The Sausage King
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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. I am really looking for an update on a story that I know that you've covered. Oh. Kind of a serial killer story. And I know that it is one of the biggest you've ever had to deal with. It's very personal for you.

And you're laughing because... I think I know where you're going. I'm going with your lunatic of a fish. What's going on with your clownfish who seems to have absolutely no problem knocking off everyone around him, including a lobster who I presume is bigger than he is. Yeah.

You know, serial killer clown, yeah, has been a pain in my side for quite some time. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, but, you know, I do have two clownfish in this tank.

Yeah. So serial killer clown has a is paired with another clownfish. So has a little helper that kind of just will follow the dominant one around and do whatever the dominant one does. You know, it's really kind of a fascinating social study. And I think the littler clown, little clown clown.

is the compliant victim of the serial killer clown. Well, you have said that. There's always in pairs, there's always the dominant, and then there's the other person. Okay. So is there a chance that you could get the less dominant of the two to sort of flip? Or can we train him to not be the little...

The little follower that he is? Because this seems like it could get out of control really quickly if there's two of them. Well, you know, there's an interesting biology that happens with clownfish, is that all clownfish are born male, and the dominant clownfish turns female. Oh. So I'm pretty sure my serial killer is a female clownfish. Okay. And the little patsy is the male clownfish. Okay.

And there's no way that I can really do anything to stop their behavior. At least that's what I thought. But I do have an update. You know, first, lobster is good. I added some more rock into my tank and the lobster has found a very secure home in the back of the tank under a very large rock.

which is good for the lobster, but not for me because I will never see this lobster again. I wish he would get some confidence. I mean, can a lobster not change? Is this just his personality?

This is a reef lobster, and they are very shy. They typically want to stay in very secure, dark areas. And with what I saw, when the lobster was exposed, how fast the clownfish could attack, the lobster doesn't stand a chance, even with the lobster being a little bit larger than the clownfish.

But I have added two new fish to my tank. One is a fox face, which right now is, you know, he's just kind of neat to look at, has venomous spines. So that's kind of an interesting quirk about this fish. But I also added a blue hippo tang, which now is the largest fish in my tank.

Now, do you know what a blue hippo tang is? I don't even know what the fox face was. You've lost me now. I'll have to post some photos.

But you will immediately recognize the blue hippo tang as Dory. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, now that was good. That was good. Yes. Cultural references. Since I've added this larger tang fish, this blue hippo tang or Dory into the tank, the clownfish has kind of been minding her P's and Q's. Oh. And I also added a bubble tip anemone with the hope that

Because I don't know if you know this, but clownfish and anemones will have a symbiotic relationship. And you'll see it like in the movie with Finding Nemo, where the clownfish will go into this anemone, which is venomous. It has stingers and its tentacles. But clownfish have a protective coating so they can actually use the anemone as sort of protection against other animals that might do them harm.

But so far, my serial killer clown and her partner have not hosted the anemone, meaning they haven't gone into the anemone, which can happen any day or can never happen. You know, I just hope it does just to help.

calm the clownfish down so they have a home versus deciding to go out there in this roving pack of two and causing a disruption to all the other animals in the tank. But right now, having this larger fish in my tank seems to have settled the entire tank. So I'm very happy.

As the world turns. It's like one big soap opera. And for the record, Paul, anytime you say, I don't know if you know this and you're talking about fish, you can just go ahead and assume I don't know it. So you can take that question right out and save yourself some time. I don't know anything about fish, but I find it fascinating. And we have talked about this before. I know it gives you a sense of

piece. My dogs do that for me too, but I could see... I had little water frogs. Did I ever tell you that? No. Yeah, my kids bought me these little cute water frogs. They're black, and I could just watch them forever and ever and ever. They would jump up and down and slide down the tank. They

They always had great expressions on their faces. They didn't last very long, I think like a year maybe, but it was really like almost cathartic for me to watch them. So I'm glad you have something like that. Every investigator needs to have that.

A koi pond or whatever you want. So very good. Something to zone out to, yes. Good. I'm glad that we had a really good update. We're switching gears here from fish to sausage. That's not really a good transition. It's a weird transition, isn't it? Fish to sausage. Is there any sausage that's made out of fish? I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever run across that. Oh, no.

If there is, please don't send it to us. I'm not sure either Paul or I would go for it. Would you go for a fish sausage? Oh, hell no. Sausage-y fish? No, I don't think I would either. No way.

