Boise’s Unknown Wanderer Identified, Tylenol Link Unconfirmed

Ada County investigators identified Boise’s “Unknown Wanderer” as Mathew Francis Betkowski and said evidence uncovered during the case review raises a possible connection to the unsolved 1982 Chicago-area Tylenol poisonings. Authorities have not named Betkowski a suspect and said they cannot place him in Chicago during the final week of September 1982, when the poisonings occurred. Betkowski was the unidentified man found dead from cyanide poisoning beneath a pew at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise on December 4, 1982. Investigators said a key carried by the man led them to a Jacksonville, Florida, address. They traced property records and located his surviving brother, then compared the brother’s DNA with evidence from the case. Ada County officials said the comparison confirmed the man’s identity. Detective Tim Cooper reopened the case in 2019. In examining Betkowski’s history and belongings kept by his family, investigators found a Chicago map, photographs taken in the Chicago area and a bottle containing sodium cyanide, according to their account. The cyanide was not the potassium cyanide used in the Tylenol poisonings.