My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 334 - 2,000 Pounds of Soap

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

This week, Karen tells the story of murderer Adolph Luetgert, Chicago’s “Sausage King” and Georgia covers the mysterious disappearance of Laureen Rahn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook, and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. Hey everybody, before we start the episode today, we want to take a moment to address the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

This decision stripped away the right to have a safe and legal abortion. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what's best for themselves and for their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Learn more by visiting choice.crd.co, that's choice.crd.co.

And if you're able to support others, please consider donating to abortion funds. And thank you to Ariel Nysenblatt, the founder of Earbuds Podcast Collective, for starting this movement of podcasters making this announcement at the top of their podcasts in a time where people really are looking for help, looking for unity, looking to know what to do. This is an amazing movement to show how many there are of us and how important coming together and unifying over this very important topic is. We encourage you to speak up, take care, and spread the word. Hello.

Hello. And welcome. To my favorite murder. That's Georgia Heartstar. That's Karen Kilkariff. And this is the podcast. Where you have less rights than you did last time, the last time you listened, strangely enough.

Does it feel different? Do you feel different? Well, let's just say that, you know, the world is a horrible place. It's hard to have banter at the top of a podcast when shit's all hitting the fan, and I don't recognize the country I grew up in anymore. But I kind of do. It's always been like this. Right.

It's never been a fascist takeover before. I think that's the big twist-a-roo that we've seen it coming, but nobody believed it could be happening. And now it's actually happening. First it happens to women. It already started happening to trans people. It's really, really dark. Yeah.

It's been happening to people of color for the entirety of how we've existed. So here we are. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, I don't really have much at the top. I'm reading a book called, it's called Mother Hunger, How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from the Lost, Nurturance, Protection and Guidance by Kelly McDaniel.

So that's how I'm doing right now. That's how I'm, that's what I'm reading in my summer vacation that we're about to have, you know, some light beach reading. Yeah. Fun stuff at the beach, fun mom baggage at the beach. I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to leave my baggage at the beach. I mean, I think that, you know, that is a, this silver lining is everything else is

so horrifying. It really does put some of that mom baggage into perspective where it's just like, oh, okay, well. Yeah. Have you been on Twitter a lot? No, but I think it's so soon, it's like we all got hit in the back of the head with a frying pan. And everyone is just kind of like, they actually went and did it and it is that feeling.

I was so grateful Ariel, Ness and Blatt got that message together that podcasters can kind of all do to kind of show unity because that's the kind of thing where it's like, and people tell us this a lot of like looking to us at times like this where it's like, every time it gets worse. How do you try to stand up and lead people through such extreme pure insanity? And this idea that like, it can't stay this way. We have to fight back. That idea of like, your company will pay for you to drive out of state.

Like no, no, no. It's not a solution. Stop telling us how to adjust to these laws that are actually, it's an illegitimate Supreme Court. We cannot have laws being passed down by religious fanatics in this country. It's the reason the country was founded. Yeah. I love that there's a big Jewish representation saying this goes against my religion and which

I fucking love because it's so true. It's like, well, if it's fine with, if your religion says no and mine says yes, it's okay in certain circumstances, then why are you more correct? Because you're more corrupt. Yeah. That's basically it. So any opposition that can be used right now, I feel like it's just, it's fair game and it's not going to change, I don't think, but to kind of point out the hypocrisies of

it all is just as important. For sure. Yeah. To reframe it back to, you can, your belief system leads you to not have an abortion. That's completely fine. Fine. That's your life. Yeah.

This idea that people's private lives and the way they have decided to live, they want that for everyone, people shouldn't want that and it's totally unrealistic and it's very bizarre. It's weird behavior. It's so weird to me to think that we're saying that it's none of our fucking business, what other women choose to do and what circumstances they are in that leads them to it. It has nothing to do with you and me and anyone else, especially not fucking Jesus and especially not men, politicians, male politicians who are mentally ill, many of them have terrible

records themselves in terms of how they treat women, how they treat people of color. It's just so overwhelmingly insane and infuriating and beyond belief and it's clearly dark money. There's so many things at play and the media just keeps telling us, well, Starbucks will pay for you to drive out of state, like, no, this will not stand. These laws won't stand there. It goes against the Constitution. All of this is in direct conflict with the rights of us, our inalienable rights. The government doesn't get to tell us what we're doing with our bodies.

That's crazy. Where are the mask people? Where are the mask people? Where are the libertarians? Stand up and be like, hey, you don't want big government like this. Right. Remember? Right.

All right. Well. Well, you know what? We've been through some horrible things going on in this country and this podcast is supposed to be the thing that you turn on to get away from that. And yet, you know, we certainly don't want to be the kind of people that run away from talking about the horrible shit since that's what we do. And that's what we have taught each other how to do over the years.

But this is so beyond that all I can say is there should be a general strike in this country. Women should absolutely remove all everything that they are giving to make this culture work since this culture hates them so much and thinks that they can just take rights away and thinks that they can send women to jail for having a miscarriage. Like what is happening? What is fucking happening? When their most difficult life altering time punish them for being a woman, you're being punished for being born a woman.

It doesn't make sense that these those laws are insane draconian, bizarre, far right policy that has is so minority in its backing. Journal says 80% of Americans support and back abortion rights. This is absolutely minority rule in the craziest, craziest fascist takeover way. Yeah, for sure. So adjust accordingly, start reading some history books, World War II books, no joke, start looking at what other people did when the fascist took over. You're going to need to know.

