This Is A Sensitive But Informative Headline
By Margaret Lyons in News on Oct 20, 2004 2:49PM
Two high-profile deaths this week in Chicagoland; one this morning and one Monday (with details surfacing today). Chicagoist usually doesn't like to cover…death…but these are kind of big, or at least unusually interesting, cases.
Daniel T. Bowen was found hanged in his Cook County Jail cell this morning. Bowen had been in jail since his arrest September 28 and was due in court again November 3. He was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wife, Anne Treonis-Bowen, an Illinois Liquor Control Commission attorney. Treonis-Bowen was shot in the head in a CTA parking lot March 5. Dennis McArdle, a lifelong friend of Bowen's, testified October 13 that Bowen paid him $20,000 and promised him a job with the city for killing Treonis-Bowen. McArdle pleaded guilty to murder charges, and in exchange for his testimony against Bowen, received a 35-year sentence. Bowen was alone in his cell and not on suicide watch.
Donald Grauer, 70, was killed Monday when he was hit by a Metra train in Highland Park. Grauer pleaded guilty in August to bank fraud for obtaining fraudulent loans, and was going to be formally sentenced November 23. He had agreed to a 3-year sentence for his guilty plea and testimony against his partner. According to the Trib, the loan fraud "saddled Oak Brook Bank and Fifth Third Bank with a combined $15 million in losses, and other partners lost at least $1 million." Witnesses told the Tribune that Grauer had parked his car near the train tracks and "stood still and ignored the whistle as a northbound train bore down and struck him."