So we are going to travel back in time, which I know we do every week. This is pretty far, 1845. This is going to be in Chicago. And I think we've done one or two Chicagos before. And this is a story that people have heard, but you have not heard it from Paul Holes. So let me warn you up front. I'm going to skim through the biography of

of the victim and the killer because it's really the forensics. There's not going to be a big mystery here. It is, could this person have been convicted in a court of law? Should they have been? What happens? And what the heck is a forensic anthropologist doing on the stand for the first time in the United States? Hmm. I have no idea what case you're talking about. Well, that's the mystery. Let's set the scene.

So the World's Fair was 1900, and people have asked me about H.H. Holmes, to talk about H.H. Holmes, which I'm sure you're familiar with. I know a little bit, but I'm not well-versed on that case or him. The serial killer who was in Chicago during the World's Fair in the 1900s, and I don't want to get into the details, but people do ask me that often.

a lot. But this is three years before, and this is Chicago right in the center of the city. So the main character we have is a guy named Adolf Luegert, and he was born in 1845 in Germany.

And Adolph is someone who is really an entrepreneur. He did a lot of odd jobs, and he moved to Chicago. And in 1872, he gets married. They have a couple of kids together. She dies. He remarries two months later to a woman named Louisa. And Louisa is at the center of the story. She's also German. They have four kids together. So we're talking about six kids in this household, which wouldn't have been unusual in this time period.

Four of them die in infancy. So we are now kind of a smaller family, and they seem to be a good family. Adolph is someone, I have a friend who always talks about people who she's fascinated with who can create something out of nothing, who build a business or start a podcast or, you know, all of this other stuff where it just appears, it's in your head, and then it comes out. That was Adolph.

He was an entrepreneur. He saved up a small fortune and bought a business buying and selling liquor before Prohibition, so nothing illegal about it. He made a profit. And then he gets into the opportunity of selling fine sausages. He learns his trade, and he builds a world-class sausage factory in Chicago.

So he knows how to make money. The sausages are a hit. This is the American dream for an immigrant from Germany and his wife.

He is sort of touted in Chicago newspapers as this, you know, personality who is larger than life, who, you know, has produced millions of pounds of sausage in this huge factory. And they call him kind of the king of Chicago, king of sausages. And that's when he really starts feeling the need to expand. Right.

He's got these Great Danes and people are sort of falling at his feet is the way I read it. He becomes one of the most prolific sausage producers in not just Chicago, but in the United States, except he's

He's doing something with money that is different than what you and I are used to when we talk about these stories. I am used to the family man taking all of his money and spending it on extramarital affairs or gambling or illegal things, right? I mean, then we start thinking this is a really natural victim, somebody who is pilfering his money away from his family, away from his business.

and frittering it away. That would be a very logical story for you and I. No, for sure, because oftentimes is when you have somebody that has met with foul play, you take a look at, well, what does his finances say or her finances say? Where is the money going? Because that can be motive.

And as of now, we know that Adolph is an excellent businessman, but his wife Louisa is really nervous because, of course, you know, any wife would want him to bring home money so they could have a better life. What he's doing is taking all of his money and all of the savings and putting it right back into the factory. So he's putting all of his eggs in one basket, which is not

smart. On his part, you would think, well, let's expand. Let's do even bigger business. He's making lots of money, but he's not saving any of it. And Louisa is saying, this is a huge gamble. What happens if people don't like your sausage anymore? What if there's a scandal? What happens if something fails financially? And he ignores it and starts borrowing huge sums of money to keep this operation going. Business is going great, but there are a couple of things that happen that are

hiccups, one's his fault, one's not, that show kind of the deterioration of him as a businessman. But he's in a tremendous amount of debt. And now I know that means you're alarmed. Anytime we hear about debt and murder together, we're thinking, who's the victim and who's the killer in this?

Who does he owe? Oftentimes in that situation, the person that is owed money will issue threats or, you know, there will be prior instances of violence in order to get the victim to pay.

When that fails, because you think, well, why would you kill somebody who owes you money? You want that money. Well, you kill because now you can take the money or you kill because you want to send a message to other people who owe you that if you don't pay, this will happen to you.

Well, who he owes money to is important, but the string of events that ruins him is not connected to who he's borrowed money from necessarily. Here's the first big thing that I think people now, our audience, can probably relate to. In 1896, things are going really well for Adolph, he thinks. He's taken in all this money, but he's in debt, but he says that my business is doing great. I can pay it back.

