The J…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

hat Graeter will be put in some asylum as soon as he is examined by a physician. Graeter comes from one of the first families of Indiana, and is estimated to be worth $80,000. The ver- dict of the coroner was in accordance with the facts as stated in yesterday’s dispatch. The J. W. Graeter above referred to is al- most undoubtedly the same man who was a partner of L. D. Miller in this city in 1885. He came here from Vincennes, Indiana, where his father and sister then resided. He frequently boasted that his business here was only a side issue and that his father was very wealthy. While here he frequently indulged in heavy drinking and gambling sprees, and at such times was cross and quarrelsome. While staying at the Broadway hotel he raised a great distur- bance one evening while under the influence of liquor. Mr. Durkee, who was a friend of Graeter’s, went into the room where Graeter lay on a bed in the dark and tried to have him keep quiet. Without warning of any kind he fired two shots at Mr. Durkee from a revolver, both bullets passing close to his abdomen and lodg- ing in the wall, where the holes may yet be soon. Mr. Durkee believes Graeter to have been insane while under the influence of liquor, while others here believe those fits to have been simply an outlet of his pure cussedness, under the guise of drunkenness, and still further believe that his recent murderous freak was of the same nature and from the same cause, in- sanity only being a dodge to escape punishment.