Where Mrs. Luetgert Was Seen:
Oshkosh, Wisconsin

On September 26, 1897, the Chicago Tribune reported:

Oshkosh, Wis., Sept. 25. (Special.) There are people in Oshkosh tonight who believe that Mrs. Luetgert is being harbored in the outskirts of Oshkosh.

This morning a number of boys, among whom were George Pfister and Albert Zimmerman, aged 12 years, went hickory-nutting south of the city. In the vicinity of Stony Beach, a summer watering place on the lake shore, they espied a clump of trees generously laden.

Fearing to trespass, they were undecided, when along the road came a woman, who regarded them closely, and who, the boys immediately concluded, was connected in some way with the management of the farm containing the coveted nuts.

Pfister and Zimmerman approached the woman, who had stopped. They asked her if they could go on her land and gather the nuts. She replied that it was not her land, that she was simply visiting, that her home was in Chicago, that her name was Luetgert (one boy says Luscher), and that her husband was a butcher, and that she had fled cause he threatened to cut her up.

She said he and his agents were hunting for her, but her friends would protect her. She was about five feet tall, and weighed about 120 pounds. She wore a blue dress and white apron.

On September 27, the Oshkosh Northwestern reported the same incident, adding:

The boy [Pfister] claims he knew nothing of the much-talked-of Luetgert trial, but that Zimmermann remarked after they left the woman that he bet that was the one that was supposed to be chopped into sausage by her husband in Chicago.

The New York Herald of September 27 reported:

OSHKOSH, WIS. ¾ Investigation to-day has failed to bring forth any trace of the

woman supposed to be Mrs. Luetgert but all inquiry thus far made serves to corroborate the story of the boys and to attest to the fact that there is such a person in the vicinity of Stony Beach, and that for some reason she is not accorded much liberty.

The description given by the boys tallies with Mrs. Luetgert, and also the woman seen at Kenosha, and the boys, Pfister and Zimmerman, cannot be shaken in their story.

The local police believe that the woman is Mrs. Luetgert, and is kept in seclusion by relatives or friends, who will produce her if Luetgert is convicted, or that she is some insane woman, who imagines that she is Mrs. Luetgert.

A farmer named Brown says that some months ago a strange demented woman made her appearance in the neighborhood. She answered the description of one woman seen by the boys. She said she came from Chicago and was fleeing from her husband, and asked to be taken to some German family. This was done. She looked as if she had just left a train. The German family in question assert that the woman left on the following day and that they know nothing about her.

Read about other places where the missing Mrs. Luetgert was supposedly seen.