Except in 1896, the National Bank of Illinois fails. And this prompts more banks to fail in Chicago. And it creates bank runs and it creates chaos. And we know what has happened when banks fail. It ruins businesses. It

It ruins them. And it ruins Adolph's business, and he freaks out. And in February, several banks have failed, and his business is plummeting, and people want money back. He says, I've got to sell this thing. I've got to get away from this factory. So someone approaches him and says, I'll buy the factory. You know, there was an exchange of some money, and Adolph gets scammed.

So he gets scammed of all of his money and then he has no choice but to shut down the factory. And they've lost everything, everything. By May of 1897, they've lost all of their money because he was scammed when he thought he was going to be able to sell his business to a legitimate person. And he just manages to lose the money.

So this scammer approaches Adolf wanting to buy the business. I would imagine that there was some sort of transaction in which now Adolf is signing over the ownership of the business to this scammer, and there wasn't money coming back

Right. That's it. And now he's lost all of this money. He had turned down other offers and he had thought, I'm going to sell this. And by the time he found out it was a scam and he had somehow lost some money in this transaction, it was too late and he just had to shut down the factory. So the factory stopped producing sausages. Right.

in mid-1897. He lost the business and he never got money for the business. And so, in essence, he had been putting all his money in the business. He's screwed. Yeah, he has nothing. He and his wife, and I'm sure Louisa was very upset. They've lost all of this stuff. On May 1st of 1897, this is just a few months after the bank failure, the scamming. On May 1st of 1897, Louisa goes missing.

So now we know who the victim is. So Louisa is Adolph's wife. Correct. The second wife. Second wife. Got it. And the mother of several of his children. So she goes missing. It is not Adolph who reports her missing. It's her brother. And she is not reported missing for a week. So the brother doesn't even get, you know, any wind on whether or not she is missing for a week. Yeah. Okay. So police want to know about Adolph and about their marriage, their relationship, their

At this point, the police, when they question him, they know that their banks have failed, that his business has been shuttered, that they don't have any money. And then they start asking more questions, which, I mean, you know, quite frankly, sounds like a motive enough for murder to begin with. But they ask more questions about the marriage. They had had...

a lot of financial problems, but the bigger problems was just interpersonal between the two. Adolph sounds like a jerk. He was allegedly physically abusive towards Louisa. He was a philanderer, serial cheater. He had many mistresses, including Louisa's own cousin, who was their housemaid.

And apparently the marriage was so toxic that they aren't around each other the majority of the time. They'll have meals together. And that's it. And Adolph really slept at the office at his factory with his Great Danes, you know.

you know, rather than stay at home with Louisa. So you've got all of this financial turmoil and destruction happening to their money. And then you've got, you know, on the other hand, a bad marriage. It sounds like before all of this went downhill with his finances. Yeah. So Louisa goes missing and husband fails to report her missing. And yeah, the first question I have is, was there any life insurance policy on Louisa that Adolph was a beneficiary of?

I don't see anything about a life insurance policy. No life insurance policy. Of course, because of the financial straits that Adolph is finding himself in at the moment that Louisa goes missing, of course, I'm looking at is there a financial motive in which Adolph can benefit due to Louisa's going missing and then ultimate, I'm assuming, homicide. Yep.

If there isn't that financial aspect, then is this the elimination of a wife that he is in a relationship with and he's not happy with that circumstance? Here's what irritates the police and confuses them is Adolph does not report Louisa missing, which is odd to them because when one of his great Danes ran away earlier this year, he

He rushed over to his neighborhood precinct and said, I need help with this dog. And now he doesn't seem to give a flip about where his wife is. And the police immediately say something's really weird here. No, it's a huge red flag. Now, Adolph has an answer. And it sounds very plausible to me.

He says that Louisa said, nuts to this, you loser of a businessman. You lost all of our money. I told you this was going to happen. I'm out of here. And he says she left.

and abandoned them, she would not be the first woman to do that. And frankly, you know, she didn't take the kids, but if she had taken the kids with her, I would have said, I don't blame her. But she did leave the children behind. So, you know, he has mixed stories. The police also think that this is weird. Sometimes he thinks that she's just abandoned the family on her own. Other times he thinks she ran off with another man.

And sometimes he says, I'm sure she's in Germany. She probably went back home. And there's no way to prove it because 1897. Right. But how many times have we seen even current day in which wife goes missing and the husband comes up with this excuse? She just packed up and left me.

Part of the investigation of these set of circumstances does involve, well, what was the mother's relationship with her children? Because if she was close with her children and she leaves them behind to somebody she doesn't like, who has demonstrated to be abusive, at least to her, that doesn't tally with her just abandoning her kids to pursue maybe a better life for herself. It does happen.

