Sheboygan Tales of the Tragic and Bizarre

by William Wangemann

  The trolley car shown is exactly the same type that carried three persons to their death in the icy river. Author’s collection.

  At last, the long nightmare was over for George Thieme.

  THE PASTOR IS IN

  The Reverend William Wambsganss was the revered and respected pastor of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church that was, and still is, located at the corner of South Twelfth Street and Broadway Avenue in Sheboygan. The congregation was flourishing and the church was doing well. It seemed to the members of the church that Pastor Wambsganss was the perfect man to lead their flock.

  The pastor and his family lived nearby in a large, comfortable home provided by the church. On the second floor, he had a large study where he prepared his sermons and met with church members who called at his home. All in all, the pastor was leading a comfortable and satisfying existence. Life was good for the pastor on that sunny spring day of June 9, 1927.

  The life of Frank Doering Sr. and family, who lived a short distance from Reverend Wambsganss, could not have been more different in every way. In direct contrast to the pastor’s family, the Doering family was deeply troubled. They had lost their oldest son in World War I, a loss they were deeply affected by. Their younger son Walter, for reasons not explained, had very difficult relations with his father. Neither of the two families in their most terrifying nightmares could have foreseen the horrendous circumstances that were about to engulf them on that pleasant June day.

  Later, Mrs. Doering would recall that Walter seemed very quiet and withdrawn that day. She recalled that about 11:00 a.m. she had sent him on an errand to the grocery store and that when he returned home he dropped the bags on the kitchen table and turned and left the house without saying a word to her. Mrs. Doering also recalled that earlier in the day she heard her husband chopping wood in the basement. After a while the chopping stopped, but her husband did not come upstairs. At first she made nothing of this, thinking that perhaps he was working on some other project. At about 11:45 a.m., she became somewhat concerned and called down the steps to her husband, Frank. Hearing no response from him, she went down to the basement to investigate and to retrieve some items that she needed. As she walked down the basement steps, she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and was horrified to find the body of her husband sprawled on the basement floor in a large pool of blood. The terrified woman ran back up the steps and called her family physician, Dr. Emil Gunther, who lived just a short distance away. Within a few minutes, Dr. Gunther arrived and rushed into the basement. After a quick examination of the body of Frank Doering, the doctor declared that he was deceased. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. No weapon was present, which tended to indicate that it was not a self-inflicted wound. Dr Gunther called the police and the coroner. When the police arrived, due to the circumstances, they treated the scene as a homicide. As the police began their investigation, all members of the Doering family were present. All, that is, except young Walter, and his whereabouts were unknown.

  Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Courtesy Sheboygan County Historic Research Center.

  On that same morning at about 11:00 a.m., the Wambsgansses received a phone call from a young man, later believed to be Walter Doering, inquiring if the pastor was in. When he was informed that the pastor was, the young man hung up. A short time later, Walter Doering appeared at the Wambsganss home asking to see the pastor, but the reverend had just stepped out for a moment, and the young man was informed that he would return in about thirty minutes. At about 11:45 a.m., Walter Doering again appeared at the parsonage. This time, Pastor Wambsganss was in, and Walter was shown upstairs to his study. The pastor greeted Walter at the top of the stairs, and the two men disappeared behind closed doors. At about noon, the pastor’s family had lunch without him, as his guest still had not left. At about 12:30 p.m., the reverend’s son, needing some papers from his father’s office, went upstairs, stopped outside the closed door and listened. Hearing no voices, the puzzled young man knocked and then opened the door. As he stepped into the room, the pastor’s son was confronted by a horrifying scene. On the floor in a large pool of blood lay the contorted body of young Walter Doering, with a gunshot wound to his head. At his desk, the Reverend Wambsganss was also found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. A blood-spattered Bible lay open on the pastor’s desk, from which it seems he may have been reading. On the floor near the body of Walter Doering lay a .32-caliber revolver that had been fired three times.

