Soap production uses alkali and fats.
A meat factory would have access to grease.
Indeed, witnesses for the defense could point to tallow, grease and other material that had been prepared for this supposed experiment.
But investigators later asked a much darker question.
What happens if a human body is placed into boiling caustic potash?
The answer would become central to the prosecution.
Soft tissue can be broken down.
Fat reacts.
Flesh degrades.
With sufficient concentration, heat and time, the structure of a body can be dramatically destroyed.
Bones can be damaged.
Small bones may disappear or become fragile.
Teeth and dense fragments may survive longer.
Metal jewelry will survive much better than flesh.
Which meant that if someone wanted to erase a corpse in an industrial environment, a hot vat of concentrated alkali was terrifyingly suitable.
The Factory at Night
Picture the building.
Most of the factory is quiet.
Production lines that once handled huge quantities of meat are inactive.
The workers have gone.
The basement machinery sits in darkness broken by industrial light.
Steam moves through pipes.
A vat heats.
A powerful chemical solution begins to boil.
Luetgert remains nearby.
One employee would later say the mixture boiled over, spreading greasy material onto the floor.
The prosecution's story was simple and horrifying.
Louisa had entered the factory.
She was killed.
Her body was placed inside the vat.
Hundreds of pounds of caustic potash attacked the remains through the night.
By morning, little recognizable was left.
The liquid was emptied or diluted.
Bones and clothing that survived were burned or discarded.
Workers were later told to clean the basement.
And Adolph returned home with a story.
His wife had left him.
The question was whether a jury could be persuaded to believe that story of destruction when no one had actually watched Louisa enter the vat.
Sunday Morning
By the next day, members of the household understood that Louisa was gone.
Adolph did not behave the way her relatives expected.
He did not organize a frantic search.
He did not immediately run to police.
That would become damaging partly because of a comparison that newspapers loved.
Months earlier, when one of Luetgert's large dogs disappeared, he had reportedly gone quickly to police for help.
Now his wife was missing.
He showed less urgency.
When relatives eventually asked where Louisa was, Luetgert gave vague explanations.
She had left.
Maybe she had gone away.
Perhaps she had abandoned the family.
One version had her leaving with another man.
There was an obvious possibility.
Louisa could have left voluntarily.
Married people walk away from unhappy homes.
She had reasons to be unhappy.
If that were what happened, Adolph's lack of panic might be understandable.
But the family saw another problem.
Louisa had children.
She had relatives.
She had personal possessions.
Could she really vanish without contacting anyone?
Days passed.
No letter.
No confirmed sighting.
No message.
No money trail.
Nothing.
Her brother Diedrich Bicknese became suspicious.
And unlike Adolph, he went to police.
The First Search
At first, police did not immediately treat Adolph as a murderer.
Louisa might have left.
She might have harmed herself.
Chicago contained rivers, vacant land, industrial pits and enormous stretches of undeveloped or semi-developed territory.
Officers searched.
The Chicago River was examined.
Prairies and nearby areas were checked.
Investigators looked toward relatives and possible destinations.
Nothing.
Then detectives began hearing stories about the marriage.
Adolph's anger.
The factory.
The strange activity on May 1.
The boiling vat.
His employees.
His remarks.
Slowly the search changed direction.
Instead of asking:
Where did Louisa go?
They began asking:
What happened inside the factory?
May 15
The case turned when night watchman Frank Bialk told police about the vat.
That gave investigators a specific location.
The factory had already been searched to some extent.
Now they returned with an entirely different purpose.
They focused on the basement.
The middle vat.
Even after cleaning, liquid and residue remained.
The material was foul.
Reddish-brown.
Greasy.
Detectives drained and searched it.
Then came the ring.
A gold ring.
Another.
A wedding band with initials associated with Louisa.
Family members identified jewelry as hers.
That changed everything.
A missing woman's ring inside the industrial vat her husband had been operating on the night she disappeared was not easily explained away.
Then detectives found bone.
Tiny pieces.
Fragments.
Some associated with the vat.
Others recovered from nearby material, ashes or factory debris.
A false tooth.
A hairpin.
A corset stay.
Scraps of fabric.
The factory had begun giving police the outlines of a missing body.
Two Rings
The rings became some of the strongest evidence because they were personal.
A bone fragment can be disputed.
Human?
Pig?
Cow?
Old?
Recent?
But a wedding ring belongs to someone.
The prosecution argued that one of the bands had been given to Louisa by Adolph himself.
If Louisa had voluntarily run away, why was her ring at the bottom of the vat?
The defense had to attack identification.
Perhaps the ring was not uniquely hers.
Perhaps jewelry had been planted.
Perhaps it had entered the vat earlier.
Perhaps factory debris became mixed together.
The trial would eventually turn almost every object into an argument.
Nothing remained simple.
Even a wedding ring needed witnesses.
The Bone Problem
Chicago was the meat-processing capital of America.
Animal bone inside a sausage factory should surprise no one.
That gave the defense an obvious response.
Of course police found bone.
This is a meat plant.
Pigs, cattle and other animals passed through industrial processing constantly.
How could anyone take tiny fragments from a filthy factory basement and confidently say they came from a woman?
In 1897, forensic anthropology barely existed as a recognized courtroom discipline.
There was no DNA.
No genetic profile.
No CT reconstruction.
No modern histological database.
The prosecution had to rely on anatomy.
Shape.
Density.
Comparative collections.
And experts willing to place their reputations before a jury.
One of those experts became historically important.
George Amos Dorsey.
George Dorsey
Dorsey worked at Chicago's Field Columbian Museum.