled off the market in the fall of 1982 after a sudden series of deaths that have never been solved.
The mystery began on Sept. 29, 1982, with the poisoning of Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old from Elk Grove Village, Ill., who took the drug for a sore throat. Within 15 hours, six other people in the Chicago area were fatally poisoned, including a postal worker, a telephone company employee and a flight attendant. All were found to have taken Extra- Strength Tylenol capsules.
At the time of the Illinois deaths, Tylenol was the leading over-the-counter brand of pain remedy in the country. Its manufacturer, the McNeil Consumer Products Division of Johnson & Johnson, removed 31 million bottles of Tylenol from stores nationwide and had them destroyed.
After the product was reintroduced, the company undertook a major campaign to restore consumer confidence and the product eventually regained its popular status. A company official said last night that it occupied one-third of the $1.5 billion market for over-the-counter analgesics in the United States.
The Yonkers police requested that anyone with Tylenol capsules bearing the suspect lot number bring them to the Yonkers police detectives or call (914) 963-2526.
For more information, the police suggested the public call a Johnson & Johnson toll free number: 1-(800) 237-9800.
Cyanide is one of the swiftest-acting and most lethal compounds known.
Even a small amount of cyanide, swallowed or inhaled, can prevent the body's tissues from absorbing oxygen and can be lethal within minutes. The first symptoms are dizziness, nausea and vomiting, followed by falling blood pressure, convulsions and death.
A dose of 50 to 100 milligrams of cyanide ingested directly by an adult, or as little as 15 milligrams by a child, can kill within five minutes. When taken in a capsule, as appears to be the case in the Yonkers death, the effect is slower because the poison does not act until the capsule is dissolved in the stomach, which can take about 15 minutes.
Cyanide is usually produced as a synthetic chemical for a number of industrial uses. Potassium cyanide, the most common form, and sodium cyanide, another variety, are used extensively by jewelry manufacturers to refine and clean the gold and silver. In mining, the use of cyanides makes it possible to process low-grade ores economically.
In 1982, the same year in which Tylenol was blamed for seven deaths in Illinois, a woman in San Jose, Calif., became seriously ill from cyanide poisoning after taking Anacin-3 capsules. In 1983, a woman in Portland, Ore., died of cyanide poisoning after taking two capsules, said to be Anacin-3 by family members.
Cyanide found in a bottle of Coca-Cola killed a man in Manitowoc, Wis., in 1984. And in the same year, packs of cyanide-treated candy were found on the shelves of supermarkets in Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya in Japan.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
February 12, 1986
TYLENOL DEATH `ISOLATED INCIDENT`
Philip Lentz, Chicago Tribune. Tribune reporter Hanke Gratteau also contributed to this story in Chicago
Law enforcement officials said Tuesday that the death of a woman here who took cyanide-laced Tylenol was an ''isolated incident,'' but that did not stop supermarkets and drug stores in the Chicago area and across the country from hastily removing Tylenol products from their shelves.
The investigation--which is being handled by Yonkers police, the Westchester County district attorney, the FBI and the federal Food and Drug Administration--is focusing on when the cyanide could have been placed in a triple-sealed and supposedly tamper-resistant bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, county officials said the cyanide would eat through the gelatin capsules within 8 to 10 days, indicating that any tampering most likely occurred within the last few days.
''We`re dealing with a case of murder and we`ll do everything we can to solve it,'' said Andrew O`Rourke, Westchester County executive.
But officials emphasized that cyanide had been found in only one Tylenol bottle--the one used by the 23-year-old Yonkers victim--and that there were no indications that other bottles had been contaminated.
''At this time, (the police) consider it a local, isolated incident,''
said Anita Curran, county health commissioner.
The Yonkers death has prompted an eerie replay of the scare that swept the country in the fall of 1982 when seven persons in the Chicago area died after taking cyanide-tainted Tylenol.
In Illinois, Walgreen and Osco drug stores and Jewel and Dominick`s supermarkets announced they would remove most Tylenol products from their shelves, both in the Chicago area and nationwide. American Stores, owner of Walgreen and Osco, said the order affects 1,493 stores in 40 states.