  No inquest was ever held by authorities into the tragic deaths of the three men. Many questions still remain unanswered: did Walter kill his father and then go to the home of the pastor and, for some unknown reason, kill him and then himself ? Or did Mr. Doering kill himself and then Walter discovered the body, picked up the weapon and went to the pastor’s home to arrange for his father’s burial? Many times, in those days, the Lutheran Church would refuse to bury people who had died by their own hand. Is this what happened when Walter requested burial? And did he then, in a fit of rage, kill the pastor and then himself ? What happened behind those closed doors will never be known.

  CHAPTER 2

  TALES OF MURDER

  THE LAST PATROL

  Police work, though risky, is not inherently dangerous, as most of us have been led to believe. Men who work off the back of a garbage truck and cab drivers who work at night have a far higher fatality rate than the average police officer. One of the most dangerous occupations is to work in a mini-mart after midnight.

  During his entire career, the average officer never fires his side arm in anger and makes only one serious felony arrest. Most of what a police officer does on a routine day is just that—routine. It is this very boring routine that can be deadly, for it can engender an attitude that “nothing can happen to me.” In my twenty-eight-year career as a police officer, I was very fortunate to have never fired my gun in anger and drew it only a very few times. Officer Theodore Husting of the Sheboygan Police Department was not as fortunate as I.

  In years past, walking the beat is what a police officer did. He patrolled his assigned district on foot, a task I performed many times. Often, on a cold rainy night at 3:00 a.m., it caused a person to wonder what in the world you were doing out there. Your main task was to “rattle doorknobs,” check for possible burglaries and to interrogate and keep records of any suspicious person found wandering about in an area where he didn’t belong.

  On the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Officer Husting, I had a chance to meet and talk with his wife at a memorial service given by the Sheboygan Police Department in his honor. Mrs. Husting related that her husband Ted told her that since he was a small boy he wanted to be a cop. She said Ted told her that he used to sit in the front yard and wait for the officer on the beat to pass his home, and then he would walk along with him as far as he could. Mrs. Husting said that she clearly remembered the day her husband received word that the application he had submitted to the Sheboygan Police Department for the position of police officer had been accepted, and how excited he was. She further reminisced about how proud he felt the first time he donned his new uniform and the apprehension and excitement he experienced as Sheboygan’s newest police officer.

  Officer Theodore Husting. Courtesy Sheboygan County Historic Research Center.

  On October 23, 1930, Ted Husting proudly joined the ranks of the Sheboygan Police Department as a “special” officer. At that time, when a young man was accepted by the department, he was classified as a special officer. This meant that he more or less worked in a part-time capacity, such as filling in for someone who might be sick, working at a special event such as the Fourth of July or maybe being called out to assist at a large fire for crowd control. Then when someone retired or left the department, the special officer would move up on the list of specials until he reached the top of the list. When the next opening occurred for a regular officer, he would be sworn in as a regular and would become a full-time police officer. On February 2, 1931, Theodore Husting became a
fully sworn full-time Sheboygan police officer. Again according to Viola Husting, her twenty-seven-year-old husband had at last realized his boyhood dream—he was a cop. It was tradition on the Sheboygan PD that the newest officers were assigned to the midnight to 8:00 a.m. shift. As an officer increased his seniority, he would advance to the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift, and then after about ten years he at last would advance to the day shift, which worked from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. During his entire six-and-a-half-year career, Ted worked nights.

  The winter of 1937 was a cold one. Temperatures constantly dipped into the single digits and at times below zero. Saturday night, March 27, 1937, was no exception. The weather report called for partly cloudy weather and cold. As usual, Ted arrived at the police station about thirty minutes before the start of his shift. Under his long, heavy police coat, he would have worn a sweater and certainly the warmest long underwear he could find and maybe even two pairs of socks. Roll call took place at 11:45 p.m., during which the officers were briefed on any problems they were to look out for and given a list of stolen cars that might be in the area or wanted persons to watch out for. On that night, Officer Husting was assigned to beats three, four and five, which were located on the northeast side of Sheboygan. It was not uncommon for officers to be assigned to several beats when much of the area they were to patrol was residential, as was the case with Husting’s beat that fateful night.