Yeah. Oh, so yeah, we're taking a couple weeks off, but we have some really great episodes for you that we've recorded, interviews with really incredible women, a really fun episode at the end of that of a movie that we watch with the incredible women from I Saw What You Did. So we're excited about that. We're excited to give you that content and we hope you really like it. Well, yes, exactly.

Like last summer where we went into reruns entirely with the help of some of the exactly right hosts this summer, we just pre-recorded a bunch of really cool, fun interviews. So that'll be coming up next month. And meanwhile, as we take a break from trying to somehow pretend like nothing's happening when really horrible things are happening, we recommend you do the same thing, truly take care of yourself, be careful. It's a very, very strange like reality adjustment that a lot of people are going through. But what's really cool is a lot of people are starting to take action and a lot of people

are unifying and that is the truth. And the LA primaries couldn't have gone better. There's a lot of progressive people that got voted into office. There's a lot of young people that showed up and voted and actually did the thing that everyone bitches about on social media, but at the end of the day is the most important thing, whether it sucks or whether it's, you know, whatever, people are doing that. So like there's definitely things to talk about to remind ourselves it's not all horrible, but there's some horrible shit going on, horrible.

Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. Make sure you're paying attention to your own mental health. Yeah. All right. Well, I think you're first this week, right? Time for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered.

Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly. Why stop with just dinner? Now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. And Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh.

I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since like early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need. So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca

slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candice DeLong and on my new podcast Killer Psyche Daily I share a quick 10 minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths, and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and criminal profiler.

On Killer Psyche Daily I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton serial killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia, and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast Killer Psyche Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today.

Long ago when we were planning these episodes and we knew that this would be the last episode before that we would record, this would for us be the last episode before our vacation. I think Hannah suggested this or Jemma suggested I can't remember who, but it was basically anyone who loves the film Ferris Bueller knows that he calls himself Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago in that movie to get into that restaurant. And the truth is that there was a Sausage King of Chicago. His name was Adolf Lootgert and he killed his wife. And so this is the story of the real Sausage King of Chicago who was also a murderer, Adolf

Lootgert. All right. Are you ready? I'm ready. The sources on this story today. There is a Yale review article by Harold Schechter called The Sausage Vap Murder. There is of course Wikipedia, the Wikipedia page. There's a Chicago Tribune article by Edward Bowman and John O'Brien.

There's a website called grunge.com and there is an article on it by Samantha Sanders. There's a website called Historical Crime Detective and an article by Jason Lucky Morrow. And there's a Huffington Post article by Robert Lorzell. There's a website called Chicagoology that has an article on this and there's a website called Alchemy of Bones, findagrave.com and a website called Chronicling America that has two different articles about it. Adolf Lootgert is born on December 27th, 1845, he was parents Christian and Margretta in the German city of Guterslohe.

He's the fourth child of 16, of a schoolhouse of a family. That's the child of 16, he also was a twin brother. So at this time, basically Germany as we know it does not exist in terms of being one country. The place where Adolf grows up is in the province of Westphalia, it has a population of around 3,000 people. When he's still a baby, there's a terrible famine in Germany. And I don't know if it's this one because this was the 1800s, but did you know that Hansel and Gretel and those stories, the Grim Brothers fairy tale stories, like when

they have kids in the forest wandering around, those are based on true stories of famine in Germany where people, children would be orphaned and lost and then if they got caught, they would be eaten by adults who are starving. Oh my God. I read that recently on some kind of like, did you know, this is what this was based on, because the names Hansel and Gretel were like saying John and Mary, like the most common names of the time. And it was essentially just like, yeah, this was something that happened culturally.

But I think it may have been an earlier famine like in the 1600s, that's what I thought. I remembered from this article. Wow. Yeah. Just like, I'd string it together to some super dark famine stuff. Got out in there. So crops fail, food prices skyrocket around the time the German revolution erupts in 1848. And this basically was what caused the great migration of German people to America, much

like the Irish famine made everybody come, Germany was becoming the kind of place where you had to get out, you had to go find a new place to make your start. So basically in 1860, 14 year old Adolf leaves school to take a job as a tanning apprentice to a man named Ferdinand Nebel. This was very common for young men to go get, if their fathers had a trade or they could get an apprenticeship, they would leave school to go learn their trade and also live with the family of the person that's teaching them their trade. So he basically finishes his apprenticeship when he's 17 and sets off traveling around

Germany, picking up work where he can. In 1865, when he's 19, he travels to London, but he can only get work scrubbing in restaurant kitchens. So he only stays there for six months. And so he decides then to move to New York in 1865. So two of his brothers have already made the journey and settled in both Chicago and Baltimore. So he believes that he too can travel to America and make a better life for himself with $30 in his pocket.

Jesus. Right? So he doesn't stay in New York City. He actually almost immediately goes to Quincy, Illinois, where his brother Henry lives. But when he fails to find work in Quincy, he goes into the city and goes to Chicago. And he finds a job as a tanner at Union Hyde and Leather Company. And he also, of course, gets a second job to make ends meet. So from 1867 to 1872, Adolf continues to work for tanneries and saves $4,000, which

is today's equivalent, $4,000 in 1872, $95,800 in today's money. How? That's so much money for like a young tanner, I would imagine. He's busting ass and he is not fucking around. He's not buying himself new shoes. Right. He is saving every penny. Right.

So he uses this money to start his own business as a wholesale liquor dealer, which is actually kind of smart. He buys property at the corner of A and Dolmack streets in the Nicholsonville neighborhood, which was named after the Nicholson distillery. So he buys and sells liquor from the basement of the building that he buys, and then he lives in the building. So at this point in time, Chicago is the second largest city in the United States. The economy's booming.