Also, 1,000 A&P supermarkets in 25 states and the District of Columbia took Tylenol off their shelves, as did regional chains in Michigan, Wisconsin and Maine. The Tylenol in the Yonkers death was purchased at an A&P market in Bronxville, which borders Yonkers.
In New York, O`Rourke ordered all Tylenol products off all shelves in Westchester County, an affluent suburban area just north of New York City. He also asked residents who had purchased Tylenol in the last two months to return the products to the stores where they were purchased.
Executives at Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey-based manufacturer of Tylenol, said they suspected the bottle was contaminated after it left the Ft. Washington, Pa., plant of its subsidiary, McNeil Consumer Co. At a press conference in New Brunswick, they said the suspect bottle was part of a lot of 200,000 bottles produced last April and May and shipped to stores in August. The contaminated bottle carried a lot number of ADF916.
They estimated that 95 percent of that batch had been purchased. ''Most of it has been consumed by consumers without event,'' said company chairman James Burke.
In the wake of the Chicago killings, the company withdrew the product from the market and redesigned the package to be triple tamper-resistant. Though the company lost more than $100 million, the drug subsequently regained its dominance in the marketplace.
With the new packaging--which Burke termed ''the most tamper-resistant package to be made''--the bottle was sealed at the neck and under the cap and placed in sealed boxes.
''We call this tamper-resistant packaging,'' said spokesman Bob Andrews.
''Nothing is tamper-proof.''
He said consumer surveys conducted by the company on Tuesday indicated that most people ''do not blame the manufacturer and they see it as a strictly local event, so we find that very encouraging.''
The victim, Diane Elsroth, of Peekskill, N.Y., was spending last weekend at the home of her boyfriend`s parents in Yonkers when she was stricken. Authorities said that when she complained of a headache between midnight and 1 a.m. Saturday, her boyfriend, Michael Notarnicola, opened a new bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol and gave her two capsules.
O`Rourke said Notarnicola told police the bottle had been sealed before he opened it.
At 1.30 p.m. Saturday, when Elsroth did not appear for breakfast or lunch, family members discovered her dead in her bed. Upon learning about the woman`s death, Notarnicola`s mother took one Tylenol capsule from the same bottle. She suffered no ill-effects.
It was not until Monday that toxicologists uncovered cyanide as the cause of death. O`Rourke said they were tipped off because the woman`s tissue had the smell of bitter almonds, which is a tell-tale sign of cyanide.
County Medical Examiner Millard Hyland said investigators found that the ingested capsule consisted of 60 percent potassium cyanide--the same form of cyanide used in the Chicago killings--and the rest inert minerals such as silver. Examinations of the remaining 21 capsules in the bottle revealed that three others also were filled with cyanide.
Hyland said potassium cyanide is a difficult substance to purchase. He said it is used in photography and the manufacture of tools and dyes.
Examination by the FDA of other Tylenol bottles in the A&P where the suspect bottle was purchased turned up no evidence of cyanide, Curran said.
''We have not found any additional capsules contaminated by anything at this point,'' she said.
The suspect bottle was sent to the FBI in Washington where a spokesman, Lane Bonner, also said the tampering appeared to be limited to Yonkers.
Yonkers Deputy Police Chief Owen McClain said there are no suspects. ''We have no reason to suspect anyone,'' he said. ''We are actively investigating every possibility.''
Following the Chicago killings, James Lewis was convicted of attempted extortion for trying to extort $10 million from Johnson & Johnson. He is serving a 10-year prison term.
Illinois officials have offered to help the New York investigators, but so far have been rebuffed. ''There is a lack of similarities in that we have not received any extortion threats,'' McClain said.
NEW YORK TIMES
Feb. 11, 1986
TYLENOL IS LINKED TO A CYANIDE DEATH IN YONKERS
By Peter Kerr
The A.&P. supermarket chain removed all containers of Tylenol capsules from its shelves late yesterday after a woman in Yonkers died of poisoning from cyanide believed to have come from an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule.
