Cyanide-Laced Soup Case Called Random Poisoning : First Packaged Food Tainting Suspected

A New Jersey man who died earlier this week after eating cyanide-laced Lipton Cup-A-Soup appears to be the first victim of random tampering with packaged food, authorities said Thursday.

Louis Denber, a 27-year-old RCA technician, died Monday, roughly four hours after tasting a small amount of the soup, which had been purchased several days earlier by his mother, Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell said.

While Denber reportedly took only a few sips of the soup, his system contained enough cyanide “to kill a horse,” Asbell said.

Initial indications are that Denber was a random victim, Asbell and other investigators said. Tests Wednesday on 2,300 packets of the soup taken from the store where it was sold showed no further evidence of poison.

Accepts Soup Returns

Thomas J. Lipton Inc., based in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., announced that it would remove all flavors of the product from store shelves in the county and would accept returns of the soup from customers in any state. Denber’s box was part of a lot numbered 6-C-13-GGF.

The Food and Drug Administration also sent investigators to the Flemington, N.J., factory where the soup was made, said Matthew Lewis, district director of the agency’s Newark office. However, the agency failed to find cyanide on the premises or a “reasonable place on the (assembly) line where it could have been introduced.”

Investigation Moves On

As a result, he said, “the focus (of the investigation) is now moving elsewhere.”

The poisoning, while believed to be the first of packaged food, follows a pattern of consumer-product tampering that has claimed 11 lives since 1982. The other cases have involved over-the-counter medicines.

In related cases, anonymous callers last July claimed to have added cyanide to sugar-free Jell-O gelatin in Chicago and Detroit and Slice soda in New York, but no evidence of contamination was found. A man was subsequently arrested in the Jell-O case and convicted on charges of communicating false information that a consumer product had been tainted.

Most Common Targets

Tampering and threats of tampering could lead to calls for new methods of packaging, similar to the safeguards that were adopted for over-the-counter drugs after seven Chicago-area residents died from taking poisoned Tylenol in 1982. Even with those changes, the wave of tampering cases has continued, and several drug companies have discontinued their lines of capsules, which have been the most common targets.

Lipton spokesman Howard James noted: “You have to recognize at the outset that there is no such thing as a tamper-proof product. You have to make it tamper evident.”

He pointed out that the soup package had shown clear signs of tampering, including punctures in the foil packets containing the powdered mix and possible evidence that the outer box had been penetrated.

‘Signs Were Obvious’

“The signs were obvious,” agreed Asbell, who added that the victim complained the soup had “tasted funny” and had an unusual appearance. Denber, who had mixed the soup himself, went into convulsions after tasting it, Asbell said.

In a tragic note of irony, investigators said Denber’s mother had purchased the soup because he was on a liquid diet to treat a digestive ailment.

James said that the company had received no threats and first learned of Denber’s death Wednesday, when it was contacted by investigators.