The Great Fire just happened the year before. So it's 1871 is when the Great Chicago Fire happened, killed 300 people, leaves 100,000 homeless, destroys 17,000 structures, causes two million in damage. So if you two million in damage, then when 4,000 is 95,000, don't even get me started with math. You love math. So remember the story of when I told of the Great Chicago Fire and all the people were just standing in the lake staring at the city burning?

Yeah. Remember that part? Yeah. Chicago's rebuilding itself, and it's got all the industries. It's got the big hogs. It's got the slaughterhouses. It's got this guy with his liquor. It's all happening.

So on April 13th, 1872, when he's 26 years old at Adolf Mary's, a 23-year-old woman named Caroline Rupka. So his business is doing so well. He moves to Clyburn and Webster Avenues, and he combines the sales with a saloon tavern, and then they live in the building again, rooms above the store. January of 1873, Adolf's new wife Caroline gives birth to their son Max, and then a second son named Arnold a little less than two years later. Sadly, the same year that his brother Arnold is born, Max dies when he's two years old.

Very bad infant mortality back then. November 17th, 1877, 27-year-old Caroline so comes to Perriotonitis, and she dies. She leaves Adolf a single father to a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. Adolf sends his son to live with Caroline's mother while he stays in the building running the store and running his liquor empire. Two months after Caroline's death on January 18th, 1878, 32-year-old Adolf Lukert remarries. Two months. His new bride is a 23-year-old Louisa Bickney's, and he actually, when he proposes, gives Louisa

a 14-carat gold wedding ring that's engraved with her new initials, LL. So Louisa's also from Germany. She is the second youngest of six children, and when she was 17, she and her 15-year-old brother Diedrich sail from Bremen to New York City. They arrive in America on November 12th, 1872. And then Gemma put a note that said, I'm not sure how Louisa makes her way from New York City to Chicago. What I would like to tell you, Gemma, and everybody else, is that I know how, because

that's how my grandmother emigrated to San Francisco. She came in Ellis Island. She and her two sisters, and my grandmother was also 17. She and her two sisters were brought to the Lower East Side and put into a tenement house. And basically, when my grandmother got to the tenement house, their sponsor was like, I'm coming back tomorrow, and you guys were going to put you in some, like they were going to go be maids. The second the guy left, my grandma turned to her two sisters and says, I don't know

about you guys, but I'm getting out of here. And they went down to Grand Central Station, took a train from New York City to Chicago, and then from Chicago to California. That's how they got to San Francisco. So I bet that train to Chicago out of NYC was very popular. Yeah, because it was rough for immigrants. My great-grandparents went to Chicago, too. Did they?

Mm-hmm. And Philadelphia? That's not right. Cleveland. Cleveland. Cleveland. But they came through Ellis Island? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Many, many did. That's the way. Many to escape religious persecution and fanaticism. Definitely mine. And now it's being taken away all over again. And now it only took us about a hundred years to forget how much it sucks.

So basically, Louisa, my guess is she takes that train to Chicago, gets there. She also becomes a domestic servant. She barely speaks English. At some point, she meets Adolf. It's kind of mysterious how they met. They fall in love, get married. And then basically, Louisa knows that she's the wife and she will soon be a mother. She also supports Adolf's commercial ambitions.

She really wants him to succeed. She knows his business is going great, but she also wants him to save money. And she wants him to be very careful, just so they can be as successful as possible. So in the fall of 1879, 33-year-old Adolf sells his liquor business and starts a meat route, making and selling sausages door to door. Can you imagine? You're just like, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock.

Do you need any bacon? Just right there on your doorstep. So and the couple end up having four children and two of them die of cholera because that was the time. It was pretty common back then. So they've moved basically from the city out to a farm in Elgin, Illinois. But Louisa doesn't like being away from the city. And she tells Adolf she wants to go back and she urges him to take steps to basically continue

growing this sausage business. Like she really sees a future in it. So basically what Adolf did was he manufactured summer sausage in the winter. And that basically it's a very, in Europe, it was a popular style of sausage because it doesn't require refrigeration. So the meat is slightly fermented, usually consists of beef and pork. And then you, because it's fermented, it keeps for a long time. So it's really popular.

So Adolf takes his earnings and he builds his own factory, which becomes the AL Lutegard Sausage and Packing Company. He buys a place on North and Sheffield Avidus. So it's basically a commercial property. And then the family home is all built. Like that's how well they're doing. They have a whole compound. And so they move in in 1886.

But by 1891, Louisa has had enough. She cannot live next to the sausage factory anymore. And the smell, and the fermentation smell, especially, fermentation, old sausage, awful, OFFL, not cool. So in the spring of 1891, 45 year old Adolf buys land on House Street. The family moves again. They have another child named Elmer and everything is going well. The business is going really well.

So Adolf purchases property at the Southwest corner of Diversity Parkway and Hermitage Avenue on the Northwest side of Chicago for $141,000. So basically his plan, he buys the spot. He's going to build a five-story brick factory. But Louisa doesn't want him to put that much money into it. He's like, let's just spend it all and let's go for it, we're having a sausage renaissance. And she's just like, don't do it. He also wants to take on borrowed money from investors.

He wants to really go for it. And she's like, diversify. It's basically a thing they fight over all the time. And I think she is so assertive. And he's kind of like, how dare you, it's, hold on, it's the 1880s and I'm a man. How dare you tell me anything? So he forges ahead with his plans. The five-story building is a warehouse.

