Robbers hold up State Bank of Rosholt
By KATE ZDROIK The Rosholt Record (Information gathered from articles written by Malcolm Rosholt) On the morning of September 4, 1924 three men entered the State Bank of Rosholt, which was located on the northwest corner of Main St. and Randolph St., pulled guns and said Stick em up. Carl Rosholt and Lester Pe terson, who were standing behind their teller windows working, immediately dropped to the floor and set off the alarm. One gunman had approached J.G. Rosholt, who was sitting at his desk next to the south windows, and told him to stand and raise his hands. As the gunman passed J.G., Carl Rosholt opened fire on him with a gun he had grabbed from a drawer under the counter. The gunman returned fire before retreating back towards the bank entrance. Reportedly nine rounds of gun fire were exchanged between the men before the gunmen escaped the bank. The gunmen fled the village, with a fourth man, in a car who was waiting for them outside the bank. The car went north on Main Street. Carl followed the men out the door and fired shots in the air to attract the attention of people in the area. A number of people responded to the commotion. Ingwald Hanson, the village marshal and owner of a shoe repair shop on Randolph Street, came with a rifle in hand. Oscar Stenson, Allan Gilbert and Ed Stevens also came towards the bank. Paul Bremer, manager of the Wisconsin Building Material Company, had been inside the bank lobby when the men entered and was forced at gunpoint into a conference room in the northeast corner of the bank. Bremer escaped through a window of the conference. Bremer and Stevens jumped into Bremers car and the foursome headed towards the intersection of Hwy. 66 and Holt Rd. (now Cty Hwy. I). They anticipated the robbers would come out at that point heading south however there were no tracks on the road so they headed north on Holt Rd. in pursuit of the robbers. Hanson and Gilbert had jumped into Stensons car and they headed north in pursuit of the bank robbers. The posse picked up the robbers tracks as they headed west on the road leading towards Matt Trybas old place, this is the current Birch Rd. From there the tracks headed north on the road west of Ole Mellums, the current Woodland Rd. Bremer decided he did not want to continue the pursuit since he realized they were probably too far behind the robbers to do any good. Stenson, Gilbert and Stevens had headed north so fast they passed the robbers unknowingly. They stopped the car near Turtle Lake, southeast of Bevent. There they saw men changing clothes. The robbers had entered a dead end road without knowing it. The trailing posse positioned themselves at the intersection where the dead end road would reenter the main road and waited for the robbers to return. After the robbers changed their clothes they headed back down the same road, right towards the waiting posse. The posse, which had been hiding behind rocks, fired on the robbers as they approached their position. The first bullet struck the car license plate. The second shot killed one of the robbers, Joe Peplinski, immediately. At this point the driver of the car got out of the car with his hands up while the other two passengers, Charles M. Walcher, 28, and Robert Buffenmeyer, 24, escaped into the woods. Walcher and Buffenmeyer became separated when they fled into the woods but they both headed east. Farmers spotted the pair several times. Walcher accepted a ride from a pick-up truck driver, Gus Nelson, on Highway 49 near Galloway. What Walcher did not know was that Nelson had been scouting for him and his cohort. Nelson proceeded south on Highway 49 where a group of men were waiting. The men surrounded Walcher, handcuffed him and drove him into the village. The next day, people reported seeing a stranger wandering the woods behind Paul
Dobbes place, heading east. (This location is just south of Lions Camp on County Hwy. A.) The sheriffs department called for help in finding the remaining robber. Raymond Halverson and Johnny Larson joined the search party. Halverson had a rifle and Larson carried Halversons pistol without ammunition. The two men drove to John Har oldsons farm, east of Rosholt on the present day Town Rd. NN, where a man had been spotted. After hiking across Haroldsons property and saw a man crawling through the fence. The man stood up and began to walk into the field. When the man saw Halverson and Larson and heard Halversons shout he ran into a herd of cows. Halverson and Larson approached the herd from behind a hill and when they came over the hill they hollered at the stranger, telling him to stick em up. The man appeared confused but eventually walked towards his pursuers. When the man reached into his pocket and threw something on the ground Halverson fired a shot into the air. The man then put his hands in the air. Halverson ran and frisked the man, with Larson holding cover for him. The rifle shot attracted the attention of the sheriff and other men in the area. The stranger was handcuffed. A Sears & Roebuck pistol was later found in the grass. The man who was arrested in the field was Buffenmeyer. The driver of the bandits car was Walter Danke, 19, of Neenah. He had been held up the night before, west of Neenah, and forced to drive the men to Rosholt. The group had arrived west of Rosholt around midnight, changed into black and white striped overall suits, and waited for the bank to open in the morning. Around 9a.m. they drove into Rosholt and made Danke wait in the car with the engine running. Danke was later found to be an innocent victim of Peplinski, Walcher and Buffenmeyer. It was eventually determined that the three robbers had come to the United States only weeks earlier on the same ship. They all spoke German. Peplinski was from western Poland and had a brother, Sigmund, who owned a farm southwest of Galloway. Sigmund had purchased Josephs ticket to America. Joseph spent some time in the area often coming with Sigmund to the State Bank of Rosholt.
Peplinski returned to Chicago where he met up with Walcher, who was from Austria and Buffenmeyer, from Germany. The three men hatched the plan to rob the small, rural seemingly unguarded bank. Peplinski died in the confrontation by Turtle Lake and it is presumed his brother identified and claimed his body for burial. Buffenmeyer and Walcher were tried before circuit court Judge Byron B. Park. On September 25 the men were convicted of the crime of assault and intent to rob armed and sentenced to 25 years in the Waupun State Prison. In October of 1925, Walcher applied to Governor Blaine to have his sentence commuted and be deported to his native country of Austria. Both men were then released from prison on the condition that they be deported to Germany.
