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THIS DAY IN HISTORY (TDIH)
APR-30 <<<< APR <<<< MAY-01 >>>> MAY-02
LOCATION:
Chicago, IL USA
WHAT HAPPENED:
Louisa, the wife of Adolph Louis Luetgert (owner of a Chicago factory on
the corner of Hermitage and Diversey), was last seen alive today in 1897.
Her brother Dietrich noticed she was missing on May 4th. After a few days of fruitless inquiries, he reported her missing to the police. They investigated and eventually charged Luetgart with murder.
After receiving an e-mail from the alleged great grandson of Adolph Luetgert who complained about the accuracy of the original stories that were recounted here about his great grandfather.
One of the stories was that Luetgert had stabbed his wife, ground her body up using a sausage grinder, and then made sausage with it.
Another one was that Luetgert had died in prison in 1911.
After a thorough investigation, it was found that there was little or no truth to either of those two stories except that he had been convicted of his wife's murder and had died in prison. The following are the only proven facts of the case:
The prosecution's theory was that after killing his wife, he had dissolved her body down into soap by using an excoriating brew made in a sausage vat using 325 pounds of a caustic potash. The evidence against him was circumstantial at best and it had never really been proven absolutely that he had actually murdered his wife or that she was even really dead.
Eventually though, he was convicted of her murder (by a second jury) on February 9, 1898.
While serving his sentence in Joliet and before he had even had a chance to truly prove his innocence, Luetgert died from fatty degeneration of the heart on July 27, 1899.
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LAST UPDATED: December 8, 2011