But it's something that I would be looking at going, OK, I'm a little bit not convinced about the husband's story about why Louisa left. If she's leaving the kids behind, if she was really, truly close to her kids. I agree. And we say that all the time. You know, I've read stories where, you know, the police will interview the family and they'll say she'll disappear and we won't hear from her. And then she pops back up and it's weird that we don't hear from her. But she has disappeared, even though she adores her kids.

mental health issues, addiction, all of these different things. So, yeah, I mean, right now we don't know enough about exactly how upset. And also, Paul, if she is being abused...

She might have just said, I have to go. He is so miserable. He's going to kill me. And the kids will probably end up with his mother or my mother or something. Something will be OK with the kids. But there's that self-preservation there. No, for sure. And this is where it's not black and white. I agree. It seems like he killed her. We don't know yet. But what happened to her body? And as we know, you know, you don't want to convict someone. And certainly if this would be a capital case.

If there's no body and someone comes walking through the door, we've had a lot of those cases where people just disappear and never come back up.

So the police search for Louisa. They do not find her. I think they contact her family in Germany. She's not there. They come up empty until they get to the sausage factory. I was just going to go there. No, don't freak out because I don't think I could do this story. Honestly, I mean, I'm pretty squeamish about stuff like this. I'm also vegetarian. So I'm not sure if that were the case, I'm not sure I could go down the story. But there's some pretty weird things happening with this story.

Okay, so police search the building and they find a thick, foul-smelling, reddish scum on the floor near one of the basement vats. And these are vats where the sausage is cured when the factory is in production, but it's not in production. They shouldn't be making anything at this factory because it's been shuttered.

Additionally, there is this slimy, viscous substance that does not seem to be anything that investigators expected to find, even at a meatpacking facility. So don't get too graphic on me because I am squeamish, but thick, foul-smelling, reddish scum, knowing what you know about bodies and knowing that probably Louisa is in this factory in some capacity, what would that be forensically? Yeah.

You know, right now, obviously there isn't a body, but it appears, I'm going to assume that this is something from Louisa's body. And if it's not, you know, when you have a body that decomposes and lays in a location for a period of time, of course there are fluids that will kind of end up being around the body unless it's, you know, super dry and hot for mummification to occur. Right.

But it's almost sounding like considering this is a factory setting and if this is not a situation in which I'm going to try to be tactful, the body is going through the manufacturing process of the sausage making.

Then I start to wonder, has a chemical been applied, such as a lye, an alkaline substance or even an acidic substance? And now you're dealing with some of the residues after this attempt to dispose of the body. I think that's an excellent guess because a nighttime guard comes forward and

He says the night Louisa went missing, Adolph came to him, the guard, and asked him to bring two barrels of potash down to the basement and load them into one of the factory's vats. Have you ever heard of potash before? No.

I have. As have I. It was in one of my stories, and I'll tell you about that in a minute. I believe it is an alkaline substance, and I'm just double-checking that now. Yes. Potassium. Yes. So it has – well, potassium is a primary element here.

But it was used as a fertilizer to decrease the acidity of soils. That means it has a basic – when I say basic, it's a base, as in pH. And so this is where it's alkaline. And alkaline – strong alkaline substances such as, like, sodium hydroxide are very good at –

degrading human tissue, notably the fats and stuff. And so often when you hear about people trying to use chemicals to dispose of a body, they often use these alkaline substances. They put the body in a vat

and let the body sit there, and then the tissues end up dissolving in this alkaline environment. And so this sounds exactly like what I predicted. You're such a smarty. In my book, All That Is Wicked, about Edward Ruloff, Edward murders his wife and child, and he ultimately ended up dumping them into Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. But his initial thought was,

because he was an herbal expert. His initial thought was to buy potash and try to dissolve their bodies. He said he didn't do it because he wasn't comfortable enough with the chemistry of it. And we talked about this a lot. These are the kinds of, just like poison, these are the kinds of things you have to know what you're doing to be able to use them, how much and too much and all of that. And he just chickened out and said, I don't think I can do this. I can't guarantee this is gonna work.

So this seems to be what was left over is this red, nasty stuff. At least from what they found on the floor, they're not done searching yet. Yeah. You know, very rarely, even though this could potentially be a very strong chemical and have a tremendous impact on Louisa's body,

it doesn't completely get rid of the body. You know, there are tissues, there's bone structures that will remain. And so there's going to have to be further disposal attempts and cleanup attempts after the application of this alkaline substance.