There's also a grocery store in it, Adolf's office, and then a basement where the actual sausage curing vats are housed. Then there's a smaller building on the site that's the sausage factory. And then the family's three-story home is next to the sausage factory. So it wasn't really planned out very well. And that new compound they move in in 1894. So this is the point where Adolf becomes the sausage king of Chicago. He is known throughout the city.

He actually goes out walking and he's a very imposing presence because it's most of the time he has great deans that he walks. And so people know who he is and he's kind of like this local character. So Adolf and Louisa's fights about money and the running of the business escalate into violence. Adolf is physically abusive to his wife. In the mid 1890s, a 22-year-old cousin of Louisa's named Mary Simmering comes to stay with the couple to work as a servant.

And Adolf starts flirting with Mary, which of course pisses Louisa off. And then there's also a woman who is the saloon owner across the street's wife. And her name is Agatha Tosh, and he's very friendly with her as well. And then there's also a wealthy widow named Christine Felt. Louisa's basically getting it from all sides, hearing that he just is like he can't get enough of these women that are basically in the neighborhood. She's super pissed. She makes it clear that she's unhappy about it, that she doesn't like her husband's

extramarital activities. He starts sleeping in the factory. He's got a room off of his office that he starts sleeping in. And that's also where he entertains these women that he's becoming friends with. They're just friends. Besties. Okay. So to make things worse, the sausage business starts to decline.

Mm-mm. Yeah. In 1896, the country's plunged into an economic depression. So he's basically constantly expanding his business, and then he's borrowing from kind of shady, dangerous people, and he just keeps borrowing money. But when the economy slows down, 50-year-old Adolf finds himself struggling to repay his debts, and his creditors are powerful and dangerous people. So we're thinking, yeah, some mafia types.

So Adolf now knows if he doesn't find a solution that he'll lose his business. So of course, that's even worse. So the marriage isn't going well, then the business isn't going well. And then Louise is coming to him being like, I told you not to invest all this money. I told you. Right. Basically, like you didn't listen to me. So on March 11th, 1897, Adolf buys 50 pounds of arsenic and 375 pounds of potash, which

is a highly caustic, potassium-rich salt, which is similar to lye. They usually use it in making soap and liquefying fat. Yes, exactly. So a month after he makes that purchase on April 24th, Adolf tells a factory employee named Frank Odorski to help him pour the potash into a steam vat with water. So Franks think this is weird. He has never known potash should be used in any sort of sausage making process. But he does as he's told, because he's dealing with the sausage king.

What choice does he have? So on the evening of May 1st, 1897, Adolf tells factory watchman Frank Bielk to bring two barrels of potash to the basement boiler room. Frank watches as Adolf pours the potash into one of the vats and turns on the steam line, boiling the water and the potash mixture. And then that night around 10 o'clock, Adolf sends Frank to the drugstore to get him some medication. And then at 10 o'clock at night in the 1800s, like what is it, 24 hour like a CVS?

Head up from CVS, please. What would it be? Can we just take a moment? I bet you can knock on the door of the pharmacist and be like, Gregory, it's me. It feels like back then everyone lived above their store or shop. That was kind of like the rule. So yeah, you could send someone and just be like, I need something in a blue bottle with a label, a handwritten label on the front of it.

Can you come down here? I just really want to go to a pharmacy from 1897. A grocery would be amazing, a green grocer or a fucking, I would love that. Even those pictures where like the cool, you know, the ladder that rolls down the thing and they go get things off of the top shelf and all that shit, like everything was kind of like woodcut and like perfectly. This is the candy sales area had its own jars and things and it's just beautiful apothecary. That's the thing I want to see.

Apothecary. Yeah. And then you can go and just get a little, just a little bottle of cocaine for yourself just for later when the kids go to bed every morning and have a good time. Not long after Adolf sends Frank to go do his errand, several witnesses see Adolf and his wife, Louisa, who's only about five feet tall, the wife. They enter the factory and they, so like from their house into the factory. Charles Hanks, who's walking past the factory around the same time, hears a noise that he

believes sounds like screaming. When Frank Bealk returns from the errand, he can tell that Adolf is in the boiler room, but the door's locked so he doesn't know who else is in there and he doesn't go inside. No one knows exactly what went on in the boiler room that night, but it ends with Adolf placing his wife's dead and fully clothed body into the vat of potash and water. And that highly alkaline mixture begins to dissolve Louisa's body. Oh my God. So they do know that Adolf went and returned and checked on the vat basically for the next

couple of days and was just constantly checking it. And he actually ends up recruiting some employees from the sausage factory to go help him clean up and dispose of a rancid red colored liquid that was spilling over the side of the vat. So they empty the vat, they scrub it of any evidence of flesh or bone, and then that liquid is dumped into the factory furnace. He thought of a real messy way of doing it. Yes. And also a really public way of doing it.

Public and messy. Cocky, almost. A cocky way of doing it. Yes. And kind of a stupid way of doing it. Yeah. Adolf tells his sons that their mother went to visit her sister and he doesn't know why she hasn't come back.

So clearly not thought through. Right. No plan. His brother, Diedrich, tries to make contact with her, but she's never at home or at the factory or anywhere for that matter. No one else in the family has heard from her either. Diedrich becomes concerned and then suspicious, especially when Adolf is dismissive of his brother-in-law's questions about Louise's whereabouts.

