Who killed Aloyzie Przybilla?

Murder remains unsolved 25 years late

            No longer owned by the Przybilla family, the property that Aloyzie Przybilla was shot at is fenced off. The house that Przybilla lived — and died — in was burned down several years ago, while other buildings on the property have also been destroyed. The only building left standing is a milk house.             (Times photograph by Andrew Dannehy)


            The above diagram was drawn by Leon Przybilla, describing where he found his father’s body. Aloyzie Przybilla was shot in his own home during an apparent burglary attempt in 1997, the murder remains unsolved.

“Whatever you do, don’t believe the police report because, I tell you what, they &#@%ed that up so bad.” - Leon "Butch" Przybilla

One person was tried and another, supposedly, confessed, but after 25 years, nobody has been convicted for the murder of Aloyzie Przybilla.

The murder has remained a mystery since the 74-year-old Przybilla’s body was discovered by his son Leon “Butch” Przybilla, on April 3, 1997 at his home, located at N35084 County Road XX in the town of Burnside. In the years since, numerous accusations — including between family members — have been made, one man was tried and found not guilty and another man confessed, but passed away years before his confession was reported to authorities.

Today, the case that then-Trempealeau County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Dan Schreiner called a “stole-cold ‘who-dunit’” has some answers, but the biggest question remains: Who killed Aloyzie Przybilla?

According to court records, Leon Przybilla said he went to his father’s house to talk to him about a car that needed repairs and was surprised to find the door locked. He looked through a window and saw his father lying on the ground with his eyes open. 

Przybilla said he noticed several things that were out of place, including his father’s bed not being made, which was unusual. He also said he saw a .22 caliber shell and blood on the floor.  After several family members arrived, they called the police. 

Court records indicated that it wasn’t until Aloyzie Przybilla’s body had arrived at a hospital in Eau Claire that a bullet wound was discovered. There was, apparently, no signs of a bullet wound on his clothes. At that point, the county sheriff’s department began investigating the death as a murder.

For more than three years, numerous investigations were conducted and accusations were made, including one by the victim’s brother, Ed Przybilla, who told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram that he suspected the victim’s sons, Leon and Alan, were involved somehow. 

“I went for a lie detector test up in Eau Claire,” Leon Przybilla said. “I assumed they were gonna lock me up, I didn’t think that lie detector test went that well, but I passed with flying colors.” 

Przybilla doesn’t know for sure if the police also suspected him.

“I had run-ins with the law enough, they kind of despised me because I would fight for my rights,” Przybilla said. “I would say of all the tickets I got, I probably got hammered with eight or nine of them and I got hundreds.”

The first big break in the case came in 2001 when Michael Vernio III was arrested and charged with murder after his former girlfriend, Shannon Ristau, told police that Vernio was a part of a group of people who met early in 1997 and plotted to rob Przybilla’s residence.

Ristau was interviewed years earlier, but denied any involvement. In 2001, however, she had already pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit felony theft for being the driver on a couple trips the conspirators made to Trempealeau County, including one that, she said, ended with murder. 

Ristau testified that she dropped Vernio off at the rural Independence residence to commit the burglary the night of the crime. When Vernio returned to the vehicle, Ristau testified that Vernio said a man came after him, he got scared and shot the man. 

After a week-long trial in 2002, an eight-woman, four-man jury deliberated for more than eight hours before reaching the conclusion that the state and the county District Attorney’s office had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Vernio had shot the rural Independence resident in late March or early April of that year. The verdict came shortly before 3 a.m., concluding what was likely the longest first-degree murder trial in county history.

Vernio wasn’t free, though. While he was found not guilty of homicide, he was found guilty of two counts related to conspiracy to commit burglary, each came with an eight-year prison sentence. Ristau had been charged with two more serious felony counts, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and burglary. Another person implicated by Ristau, Scott Kujak, was sentenced to three years of probation, which extended his sentence in the Minnesota prison system. 

Vernio was released in 2018, roughly a decade after he attempted to get a new trial because another person had supposedly confessed to the murder.

While hospitalized with liver failure at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn., Daniel Roach supposedly told a friend  — whose name was redacted from the court records — that he was the “one who pulled the trigger on” an old man who walked in on he and several other people in a “Trempealeau, Wisconsin” house that they had entered to rob.

