Cashier thwarted attempt by 'yeggs' to rob Rosholt bank
By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
The Friday, Nov. 22, robbery of the Community First Bank at 5477 Highway 10, Stevens Point, brought to light a Sept. 4, 1924, robbery of that bank's predecessor, the State Bank of Rosholt.
While Stevens Point police and law enforcement officials continue to investigate the Nov. 22 robbery, the 1924 robbery was solved quickly and the case resolved within three weeks, with two men heading to prison to serve 25-year sentences.
The banner headline of the Stevens Point Journal on Sept. 4,1924, told the story: "Rosholt Daylight Bank Hold-Up Fails, One Bandit Slain, Another Captured."
The series of subheadlines teased readers about the accompanying story: "Heroism of Cashier Saves Bank's Funds from Yeggs (an old slang term for criminals)," "Ordered to 'Stick 'Em Up,' He Opens Fire and Drives Highwaymen Out Empty-Handed" and "Two Robbers Make Escape, Trapped Near Bevent One Is Shot and Killed and Second Captured."
At about 9:05 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, 1924, Carl Rosholt, a bank cashier, and Lester Peterson, an assistant cashier, were standing at the cashier's desk in the bank, while bookkeeper Albert Smestad was at work at the bookkeeping machine and John G. Rosholt, Carl's father and bank president, was at his private desk at one side of the lobby.
Customer Paul Brehmer was standing at Carl Rosholt's cashier window when two men came in and went to separate desks in the lobby, where they stood fumbling in their pockets.
The Journal reported "the third yeggman and ringleader rushed in and started the attempted holdup. He had the senior Rosholt put up his hands."
That third man then attempted to get behind the cashier's desk as Peterson and Carl Rosholt rushed for the burglar alarm and a .32-caliber revolver lying on a shelf under the counter. Peterson set off the alarm while Carl Rosholt grabbed the revolver, then stood behind a metal filing cabinet and fired at the third man.
The Journal reported that five shots were exchanged between Rosholt and that third man, with one bullet going through a telephone booth next to the "bandit" and another going through a window.
A bullet apparently struck the bandit's clothing, the Journal reported, because a piece of clothing was found on the floor. That account was verified the next day, when the piece of clothing was matched to the coat pocket of one of the captured men.
A shot fired by one of the robbers went into the vault door, and Carl Rosholt then closed the vault doors to protect himself before the three robbers fled.
Brehmer said he was struck in the stomach by one of the men and forced into a customers' room in front of the lobby as one of the robbers fired two shots into the ceiling of that room. He said he escaped through a window.
Smestad said he fled downstairs into the basement as the attempted robbery unfolded.
The Journal called the shootout "a pitched battle" and said nearly a dozen shots were fired "while the bank's burglar alarm was pealing forth an alarm to the village." As the robbers left the bank, one fired a shot into the wood casing in front of one of the cashier's windows.
Village officers and others responded to the alarm, and, the Journal reported "after the bandits had retreated from the bank without obtaining anything, a hot pursuit was on."
Ingwald Hanson, the village marshal, and Allen Gilbert, an assistant postmaster, armed themselves with rifles and jumped into an auto driven by R.W. Webb, "a traveling representative of a Madison farmers' magazine," the Journal said.
That vehicle was followed by a car driven by Oscar Stenson of Rosholt, and they followed the robbers' car "over a bumpy trail toward Bevent."
About a half-mile from Bevent, the Journal said the robbers stopped their car at a small lake to change clothes and then they went down a dead-end road about an hour-and-a-half after the robbery.
Hanson and Gilbert got behind a large boulder to stop the robbers' car as it came back down the road, the Journal said, and fired a warning shot to the driver to stop and the occupants to come out of the car with their hands up.
The vehicle had four occupants and all four got out, with the driver, Walter E. Danke, 19, Neenah, the only one to put his hands up and walk toward the marshal. As he held up his hands, Danke reportedly said, "I am innocent, they made me drive them here."
The other three fled and Hanson and Gilbert opened fire, with one man falling after suffering two bullet wounds.
The man who was shot was later identified as Joe Peplinski, 28, a Chicago man who had lived in the Galloway area. He was holding an automatic revolver in his right hand and pronounced dead at the scene.
The other two men fled, one by running and crawling across a marsh and the other by fleeing across a field into a thick grove of pine trees. Within 24 hours, they would also be captured.
One of them, later identified as Charles Matthias Welcher, 28, Chicago, went east until he got to the railroad tracks south of Elderon. Shortly after nightfall, he entered Galloway, about eight miles south of Elderon and went into the Frank Gosh restaurant and ordered lunch, the Journal reported.
When a car drove up, he fled down Highway 49, and a posse from Galloway formed and went after him. The posse caught up with Welcher shortly after he entered Portage County "on a curve south of what is known as the Wigwam." Members of that posse said Welcher hailed the car and asked for a ride to Waupaca. He was given a ride on the tire carrier on the rear of the car, they said.
At the junction of Highways 49 and 66, Hanson and a posse from Rosholt were waiting and they disarmed Welcher who had a revolver and other cartridges, the Journal reported.
He was identified by Carl Rosholt as the man who came around the corner of the cashier's desk and the cloth found on the floor in the bank matched a torn place on his coat pocket. Portage County Sheriff John Kubisiak then took Welcher into custody.
The fourth man, Robert Boffenmeyer, 24, Chicago, was initially identified as Robert Poffelmeyer, and he was taken into custody about noon on Friday, Sept. 5, on the John Haralson property east of Highway 49, about three miles east of Rosholt.
He was found by a posse trailing him after he was spotted near the Lutheran church earlier in the morning.
Welcher and Boffenmeyer indicated that the bank robbery was Peplinski's idea and they knew him only as the "Berliner" and thought his name was August. Welcher was a native of Austria, spoke mostly German and had been in the United States only 10 months before the robbery. They had all met in Chicago and Peplinski induced them to come to Wisconsin, the Journal said.
Welcher and Boffenmeyer pleaded guilty to the armed robbery charges on Sept. 19 and on Sept. 23, 1924, Judge Bryon B. Park of Stevens Point sentenced each of them to serve 25 years in prison.
Initially Danke was also charged in connection with the robbery, but he was soon exonerated.
It turned out he was a kidnap victim of the three robbers. He was driving to his home about six miles west of Neenah on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1924, when he stopped because a log had been placed across the road.
He was forced to drive the three men to Waupaca, then to Stevens Point and finally to Rosholt, where they drove through the village, went about two miles beyond it and then stayed at the side of the road the rest of the night, Danke said.
The next morning they drove back to Rosholt, and Danke said he was told to drive to the bank where the men said they had some business to take care of and would return.
He said he was forced to drive again as the robbers fled from the bank and none of them seemed to be acquainted with the roads between Rosholt and Bevent so they had to retrace their route several times when they turned onto dead-end roads leading to farmhouses.