Authors: Scott Bartz
Lane’s emails to Lewis paint a picture of the true objective of his “collaboration” with Lewis. Those emails indicate that Lane had attempted to manipulate Lewis into writing a novel that could then
be used by prosecutors at the State’s Attorney Office in DuPage County to get an indictment against Lewis for the Tylenol murders. This strategy, as the case of John Orr reveals, was not a new one for the FBI.
In 1991, John Orr, a former captain and fire investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in southern California, was arrested and charged with starting several fires in California. The basis for the case against Orr was the fictional novel he had written,
Points of Origin
. “The serial arsonist [in the book] is the defendant himself,” Assistant U.S. Attorney, Stefan Stein, argued during one hearing.
Orr was convicted in 1992 on three counts of arson. He then appealed his conviction, arguing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion to exclude the
Points of Origin
manuscript. The appellate court rejected Orr’s appeal, but it admitted, “The key to the government’s case was the manuscript of Orr’s unpublished book,
Points of Origin
.”
Orr pled guilty to three additional counts of arson in a plea deal in 1992 that probably would have allowed him to be paroled in 2002. Then, in 1998, Orr was convicted of arson and four counts of first-degree murder for a 1984 hardware store fire. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. Federal ATF Agent, Mike
Matassa
, said that between October 1984 and March 1991 Orr set nearly 2,000 fires – a preposterously high number that would have required Orr to start six fires per week throughout that six and a half year period.
Despite pleading guilty to three arson-counts, Orr has always maintained that he did not start any of the fires. He says he was betrayed by the justice system. Orr, still professing his innocence in 1993, said, “I used the fires I studied as material for my book, not the other way around.
Points of Origin
is a work of fiction.”
It appears that the FBI had hoped to use a work of fiction,
POISON! The Doctor’s Dilemma
, as the centerpiece of a fabricated case against James Lewis. When authorities searched Lewis’s apartment on February 4, 2009, and confiscated his computers and writings, they were not looking for clues from the 1982 Tylenol murders; rather, they were looking for a work of fiction that prosecutors could present to a jury as a confession to the Tylenol murders. An unidentified source told the
Chicago Tribune
that authorities were looking into whether Lewis may have written anything incriminating stored on his computer.
Joe Birkett, the state’s attorney in DuPage County who had gotten the warrant to search Lewis’s home, evidently hoped to find a confession to some heinous crime by the fictional character, Chuck Rivers, in Lewis’s novel. Prosecutors hoped to pawn off any such confession as if it were really the confession of an actual living person, namely James Lewis, to a similarly heinous crime – the Tylenol murders.
Lane encouraged Lewis to write a biography for the character of Chuck Rivers that was amazingly similar to the biography that the press had already written for James Lewis. It also contained elements of the profile that FBI Profiler John Douglas had created in 1982 for the Tylenol killer.
Lane sent an email to Lewis on December 9, 2007, in which he described elements of a storyline he suggested Lewis should incorporate into his novel
.
Lane’s email included
the factors that would lead Chuck Rivers to confess to some horrific crime involving the deaths of 12 people in Chicago:
As promised, here are my notes that I used in our breakfast discussion.
Big business represents the villain or evil
Morally repugnant act, but later in time when taken in full context, is defensible
Chuck’s bifurcated character, self and conscience. Violently at war with each other, yet still best friends
Chuck’s full revelation would be futile and suicidal or would it be liberating and cathartic?
Would Chuck confess to someone worthy?
Paul Snowden, the solid character, is the social and economic opposite of Chuck
Chuck and Paul working together
Sexual tension between man and woman
Love father/son and mother/son
Max Snyder is credible, fair guy, tolerates moonshiners and can be used for letting rumors into the community.
12 died in Chicago so more could be saved and their lives improved
Hope this is helpful, Roy
As Lane and Nichols carried out their con game on Lewis, they also tried to gain his trust. To that end, Lane sent an email to Lewis and Nichols on January 26, 2008, about “building trust” in their relationship. In that email, Lane asked Nichols about the possibility of including Lewis in their confidential conversations about her phantom book:
Sherry,
I reviewed your below message, and believe I understand the issue. I hesitated to respond yesterday because I wanted to reflect overnight on my initial thought on how this could be addressed. The thought remains the same today and is as follows. Dare we include Jim with us on the issue and solution? I think so and have taken the liberty of sending a copy of this email to him. This will also be an excellent opportunity to grade our relationship with him. Is it maturing, evolving, building trust, etc? We’ll see. Enjoy your weekend.
Lane then addressed Lewis regarding the input Lewis had given to Nichols about his reason for writing the extortion letter:
…As you see from Sherry’s email below, she is receiving some push back from her publisher regarding her paragraphs of you in Chapter 1. Just to further frame the issue and review what Sherry read in our last meeting: “…Lewis was a disgruntled opportunist that redirected the FBI investigative energy away from the
truth.
His motive was to humiliate the Continental Bank and instead, spent 13 years in jail for his failed extortion attempt. A big price to pay ....”
You objected to using the word “humiliate” as you stated it was inaccurate. You suggested replacing humiliate with “to expose the tenuous financial condition of the Continental Bank...” The publisher now asks, what evidence is there that proves your motive was in identifying a potential, serious, and critical issue rather than your motive being one of
either extortion
, embarrassment, or humiliation?
