The farmhouse sat in the open country near what is now Harper Road and Gutzmer Road, between Monroe and Monticello, in the kind of quiet Green County landscape where violence was supposed to feel far away.

But on May 3, 1919, that farm became the center of one of the most shocking crimes in county history — a killing, a siege, a wounded World War I veteran, an enraged crowd and the death of Green County Sheriff Matthew Solbraa.

The man at the center of it was Gottfried Voegeli, a Swiss immigrant and hired farmhand. The victims were Dietrich “Dick” Marti, a farmer with New Glarus-area family ties; Sheriff Solbraa, a respected lawman; and Spencer Morton, a 22-year-old veteran who had survived war overseas only to be shot in rural Wisconsin.

Newspapers at the time described the case in breathless, almost battlefield language. Hundreds of armed men surrounded the farmhouse. Bullets tore through plaster and wood. Officials feared mob violence. Before the week was over, Voegeli would be in prison for life.