According to court records, Dr. Katherine Piderman, the chaplain at Mayo Clinic, also testified regarding conversations with Roach. Roach admitted his involvement in the murder of an elderly man with “a bunch of people.” He did not specify who, when, where, or if he was the one who committed the murder. He told Piderman in December 2000 that the murder was “a long time ago.”

Dr. Steven Altchuler, psychiatrist at Mayo Clinic, said Roach could’ve been under the influence of drugs when he confessed to being involved in the crime. 

Roach told others that he was involved and felt guilty that he didn’t do anything to stop the killing. A Registered Nurse from Mayo who treated Roach said he suffered from alcoholism and alcoholics are known to embellish. He said Roach referenced the crime, but did not say he pulled the trigger.

Roach had previously been interviewed by police. In June 2000, he told police that he learned about the crime from Kujak, who he had met in jail. 

Roach passed away in November of 2001. 

In 2008, Vernio’s attorney, Dennis Schertz, said Roach’s admission cast more than a reasonable doubt on whether his client was involved in the death of Przybilla. Damon rejected that argument, and the three-judge appeals court did too. The appellate panel noted that, while Vernio denied involvement in Przybilla’s murder, he had acknowledged to investigators that others had conspired at his residence to commit burglary and robbery; whether or not Vernio was involved in the murder — and even if the murder had not occurred — the conspiracy charge would stand.

Leon Przybilla indicated that he believes Roach did it, but doesn’t think he acted alone. 

“He’s dead and gone, but I’d like to know the rest of them who were involved with it because somebody should pay the piper,” Przybilla said. 

He said he believes Ristau knows more than what she said. 

“I wish they would’ve locked that Shannon Ristau up right in this jailhouse here (in Whitehall) and she would’ve spilled the beans,” Przybilla said. “That much I know.”

As for why Ristau said Vernio was the shooter, he said: “Blame a black guy…they’re the easiest ones to pick on.”

The motive for the crime is thought to have been money, but Leon Przybilla said neither he nor any of his siblings thought his father had any money. Roach told police that Kujak told him they left the house without any money. 

“If he had any money, we never found it either,” Przybilla said.

The house, according to numerous accounts in the court records, was known as a place where parties were held in the 1980s. While it was said that no parties had been held there since at least 1994, some speculated that the parties are what drew the burglars to the residence. Ed Przybilla told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram that the house had been burglarized a number of times over the years. 

The Przybilla family has invested a lot of time and resources into finding the killer.

“I don’t know how much you believe in the God darn psychics, but we reached out to a lot of stuff,” Przybilla said. 

He said a psychic from Menomonie told him a woman with dark hair was looking in the window of the house and described a curtain that was hanging. She also described the house as a log cabin, which it originally was before being refinished. 

“How did she know all of that,” Przybilla asked.  

The family also hired a local man, Joe Taylor, to serve as a private investigator.

“Oh God, that was a bad mistake,” Przybilla said. 

While he indicated that he believes Roach’s confession, Przybilla said it didn’t give him any peace. “Did you think it would?” 

Przybilla also has issues with how the investigation was conducted. He referred to one officer as crooked and said an Emergency Medical Technician lied on the stand.

“Whatever you do, don’t believe the police report because, I tell you what, they &#@%ed that up so bad,” Przybilla said. “We were telling them the whole story and, all of a sudden, the investigator said ‘well, you left that part out.’”

Przybilla said the sheriff’s department edited the call that was made to 911 from the house.

He said his youngest brother, Randy, suggested bringing a video camera after they found his father’s body, something he wishes they would’ve done. “The video don’t lie and neither do we, we don’t have no reason to lie.”

The case sparked a change in policy as the sheriff’s department began sending officers to all unattended deaths. By not investigating the death as a murder from the start, Schreiner told the Eau Claire Leader Telegram in 1998 that they may have lost valuable evidence. 

The case has been closed by the sheriff’s department. In 2018, when Vernio was released, then-Sheriff Richard Anderson said it had been a number of years since the department had gotten any new evidence. Current Sheriff Brett Semingson said no new evidence has come since he has taken office. 

Shortly after his father’s murder, Leon Przybilla offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who helps catch the killer, which he says still stands. “Heck yeah, it would be good.”

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