The Sausage Vat Murder: How Chicago’s Sausage King Dissolved His Wife
In May 1897, Louisa Luetgert walked into her husband’s shuttered sausage factory on Chicago’s North Side and was never seen again. Her husband, Adolph Luetgert—the self-proclaimed Sausage King—told their children she had gone to visit her sister. He never reported her missing.
Days later, police drained a basement vat filled with a thick, putrid, reddish slime. At the bottom they found two gold rings. One was engraved L.L.
What followed became one of the most sensational murder cases of the 19th century: a missing body, a boiling cauldron of caustic potash, bone fragments, a national media…
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