Ex-Northwestern Prof Sentenced In 'Perverted' Murder Of Boyfriend

CHICAGO — The former Northwestern University professor convicted of murdering his boyfriend was sentenced this week to 53 years in prison.

Wyndham Lathem, 47, faced a minimum sentence of two decades in state prison and a maximum of 60 years behind bars after a jury found him guilty of the fatal July 2017 stabbing of 26-year-old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau.

Prosecutors said Lathem and Andrew Warren, a British man whose flight to Chicago the professor had arranged with the intention of carrying out a murder-suicide sex fantasy, stabbed Cornell-Duranleau nearly 80 times. The two men led authorities on a nationwide manhunt before turning themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area eight days later.

Warren pleaded guilty in 2019 and testified against Lathem at his trial in October. Despite a video-taped confession played for the jury in which Lathem says, "I killed him, I did do it. It wasn't an accident, but it was a mistake," Lathem's attorneys suggested at trial that Warren had been the instigator of the killing.

Jurors were unconvinced. They returned a guilty verdict after less than two hours of deliberation.

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Cook County Circuit Judge Charles Burns described the killing as "cold-blooded" and an "execution" during Lathem's sentencing hearing Tuesday, CBS News reported.

"To butcher an individual, Trenton Cornell, the way that he died," the judge said, according to WFLD-TV, "in order to fulfill a bizarre, antisocial, perverted fantasy, based on whatever sense of reality, is totally beyond my understanding."

The former associate professor of microbiology-immunology was fired by Northwestern, where he had been on the faculty for a decade, "for the act of fleeing from police when there was an arrest warrant out for him," according to a university spokesperson.

During his sentencing hearing, Lathem reportedly said he had spent every day for the past four years thinking about Cornell-Duranleau.

“I want Trent’s family to know that I have been grief stricken with remorse since the moment everything happened,” Lathem said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

One of Cornell-Duranleau's mothers provided a victim impact statement at the sentencing hearing. Mischelle Duranleau said the family did not believe Lathem has shown any remorse for the killing, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“His belief in the kindness and honesty of others," Dureanleau said, "is the one characteristic we wish Trenton left with us."