So another suspicious thing is that the guard was asked by Adolph to go pick up a medicine for him from a local drugstore. He didn't know what the medicine was, but it was late at night. He was staying at the factory. He had already asked him for this potash. And so the security guard went out and got it for him and brought it back. And that was the end of it. This was the only person on duty on May 1st. So...

Adolph, it seems like, was alone in the factory the night that his wife went missing. The guard did not see the wife, Louisa, but Adolph had access to the factory by himself, which was unusual because there was always somebody there, somebody on duty to protect everything. Adolph was very particular about all of this equipment.

So investigators search the factory, and they really look around everywhere. The initial one was a cursory search, and this was much more in-depth. Ugh, this is gross. I hate all this stuff, but I know it's necessary.

So I have a sketch of the vat that we're about to talk about, but it's a sketch. I know that's not what you want to hear. But they drain the vat that's closest to this red mystery scum, which I'm assuming they think leaked out of this vat, to find out what happened. And they look and it appears to have bone fragments in the vat.

And between the vats and the drains and the nearby ash pile, police find small pieces of, aside from the bone fragments, a metal corset that a woman would wear, a hairpin, scraps of clothing, a fake tooth, as well as two rings. And one had the initials LL, which were Louisa's initials. This is all really good circumstantial evidence, I'm assuming at this point, especially the bone fragments. Oh, yeah. Well...

Yeah, of course. I'm kind of curious to know what bone fragments they had. You have the fake tooth, which potentially could be tied back to Louisa.

you know, these bone fragments, it's almost sounding like, you know, after a period of time with the body in this potash that there may have been a mechanical force applied to the remaining skeletal structure to break it up, to try to, you know, get more of that bony substance to dissolve. And was in the process of getting rid of all that bone when the cops drained the vat, and there it is.

Now, ideally, you would still have significant skeletal remains in which an anthropologist would be able to utilize and be able to identify physical features. And ideally, even if, let's say, back in the late 1800s, something along the lines of, well, we knew Louisa, let's say she broke her leg at one point in life, if that bone remains.

Does it show evidence of that fracture? So by looking at these various physical characteristics and what remains, you increase your confidence. Yes, this is Louisa's body. You know, in the day before, you could use DNA in order to say for sure this is Louisa.

Right. And the problem is, is these really are indeed fragments. And as we get into this trial, because there will be a trial, because the police will very soon arrest Adolf for the murder of his wife, whose body is technically missing. We will have competing experts, which is where the forensic anthropologist comes in, on the origin of these bone fragments. But for right now, you know, the police are

really searching for more evidence. They are now finding all of this stuff and saying, okay, well, this has to be Louisa. But they also learned that Adolph had recently purchased large amounts of the potash, which we talked about, but also of arsenic. They think that he poisoned her and then tried to dissolve her body.

The problem with both of those things is the potash could have been used in his business, and everybody had arsenic. I mean, I know not large amounts, but I just interviewed somebody who talked about the huge amount of rats, particularly, can you imagine, in a sausage factory what that must have been like?

Large amounts of arsenic wouldn't have surprised me one bit. It's dangerous in a sausage factory, but with all of the vermin, the animals, and just everything, that would have been probably the first line of defense in this time period to kill anything that was in the sausage factory. Yeah. Maybe the rats were his secret ingredient to a sausage. Oh, Paul, you can't do that.

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So I think what we're doing is looking for things that a good defense attorney would and did explain away. That these are things that he would have used, and we'll talk about the bones in a minute. Regardless, the police say this guy needs to be arrested, and they do it on May 17th. And he's charged with her murder. The trial begins August.

August 23rd, about three months later, it is, as you can imagine, a huge media circus. I mean, you got to love 19th century newspapers. This is the sausage king and his wife is dead in a factory and there's stuff in the vats. And I wouldn't eat that sausage because the rumor, of course, is that he turned her into sausage.

There's no evidence that happened, but there's a historian named Robert Lorzell who says that for the next couple of years, Chicago butchers had a pretty hard time moving their sausage sales. I wouldn't eat it either. I mean, you know, because that really was a rumor that she was made into sausage. And the police said, believe me, we would have had that injured at trial, and we just don't have any evidence of that. But

I guess that would have been a good way to dispose of a body. I don't know. We're going to have to really talk about the technical part of disposing of a body in a minute. Well, when you consider oftentimes what components are in sausage, it would be a way in order to very effectively get rid of a human body.

and have it distributed and consumed by other people. Why did I pick this case? Okay. I see. Well, that's good. Let's not give any tricks and tips to anybody about...

How to dispose of a body. But he was in a unique position to have all of this equipment that had the ability to hide evidence. Yes. So he goes on trial in August. There are a lot of witnesses on both sides. He has a great attorney. The D.A. is also very skilled.