The request: If you have any other anecdotal evidence that would support/corroborate your motive already not discussed, please let us know. This could be anything from personal notes, drawings,
letters
to newspapers/government entities, protest meetings attended, or statements you may have made to others about the situation at Continental.
In his comments to Nichols - Lane indicated that Lewis had not yet earned their trust. However, Lane made it clear that Lewis could earn that trust if he acted in a way that pleased them. Lane then gave Lewis the opportunity to do just that by producing documents that might be useful to Lane and Nichols in building a sham case against Lewis.
On December 31, 2007, Lane replied to an email from Lewis about the development of the fictional biography of Chuck Rivers:
…After I read it and had time to think about it, I would suggest that we need to develop more internal conflict within Chuck. Maybe when Chuck was growing up, he did not have much of a social life. He never met a girl who matched or challenged his intellect and thus did not date much. While at Washington University, he met that person, fell in love, and they married shortly after. Over the next several years they had a child. Chuck was a devoted husband and doted on his only child. Chuck became world renown in his efforts to expose environmental hazards/corrupt business practices and in so doing lost the balance between his professional and personal life. When Chuck came home after an extended trip, his wife, who still loved him, told Chuck that she could not take his absences, both physical and mental, any longer and was leaving him. She then took their child, moved away, and over time married again. Chuck struggled to know that the woman he loved had another husband and that his daughter had another father. We can further vet this idea, but I think it sets up well for us to do something with Chuck’s conscience and with his interactions with Jogger [Chuck’s colleague and love interest].
The story that Lane created for Chuck Rivers would have made it very easy to plug in elements of James Lewis’s real life. Similar to Lane’s suggested storyline; Jim and LeAnn had fallen in love while at college, and married shortly after. They had one child. Lewis was a devoted husband, and he doted on his only child. Lewis was away for an extended period of time when he was in prison. These facets of Lewis’s life were all included in the biography that Lane had written for Chuck Rivers.
Lane sent an email to Lewis on March 1, 2008, in which he proposed a storyline that included Chuck’s reconciliation with his family, following his confession to a terrible crime that in Lane’s version of Lewis’s novel had led to the death of “10 adults and 2 children in Chicago alone.” Lane suggested that when taken in context of Chuck’s motivation for carrying out the crime that caused these deaths, his actions would be widely considered justifiable. Lane began the “reconciliation” email by proposing that Chuck Rivers should reunite with his family.
Chuck’s reconciliation
:
Chuck has
a reconciliation
with his conscience, estranged wife, and child, Roy, Alice, and the friends who now respect him in Carl Junction
[Lewis’s hometown]. Although emotionally attached to her, Chuck Rivers loses Jogger when he reconciles with his wife. (As an aside, I sense we can do more with the relationship between Chuck and his father. Maybe there was physical/mental neglect or abuse, and Roy committed this crime to benefit Chuck after experiencing pains of guilt.)
Lane had apparently wanted Lewis to write a dysfunctional relationship between Chuck and his father that the public might speculate was possibly akin to Lewis’s relationship with his own father or stepfather. Lane’s “reconciliation” email continued with a description of Chuck’s “act of reconciliation,” which included his confession to a terrible secret crime:
Act of reconciliation
: Chuck
confesses
to the secret in an open letter to respected journalists and academia. He is contrite in that he acknowledges his and his father’s wrongdoing and is willing to accept the consequences. Chuck is certainly distraught at this point. He next volunteers (penance) that 25% of his annual income will be used to establish scholarships in environmental studies at MIT. He offers to teach one environmental course per year without compensation. Lastly, he
affirms
that he will not participate in this type of wrongdoing again.
In the novel that Lewis actually wrote, Chuck’s father was an accessory to a terrible crime that Chuck only learned about decades later. The novel that Lane wanted Lewis to write would have made Chuck an active participant in that terrible crime. When the FBI searched Lewis’s home in 2009, they had evidently hoped to find an alternate storyline for
Poison!
The Doctor’s Dilemma
that included a guilty Chuck Rivers.
The “penance” that Lane suggested Chuck Rivers should accept for committing some heinous crime was absurdly mild. Chuck would agree to pay 25 percent of his annual income to environmental studies at MIT and voluntarily teach one course per year at MIT, an institution for which Lewis, as Lane knew, has great respect. Lane suggested that the terrible crime in Lewis’s novel should be characterized as a crime committed against “big business” which “represents the villain or evil.” He further suggested that the “morally repugnant act” he wanted Lewis to attribute to Chuck Rivers, when “taken in full context” of the greater good, “is defensible.” The greater good was that this crime would serve to put an end to big business activities, which if not stopped, would cause an irreversible environmental disaster. The disaster in Lewis’s novel occurred in Missouri, but Lane wanted Lewis to place that disaster in Chicago.
According to the logic presented by Lane, the crime he wanted to attribute to Chuck Rivers - the murders of 12 people in Chicago - was a defensible act against an evil corporation, carried out for the greater good of all humanity.
Translating that line of thought to the Tylenol murders: The “morally repugnant act” of poisoning Tylenol capsules, a crime against the “evil” “big business,” i.e. Johnson & Johnson, when “taken in its full context” was “defensible.” At least that was apparently the message Lane wanted to convey to Lewis.