Laura Wright 
Haunted Houses of Yesteryear
In 1897, Chicago became captivated by one of the most sensational murder cases the city had ever witnessed.
A woman disappeared.
Her husband, a wealthy sausage manufacturer, claimed she had simply left home. Police suspected otherwise.
Their investigation eventually led them to an enormous vat filled with caustic potash inside her husband’s factory. At the bottom, investigators discovered rings, pieces of a corset, and other evidence suggesting something terrible had happened there.
Adolph Leutgert was eventually convicted of murdering his wife, Louise.
But his imprisonment and death were not the end of the story.
Years later, residents of the former Leutgert home began reporting mysterious lights, opening doors, frightened animals, and apparitions of a dark-haired woman in white.
The Leutgert murder had become a haunting.
Adolph and Louise Leutgert
Adolph Leutgert was born in Germany but eventually made his life in Chicago, where he established a successful sausage factory and lived in a sizable home.
His first wife, Caroline Roepke, died in 1877.
The following year, Adolph married Louise Bicknesse.
Their marriage lasted approximately eighteen years, but it was apparently far from happy. During the later years of their relationship, neighbors frequently reported arguments and domestic disturbances.
The couple had six children, although only three survived beyond the age of two.
Despite their troubled marriage, Adolph and Louise remained together.
Then, in May 1897, Louise disappeared.
Louise Vanishes
Adolph told his children that their mother had gone to visit her own mother on May 2.
Two days later, Louise’s brother, Deidrich Bicknesse, arrived to visit his sister.
He was immediately alarmed.
Louise had already been missing for approximately three days, yet Adolph had apparently made no effort to locate her or notify authorities.
Deidrich knew something else.
Louise was not at their mother’s house.
Suspicious of his brother-in-law, he went to the authorities.
The Search for Louise
Police began searching Chicago for the missing woman.
Investigators even dragged a section of the Chicago River in hopes of locating her body.
From the beginning, Adolph’s behavior attracted suspicion. His apparent indifference toward his wife’s disappearance seemed strange for a man whose spouse had vanished without explanation.
Leutgert eventually offered his own theory.
His sausage business had failed, he explained, and he was being forced to sell the factory to a soap-making company. Perhaps Louise had been so humiliated by the family’s impending financial disaster that she had committed suicide.
Police were unconvinced.
Soon, Adolph Leutgert became their principal suspect.
The Sausage Factory
Authorities eventually obtained warrants allowing them to search both the Leutgert residence and sausage factory.
Their attention increasingly focused upon the factory.
In particular, investigators became interested in one enormous vat.
It contained caustic potash, or potassium hydroxide.
That immediately raised questions because the chemical was not ordinarily required for sausage production.
Leutgert claimed the potash was needed by the soap company purchasing his business.
Investigators remained suspicious.
They drained the vat.
What they found at the bottom transformed a missing-person investigation into one of the most gruesome murder cases of the era.
Rings and Corset Pieces
Among the debris were two gold rings.
One bore Louise’s initials.
Investigators also discovered several steel pieces from a corset.
The obvious possibility was horrifying.
Had Louise’s body been placed inside the vat?
Attention also turned toward the bone-disposal area behind the sausage factory, where animal carcasses were routinely discarded.
There, investigators discovered several human bones.
Adolph Leutgert was arrested on May 18, 1897.
Could a Body Be Destroyed With Potash?
Authorities theorized that Leutgert had murdered Louise and attempted to destroy her remains inside the vat.
There was a problem.
Could caustic potash actually reduce a human body to little more than bone?
Investigators decided to find out.
An experiment was performed using a cadaver, but the initial attempt failed to produce the expected result.
Then witnesses provided another important detail.
Smoke had reportedly emerged from the factory smokestacks on the night of May 1, when authorities believed Louise was murdered.
Investigators tried again.
This time, they boiled a cadaver for approximately two hours.
The experiment succeeded.
Only a few bones remained.
The Night Watchman’s Story
A night watchman provided authorities with even more damaging testimony.
He had been working at the sausage factory on the night of May 1.
