A second sign came with the dawn, when a screech owl pierced the quiet outside the Cook County Jail. Some people on the street caught sight of the bird beating its wings against the windows of the towering gray courthouse. The owl fell to the ground and they captured it, taking it into a saloon. The Chicago Journal called it the "Bird of Evil Omen."

A thousand men and women fought their way into the elevators and up the three flights of stairs to Judge Richard Tuthill's courtroom, hoping to hear the trial's final words. Only a few hundred made it pastthe blue-coated bailiffs. Some found places to sit on the long oaken benches, but most were content to stand by the windows or on the railings. The crowd included the usual quota of females, the ones the papers derisively labeled "morbid women." Many of the same women who had been coming day after day vied for seats behind the clerk's desk, where they would have the best view. When the trial began in late August 1897, they had worn summer hats with brilliant flowers. Now it was October and autumn's nodding plumes adorned their hats.

At the courtroom door the bailiff Edward Cool stopped a little woman who wore an old straw hat over her gray locks. He inquired what business she had in court.

"I am Mrs. Luetgert," she said.

Her statement caused a brief stir. Someone in the sheriff's office dashed hatless down the stairs to catch a glimpse of the lady who claimed to be Luetgert's missing wife, Louise. The mob struggled to get closer to her, but it quickly became obvious that this was just another hoax.

Now the woman said she was a teacher. One of Judge Tuthill's daughters was in her class, she said, and she had a letter from the judge requesting the bailiffs to admit her. They looked at the letter and allowed her into the court, which was noisy with the hum of voices.

"Refreshments for the all-night newspaper crowd," one of the reporters mumbled.

At last the pair reached an empty corner of the sixth floor and climbed an iron stairway up to the roof. From there they opened a set of folding doors and lowered the box eight feet into the attic. Reentering the building, they sent word to the Journal office that the apparatus was ready.

"No, not a bit," Luetgert said, laughing. "Here, give me your hand." Katharine reached out her right hand to him, and he said, "Take courage. That will give you some of mine. Don't you feel it?" Luetgert pointed to her left hand and she gave him that one as well. "I am not nervous," he said. "You should not be. I am brave."

"To prove the corpus delicti in a case of murder," he said, "does not require the state or prosecution to produce the body of the alleged deceased, or any part thereof, or the testimony of any witness who has seen the same since the commission of the alleged crime."

As the judge droned out the words on the verdict form — the words the jurors were supposed to use if they found Luetgert guilty — the defendant displayed his first visible reaction to the day's proceedings. A Chicago Record reporter wrote that he "winced like a wounded animal."

"Now, gentlemen," the judge said, "you may retire and consider your verdict."

The crowd moved out slowly, for the curious hoped to catch one more glance of the sausage maker. Young women gathered around Luetgert and tried to draw him into conversation, but he did not waste much time with them. The bailiff Isaac Reed told Luetgert he would have to go back to the jail, and the pack of court watchers opened a path for the prisoner. Luetgert saw his youngest son come through the crowd, arms outstretched. Luetgert bent forward, murmuring, "Elmer, Elmer," as the five-year-old clasped his hands around his father's neck. Elmer's lips brushed against Luetgert's mustache in a kiss.

"My boy, my boy," Luetgert said, as Reed touched his sleeve. "Yes, in a minute, in a minute," Luetgert told the bailiff. "I must see my son."

"Is it all over, Papa?" the boy asked.

"Not yet, baby, but it will be so today." Luetgert handed the boy back to Mary Charles, a family friend who had been holding the boy during court that day. Luetgert marched over to the jail with tears in his eyes.

After crawling fifteen feet they came to the building's west air shaft, a sheer drop of 150 feet. The shaft was walled with smooth, solid stone, but it was not completely black. Beams of light shone into the darkness from vents in the eight jury rooms — including the chamber on the third floor that the Luetgert jury would soon be entering.

The four men crouched at the shaft's edge, where they had planned to set up a pulley. Three of them would use the rope to lower the other man down the shaft. But a large water pipe near the edge didn't give them enough space to set up the pulley, so instead they looped the rope twice around the pipe. One end of the rope was fastened to a strong plank seat. They slipped the seat over the tunnel's sheet-iron edge.

The reporters hesitated. Since they had nothing to use as a brace, they could be pulled into the shaft by a sudden jerk of the rope. The sharp metal edge might cut the rope before the man in the shaft had descended even five feet, dropping him far down to the basement — and almost certainly to his death. The Journal reporters would later claim they gained some courage when they looked out through narrow chinks in the attic wall and caught a glimpse of rival newspapermen on the roof of an adjoining building, vying for the best vantage points to peer into the jury room with their spyglasses. And a sound drifted up into the attic from four stories below: reporters for the other papers were rushing about and discussing the case. The Journal men decided to go on with their mission.

They laid some strong burlap across the edge of the shaft, hoping it would prevent the rope from fraying. They lowered the sixty feet of speaking tube down the shaft. They chose Smith, the lightest man, to make the descent. They tied one end of a string to a nail in the metal floor, and Smith put the ball of string in his pocket. He got onto the plank seat, clinging to the rope until he was a few feet below the tunnel. He ordered the others to pay out the rope. As the rope made its first turn around the pipe, a wailing sound echoed through the building's dark corners. Mitchell, Payne and Rourke paused to moisten the pipe with oil from one of their lanterns. That reduced the din as they continued lowering Smith.

He swung back and forth in the six-by-four-foot airshaft, using his knees as cushions to keep the wooden seat from striking the walls. He had thought of this in advance and worn an extra pair of trousers for padding. As he neared the third floor, he heard a confused noise below him, sounding unmistakably like the Luetgert jurors retiring to their room. Smith yanked on the twine — the signal to stop — and the creaking rope became silent. After a momentary lull in the jury room, the voices became louder, and Smith decided it was safe to go down a bit farther. He tugged twice on the twine. The rope lowered him to the third floor. Brushing cobwebs from his face with one hand and holding the rope with the other, Smith came to rest within two feet of the Luetgert jury.

As the sound of the jurors, arguing over bones and rings, came through the register, Smith repeated their words, whispering into a funnel on the end of the speaking tube. One of the reporters in the attic listened to the earpiece on the other end of the tube and jotted down the jurors' words.

It soon became clear the jurors weren't going to have an easy time reaching a decision. At times it sounded as if they might break out into a brawl. After a while Smith heard one of the jurors suggest a compromise: find Luetgert guilty but sentence him to prison rather than death. "If Mrs. Luetgert should turn up," he said, "we would feel pretty badly after giving this man the extreme penalty."