Lawyers representing the man who spent six decades in prison after three women were murdered at Starved Rock State Park will get to look at the evidence. But the new forensic examination they want in 82-year old Chester Weger’s case isn’t happening just yet. LaSalle County Judge Michael Jansz ruled Tuesday the purpose of looking at the evidence is to find out if there’s something that can be given a new test. The lawyers for 82-year old Weger ultimately hope to get an examination that clears Weger of the 1960 killings. He got out of prison on parole last year.
In the years since a jury convicted Weger of one murder, the general public was allowed to look over the evidence. Some people put on Weger’s coat and handled other evidence with their bare hands. That was before DNA testing. No one had any idea that letting everyone else touch the evidence also let them contaminate it with their DNA. But Christopher Palenik, a vice president at Microtrace, says his company can often identify evidence that’s sealed against contamination and can be analyzed. In court Tuesday, he described how fibers and hairs placed on slides for microscope views are protected in the resin that holds them onto the slides.
Prosecutors held back on prosecuting Weger for two other women’s deaths. Their plan was to keep them as backup cases in case he won his trial on the first charge or a court ruling went in his favor. But those prosecutions never happened, even after the Illinois Supreme Court changed his sentence from life to life with a chance for parole.