So Diedrich reports his sister is missing on May 8th, 1897. So when the police go to speak with Adolf, he tells them that Louise has run away with another man, but then they search the Leucart home and they notice that Louisa hasn't taken any of her belongings on this trip. That's when Adolf changes his story. He says because of the business's dire financial situation, Louisa has taken her own life. He claims that on the night that she was last seen, he was in the company of his friend Charles Mater, but officers find sales receipts documenting Adolf's purchase of both arsenic

and potash just before the murder. So when they ask him what he uses those chemicals for, he says he has it to make soap to clean the factory, but the amount of potash that he has purchased would have made around 2,000 pounds of salt, which would be too much soap. Very cost prohibitive for actually using that soap to clean. It's too much soap. So police grow increasingly suspicious that Adolf not only knows more than he's saying, but that he's directly involved in his wife's disappearance.

On May 15th, officers search the factory, and that's when they make their way to the boiler room in the basement where they see a large vat. So peering inside, they see remnants of the slimy red foul-smelling potash solution. And when the remaining sludge at the bottom of the vat is drained, police find two rings, one of which is Louise's wedding ring, which is easily identified with the engraved initials of LL. Yeah. So what more do you want?

Come on, dude. Like, he's not even trying. No. And then underneath the vat, they find partially dissolved human teeth, and then they search the drain pipes. That's when they find particles of human bone. They then search the furnace, and they find even more grizzly evidence, along with burned sausages.

There's steel boning that's the kind that's used in women's corsets. Those are found inside the furnace. More human bone fragments are found in the factory yard. So basically, the police now are searching for Charles Mater, who is the only person that can hold up the alibi claim of Adolph's. But they discover that Mater has fled to Europe, a great sign. So investigators then speak to more people who know the couple, the Lutgerts, and Adolph's friends Agatha and Christine, the women he was messing around with.

They both tell police that Adolph told them on numerous occasions that he wishes his wife, Louisa, was dead. So when Adolph's employees and the Watchman Frank tell officers about assisting Adolph in the days leading up to and after the murder, Adolph is arrested on May 17, 1897. He insists he's innocent, and he has no knowledge of where his wife is. On June 6, Adolph is indicted by a grand jury to stand trial for murder, and they refuse bail. So basically, between Adolph's arrest and the beginning of his trial in August of 1897,

the company's sausage sales plummet because just as you said, there's a murder in the building where they make the sausages. So immediately, the rumor mill has it that Louisa's body was in the sausages. Ooh, right. Yeah. Yes. That's how he actually disposed of her, which is horrifying, disgusting, and also you would only need to hear that, even just the slightest suggestion he wouldn't be able to eat that

sausage. No. Definitely not. In my opinion. I challenge you. That rumor actually gets put to bed publicly when it's pointed out that Adolph wasn't manufacturing sausages at that time of year. But as we all know, by that point, it doesn't matter what the truth is.

The trial receives a ton of media attention. Newspaper reporters from all over the country are sent to Chicago to cover the trial. And every day for the first couple months of the proceedings, there are mobs of spectators at the Cook County Courthouse where it's being held, even back in 1897. The biggest hurdle for the prosecution is proving murder in the absence of a body. So aside from the bone fragments, there are no sizable remains belonging to Louisa that are recovered. The prosecution alleges that the potash solution liquefied Louisa's soft tissue and dissolved

most of her bones, but that's difficult to prove. So the state has a novel and unprecedented ace up its sleeve. For the first time in U.S. legal history, the prosecution calls forensic anthropologist George Amos Dorsey from Chicago's Field Colombian Museum as an expert witness. So George Dorsey testifies that the bone fragments found in the furnace include bones from human feet and toes, and the posterior end of a human rib, and the court hears that amongst the bones found in the factory yard are the remains of a human skull. The prosecution goes so far as to conduct an experiment to see what happens to a human

body submerged in a potash solution. People must have been talking about this trial forever because that's pretty wild. They did that test and they dissolved a cadaver in the same vat where Louisa's body was disposed. After the mixture containing the body is boiled for two hours, nothing remains at the end except for some of the larger bones. The prosecution also points to the discovery of what are proved to be Louisa's rings at the end. So that's kind of very damning.

Also that woman, Agatha Toch, who I believe is a saloon owner's wife from across the street, she tells the court that on the night of the murder, she'd seen smoke coming from the factory chimney. At that time, Agatha thinks this is odd, giving that the factory isn't meant to be manufacturing at the end of the fall season. And then the woman Christine Felt gives damning testimony, telling the court that the day of Adolf's arrest, he gives her a four and a half inch pocket knife for safekeeping. The knife, which is rusted and stained, we don't know with what, is passed around the

courtroom. And Adolf admits it's his and he inspects it, running his fingernail along the blade, but he shows no emotion. The prosecution tells the courtroom this is the murder weapon. So the defense argues that on the night Louisa disappeared, she left the house voluntarily. They point to evidence by people from as many as 12 different states who had contacted the police to claim they had seen Louisa Lutgart. One particularly popular story is that she'd fled her violent husband and boarded a ship

back to Europe, but there were no sightings of Louisa outside of the US ever. They were never reported. Adolf's general demeanor during the proceedings is one of a relaxed and confident man who clearly thinks he's going to be acquitted. But October 21st, 1897, the jury comes back and they cannot decide. And so it's a hung jury. In December of 1897, Adolf's second trial begins. And again, the prosecution calls that same forensic anthropologist, George Dorsey, when

Adolf takes the stand, this time around, he's questioned for 18 and a half hours. Jesus. Yeah. Most of his responses are a combination of I don't know or I don't remember. So was part jurors. Yeah. And the funny thing is it's three months later. Right.

