Four years ago, when Wyndham Lathem and Andrew Warren touched down at O’Hare International Airport after a weeklong nationwide manhunt, the city was baffled: What could possibly have led a respected Northwestern microbiologist and a British national to stab a young hairdresser 78 times and leave him to die?
At Lathem and Warren’s first appearance in court a few days later, Cook County prosecutors provided an answer. The motive, they said, was a violent sexual fantasy they shared, centered on killing other people and themselves.
The sordid allegation made international headlines and instantly branded the case as one of the strangest murders in recent Chicago memory.
But this week, as Lathem finally went to trial, jurors heard nothing about a sexual motive for the killing.
Instead, prosecutors have said only that Lathem and Warren, both deeply depressed, had a suicidal agreement to kill each other. Warren, testifying for the state as part of a plea agreement, said Lathem spoke in general about killing people, and one night in July 2017 summoned Warren to his apartment because he wanted to kill his boyfriend, Trenton Cornell.
Instead it’s been the defense that put forward a salacious theory: That Warren catfished Lathem from across the Atlantic, then killed Cornell all by himself in a frenzy of jealousy during a kinky meth-fueled threesome. Lathem is expected to testify this coming weekin his own defense.
Undisputed is that after Cornell’s death the two men fled Chicago and eluded authorities for more than a week. Along the way, Lathem made cash donations in Cornell’s name to the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago as well as a library in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Judge Charles Burns was assigned to oversee the case after the allegations were made in bond court, and has since conducted proceedings in extraordinary secrecy. Many key court filings were submitted under seal, and Burns has conducted extensive closed-door hearings with attorneys to argue over evidence. Even some of his rulings on what jurors are allowed to hear have been kept secret.
So Burns may well have banned prosecutors from mentioning any possible kinky or sexual motive, leaving a gap in their case. Lawyers on both sides remain under a court-imposed gag order.
The trial is expected to stretch into the coming week, and some questions still linger. If Warren’s story about the death pact was true, why did he email two people to tell them he’d be home to explain everything in August? If Lathem was the homicidal one, why did Warren join in on the stabbing? And if Lathem was truly just a frightened bystander, why did he accompany Warren on the lam for more than a week instead of going to authorities?
It was a different memorable prosecution witness who moved things closer to the original motive authorities presented, a man who met Lathem for a Grindr hookup long before Cornell’s death. He told the jury that during their encounter Lathem took out what appeared to be a knife and asked if he could pretend to stab him while they had sex.
When Jeremy Zaloun said no, Lathem “changed,” he said.
“I watched him basically turn from Fred Flintstone to Freddy Krueger in about 30 seconds,” Zaloun said.
While Lathem is not expected to take the stand until in coming days, jurors on Friday saw him speak for himself, on a video he sent to his parents while on the run in August 2017.
Lathem, red-faced and crying, appears against a dark background and tells his parents he is racked with guilt.
“I don’t know why I didn’t ever tell you, but I had a boyfriend, I had one for a number of months,” he said, then briefly hyperventilated. “His name was Trent, Trent Cornell. I called him my squishy boy, he was so innocent and so young.”
“He trusted me, he felt safe with me, and I betrayed that … because I killed him, I did do it,” he continued. “And it wasn’t an accident but it was a mistake. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I regret it with every fiber of my being.”
Lathem said he could not live with the guilt, and the video takes on the characteristics of a suicide note: giving instructions on what to do with his remains and his estate. His money should go to charity in Cornell’s name, he said.
“People should remember him, not me,” he said. “No one should ever remember me. Just remember him, my squishy boy.”
But the centerpiece prosecution witness was Warren, who testified Wednesday as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors. In exchange for his testimony against Lathem, prosecutors have said they will recommend a sentence of 45 years for Warren, and will not object if he seeks to transfer to a prison in the United Kingdom, where he would only have to serve half of his remaining time.
Warren told the jury Lathem spoke with him in general about killing people after he paid for Warren to fly from London to Chicago in summer 2017.
In the hours before Cornell was killed, Lathem texted Warren in the middle of the night, Warren said.
“I got this message saying that he wanted to kill Trent,” he told the jury.
Warren went to Lathem’s apartment, where Lathem showed him knives in a brown paper bag, and both men removed their clothes “in case there was blood everywhere,” Warren said.
Lathem instructed Warren to take video of him killing Cornell, but Warren couldn’t bring himself to do it, he said. Warren saw Lathem stabbing Cornell, who screamed and struggled, Warren said.
Lathem asked Warren to come in and try to quiet Cornell down; in response, Warren tried to hold his hand over Cornell’s mouth, then hit him over the head with a nearby lamp, to no effect, Warren told the jury.
Then Warren said he grabbed a knife himself, and stabbed Cornell twice in the abdomen.
“I don’t know why. I’ll never know why,” he said.
The two men showered and went on the run after that, to Wisconsin, then across the country to California, Warren said. Lathem dropped Warren off in San Francisco, where he wandered around trying to find a police station to turn himself in.
“I wanted to clear my mind, get everything off my chest,” he said.
On cross-examination, defense attorney Barry Sheppard aggressively sought to cast doubt on Warren’s claims that the two men wanted to kill themselves or each other. Throughout their travels they had plenty of opportunity to do so, Warren acknowledged, but only made one attempt — they tried to poison themselves with carbon monoxide at one point after Cornell’s death.
They never overdosed or jumped off the St. Louis Arch or the Golden Gate Bridge, he said in response to Sheppard’s questioning.
“You couldn’t jump off the London Bridge, could you?” Sheppard asked. “Some people jump off a bridge. Why didn’t you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Warren said.
And jurors saw emails from Warren and Lathem’s accounts that seem to support that there were sexual and romantic messages between the two — potentially bolstering the defense’s argument that Warren was a catfishing gold digger.
“You are my perfect husband, I love you with my whole heart, xxx,” Warren emailed Lathem in July 2017, not long before he flew to the U.S.
And on Friday, a scientist who tested much of the crime scene evidence testified that no blood was detected on the knife that Warren said he saw Lathem carry into the bedroom. Lathem’s attorneys have said that definitively proves Warren is lying about his version of events.
On further questioning, the scientist noted that she would only have tested for blood in areas where she saw blood stains, so if the knife had theoretically been cleaned or wiped off, she would not have conducted tests on those areas.
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
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