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Elev en •————————————• Orange Pumpkins and Yellow Journalism y late 1897, the two competing Cedar Rapids newspapers had given extensive coverage to the Novak case. Now that Novak’s arraignment had taken place, the papers’ respective city editors, William Holmes of the Gazette and William Ashford of the Republican, tried to outdo the other with hyperbolic articles matched with outrageous headlines. Holmes worked closely with W. I. Endicott, the latter pacing the newsroom like some linotype Zeus, hurling his hot-­ type thunderbolts throughout eastern Iowa, hoping to shine any new light on the Novak case while keeping his readers’ interest until the trial began. One weapon Endicott frequently used in the circulation war was an artist named Cy Fosmire. A wonderful illustrator with a knack for capturing someone’s personality in a few short strokes of his pen, “Fos”—the three-­ letter name he used for his work—had drawn several portraits of Novak, Edward Murray, and the scene of the Walford fire, and now illustrated the articles with a few sketches of Alaska as well as the Vinton jail and courthouse. The Gazette trumpeted its prowess in covering the case and promised to increase the amount of newsprint in weeks to come: “If your friends want a full and complete report of the Novak trial they better see that The Gazette [subscription ] list contains their names. We shall also have some illustrated features impossible to be secured in any other way.”1 Meantime, as M. J. Tobin and Tom Milner prepared their arguB Orange Pumpkins and Yellow Journalism 121 ments and plotted strategies for the upcoming trial date, the Benton County attorney was eagerly following the Adolph Luetgert murder trial, which was wrapping up in Chicago. This case had some remarkable similarities to the Novak trial, probably the most important one being that the prosecution’s efforts revolved largely around a few pieces of circumstantial evidence. A German immigrant, Adolph Luetgert had come to America with nothing in his pockets and worked at various trades before saving enough money to build a large sausage factory. He lived in the adjoining house with his second wife, Louisa, two children, Louis and Elmer, and Mary Siemering, his wife’s cousin, who served as a maid in the household. Like Novak, beneath the veneer of success, Luetgert was in serious financial trouble, having lost about twenty-­ five thousand dollars to an English con man and being forced to close the sausage factory in March 1897. The due date for a chattel mortgage—a note that uses personal property rather than real estate as security—was coming up; the sheriff was preparing to seize what remained of his assets, and Luetgert was virtually staring down the barrel of a cocked shotgun.2 On the evening of May 1, Louis Luetgert had returned home from attending the circus and excitedly told his mother and father about what he had seen there. This was the last time anyone would admit to having seen Louisa Luetgert. Three days later, on May 4, her brother, Diedrich Bicknese, came to the Luetgert house and asked to speak to her. Adolph Luetgert asked, “Ain’t she at your place?” Concerned that something had happened to Louisa, Bicknese asked friends, relatives, and other acquaintances if they had seen his sister but no one had any information on her whereabouts. And strangely, Adolph remained indifferent to his wife’s disappearance.3 Bicknese contacted the police, who searched the area for her body. Finally, two weeks after she vanished, they turned their attention to the factory itself, draining a steam vat with gunnysacks over the outflow to catch any solid items trapped in the smelly refuse.4 Their hunch paid off. Picking through the disgusting mess and 122 t h e t r i a l clambering into the vat, the police found a few fragments of bone, a hairpin, part of a false tooth, and perhaps most importantly, an eighteen-­ carat gold ring engraved with the initials “L. L.” Based on this evidence, plus other bone fragments and materials they found later, they arrested Adolph Luetgert and charged him with first-­ degree murder. At the trial, the prosecution used this circumstantial evidence to hammer home its interpretation of events: Luetgert and his wife had had constant arguments and in fact no longer slept together; he was in financial trouble; he may have had an affair; and at this point was looking to start a new life without her. To get on with...

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