Crime & Safety

Alert Tosa Officer Collared Peshtigo Murder Suspect

It was routine and at the same time exceptional. Just knowing to investigate a car a bit out of place on an East Tosa street was enough to lead to arrest in homicide case.

It was widely reported last week that the suspect in the murder of Patricia Waschbisch of Peshtigo was arrested in Wauwatosa. But the Tosa police were mum as to how it came about.

While some media credited the Wauwatosa police, at least one news story implied that Brent Kaempf was taken into custody by officers of the state Division of Criminal Investigation.

Partly true, but only on a technicality. It's clear from the criminal complaint filed in Marinette County, charging Kaempf with first-degree intentional homicide, that a piece of excellent – if at the same time very normal – police work by a diligent late-shift Tosa patrol officer was responsible for Kaempf's capture.

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Nearly a day's lead on the law

Waschbisch's body was found at about 7:20 p.m. April 28, in the Peshtigo home she and Kaempf were sharing. But Kaempf would confess soon after he was taken in that he had stabbed her to death around midnight the night before. He could have had as much as a 19- or 20-hour head start before the murder was even discovered.

The complaint does not detail what all Kaempf might have done in the interim, but it does suggest that Peshtigo authorities spent some time developing Kaempf as a suspect before putting out a bulletin seeking his arrest.

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A little after 3 a.m. Monday, only a few hours after the bulletin would have gone out, a Wauwatosa police officer was on routine patrol in East Tosa.

At that hour of the third shift, an officer would be enforcing overnight parking regulations. At the same time, he or she would be on watch for the unusal as well – suspicious sights or sounds, a glimpse of someone or something out of place, watchful for impaired drivers, ready for the anxious call of a burglary or robbery in progress.

The officer noticed a car parked near a closed business at 61st and North. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's nothing. The other time it's a burglar.

The officer approached the car and saw a man asleep inside. He woke the man and spoke to him, then asked him for his identification. The man gave his name: Brent Kaempf. It was only after the officer did a routine records check that the red flag of the bulletin went up. The patrol officer had stumbled upon a man wanted for murder.

An uneventful arrest

You might think the next scene would be of a street filled with flashing lights as backup squads from Wauwatosa PD, nearby Milwaukee PD, sheriff's deputies and state DCI officers swarmed to 61st and North in a high-profile homicide arrest.

In fact, the officer noted that Kaempf had a wound on his wrist, and doing what trained peace officers do, he alerted his superiors and took Kaempf to the hospital.

Two DCI agents were sent to interview Kaempf. They read him his rights, he waived them, and he confessed to killing Waschbisch with a kitchen knife.

He was in Wauwatosa, he said, because he ran away from home.

Technically, DCI agents arrested Brent Kaempf on suspicion of homicide.

In reality, a third-shift Wauwatosa police officer made it possible by paying acute attention to the dark landscape of his beat.


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