The Yonkers police said last night that a 23-year-old Peekskill woman died Saturday after taking the nonprescription pain reliever. The woman, Diane Elsroth, who was visiting a friend in Yonkers, had bought the drug at an A.&P. store in Bronxville.
In reaction to the incident, the Federal Food and Drug Administration warned Yonkers-area residents to avoid using all Tylenol capsules and warned consumers not to use Tylenol from 200,000 bottles with the lot number ADF 916 and an expiration date of May 1987. The New York City Health Department last night also advised consumers to avoid all Tylenol capsules.
Victim Died Saturday
Clare Palermo, a spokesman for Westchester County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke, said last night that the county had embargoed the sale of Tylenol and Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules and asked consumers to return containers bought within the last two months.
Officials, including the Yonkers police, stressed that it was too early to know whether the incident indicated that other bottles of Tylenol might be tainted.
Nonetheless, the death concerned police and health officials. In 1982, seven people died in Illinois from Tylenol capsules poisoned with cyanide. According to Johnson & Johnson, the product's manufacturer, Tylenol sales total about $500 million annually.
A spokesman for the company, James A. Murray, said that the cyanide must have been added to the Tylenol recently because the poison would corrode through the gelatin capsule within about two weeks. Visiting a Friend
According to the Yonkers police, Miss Elsroth went to bed shortly after 1 A.M. Saturday and was found dead a little more than 12 hours later. An investigation by the Westchester County Medical Examiner's office found traces of Tylenol and cyanide ''in close proximity,'' indicating that the poison was ingested with the drug, the police said.
''It is not known where or when the cyanide may have been introduced into the Tylenol capsule,'' said Commissioner Joseph V. Fernandes of the Yonkers Police Department at a news conference last night.
Another Yonkers police official, Deputy Chief Owen McClain, said that Miss Elsroth was visiting a friend at his parents' home on Ardell Road in the Northeast section of Yonkers.
''She took a couple of tablets the night before because she was not feeling well,'' Chief McClain said.
Her friend, who was not identified, he said, last saw her alive before she went to bed at 1 A.M.
Chief McClain said that Miss Elsroth did not seem to have any enemies and that the police believed she did not commit suicide. The police, he added, were investigating the case as a homicide.
The police said that Miss Elsroth was the daughter of a New York State Police investigator.
A source close to the investigation said that the friend told the police he had opened the sealed bottle and that on the night of her death Miss Elsroth had taken two of the 24 capsules. When Miss Elsroth was found dead the next day, the source said, the friend's mother, upset by the news, took a Tylenol capsule. She was unharmed.
Investigators found three other capsules in the bottle that were brown and discolored and preliminary tests indicated that they contained cyanide, the source said. Definitive tests on the capsules were scheduled to be conducted today by a county toxicologist.
The autopsy was unable to find a cause of death, according to the source, but a test of tissues proved cyanide was the cause of death. The cyanide was found in her bloodstream and stomach, the source said, ''in large quantities.'' Precautionary Measures
Yesterday afternoon, the police entered the A.&P. supermarket in Bronxville where the suspect bottle had been purchased and removed all Tylenol capsules from the shelves. Within hours, both the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and the Food and Drug Administration said they were taking precautionary measures.
''Although incidents of this type have invariably proved to be localized, we do feel that area residents should avoid taking Tylenol capsules until more is known,'' said William Grigg, a spokesman for the F.D.A in Washington. ''We are investigating and working with thepolice.''
Mr. Grigg said that since 1982, when the seven deaths in Illinois led to the removal of all Extra Strength Tylenol from retail stores, there had been several incidents in which people were poisoned with Tylenol capsules.
In those cases, Mr. Grigg said, there were no indications that bottles being sold to the public had been tampered with. Mr. Grigg said he did not know how many cases there were involving Tylenol, but said he believed some turned out to be suicides.
When Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were returned to the market in late 1982, the product had a triple-seal, tamper-resistant packaging designed to assure consumers that the drug was untouched after it left the factory. The Tylenol is now sealed inside a bottle, wrapped in bright red plastic and placed into a box that is glued shut.
