Boise police have identified the “Unknown Wanderer,” a man found dead in a church in 1982, and say his life story now carries a striking possible link to the still-unsolved Chicago Tylenol murders. The man was Dr. Matthew Francis Betkouski, and investigators are sharing his case with Chicago police.
Sheriff Matt Clifford of Ada County made the announcement Wednesday, revealing the identity of the man found dead inside Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Dec. 4, 1982. He had been discovered without any name or identification. Detectives spent years working the case until they finally found a break in 2019.
The man found dead in the church
The man wore a Seiko watch on his wrist, a leather belt with a particular buckle, a bolo tie fashioned from turquoise and silver, and two keyrings holding nearly 30 keys altogether. In his possession he had an envelope containing $1,900 dollars in $100 bills, a typed note bearing the signature of William L. Toomey (which police established to be a false name), and a map of Chicago drawn by hand.
There was no money left inside his wallet, yet sweat stains marked where cards had once rested. His fingernails were neatly groomed, his hair colored and arranged with care, and his trousers seemed either untouched by wear or recently ironed. The police noted he possessed a rich, uniform tan, the sort that develops from residing in a warm climate, and he did not seem to have been dwelling among the homeless.
After many years of service, Detective Frank Richardson retired from the case. Then, Detective Tim Cooper, who had served for 24 years, came back to it, opening it up again in 2019.
The key that cracked the case
The nearly 30 keys the wanderer carried were counted by Cooper, and among them was one bearing a marking that pointed to a hardware store in Jacksonville, Florida.
That same key bore an etching which Cooper identified as a mark that had previously been misnamed, and which he believed was created using a sharp instrument. His examination of the marking and etching pointed him toward a street in Jacksonville known as Mills Court.
The late 1970s and 1980s brought him the property deeds, and among them he found one belonging to a man said to be dead since 1989. Cooper located his only living relative, a brother residing in Los Angeles, who confirmed his brother resided in Jacksonville until he disappeared in 1982, and was then pronounced dead in absentia years afterward.
The investigators matched the brother’s DNA to the DNA found in the wallet, confirming that the two men shared a father. Cooper identified the Unknown Wanderer as Dr. Matthew Francis Betkouski.
Betkouski’s troubled past
The Betkouski family was well known in Los Angeles. The grandfather held the office of president of the Los Angeles City Council and occasionally stepped in as interim mayor. His father worked as a high-ranking official with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Cooper said the man developed an early interest in chemistry and explosives, along with a lifelong battle against mental illness. According to Cooper, a serious head wound suffered in 1974 made his mental health problems worse and led directly to “some of his problems to manifest in more concerning ways than they had before,”.
Cooper said Betkouski relocated to Jacksonville in 1975 to take a job at a flavors and fragrances company. According to coworkers, he was reported to management for discussing how to commit the perfect crime using poisons, as well as for talking about suicide.
Investigators said Betkouski’s paranoia became more obvious during that period, with coworkers occasionally spotting him speaking to himself. He went back to Los Angeles for two months of both inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment in 1978. After returning to Florida, he lost his Jacksonville jobs.
After his mother died in 1979, Betkouski spent more than a month in psychiatric treatment at a Florida state hospital, and likely at other places in the state, investigators said.
The Lockheed job and the experiments
Lockheed brought Betkouski on board at its test facility in White Sands, New Mexico in late 1979. Other researchers who worked with him there said he spoke often about how poison could be slipped into capsules of over-the-counter medicine.
Investigators say Lockheed fired Betkouski in March 1982 following a dispute at a nearby pharmacy. According to the allegations, he attempted to obtain pills or capsules “for an experiment.”. Once police arrived on the scene, they discovered that he had been carrying out experiments in his home garden.
The connection to Chicago
In 2021, after Betkouski’s brother died, his remaining relatives allowed Idaho police to go to Los Angeles where they found personal items belonging to Betkouski his brother had kept in his childhood bedroom.
The recovered items included photos, letters and a hand-drawn map of Chicago that police believe dates back to the 1970s. A small bottle of cyanide with a handwritten label was among the other objects found.
The bottle contained sodium cyanide.
Timeline of key events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Dec. 4, 1982 | Man found dead in Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise |
| 1982 | Lockheed fires Betkouski after altercation at local pharmacy |
| 1989 | Betkouski’s Jacksonville property owner reported dead |
| 2019 | Tim Cooper reopens the case |
| 2021 | Idaho police visit Los Angeles to collect Betkouski’s brother’s effects |
What comes next
The investigation remains unresolved. No official has identified Betkouski as a person of interest, and there is no indication he was in Chicago during the time in question.
The information is now available to the Chicago police, and both departments are weighing the connection. Betkouski’s work history — time at a flavors and fragrances company, talk of poisoning over-the-counter medicine, and tests carried out in his home garden — has raised questions about his grasp of how the Chicago Tylenol murders were carried out.
There is no answer yet about whether Betkouski is connected to the Chicago Tylenol killings. The DNA match, the cyanide container, the map of Chicago, and the timing all point toward the same conclusion, but the inquiry has not reached its end.
The name of Boise’s “Unknown Wanderer” has now been revealed, though it is still unknown whether that name will produce any answers regarding the Chicago murders.
See the video the story is built around at CBS News.
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