But really, it's circumstantial evidence at this point because of all the excuses that the defense attorney comes up with. Let's talk about the prosecution first. There's a neighbor who saw smoke rising from the factory when it shouldn't have been rising on the night of May 1st because he's been shut down.

And they think, they think that they heard someone screaming at the scene. And there was another person who believes that they saw Adolph and Louisa enter the factory together that night. The screaming bit, I'm not quite sure about if they're right about her being poisoned. I kind of just figured he gave her something to eat or drink and she was poisoned and that's it. But I also don't know enough about arsenic to know if that would have been a reaction to

someone had if they realized that they were being poisoned. If they're seeing Louisa and Adolph entering the factory, almost like Louisa is just accompanying her husband into his place or former place of work, it almost sounds like she was met with some form of violence inside of the factory versus Louisa

being given a high dose of arsenic. Uh, that's my suspicion. Now, maybe he was giving her some arsenic ahead of time, you know, sort of that chronic dosing, you know, but then she would end up developing, you know, some, some symptoms versus, uh,

a high acute level of arsenic poisoning inside the factory doesn't make sense to me. I would think that in all likelihood, once they're inside the factory, she's being hit on the head, she's being strangled, she's being stabbed, who knows? Mm-hmm.

Okay. The prosecutors have theorized, because of course people want a motive and people want to know what happened. They theorize that Adolph kills Louisa one way or the other, and he decides to dispose her body using the potash solution. But the defense says...

The potash was completely harmless. Adolph says he was using it to create soap to clean the factory so he can unload this stupid, you know, money-sucking factory off his hands. And he needed to clean it because it was pretty disgusting. And besides, the defense says the potash wouldn't dissolve a body anyway. And both sides going to demo this in the most disgusting way possible coming up.

So what do you think about this? I mean, as I said, I think that to me, that seemed like a pretty good explanation for why he would have potash laying around. He was using it to clean the factory. It's a good excuse. Well, you know, this is the typical adversarial arguments that are presented in court is that

The defense is dealing with this evidence. And so now they have to come up with a reason for that evidence that seems plausible to the jury. And here you are in the factory. Yes, potash can be used in order to create a soap. But you still have bone fragments. You still have clothing, leftover clothing items from women's clothing. And you have...

a ring that has Louisa's initials on it. So, you know, this is where you got to explain that too. We'll get to that. First, we have to establish whether or not if we say there are bone fragments and they are human bone fragments in this vat, the big question that the jury wants to know, I'm presuming, is could the amount of potash that he had in the factory actually do that?

Could there be a small woman in that vat? You put the potash on top, and it totally dissolves her with the exception of the little bits of bone fragments. So this is horrific to me. The prosecutor buys a corpse and puts it in a vat. Not in front of the jury, thank goodness, but puts it in a vat just like the one at the sausage factory. He fills it with potash, and they say within two hours, the DA said within two hours, the entire corpse was dissolved in

except for a few of its largest bones. Adolph's lawyer does the same thing. I mean, I guess these are coming from medical schools. And they say, the defense says, that is not at all what happened when we put our potash on our corpse. That is how far these attorneys are going to prove it, because this seems like one of the biggest pieces of circumstantial evidence that

Is this the way the murder of this woman was covered up? And if it wasn't possible, then it didn't happen. And she is in Canada living it up with some man. We now have dueling experts again. So the prosecutors have expert witnesses who testify. The DA's and witnesses say the bone fragments, just fragments in the vat.

do belong to a small woman. One of the experts is an archaeologist named George Dorsey, and he says that the bones, he believes these fragments of bones are parts of a skull, rib, metatarsal bone, and phalanges of the foot.

So Dorsey, it was a big deal. He goes on to get Harvard's first Ph.D. in anthropology. He says this comes from a small woman. These are just fragments, though, Paul. These are not full bones. And the defense expert says, you are so wrong. This is not a human. These come from a—what is sausage made from?

And he broke down pigs all the time. These are pig bones. You're all wrong. Well, first, the prosecution's anthropologists, or you said he was an archaeologist. He was turned anthropologist after this case, it sounds like. Okay. Considering...

His opinion on which these bone fragments, you know, sort of the body origins of these bone fragments, I don't see how he can say these came from a small woman. You know, you typically, when anthropologists are dealing with skeletal remains, the primary skeletal structure that is looked at to determine gender is the pelvis. And now you're looking at an intact pelvis.