It's not like they had to wait five years. It's ridiculous. So on February 9th, 1898, the second jury finally reaches a definitive conclusion. And 52-year-old Adolf Lutgart is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison at Illinois State Penitentiary. His attorney immediately begins working on an appeal, but soon after Adolf is imprisoned, he starts complaining that Louise's ghost is tormenting him. And what's strange is around the same time, the Lutgart's neighbors report seeing, they

think they're seeing Louise's ghost back from the dead in the house, which I think is the fact that both of those things are happening simultaneously or like, ooh, what's going on? Whoopie. 18 months after Adolf's conviction on the morning of July 7th, 1899, the 53-year-old man is found dead in his prison cell. Despite some accounts claiming that Louise haunted her husband until he died, the cause of death is officially recorded as fatty degenerative heart disease.

So in the years following Adolf's conviction in death, the Lutgart family home moves at least once from its original location on Hermitage Avenue. Only one tenant moves into the Lutgart's house after the murder, but they don't stay long. And no one else seems to want to live in the house, probably because the gossip has gotten around that her ghost is haunting it. There's a fire at the sausage factory in June of 1904 that destroys part of the building, but not all of it entirely.

And at this point, the former factory is now occupied by the library bureau. So it still exists today. What? In the late 90s, it was converted into condos, but the sausage factory building remains standing today on the south side of the 1700 block of West Diversey Parkway in Chicago, Illinois. Do you live there? Anyone listening? Tell us about the ghosts.

Are your lights constantly going on and off? And that is a terrible, horrible nightmare story of Adolf Lutgart, the murderous Chicago sausage king. Wow, that's fucked up. All right. Great job. Oh, thank you. I'm moving right along.

I'm going to tell you about the strange disappearance of Loreen Rahn. So the sources I use today are the New Hampshire Department of Justice website, the Doe Network, The Charlie Project, an in-depth case summary written by Rahman Alien on Reddit, and a medium article written by Brenda Thornlow. On April 3, 1966, Loreen Rahn is born in Manchester, New Hampshire. When she's still a baby, her parents divorce. She stays with her mom. She rarely sees her dad.

And by 1980, mom and daughter are living in an apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is right outside of Bedford, and it's been an hour from Boston. Loreen, who's in junior high now, is smart and outgoing. Her aunt said that she's, quote, pleasant and happy all the time. She's kind of a normal young teen. And by junior high, she's on the honor roll. She loves to sing and dance, and she dreams of being an actress someday. But while in junior high, like so many of us, Loreen starts rebelling and spends a lot

of her time hanging out in the neighborhood, which in her neighborhood, it's on the rougher side. She starts smoking weed and drinking. One of Loreen's aunts later says, Loreen is, quote, an angel who hung around with the wrong people for a while, which amen. On April 26, 1980, Loreen's mom, Judith, goes out of town with her boyfriend. He's a professional tennis player, and he has a tournament that day, and Loreen usually goes with them.

But this time, she asks if she can stay at the apartment alone. It's the first night of spring break. She wants to hang out with her friends and have the house to herself, like any 14-year-old would. So Loreen spends the day hanging around the neighborhood, then invites two friends over, and the friends have never been named, but we know they're a 14-year-old girl and a 21-year-old boy. And according to them, they go to Loreen's apartment around 11 o'clock at night, and

they drink beer and wine cooler. And so after they drink for a while, Loreen's girlfriend goes to sleep in Loreen's bed. She gets drunk, and Loreen and the male friends sit on the couch in the living room hanging out. And that's when the male friend says that he thought they think they heard someone in the hallway coming to the apartment door, and Loreen thinking her mom might be coming home early, just like rushes the guy friend out the back door. But actually, her mom doesn't get home until around 1.15.

And as she and her boyfriend walk up to the third floor apartment hallway, they notice that every hallway light is out, so it's completely pitch black. So she figures a fuse burnt out or something. But when she and her boyfriend reach the apartment, they find that the door is unlocked, which is weird because Judith is really careful, you know, her and her daughter are really careful, and they make sure the house is locked all the time. So once inside, Judith goes to look in on Loreen in her room and sees someone in Loreen's bed, and she figures it's her.

But then Judith's boyfriend notices that the apartment's back door has been left wide open, which Loreen would never do. And so Judith double checks on her daughter in the bedroom again and realizes it's Loreen's friend. And the friend says Loreen should be sleeping on the couch, but of course, she's not on the couch. There's only a pillow and blanket there, but there's no sign of Loreen. There's also no sign of struggle, and nothing seems to be missing.

But however, Loreen didn't take clothes or money or any personal items with her, including her brand new favorite shoes, which are in the living room. It's almost like she had taken the shoes off and laid down on the couch with the pillow or something, and something happened. Judith and her boyfriend start searching the neighborhood for Loreen and can't find anything and by around 3.45 a.m., Judith reports her daughter missing. Of course, police ask if Judith and Loreen had had a fight recently. Judith said they had a little disagreement, but that wasn't something Loreen would run

away over. But police cling to that idea, and so in their minds, Loreen's a runaway. She's 14, she's from a, quote, broken home, happens all the time. But Judith says that she and Loreen are best friends or really close, Loreen would never do this. When police speak to the friends who had been with Loreen that night, the mail tells police that when Loreen snuck him out the back door when they thought the mom was coming home, he distinctly remembered her locking the door after he left.

