Born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1889, Joe Crater graduated from Columbia Law school in 1913. Crater spent six years as an assistant to Justice Robert Wagner then went into private practice. In April 1930, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt named Crater to fill the unexpired term of retiring State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Proskauer.
Crater and his wife Stella owned a summer cottage in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, where they could escape New York's hot and humid summers. The Craters were enjoying the pleasant Maine weather on the evening of August 2, 1930, when the judge received a phone call that upset him. He told his wife he had to go back to New York for a few days and would return by her birthday, August 9, if not sooner. The judge never told her or anyone else the caller's identity or the topic of conversation.
Crater's train pulled into New York City's Grand Central Station on Monday, August 4. Upon arriving at his apartment he told the maid to take off for a few days. The following morning the judge went to his office at the court and worked all day. When he arrived at his office on the morning of August 6, the judge sent an aide to the bank to cash checks totaling $5,100. ($55,104 in 2005 dollars) The Judge spent the day going through his personal files. He filled a borrowed brief case with the files and tied the rest with string. To help carry the papers, aide Joseph L. Mara accompanied Crater home in a cab. Mara thought the judge acted depressed, "very blue and moody." Crater, a Larchmont Shore Club member, told Mara he planed to go to Westchester for a swim and that he would see him in the morning.
Crater then went to a ticket agency in Manhattan's theatre district where he arranged to pick up a ticket for
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