Wife charged with helping husband rob armored car

Last update: May 12, 2009 - 11:05 PM

The wife of a western Wisconsin man charged in a 2003 armored car robbery drove the getaway car and deposited huge sums of money in a bank, according to charges filed in St. Croix County Circuit Court.

Debra Ann Wiegand, 29, of Herbster, Wis., was charged Monday with two counts of armed robbery, one count of receiving stolen property, one count of arson and one count of operating a motor vehicle without the owner's consent. All are felonies.

The complaint said Wiegand and her husband, Zachary R. Wiegand, 32, stole four bags of cash containing $238,000 in the Hudson, Wis., robbery.

The complaint also says she took time off from her job at Christian Community Home in Hudson, Wis., to rent a safety deposit box. She made a series of deposits that totaled $104,393.04 in River Bank in Osceola.

Zachary Wiegand was sentenced last week to 12 years in a Minnesota prison for the first-degree attempted murder of a Lake Elmo woman when he tried to take her car at a rural intersection in Washington County on May 28, 2003.

After shooting her four times, he stole another woman's van at gunpoint. He allegedly used that vehicle in the armed robbery of an armored car in Hudson the next day. His wife is accused of driving him from the scene after he set fire to the van.

He's charged with five felonies in St. Croix County.

A break in the case came last fall when a Washington County investigator traced a handgun found in a Minneapolis traffic stop to Zachary Wiegand.

KEVIN GILES

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