Or if you're looking at the skull, sometimes you're seeing what are considered more gracile features of the skull versus robust. Those are two anthropological terms. Males tend to have more robust features, such as more pronounced eyebrow surfaces.

But we see overlap between the genders. Sometimes you can have a female that has robust features, you know, and this is where in the advent of doing DNA testing on skeletal remains has shown sometimes the anthropologists historically have been wrong about gender assignment when they have complete skeletons.

So now we are talking about bone fragments, rib fragment, a fragment of tarsal, you know, from the foot. I don't know how the prosecution's expert could form this opinion. These came from a small female. On the other hand, you know, with the defense anthropologist saying, well, these are

pig. I do believe that there is the possibility by looking microscopically, looking at the bone structure, that an anthropologist might be able to discern the bony structure under the microscope is human versus porcine. But I'm not completely sure about that.

And we don't know what they knew, what these experts... I know that George Dorsey, the archaeologist turned anthropologist, sounds impressive, but I don't know what that would have been like in, you know, 1897. And what they knew or didn't know, all we know is that includes reasonable doubt. It seems reasonable that a pig ended up in this vat. He said that happened. Adolph said it could happen. It's not the end of the world. He never explained fully...

the clothing and all of that other stuff, but only to say, I didn't have anything to do with it. She could have snuck in here and put that stuff in there herself as a way to say, screw you, you know, Adolph, I hate you and I'm leaving you. But again, there is enough circumstantial evidence that,

to really make this an interesting case, especially, Paul, because as predicted, what I thought was there are people all over the United States saying they think they've seen Louisa. But when we have, we have a high profile missing persons case, even with a case that is not very high profile, but gets some play in the media.

We always have witnesses come forward. Oh, I saw I saw Susie, you know, and she's over here. And, you know, seeing somebody that maybe is a lookalike, a doppelganger for for that or somebody just coming forward because they just want to have a role in this investigation that's getting some public notoriety. Yeah.

You know, when I take a look at this, you have the security guard who's placing Adolf there asking for the potash. It's very unusual. You have a witness that sees Adolf and Luisa going into the factory that night. You have a witness seeing smoke coming up out of the factory.

You know, things are stacking up. So for me, you do have some circumstances. You do have physical evidence. You still have the initials LL on the ring. You have women's clothing, irregardless of the bone fragments. I think we know what's going on here. It's a matter of can you convince 12 people that beyond a reasonable doubt, Louisa was placed in that vat. She was basically dissolved completely.

and Adolph is the one responsible for her homicide. Not in this trial. What? Hung jury. They couldn't do it. The prosecutor couldn't get across what the motive was because he didn't have life insurance on her. It seemed like not a financial motive.

And I'm not sure that they were able to have her become enough of a character for them to realize that maybe he just snapped one night. Maybe he was tired of it. Maybe he wanted to marry a mistress. They just couldn't come up with a motive. And I think that bothered the jury. So it was a hung jury on October 21st.

So trial number two, because you know the DA is not going to let this one go. The sausage king goes on trial again. Same elements, same witnesses. The jury had been able to see the bone fragments before, except this is a quirky thing because, you know, I would love to right now call, as soon as we get off of this Zoom, I would love to call the Chicago Cold Case Squad and say, do you still have those bones? Paul and I, Paul can out of pocket pay for it.

The DNA testing. Kate's spending my money. Paul, as part of his contribution to the show, Paul will pay for DNA testing, except the historian Robert Lorzell, who really did a lot of research on this, says that there was a juror from the first trial who stole the bone fragments. Okay. Talk about a keepsake. I mean, I guess he stole the fragments and

And one of the things that was funny about the second trial is that the prosecutor presents these bone fragments again at the second trial. And the problem is, is that the juror said he spoke up in the media and said, these are fake bones.

because I have the real ones. So automatically, the prosecutor is looked at askance at this point because they have fabricated evidence apparently in the second trial. Well, what's going on with the juror? I mean, this is where DA investigators should be descending on this juror's house with a search warrant to basically repatriate these bone fragments back into people's evidence.

They didn't do that because I think the prosecutor was in a good mood because the trial went very differently this time around. And I don't know if it was exposure to all the media, the jury. On February 9th, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict this time. When Adolph's verdict is read, he reportedly tells, of course he says this, he reportedly tells the court, she'll come back. Then you'll see what fools you have been. But Louisa has never been heard from. Yeah.

And he's in prison and he dies in 1899 of heart trouble. So he had been in prison for two years. Two years and he dies in prison and that's it. For probably murdering his wife, dissolving her in potash, grinding her up, whatever it was, effectively removing the body. He spends two years in prison. Well, he got off light. Yeah. You know, I think this is an example. We see this, you know, we do have no body cases. Right.

