"A page turner ... an exceptional example of
the true-crime genre."
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
"Fascinating ... a remarkable book."
Tucson Citizen
Update: Searching for Mrs. Luetgert's ghost.
Update: What happened to the bones from the Luetgert trial?
In October 2022, CBS Chicago featured an interview with Robert Loerzel: Chicago Hauntings, “The Grisly Story of the Luetgert Sausage Factory Murder.”
Robert Loerzel discussed the book in an episode of Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast.
"Anyone in love with the history of Chicago ... must have this book." — Leigh Bienen, co-author of Crimes of the Century
"A fascinating and strange tale ... I am still haunted." — John Gilmore, author of Severed
Newspapers fought one
another for scoops, people across the country claimed to
have seen the missing woman alive, and each 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 of 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 strange-but-true subplots involving hypnotists, palmreaders, English con-artists, bullied witnesses, and insane-asylum bodysnatchers, Alchemy of Bones is more than just a true crime narrative; it is a grand, sprawling portrait of a city — and a nation — getting an early taste of the dark, chaotic twentieth century.
Winner of the Reader's Choice Award at the 2004 Love Is Murder Writers Conference for Best True Crime Book
Read articles and reviews from:
Chicago Sun-Times /
The Kenosha News /
The Kankakee
Journal /
Chicago
Magazine /
The Daily Herald
Recently discovered
prison photo
of Adolph Luetgert:
Published by the University of Illinois Press.
320 Pages, 7 Photographs and 38 Line Drawings.
Paperback: $19.95 / Hardcover: $29.95.
ISBN 0-252-02858-9.
This
website is a companion to
Alchemy of Bones,
featuring a wealth of information about the people, places and subjects in
the book —
including many stories, facts and
pictures beyond those in its pages. The
author hopes that this Web site will aid people researching the history of
Chicago in the 1890s, genealogy, and topics such as criminology and
journalism.This website is designed and run by Robert Loerzel. All contents are © by Robert Loerzel (mostly created in 2003) except for those articles and illustrations that are taken from public-domain sources and fair-use quotations from copyrighted sources. Book cover design by Paula Newcomb/University of Illinois Press.