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Caught in the library

Federal agents apprehended a major fugitive last week in connection with the Tylenol-tampering case that claimed seven lives in the Chicago area in September and October, but seemed no closer to finding the actual killer or killers.

James W. Lewis, 36, sought on charges of extortion and unlawful flight in the case, was picked up at the mid-Manhattan branch of the New York City Public Library. Librarian Donald Alexis spotted the suspect when the bespectacled Lewis, wearing blue jeans, walked by the librarian's fourth-floor reference desk. "I just glanced up at him," Alexis said, "and in a flash, something seemed familiar." Alexis then rechecked the man's features against those on an FBI poster tacked up in the staff room. When federal agents arrived, the fugitive was at a table quietly copying names and addresses of newspapers from a reference book. The agents surrounded Lewis, who was unarmed, handcuffed him and took him to New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was held on $5 million bond.

Lewis and his wife LeAnn, 35, had eluded a citywide hunt for two months. Using the alias Robert Richardson, Lewis allegedly sent a handwritten note to Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, demanding $1 million "if you want to stop the killing." By the time his name had surfaced as a suspect in the actual Tylenol poisonings, the Lewises had fled Chicago and were hiding in a New York City hotel room. From there, Lewis mailed letters to the Chicago Tribune to deny any connection to the killings. Investigators, hoping that Lewis was regularly scanning the Tribune to see if his letters were being published, staked out Manhattan's out-of-town newsstands. Then they blanketed city libraries that subscribed to the newspaper with posters like the one seen by Librarian Alexis.

One day after her husband's arrest, LeAnn Lewis surrendered to authorities in Chicago. She was held on $5 million bond after U.S. Attorney Dan Webb alleged that she helped her husband send a mid-October death threat to President Reagan. The letter, allegedly in James Lewis' handwriting, criticized Reagan's tax policies and threatened an attack on the White House with radio-controlled model airplanes somehow designed to confuse Secret Service radio communications. Said a federal investigator: "You could tell it was written by someone whose thoughts were muddled." Like the original extortion note, the letter was stamped with a postage meter to which LeAnn Lewis had access.

Despite Lewis' arrest and his alleged connection to the Tylenol extortion, police admitted they had no evidence to prove that he did more than piggyback on the notoriety of the deaths. Says Chicago Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek: "It appears unlikely Lewis will ever be linked to the seven murders."