  Walking the beat on a cold winter’s night is a lonely and unrewarding job. The officer must endlessly make the rounds, checking doors and being alert to suspicious persons or circumstances. In short, it is boring and tedious, as much of police work is, punctuated by a few moments of terror now and then. As Ted left the station, he probably walked north on North Ninth Street to Michigan Avenue, west to North Thirteenth Street and then north to Calumet Drive and Lincoln Avenue, checking doors all the way. At Calumet Drive and Lincoln Avenue, he would have made his first hourly “pull.” The term “pull” meant that each hour the officer assigned to a specific area would go to one of the police call boxes that were located throughout the city. The call boxes were large gray boxes mounted on a short metal pole and almost always located on a corner. After the patrolman unlocked the box, he would pull down a lever inside the box and, by doing so, send a signal to police headquarters, which then punched out a paper tape indicating that he was on the beat and safe. The tape also indicated the patrolman’s location. This task had to be performed every hour. Also in the box was a small telephone that the officer could use to summon help or contact the shift commander, if needed. Basically, an officer was pretty much on his own. If he discovered a crime in progress, he could either try to handle it alone or run to the nearest call box to summon help. If he chose the second option, the guilty party might escape; if he chose to apprehend the culprit himself, he could be putting himself in jeopardy, especially if the suspect were armed. It was a difficult decision to make, but it was one that the beat patrolman had to make many times.

  At about 3:00 a.m., Patrolman Husting found himself at North Twelfth and Lincoln Avenue, where several business places were located. On the southwest corner was Moeller’s Grocery. As he had done dozens of times earlier that night, he stepped up to the door, tried the doorknob and found it securely locked. He then shone his flashlight into the interior; everything inside appeared to be in order. The officer then moved to the shop next door, DeKarskes Shoe Repair, and the next, Connie’s Battery and Electric Shop. All was in order. He then walked east across North Twelfth Street and checked the Nerlich Printing Co. and Stiller Cigar Co., and again, all was secure. Officer Husting now approached the southeast corner of North Twelfth and Lincoln, where Herman and Nehrings Tavern was located at 1135 Lincoln Avenue. Patrolman Husting could not have known this was to be no routine door check.

  As usual, he walked up to the door, checked to see if it was locked and then shone his flashlight into the dark interior of the tavern. The small beam of his flashlight swept across the bar and then toward the west wall of the barroom, where several pinball machines stood in a row. It was at that moment that the officer saw the dark outline of a man run toward the rear of the tavern.

  As the officer approached the building, twenty-eight-year-old Norbert Jocis was inside trying to pry open the coin box of a pinball machine. It was later learned that Jocis had been a customer of the bar earlier that evening. Jocis had in fact spent over four hour’s playing cards and drinking until the bar closed at 1:00 a.m. It was later learned from Jocis himself that while he was in the bar, he slipped unseen into a back room and unlocked one of the windows with the intention of coming back later to burglarize the tavern after it closed. Jocis later stated that he came back to the tavern at about 2:30 a.m. and crawled in through the window he had unlocked. Once in the tavern, he immediately went to the cash register, opened the drawer and found only a small amount of coins; the proprietor had apparently removed the paper money upon closing. The young thief then began to rummage around behind the bar and found a loaded Colt .45-caliber military-type automatic pistol and a blackjack. He put the blackjack in his pocket, carried the gun out from behind the bar, laid it on a table and went to work on the pinball machine with a screwdriver. As he pried on the machine, Jocis was suddenly startled to see the beam of a flashlight sweep across the bar. Jocis dropped the screwdriver, picked up the gun and ran for the back of the bar with the intention of escaping out the window that he had originally entered. At this point, he was not aware that the officer had seen him.

