Dark La Crosse Stories

The life and times of Walter Goetzinger, one of the most extraordinary musicians in La Crosse history, continues with a double homicide in Milwaukee involving his son and family friends from La Crosse.

The life and times of Walter Goetzinger, one of the most extraordinary musicians in La Crosse history, including a theater fire, a messy divorce, and his role in the erection of the Rivoli Theatre. 

A young farmer kills three brothers near Austin, Minnesota and goes on the run for 12 days with George Brooks' bloodhounds and a La Crosse Tribune reporter hot on his trail.  

What happens when an unsavory business opens in a historic home in the heart of an upper-class residential district?

In 1883, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Crosse opened the St. Mary's Indian School, a boarding school that was on the reservation of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians with the mission to convert Ojibwe children to Catholicism, a history the FSPA now must reconcile with the survivors and descendants of St. Mary's.

At the turn of the 20^th century, disgraced Reverend Martin Hanson left a North La Crosse congregation, his family, and the family pet wondering what happened to the man they thought they knew. 

In October 1927, the La Crosse County Coroner drove to Madison with a macabre cargo - a human stomach, destined for the state toxicologist’s office, exhumed from Oak Grove Cemetery just days after its burial.

An evening performance of Howe's Great London Circus descended into chaos as a raging summer storm moved through La Crosse in 1875.

A hot summer night in 1935 that began with celebrating at the Crystal Room in the Hotel Stoddard ended in tragedy on the Old Wagon Bridge spanning the Mississippi River.