And I should say that maybe more clearly, we do have no body cases in which defendants are convicted because the circumstances are so compelling and there's at least enough evidence where there's confidence that.

there has been a homicide. For example, the amount of blood at a scene. You go, that's not somebody with a bleeding nose. This is somebody who has lost so much blood they could not survive it. We don't have a body, but now in this era, we can say, yes, this blood came from this person using DNA. Person's body has been recovered, but a pathologist can come in and say that is enough blood to where that person is with certainty dead.

And then you have circumstances in which defendants have been convicted of that murder. Here, they are lacking the modern forensic technologies in order to prove that this is Louisa's body in this vat or the sludge. If there's a way to show that the sludge contains evidence

Aspects of Louisa, whether it be DNA or tissue components or whatever, you know, the fact that this alkaline substance is present very likely could have killed all the DNA that could have been tested today. Even today, we may not have been able to show through DNA testing that this is Louisa. And thanks to that stinking juror, we don't have any bone fragments to ask for.

Why isn't your having access to that evidence? No idea. I don't know if they allowed them to look at it up close. I mean, I've done...

stories of, you know, brains floating in formaldehyde being passed throughout the jury, but I've never heard of a juror having access. Despite all of that, this has been, you know, something that has been part of the lore of Chicago. The factory, most of it had been torn down, but people had said that they had seen, of course, Louise's ghost walking around the side of the factory. And now

that most of the factory has been demolished, but it was then converted into condominiums, which are, I'm sure, haunted condominiums. What a story. It's terrifying. I mean, even without making horrendous sausage, it's a terrible story. Oh, well, for sure. You know, the idea that there isn't motive. Well, we've talked about before. You don't have to prove motive to prove murder. But it sounds like, well, there was motive.

It's just, could that be proven by the prosecution? Because of the relationship, the abusive relationship, his dalliances on the side, is there something else going on in his life in which that's the reason why he decided that he wanted to get rid of Louisa? And I'm assuming, I mean, were the kids that were, the two kids that were still alive, were any of them Louisa's children? I think it was the kids from the original wife that died. Got it. Yeah. You know, so...

You know, this is, again, now you have these two children who have lost their mother. They've lost their father because of his, you know, whatever selfish reason he had to kill Louisa. You know, it's just, it is horrifying, you know, and to take that type of step. You know, somebody that you loved at one point in time, and now you're watching them being dissolved in a vat. What a horrific way to end this show. Paul, you have to think of something happier to say. Yeah.

I mean, how terrible. I know this was a horrible story, but I do think that the no body stories are, they're fascinating to me. How do you prove, especially in a case where somebody could end up dead, how do you prove that that person is dead?

definitely gone. So we don't execute someone and then Louisa walks through the door two years later. There are these no-body cases in which law enforcement is confident that the victim has been killed and is confident on who is responsible, but they can't prove the Homicide Act. In fact, there is a case where

I was involved with for a show out on the East Coast, I'm not going to name the case, in which this woman's body has never been recovered, but the two suspects, a husband and wife, were convicted of kidnapping because that's what the prosecution could prove. And they didn't pursue the murder charge, but...

I suspect that once this woman's body is found, that these two now convicted offenders will likely be charged with murder and they will be able to move forward and make sure that those two people will never get out of prison.

So there are circumstances in which these no body cases you can't move forward with. But as I mentioned, there are cases in which you can. Is there a chance that with your serial killer, Clownfish, and her little buddy, would this ever be a no body case? They can't do all that, right? Clownfish can't like magically make someone disappear. You'll have evidence if you need it, right? Yeah.

Oh, but they have some accessories to their crime. I have stocked the take with what's called the cleanup crew. These are hermit crabs and snails and cleaner shrimp. Well, the hermit crabs, I've had fish just disappear in this tank. And my suspicion is they either died or

or were killed by the serial killer clownfish, and the hermit crabs have come and completely consumed that fish's body as it laid on the bottom of the tank. That's just the way this ecosystem works. So you have enabled this. You have created this fear in your tank. You've enabled it with cleanup. Sounds like a great place for a clownfish to be, boy. Yeah.

But I also have other good citizens in the tank. So it is truly a social structure, both on the good and the bad that's going on right next to me. Perfect. Just like life. I hope for us and for our listeners that we only encounter the blue dory fish and not the killer clownfish between now and next week. All right. Sounds like a plan. Thank you. Thank you.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.