  But Officer Husting had seen the young burglar as he fled toward the rear of the tavern. The officer drew his gun, ran to the back of the tavern and peered into a window, where he again saw the shape of a man ducking into a side room. Officer Husting ran to a window located in the side room and shouted at the dark figure he saw inside, “Come out or I’ll shoot.” At this point, the story becomes somewhat confused, as Jocis later claimed that the officer fired three shots at him first and that he panicked and returned fire, and in the ensuing exchange of gunshots Officer Husting was fatally wounded. Jocis claimed he had no idea the officer was hit and his only thought was to escape, so he climbed out of the window he had used to enter the tavern.

  Having been severely wounded in the abdomen, Officer Husting staggered out into the middle of North Twelfth Street and collapsed. Neighbors, awakened by the sound of gunfire, looked out of their windows and saw what appeared to be a man lying in the middle of the street. Not only was there someone lying in the street, but residents heard him cry out, “Help, help, I’m dying.” Several of the neighbors rushed outside and were shocked to see that the prone figure of a man was in fact a police officer. As shaken onlookers knelt beside the wounded officer, he said, “Somebody shot me from George’s & George’s tavern, call my wife…2558-W…and call the police department…30.” A female bystander ran back into her house and called Mrs. Husting. It was in this manner that she learned that her husband had been shot. This lady then called the police department, but several other persons had already called and she was informed that an ambulance and police were on the way. One of the first officers to arrive on the scene was Sergeant Ambrose Kiernan, who later said that when he arrived Officer Husting was still holding his gun in his hand and that it was cocked. In those days, the ambulance was run by the police department. When the ambulance attendants bent down to lift their wounded comrade onto the cot, he looked up at his fellow policemen and said, “Gee Ham it hurts. Will you open my belt?” Officer Husting was then rushed to St. Nicholas Hospital, where he died at 4:23 a.m. The fatal shot had caused severe internal bleeding, and even though he was rushed into surgery upon arrival at the hospital, the bleeding could not be stopped.

  This diagram, which appeared in the local media, depicts the crime scene where Officer Husting was killed. Author’s collection.

  Chief of Police Walter Wagner had been summoned, and he immediately ordered that all detectives be called out and rushed to the scene. Investigators found the open window in the s
ide room and footprints in the thin layer of snow leading away from the crime scene. Detectives had no trouble at all following the tracks through backyards to the home of Norbert Jocis, who lived at 1127 Bluff Avenue, which was only a few blocks from the tavern. While they were following the tracks to the Jocis home, they found a piece of cloth that appeared to have been torn from someone’s trousers as he climbed over a fence. Also at this location, they found a small handful of coins amounting to one dollar. Detectives assumed that the coins had been dropped by the burglar and were part of the loot; in fact, they were the entire loot!

  When detectives arrived at the home where the tracks in the snow had led them, they began pounding on the door. After a short time, Mrs. Jocis answered the door. Detectives demanded to see her husband. She said that he was in bed sleeping. Officers then entered the home, and Norbert Jocis walked into the kitchen. Detectives noted that for a man who was supposed to have been sleeping he seemed very much wide awake. When Jocis said that he had been in bed since 1:30 a.m., his wife nodded in agreement. Permission was granted to search the home; however, after a search of several hours, nothing was found. Detective William Rothe standing in the kitchen of the Jocis home noted that they had an old-fashioned combination gas and wood stove. Looking at the stove, Rothe’s eye was caught by the stove’s large ashbin. Sliding the ashbin out, the detective immediately noted how heavy it was. Stirring through the cold ashes the sharp-eyed investigator discovered a Colt .45 automatic pistol and a blackjack, both of which were reported stolen from behind the bar at the tavern. The gun was later proven to be the murder weapon.