A year and a half before a Northwestern professor was accused of fatally stabbing his boyfriend, he grabbed what appeared to be a knife and asked a Grindr date if he could pretend to stab him while they had sex, the onetime date testified Thursday.

       When Jeremy Zaloun said no and that he wanted to leave, Wyndham Lathem reacted threateningly, Zaloun told jurors.

       “He told me I would leave when he said I could,” Zaloun told jurors. “I watched him basically turn from Fred Flintstone to Freddy Krueger in about 30 seconds.”

       Zaloun said the January 2016 encounter that resulted from the dating app ended when he pulled his gun on Lathem and ran out of Lathem’s high-rise apartment.

       He did not report the encounter to police until August 2017, after Lathem had been named a suspect in the stabbing death of Trenton Cornell — who was a friend of Zaloun’s. Zaloun testified during the fourth day of the former professor’s murder trial, which is expected to stretch into next week.

       The military veteran grew distressed and hostile on cross-examination, telling Judge Charles Burns he had post-traumatic stress disorder and he couldn’t continue. His body was visibly shaking and at times he appeared to be on the brink of tears at a defense attorney’s persistent questions about his gun, his relationship with Cornell, and his past drug use.

       Burns had to pause the proceedings several times, to tell Zaloun to answer the questions and admonish the defense not to repeat questions.

       Thursday’s testimony brought yet another sordid element to what has been a strange and salacious trial. Prosecutors allege Lathem and a British man, Andrew Warren, met up in Chicago to execute a death pact, in which Warren would shoot Lathem and Lathem would stab Warren. Instead, however, Lathem decided to kill Cornell, Warren testified Wednesday.

       The two men then went on the lam, sparking a nationwide manhunt before they separately turned themselves in to authorities in California.

       Lathem’s attorneys, by contrast, have told jurors that Warren acted alone, stabbing Cornell in a jealous frenzy after trying to catfish the more prosperous Lathem into a relationship. Lathem himself is expected to testify next week.

       Jurors on Thursday also heard from a former security supervisor at the lab where Lathem, an accomplished microbiologist, studied the bubonic plague.

       A few months before Cornell’s death, Lathem had been passed over for a much hoped-for position at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Dr. Andrea Hall told jurors that Lathem had not passed the institution’s background check.

       A few days after Cornell’s death, Hall got an email purportedly from Lathem, she testified. In it, he promised that he had not done anything improper with samples of the dangerous bacterium he studied.

       “I have put you in a terrible spot,” the email stated. “I am so sorry for everything that has happened and what is to come.”

       Prosecutors have said Lathem was so distraught at losing the Paris job that he was driven to suicidal impulses, leading him to discuss the death pact with Warren.

       But, Hall testified, while Lathem was initially disappointed, he appeared to recover relatively quickly, and was in the process of getting his Northwestern lab back up and running.

       Jurors also saw video footage of Warren’s statement to San Francisco detectives, in which he reiterated the “strange fantasies” he and Lathem had shared about killing each other.

       mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

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