A spokesman for A.&P., Michael Rourke, said his company decided to remove all Tylenol capsules from 850 stores in 26 states as soon as it learned of the Yonkers investigation.
''It is just a precautionary measure,'' Mr. Rourke said, ''until we know more.''
Tylenol, was pulled off the market in the fall of 1982 after a sudden series of deaths that have never been solved.
The mystery began on Sept. 29, 1982, with the poisoning of Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old from Elk Grove Village, Ill., who took the drug for a sore throat. Within 15 hours, six other people in the Chicago area were fatally poisoned, including a postal worker, a telephone company employee and a flight attendant. All were found to have taken Extra- Strength Tylenol capsules.
At the time of the Illinois deaths, Tylenol was the leading over-the-counter brand of pain remedy in the country. Its manufacturer, the McNeil Consumer Products Division of Johnson & Johnson, removed 31 million bottles of Tylenol from stores nationwide and had them destroyed.
After the product was reintroduced, the company undertook a major campaign to restore consumer confidence and the product eventually regained its popular status. A company official said last night that it occupied one-third of the $1.5 billion market for over-the-counter analgesics in the United States.
The Yonkers police requested that anyone with Tylenol capsules bearing the suspect lot number bring them to the Yonkers police detectives or call (914) 963-2526.
For more information, the police suggested the public call a Johnson & Johnson toll free number: 1-(800) 237-9800.
Cyanide is one of the swiftest-acting and most lethal compounds known.
Even a small amount of cyanide, swallowed or inhaled, can prevent the body's tissues from absorbing oxygen and can be lethal within minutes. The first symptoms are dizziness, nausea and vomiting, followed by falling blood pressure, convulsions and death.
A dose of 50 to 100 milligrams of cyanide ingested directly by an adult, or as little as 15 milligrams by a child, can kill within five minutes. When taken in a capsule, as appears to be the case in the Yonkers death, the effect is slower because the poison does not act until the capsule is dissolved in the stomach, which can take about 15 minutes.
Cyanide is usually produced as a synthetic chemical for a number of industrial uses. Potassium cyanide, the most common form, and sodium cyanide, another variety, are used extensively by jewelry manufacturers to refine and clean the gold and silver. In mining, the use of cyanides makes it possible to process low-grade ores economically.
In 1982, the same year in which Tylenol was blamed for seven deaths in Illinois, a woman in San Jose, Calif., became seriously ill from cyanide poisoning after taking Anacin-3 capsules. In 1983, a woman in Portland, Ore., died of cyanide poisoning after taking two capsules, said to be Anacin-3 by family members.
Cyanide found in a bottle of Coca-Cola killed a man in Manitowoc, Wis., in 1984. And in the same year, packs of cyanide-treated candy were found on the shelves of supermarkets in Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya in Japan.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
February 12, 1986
TYLENOL DEATH `ISOLATED INCIDENT`
Philip Lentz, Chicago Tribune. Tribune reporter Hanke Gratteau also contributed to this story in Chicago
Law enforcement officials said Tuesday that the death of a woman here who took cyanide-laced Tylenol was an ''isolated incident,'' but that did not stop supermarkets and drug stores in the Chicago area and across the country from hastily removing Tylenol products from their shelves.
The investigation--which is being handled by Yonkers police, the Westchester County district attorney, the FBI and the federal Food and Drug Administration--is focusing on when the cyanide could have been placed in a triple-sealed and supposedly tamper-resistant bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, county officials said the cyanide would eat through the gelatin capsules within 8 to 10 days, indicating that any tampering most likely occurred within the last few days.
''We`re dealing with a case of murder and we`ll do everything we can to solve it,'' said Andrew O`Rourke, Westchester County executive.
But officials emphasized that cyanide had been found in only one Tylenol bottle--the one used by the 23-year-old Yonkers victim--and that there were no indications that other bottles had been contaminated.
''At this time, (the police) consider it a local, isolated incident,''
said Anita Curran, county health commissioner.