The girl was too drunk to remember much of anything. She's later hypnotized, hoping that she remembers something, but it doesn't work. One of Loreen's neighbors tells police that around the same time that Loreen and her male friend had heard voices, he had also heard voices in the hallway. He said he heard footsteps going towards Loreen's apartment, then everything went silent. And then they find out that all the lights that are out in the hallway, the reason they're out is not a fuse being busted, but someone had lightly unscrewed every light bulb. A week after Loreen disappears, police still think she might be a runaway, although because

of that, those weird little incidents, they're starting to believe something might have happened to her. A bus station employee says he sold a ticket to a girl, looked like Loreen, and he said he dropped her off in Park Square in Boston. But later he sees another updated picture of Loreen and doesn't think it's her. Judith goes to the FBI, but of course they can't do anything about it without an evidence of kidnapping. They do tell Judith that it's possible Loreen has been sold into, quote, white slavery.

And they give Loreen the number of two private investigators who she does hire, but they never find anything of interest. Finally police start to suspect that Loreen didn't actually run away because she doesn't contact anyone. They theorize that she willingly went outside through the back door and planned to return into the apartment, but was met with foul play outside instead. They do find in the neighborhood there's a 35-year-old man who's known to invite teen girls to his apartment and gives them beer.

He's the known owner of child pornography magazines, but they never find any evidence linking him. In November of 1980, Judith looks over her phone bills and notices that she'd been billed for three calls placed in Santa Monica, California, on October 1st. So Judith knows she didn't make these calls, so did someone, you know, wondering, did someone make them from her apartment, but that's not what happened. According to Medium, calls could be charged to your own number by calling the phone company and entering a PIN code, but Judith has no ties to anyone in California, so there isn't

an explanation for who the calls were made by. And she starts theorizing that Loreen had made these calls. So two of the calls were to a motel in Santa Ana, and the third was to a hotline for teens who had questions about sex. So police contact the doctor who runs the hotline out of California, but he says he doesn't know anything about that call or Loreen. So this starts to get really, like, tangled and weird. Judith and her sister also start receiving mysterious phone calls, and when the call

is answered, the person on the other end just doesn't say anything and hangs up, the calls come in around 3.45 a.m., which is the time Loreen was reported missing. After around a year, the calls taper off, however, for a few years, the calls do return around Christmas time, and they finally stop when Judith remarries and moves to Florida and changes her number. But one of Judith's other sisters, Janet, also receives calls. One comes from a young girl asking for Mike, and Janet has a son named Michael, who's Loreen's favorite cousin, and Loreen's the only person who calls him Mike.

So it's very suspicious. But when Mike comes to the phone, the caller's gone. Then in 1985, police look back into the hotline called Judith was billed for, and they speak to the doctor again who runs the hotline, and this is where things get weird and confusing because there isn't a ton known about this. The doctor has changed the story now. He says runaway girls often visited his wife at their house, and he remembers that one of the girls might have been from New Hampshire.

In 1985, the male friend who was there that night with Loreen, the night she disappeared, he takes his own life. He leaves a note saying he, quote, couldn't take it anymore. But he was never a suspect, and Loreen's family wonder if maybe he just knew more and was scared or something like that. I mean, I was going to say in the beginning, it's super weird that a 21-year-old is hanging out with 14-year-old girls. Yeah.

14-year-old girls are babies. That's like just out of junior high. Yeah. There is no reason for those two sets of people to be, quote, unquote, hanging out together. At 14, I hung out and drank with 21-year-olds, and they were looking back, so fucking sketchy. But at the time, but then it was also 1980. Watch that movie. Over the Edge?

Yes. Yes. And it's like, people just hung out together. No, that's, it's true. I don't mean that about that person, but I mean, it's just kind of like, it's not, imagine that today. No. It simply would not be.

Right. Right. It's the wild openness and kind of like, yeah, it would just be, that's the first person I would absolutely check on, which maybe is what he's talking about, of saying he can't take it anymore, is just like, he can't take the suspicion. Right. Totally. I will say that some articles say he's 15, but from what I was able to find the most

of, I've said he was 21. So the next year in 1986, an investigator travels to California and finds the motels where the build calls were placed. According to the officers, the two motels had been on the police's radar in 1980 for a different reason. They were bases for a number of sex trafficking rings at the time. And it turns out that a lot of child pornography was filmed there. And the investigation into the trafficking rings had uncovered that the leader at the

time was a man known as Dr. Z. And he was a child pornographer. Police are never able to find any ties between Dr. Z and the hotline or Lorine. However, police have never ruled out this theory completely. And it's just so ominous. And there's not a ton of information about it, but it's too big of a coincidence, right? Yes. Completely agreed. Also, because that was the time where 800 numbers were starting and the phone, it was

a very strange time where the phone really was a thing that got used so much more. But you're telling me it's a hotline for teenage girls to call and ask questions about sex? Right. That's about the most, like, what in the living hell are you talking about, service I've ever heard of? It's not like they're not calling the nurses station at a local hospital. That's such an inappropriate thing to have a hotline for that it would be very interesting to know what the qualifications of the people on the other end of that.

If it was like, yes, it's us, the women's health center, and it's a bunch of women and retired nurses answering these questions, but it doesn't sound like that. No, no. So besides the hotline, Dr. Z and those California calls, there haven't really been any solid leads. With that said, though, there are some other young women who disappeared in that area around the time Lorine went missing. And they look similar to Lorine, which might not mean anything.

You know, everyone kind of looked the same in the 80s, right? They did. Everyone had feathered hair. Exactly. Parted up the middle. Girls had boys' haircuts. Right. Lots of makeup and, you know, wet and wild lip gloss and stuff.

