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The evening of May 2, 1999, was just another Missouri Sunday. In one small town 70 miles south of St. Louis, most people were preparing for the start of another work week.
As darkness fell, Gregory Pelak made his way to the Seaton-Windham factory. This factory remains the area's largest employer. As an employee with eighteen years of service, Pelak knew the place very well. Obviously, he had paid close attention to the plant's security details.
Sometime around ten, Pelak was able to enter the building unnoticed and place some kind of drugs into the coffee of the night watchmen. When they fell asleep, he worked quickly.
Pelak added a chemical compound to one of the ingredients which would make up the company's Shine toothpaste. To draw attention away from what he had done, Pelak went over to the laboratory to randomly demolish some equipment and scrawl slogans denouncing testing on animals on the walls. He was gone before the watchmen recovered.
This led Seaton-Windham to assume they had been attacked by misguided animal rights terrorists. After all, the company did not do animal testing. Pelak no doubt intended to lull the company into a false sense of security. The Monday morning shift churned out their usual quota of Shine toothpaste. The product was packaged and shipped across many regions of the U.S. and Canada. Orders were larger than usual because of a promotion for the product.
Within a few weeks, the compound made its deadly impact. Thirty-seven people were killed by immediate contact with the toothpaste. Others were hit with severe abdominal pains within seven days of using the product. All of these people were to experience permanent damage to their reproductive systems.
Still others appeared not to be affected at all. Medical examination found no ill effects in these seemingly lucky people.
The seemingly random effects of the compound upon people sharing the same tube of toothpaste made for some tragic stories. More than one family saw some members seemingly unaffected while loved ones became sterile, died, or worse. If one wonders what could be worse than death, then one hasn't seen any of the more horrifying transfigurations suffered by some victims.
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