In 1873, a seventeen-year-old German immigrant named Otto Koehler arrives in St. Louis and starts working his way up through the brewery business. Within thirteen years he is part owner of the City Brewery and vice president of the San Antonio Brewing Association (later Pearl Brewing Company). He travels to Germany and brings back the recipe for XXX Pearl beer, which becomes an immediate success. The press calls him a “Napoleon among brewers,” writing stories about the fabulous social events he and his wife, Emma, host at their San Antonio mansion. By the early 1900s, Koehler, now president of the brewery, is a multi-millionaire. 

After Emma is injured in an automobile accident, the Koehlers bring a German nurse, Emmy Dümke, into the mansion to take care of her. Within a short-time Koehler begins an affair with Dümke, which lasts until she is married to another man. Koehler then begins a second affair with her roommate, another German nurse, Hedda Burgemeister. After Koehler returns home from a trip to Germany during the beginning of World War I, tensions rise in the relationship, sparking a feud that can only end in murder. 

Combining historical research with a narrative style, “Beer, Lust, and Murder,” is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches brewer and his widowed wife, a gripping trial, and how the family and brewery continued onward.

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