The DNA analysis won’t be done by Christmas as defense attorney Celeste Stack had hoped, but evidence in the Starved Rock murders case should be undergoing examination at a lab in Virginia by then. Stack and the lawyers for the state plan to meet with LaSalle County Sheriff’s Department personnel next Thursday to package evidence. Hair, string, and cigarette butts will be analyzed in an attempt to find out if someone other than Chester Weger and the victims were there when three women were killed in St. Louis Canyon in 1960.
Forty-seven year old Frances Murphy, 50-year old Mildred Lindquist, and 50-year old Lillian Oetting were beaten to death. Weger is on parole after serving almost six decades in prison. He confessed to the crime all those years ago but recanted almost immediately and has said ever since that he was pressured into saying he did it.
In late October, Judge Michael C. Jansz ruled that some of the evidence can be examined using techniques that didn’t exist when Weger was prosecuted. Weger’s attorneys believe some of the items that have been saved for 61 years avoided the contamination imposed on other evidence after the public was allowed to touch it. In hearings earlier this year, they and a forensic analyst said hair and fibers sealed onto microscope slides would have been protected.
A different lawyer for Weger abandoned an attempt to get new analyses in 2004 while he was still in prison. She concluded that so many people had handled the evidence, identifying other DNA wouldn’t prove anything. Even earlier this year, lawyers acknowledged that Girl Scouts who tried on Weger’s jacket could have left as much DNA in it as Weger did.
The lawyers are to be in court again in February to update Judge Jansz on the testing’s progress.