Two arrested after living at Kickapoo Indian Caverns
Elizabeth Perry Rydz
Brandon Wantroba
These are the beds Rydz and Wantroba were sleeping on in the Trading Post building on the Kickapoo Indian Caverns site. (Photos courtesy of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department)
Shelves inside the Trading Post building were found to hold numerous food items.
By Ted Pennekamp
On Wednesday, May 10, the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department received a report of a suspicious vehicle parked on the property of the former Kickapoo Indian Caverns in the town of Wauzeka.
The property is for sale and is checked on periodically by care takers. Deputies responded to the area and located the vehicle parked in the vicinity of the walkway leading up to the “Trading Post” building on the site. The building is located at the exit/entrance area of the cave. Deputies approached the building and determined that entry had been forcefully gained by prying open a side door to the building. As deputies prepared to clear the building, a woman and a man exited the building and were identified as Elizabeth Perry Rydz, 36, and Brandon Wantroba, 20, both of Milwaukee.
After questioning, Rydz and Wantroba were taken into custody for suspected burglary and transported to the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department Jail to await a bond hearing. The suspects told deputies they had been staying at the property periodically over the past month and planned to claim the property as their own and name the property “Silent Grove.”
Once Rydz and Wantroba were removed from the property, deputies and investigators cleared the building and the cave and discovered numerous items including food, beds, clothes, personal hygiene items and digging tools.
Both Rydz and Wantroba stated to deputies that they had found the property for sale on-line and decided that they would move into the property and take adverse possession. They stated that they broke the lock off the door and replaced it with their own lock. An acquaintance of the pair told investigators that both Rydz and Wantroba are members of a religious group named The United Council of Magna Vetera, and they were looking for places to survive a potential nuclear attack on the United States.
The only items missing from the buildings was a necklace made of animal teeth and a sign. Both items were found in the vehicle owned by Rydz.
Rydz and Wantroba have both been released from jail on a $1,000 signature bond.
The case remains under investigation.
Mississippi Valley Conservancy (MVC), which is headquartered in La Crosse, has been pursuing the purchase of the 83-acre site. Sheriff Dale McCullick said that MVC received threats recently related to the incident.
Starting in 1947, Kickapoo Indian Caverns became a tourist destination where people could pay for a guided tour of the cave. Public tours ended in 2011. The owner, Delores Gaidowski, died in 2014 and her family put the site up for sale in September of 2015.
Kickapoo Indian Caverns is one of Wisconsin’s longest natural cavern systems and is considered one of the biggest show caves in the Midwest.
The stunning limestone cavern system includes an underground river, numerous cathedral-like chambers and beautifully colored ribbon stalactites. It also provides hibernacula for the federally threatened northern long-eared bat and state threatened little brown bat and eastern pipistrelle.