According to the watchman, Leutgert was there with a woman who resembled Louise.
Adolph asked him to bring potash to the vat.
Then Leutgert sent the watchman to a store to purchase his nerve medicine.
When the man returned, Leutgert had locked himself inside the room containing the vat.
Other witnesses soon came forward with another peculiar story.
The day after Louise’s disappearance, Leutgert had reportedly visited several people and asked them not to mention seeing smoke coming from the factory chimneys during the night.
He claimed he could get into trouble for operating the factory after hours.
The First Leutgert Trial
Despite the evidence and the night watchman’s testimony, Leutgert’s first trial ended with a hung jury.
A second trial began on November 29, 1897.
One of the defense’s most important witnesses was Mary Siemering, a maid employed in the Leutgert household.
Siemering described Adolph as an upstanding man who adored his wife. According to her testimony, he had always been kind and patient with Louise.
Then prosecutors discovered something rather inconvenient for the defense.
Siemering was having an affair with Leutgert.
Her testimony quickly lost much of its value.
A Motive for Murder?
The prosecution presented additional witnesses.
A wealthy widow testified that Leutgert had attempted to court her and had frequently spoken about how much he hated Louise.
Many people came to believe that Leutgert murdered his wife because he wanted to marry the widow.
Even the timing of his first marriage attracted renewed suspicion.
Caroline, his first wife, had died in November 1877.
By January 1878, Adolph had remarried.
Meanwhile, employees and professional chemists continued testifying that there was no legitimate reason for a meat-processing factory to possess the quantity of potash discovered at the property.
Leutgert Takes the Stand
By January 1898, Leutgert had become accustomed to the courtroom.
He decided to testify in his own defense.
Interest in the case had become so enormous that police could barely contain the crowds.
Taking the stand did not help him.
Leutgert was convicted of murdering Louise and sentenced to life imprisonment.
But even before the trial ended, strange superstitions had begun accumulating around the case.
The Curse of the Jury
According to one story, Leutgert cursed the jurors responsible for convicting him.
All of them survived the trial.
But legend later claimed that every member of the jury eventually died a violent or horrible death.
Whether that claim can withstand historical scrutiny is another matter, but it became part of the folklore surrounding the Leutgert case.
Then there was the number thirteen.
The Number 13
Newspaper accounts found plenty of opportunities to associate Leutgert with the supposedly unlucky number.
Leutgert was said to fear thirteen.
Yet the original spelling of Adolph Leutgert contained thirteen letters.
He was supposedly born on the thirteenth.
The gold rings were found thirteen days after the alleged murder.
Even the state’s attorney, his assistants, and three prosecution witnesses reportedly had names containing thirteen letters.
For newspapers already covering a sensational murder involving a sausage maker, a chemical vat, and an allegedly dissolved corpse, the numerology was irresistible.
The Death of Adolph Leutgert
Leutgert was sent to Joliet Prison.
Reports described him as a broken man after his conviction.
He survived until July 27, 1899.
Accounts differ concerning his cause of death. Some attributed it to a cardiac episode, while others blamed consumption.
A much later and more sensational account came from convicted murderer Henry Spencer, who alleged in 1913 that Leutgert had actually been beaten to death on orders from prison officials.
According to Spencer, guards and wardens sometimes ordered prisoners to beat other inmates to death or face terrible punishment themselves.
Whatever actually caused Leutgert’s death, he never left prison.
His former home, however, was about to begin another chapter.
The Leutgert House
At the time of Louise’s disappearance, the sausage factory was already being renovated for use by a British soap manufacturer.
Little more is known about its immediate history afterward.
The Leutgert family home remained vacant for years.
Originally standing at the corner of Diversey Boulevard and Hermitage Avenue, the house was purchased by Mrs. John Blane in 1908.
She moved the building to 1641 Diversey Boulevard.
The large residence was then divided into five separate apartments.
After completing the renovations, Mrs. Blane sold the property to John Lutga.
That was when the old Leutgert house began developing an extraordinary reputation for paranormal activity.
Apparitions in the House
Residents began seeing people who were not actually there.
