For more than four decades, he was known simply as the “unknown wanderer.”
A well-dressed man who walked into Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise in December of 1982 and died there after ingesting cyanide. He had no identification.
But he did have $1,900 in cash, nearly 30 keys and a type-written note signed with a name that turned out not to be his. The mystery of who he was lasted so long, it even made it onto the “Unsolved Mysteries” television program back in 1990.
Now, 44 years later, Ada County investigators say they finally know his name. He was Doctor Mathew Francis Betkouski, a chemist who had lived and worked around the country. And solving that mystery has opened the door to a much bigger one.
Investigators say Betkouski may have a connection to the infamous 1982 Tylenol murders, when seven people in the Chicago area died after taking capsules laced with cyanide. That case has never been solved.
And to be clear, authorities have not named Betkouski as the Tylenol Killer. But what Ada County investigators found while trying to figure out who the unknown wanderer really was has been compelling enough that they've now turned their evidence over to investigators in Chicago.
Boise State Public Radio newsroom assistant Jaxon Holmes has been digging into this story and she joined Idaho Matters to tell us more.
