“Aha, God damn you, I’ve got you now!” Shouted Antenat, and with one slash of the knife, he severed Kever’s carotid artery and jugular vein. “He never cut the throat of a hog and drew the dripping knife away more deliberately and with more complacency.” Said the Indiana State Sentinel.
With his dying breath, Kevers said, “I’m gone. Go, Billy, I’m killed.”
Antenat tried to stab Lowman in the chest, but Lowman dodged it and fled down the street. Antenat chased him for half a block, then turned back the other way and went to the home of his employer, Frederick Grafenstein.
He told Grafenstein what he had done, and Grafenstein advised him to go to the police station and turn himself in. Antenat agreed. On his way downtown, he was overtaken by Police Officer Minor, who escorted him to Central Station.
Lowman told the police that the attack had been unprovoked. He and Kever had stopped into Sprandel’s Saloon to get a beer. They saw the murderer in the saloon but had no difficulty with him. Antenat told a different story. He said the two men had tried to make him pay for their beers, and when he refused, they abused him for being a butcher.
The victim, Robert Kever, was a 23-year-old grocer of German descent. His reputation was generally good, but he was quarrelsome and known to be a bully. “In short,” said the Sentinel, “he was full of expressive bluster and made enemies thereby.”
40-year-old Louis Antenat was a French immigrant from Alsace-Loraine who had been in the country for seventeen years but had trouble speaking English. He was said to be of a quiet yet sullen disposition. But when excited, his fury knew no bounds. His wife had divorced him for drunkenness and cruel treatment, and he was arrested twice for assault.
He told reporters his version of the story:
I tell you how it was. I left the butcher shop, expecting to get me a bottle of beer, went to the little saloon at the corner of Second and Mississippi Streets and stopped up to the bar and called for me a bottle of beer and "pony whisky." The saloon keeper put it on the counter, when two fellows that I don't know stopped up and said they would take a drink too, and told him (the saloon keeper) that the butcher would pay for it. I said no, and the saloon keeper ( he is a good man) told them I was all right and not to make me no trouble; that I paid for my drinks and go about my business. Then one of them said to me, " You are the butcher what whips five men," and said I was no game and would not fight, and began to punch and kick me around...They kept pushing me around, and I left, and they followed me. When I got down to the corner of First and Mississippi Streets, one of them, I did not know any of the men, jumped on me and choked me, and another hit me on the back of the head. I was so mad I don't know what to do, and if I had two revolvers, I would shoot them both.
Antenat was tried for first-degree murder in March 1880. He was easily convicted and sentenced to life in Indiana State Prison North.
His attorney moved for a new trial on the grounds that one juror was asleep during the defense’s closing argument. The juror, Mr. Wakeland, filed an affidavit saying that he felt drowsy and had closed his eyes during the defense argument, but he was not sleeping. He heard every word of the argument. The judge overruled the motion. Antenat was taken to prison to serve his sentence.
In 1889, Indiana Governor Gray commuted Antenat’s life sentence to sixteen years. His good behavior in prison also reduced his sentence by six years. He was released in October 1890.
Sources:
“The Antenat Case,” Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, April 13, 1880.
“The Antenat Homicide,” Indianapolis leader., January 24, 1880.
“Bloody Butchery,” Illustrated Police News, January 31, 1880.
“City News,” Indianapolis leader., March 13, 1880.
“Home Notes,” Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, February 9, 1880.
“Indianapolis,” Cincinnati Daily Star., March 4, 1880.
“Stabbed to Death,” Indiana State Sentinel., January 21, 1880.
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