The Yonkers death has prompted an eerie replay of the scare that swept the country in the fall of 1982 when seven persons in the Chicago area died after taking cyanide-tainted Tylenol.
In Illinois, Walgreen and Osco drug stores and Jewel and Dominick`s supermarkets announced they would remove most Tylenol products from their shelves, both in the Chicago area and nationwide. American Stores, owner of Walgreen and Osco, said the order affects 1,493 stores in 40 states.
Also, 1,000 A&P supermarkets in 25 states and the District of Columbia took Tylenol off their shelves, as did regional chains in Michigan, Wisconsin and Maine. The Tylenol in the Yonkers death was purchased at an A&P market in Bronxville, which borders Yonkers.
In New York, O`Rourke ordered all Tylenol products off all shelves in Westchester County, an affluent suburban area just north of New York City. He also asked residents who had purchased Tylenol in the last two months to return the products to the stores where they were purchased.
Executives at Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey-based manufacturer of Tylenol, said they suspected the bottle was contaminated after it left the Ft. Washington, Pa., plant of its subsidiary, McNeil Consumer Co. At a press conference in New Brunswick, they said the suspect bottle was part of a lot of 200,000 bottles produced last April and May and shipped to stores in August. The contaminated bottle carried a lot number of ADF916.
They estimated that 95 percent of that batch had been purchased. ''Most of it has been consumed by consumers without event,'' said company chairman James Burke.
In the wake of the Chicago killings, the company withdrew the product from the market and redesigned the package to be triple tamper-resistant. Though the company lost more than $100 million, the drug subsequently regained its dominance in the marketplace.
With the new packaging--which Burke termed ''the most tamper-resistant package to be made''--the bottle was sealed at the neck and under the cap and placed in sealed boxes.
''We call this tamper-resistant packaging,'' said spokesman Bob Andrews.
''Nothing is tamper-proof.''
He said consumer surveys conducted by the company on Tuesday indicated that most people ''do not blame the manufacturer and they see it as a strictly local event, so we find that very encouraging.''
The victim, Diane Elsroth, of Peekskill, N.Y., was spending last weekend at the home of her boyfriend`s parents in Yonkers when she was stricken. Authorities said that when she complained of a headache between midnight and 1 a.m. Saturday, her boyfriend, Michael Notarnicola, opened a new bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol and gave her two capsules.
O`Rourke said Notarnicola told police the bottle had been sealed before he opened it.
At 1.30 p.m. Saturday, when Elsroth did not appear for breakfast or lunch, family members discovered her dead in her bed. Upon learning about the woman`s death, Notarnicola`s mother took one Tylenol capsule from the same bottle. She suffered no ill-effects.
It was not until Monday that toxicologists uncovered cyanide as the cause of death. O`Rourke said they were tipped off because the woman`s tissue had the smell of bitter almonds, which is a tell-tale sign of cyanide.
County Medical Examiner Millard Hyland said investigators found that the ingested capsule consisted of 60 percent potassium cyanide--the same form of cyanide used in the Chicago killings--and the rest inert minerals such as silver. Examinations of the remaining 21 capsules in the bottle revealed that three others also were filled with cyanide.
Hyland said potassium cyanide is a difficult substance to purchase. He said it is used in photography and the manufacture of tools and dyes.
Examination by the FDA of other Tylenol bottles in the A&P where the suspect bottle was purchased turned up no evidence of cyanide, Curran said.
''We have not found any additional capsules contaminated by anything at this point,'' she said.
The suspect bottle was sent to the FBI in Washington where a spokesman, Lane Bonner, also said the tampering appeared to be limited to Yonkers.
Yonkers Deputy Police Chief Owen McClain said there are no suspects. ''We have no reason to suspect anyone,'' he said. ''We are actively investigating every possibility.''
Following the Chicago killings, James Lewis was convicted of attempted extortion for trying to extort $10 million from Johnson & Johnson. He is serving a 10-year prison term.
Illinois officials have offered to help the New York investigators, but so far have been rebuffed. ''There is a lack of similarities in that we have not received any extortion threats,'' McClain said.