One apparition was described as a tall man wearing a black suit.
He had a thick black moustache and wore a black derby.
He would appear suddenly and then vanish.
Another apparition was female.
She had long, dark hair flowing down her back and wore an ethereal white gown.
People eventually began identifying the mysterious figures as Adolph and Louise Leutgert.
But apparitions were only part of the reported activity.
Lights, Doors and Frightened Animals
Residents claimed lights moved without anyone touching them.
They flickered mysteriously or went out altogether.
Doors opened and closed on their own.
Gas jets inexplicably extinguished themselves.
Animals brought into the apartment building sometimes barked and howled for no apparent reason.
Perhaps the strangest detail was the consistency of the reports.
Tenants often had little contact with one another, yet many described remarkably similar experiences.
That made the Leutgert house increasingly difficult to dismiss as merely one frightened resident’s imagination.
The Woman in White
The female apparition became particularly associated with Louise.
There is, however, an obvious problem with later descriptions claiming that the ghost appeared in clothing associated with her burial.
If prosecutors were correct, very little of Louise’s body remained to bury.
That contradiction is worth preserving rather than explaining away. Ghost stories often change as they pass from one generation to another, and details can become attached to an apparition long after the original events.
What remained consistent was the image itself.
A dark-haired woman in white continued to be associated with the former Leutgert property.
And according to later stories, she did not confine herself to the house.
Louise Still Walks the Street
There is no formal record in the original account explaining exactly what ultimately happened to the relocated Leutgert house.
The address at 1641 Diversey Boulevard eventually became associated with St. Bonaventure Parish.
The old sausage factory was later remodeled into condominiums.
But according to the legend, Louise never completely disappeared from the neighborhood.
Her apparition is still said to walk the street corner where she once lived.
Did Louise Leutgert Haunt Chicago?
The historical crime and the later haunting are two very different questions.
Evidence presented at Leutgert’s trial convinced a jury that he murdered Louise and attempted to destroy her body inside the factory.
The ghost stories came later.
Perhaps residents knew the terrible history of the building and interpreted ordinary noises, flickering gaslights, frightened animals, and shadows through that knowledge.
Perhaps the building itself, relocated and divided into apartments, developed the creaks and peculiarities common to an aging house.
Yet the reports of similar apparitions from tenants who supposedly knew little of one another kept the legend alive.
A tall man in black.
A dark-haired woman in white.
Doors opening by themselves.
Lights moving through empty rooms.
And animals howling at something their owners could not see.
Adolph Leutgert died behind prison walls.
Louise’s body was never recovered intact.
But according to Chicago ghost lore, one member of the Leutgert family may have finally returned home.
About the Author
Interesting and morbid. Thanks for sharing. One would think Louise would have haunted or still haunt the location of her death as well; that is, if she actually died at the factory. Such a death, of it actually corresponds to legend or suspicion, would have been a traumatic one, no?
Just one point: you said her apparition wore the white dress in which she had been buried. How could that be if nothing remained to bury? Do you mean the dress she wore when she died, as in the dress in which she was last seen alive? Sorry about that. Maybe I am nitpicking, but I was compelled to ask.
As for Adolphe, an attachment to his home would not have been the only reason behind his haunting of that environment; the final years of his life must have been traumatic and filled with overwhelming despair regardless of his guilt status.
Hi! No, not nitpicking at all. At the time the articles ran on the Leutgert ghost, she was always the woman in white at the home. I don’t know how that came to be so common, because obviously she wasn’t intact enough to be buried in white. The only think I could figure was that the few remains might’ve been buried wrapped in her white dress? I wasn’t sure so I didn’t even bother to put that in the article. There was no further details given.
I think Leutgert’s guilt was pretty definite. There was no way to really question it, as he had motive, had publicly talked about how he hated his wife, he was witnessed at the factory with someone who resembled his wife, on the night his wife disappeared. Then, he made no effort to locate her and showed no concern of her whereabouts after.
I think she was alive until he got her into the factory. I can’t imagine his struggle to move a corpse, which would’ve been dead weight, into the factory knowing he employed watchmen.