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Alchemy of Bones: Chicago’s Luetgert Murder Case of 1897

Amazon.com Price:  $17.96 (as of 06/05/2019 11:58 PST- Details)

Description

On May 1, 1897, Louise Luetgert disappeared. Even if no body was once found, Chicago police arrested her husband, Adolph, the owner of a big sausage factory, and charged him with her murder. The eyes of the world were still on Chicago following the success of the World’s Columbian Exposition, and the Luetgert case, with its missing victim, once-prosperous suspect, and all manner of gruesome theories in regards to the disposal of the corpse, turned into some of the first media-fueled celebrity trials in American history.Newspapers fought one some other for scoops, people across the country claimed to have seen the missing woman alive, and each and every new clue led to fresh rounds of speculation about the crime. Meanwhile, sausage sales plummeted nationwide as rumors circulated that Luetgert had destroyed his wife’s body in one in all his factory’s meat grinders.In this narrative history of the Luetgert case, Robert Loerzel brings 1890s Chicago vividly back to life. He examines not only the trial itself but also the police department and forensic specialists investigating the case, the reporters scrambling for details, and the wider society who followed their stories so voraciously.Weaving in ordinary-but-true subplots involving hypnotists, palmreaders, English con-artists, bullied witnesses, and insane-asylum body-snatchers, Alchemy of Bones is more than just a true crime narrative; this can be a grand, sprawling portrait of a city–and a nation–getting an early taste of the dark, chaotic twentieth century.

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