These cases have never been specifically linked, but it's worth mentioning because there's some coincidences that are, like, again, too big. Or they're red herrings. So on March 22, 1980, 15-year-old Rachel Garden, she buys a few things at a corner store at a market in Newton, which is around 45 minutes from Manchester, where Lorine's from. She then starts walking to a friend's, where she's going to spend the night, and she never makes it, and she's never seen again. So then on June 8, 1980, 25-year-old single mother of two, Denise Denalt, leaves a private

social club in downtown Manchester around 1.30 a.m. And that's where Lorine went missing from. She says she's going to another party, but Denise is never seen again. And then we'll much later find out that her neighbor from literally a couple doors down is none other than suspected serial killer, Terry Rasmussen, who's very likely responsible for the Bearbrook State Park murders, that fucking evil monster. That guy is disgusting. So Terry died in prison in 2010, it's strongly believed that Rasmussen is responsible for

the murders of a woman and then three small children, whose bodies were found in barrels in the woods near Bearbrook State Park in Allenston, New Hampshire, which is close by. So he lived in that fucking neighborhood two blocks from Lorine at that time, like that. And this man is an evil monster. So these women, young girls, young women going missing, there's another coincidence that seems like. Too much of a coincidence. Too much.

Yeah. Today, most investigators who worked the case believe Lorine was murdered the night she went missing or sometime soon after. And one officer says he still thinks that the friends that were at the house that night know what happened to Lorine, but are too afraid to say. And we're too afraid to say anything. If she is still alive today, Lorine would be 55 years old and those phone calls are so odd, aren't they?

Yes. That's another, there's like these weird coincidences that could just be red herrings in this case. But when you said that they were from motels, like, and also you saying the phrase like white slavery or whatever, but that's just an antiquated, very problematic way of basically expressing sex trafficking. Exactly. It's essentially what in the 70s and 80s, people thought was an imaginary thing that

now we know to be sex trafficking, that's very real and happens all the time. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely possible that she was kidnapped that night. And that she was told, if you do this or that, if you call your mother or you do something directly, I'll kill them or some kind of, you know, a threat, one of the many threats that we know that people use to kind of coerce and control people. And then, yeah, so she would just be calling to hear people's voice or, I mean, it's just so sad.

Well, there is one other call that happened. So the mom moved away, so had a different phone number. So a childhood friend of Lorine in 1986, the friend named Roger tells police that a woman had called him. She wasn't around, but Roger's mother answered the phone and the woman said her name was Lori or Lorine. She couldn't remember which. And the woman said she was Roger's ex-girlfriend and Roger had dated Lorine when they were

around 12 years old. So maybe she's just thinking of phone numbers that she had memorized back then because that was all she had access to and just wanted to hear someone's voice. That's a really good point. So sad. Yeah. Lorine's been missing for 41 years. Judith still maintains that her daughter could be alive, and she said that if she could

tell Lorine anything, it would be, quote, please call us. We miss you. We love you. No matter why you left, whatever reason, it doesn't matter. We just want to make sure you're in good health and you're fine. And that is the mysterious disappearance of Lorine Oran, R-E-H-N, if you want to look at that. God, that would be so awful.

Like, you're getting mystery calls from California. Totally. Just nightmarish. That reminds me of the Johnny Gosh case where it's just like these parents are tortured for the rest of their lives, essentially. Right. And it could just be some hang-up call that your phone is randomly ringing, but you want to hold on to that hope, you know?

But man, the light bulbs just slightly being turned. That's so sinister. And it's also so, that's like a recurring thing that happens all the time. That's sinister. Like, the fact that the back door was wide open, like maybe she just went out for a smoke, she didn't have her shoes on, or she didn't have her shoes with her, went out for a cigarette, and this fucking serial killer is living down the street from her. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, who knows? So shady. God, it's weird. I don't feel better. Those two stories, and I don't feel better. What are you talking about? What do you mean?

I mean, I don't know. Sorry, I did. What I should have said is great job. Thank you. Thank you. Very sad story. Yeah. It does, every cold case, I just, I just then have so many wishes of wanting to know the

truth. Me too. So frustrating. It is. So frustrating. I mean, maybe someday we will, you know? Yeah. True.

Hey, look, everybody, we love you, we're with you. Yep. We're in this together. We've got each other's backs, as we always do. We are used to bullshit, and we are used to oppression. I was reading a thing this morning about all of the black women who stood up when the Anita Hill thing was happening, and people were trying to talk about Clarence Thomas and how awful he was, and no one would listen to black women.

Also just take care of yourself, truly, pay attention. If you're like me, and you don't love feeling feelings, be especially attentive to yourself, because you might convince yourself you're fine, and then you're in the grocery store crying because a certain song comes on. If that happens, who gives a shit? No one cares. You get to do what you want. You get to be a little weak.

You get to reach out to your friends, talk to older women that you know. Don't be alone. Don't isolate. Yeah. Communicate, and then participate. Well, we'll be back. We hope you enjoy the July episodes. We are really proud of them, and hopefully when we're back, we'll have some fun time,

good news to talk about, and we could talk about Fire Island and the fun shows we've watched instead of Doom and Gloom. Yeah, exactly. Well, this is absolutely, obviously, a mental health break for us, and it couldn't come at a better time, but along with that, take care of yourselves. Give yourselves a break. Make sure you get a vacation of some kind, if possible, if only in your mind. We love you.

Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.

Our researcher is Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show and Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, did you know that you can listen to my favorite murder early and ad free on Amazon Music?

Download the Amazon Music app today. You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at wanderie.com slash survey.