After Travis Grafe left Rachel Grafe in a pool of blood Friday night, an arrest report said, he went to the home of a neighbor and told the man that he’d killed his mother, the owner of Knaus Berry Farm.
That’s what one witness told Miami-Dade police as they investigated how Rachel Grafe wound up fighting for her life at Jackson South Medical Center, where husband Herbert Grafe also was hospitalized. A Sunday Instagram post on Knaus Berry Farm’s account said Rachel Knaus Grafe has shown “slight improvement.” The South Miami-Dade business known for milkshakes and sticky buns was open Monday after being closed all weekend.
Meanwhile, Travis Grafe, 40, remains in jail on charges of attempted premeditated murder; aggravated battery on a person 65 or older; and attempted strongarm robbery. Online jail records say his bond is $25,000. No attorney is listed for this case yet in online court records. Previously, Howard Brodsky has represented Travis Grafe.
His last encounter with the criminal justice system, an October 2013 arrest on multiple charges including bomb possession and aggravated battery on a police officer, ended in 2019 with an order of dismissal because Grafe was ruled incompetent to stand trial and had been “incompetent for more than five years.”
Blood and money
Online court records say Rachel Grafe has been Travis Grafe’s legal guardian since 2016. Mother, father and son live together in a house in the 24500 block of Southwest 157th Avenue.
When police arrived there around 6:13 Friday, the arrest report said, “officers found (Rachel Grafe) lying unconscious in a pool of her own blood” with head and chest injuries. Next to her, “officers located a flashlight with apparent blood stains.”
She was airlifted by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to Jackson South. When a Miami-Dade detective found Herbert Grafe at Jackson South with a contusion to the head, Herbert said he couldn’t say how he got hurt “because he lost consciousness.”
A longtime friend of the family told investigators he’d been on the phone with Herbert Grafe and heard Travis say he killed his mother and “he wanted money or he will kill him, too,” according to the arrest report.
Travis eventually went to the neighbor’s house, which is where police say they found him. The neighbor said Travis Grafe got there with blood on his clothes and said “that he hit his mother with a flashlight multiple times on the head, causing injuries and believe that he had killed her.”
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