Murder Trial Of Ex-Oxford University Staffer Set To Begin In July

CHICAGO — The murder trial of a former Oxford University staffer charged along with a former Northwestern University professor is due to begin next month, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The move means the pair will face separate trials over the 2017 fatal stabbing of 26-year-old hairstylist Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau.

Andrew Warren, 57, of Faringdon, England, and Wyndham Lathem, 44, of Chicago, each face six counts of first-degree murder. Both men have been held without bond since turning themselves in to authorities in California following a nationwide manhunt nearly two years ago.

Warren's trial is due to begin July 29 after his attorney exercised his right to a speedy trial, the Sun-Times reported. Warren, who was deemed a suicide risk at the time of his arrest, has admitted his involvement in the killing, according to authorities. The Sun-Times reported his confession was unlikely to be admissible in court as evidence against Lathem.

Prosecutors said the men stabbed Cornell-Duranleu 70 times — nearly decapitating him — inside Lathem's River North apartment on July 27, 2017, as part of a sexual fantasy involving murder and suicide. Cornell-Duranleu dated the Northwestern professor before his death, according to authorities.

Warren and Lathem met online and communicated for months about "carrying out their sexual fantasies of killing others and then themselves," Assistant State's Attorney Natosha Toller said at a bond hearing for the men.

Lathem bought Warren a one-way ticket to the United States, picking the Englishman up at O'Hare a few days before the killing and booking him a room near his North State Street condo, according to prosecutors.

Investigators believe Warren arrived at the professor's house around 4:30 a.m. as Cornell-Duranleau slept. Lathem told the Englishman to record video of the killing using a cell phone, but Warren did not end up taping it, according to prosecutors.

Warren covered Cornell-Duranleau's mouth, hit him with a heavy lamp to try to shut him up and joined Lathem in stabbing the man, prosecutors said. Before succumbing to the gruesome attack, the victim allegedly bit Warren's hand.

Instead of taking part in their planned suicide, Lathem and Warren fled the state together, prosecutors said. Cornell-Duranleau's body was discovered that night after the front desk received a call from a man suggesting a crime had been committed in Lathem's 10th floor unit.

While on the lam with Warren, Lathem made two donations in the victim's name — leaving $5,610 in cash to a health center in Chicago and a $1,000 check to a public library in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, authorities said. Prosecutors said he also sent a video to friends and family confessing to the killing.

BREAKING: CPD has gotten word that Prof. Wyndham Lathem and Andrew Warren are both in police custody in Oakland, CA via @USMarshalsGov pic.twitter.com/BrXufzsaUA
— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) August 5, 2017

Warren worked as a senior treasury assistant at Oxford's Somerville College, and lived with his sister, who reported him missing the day after he left Britain, according to The Guardian.

The Oxford Mail reported Warren worked for the college for the past eight years and had previously been employed as a driver and cashier for a British bus company.

Citing an unnamed neighbor, British tabloid The Sun reported Warren had recently returned from a vacation with his boyfriend before flying to the U.S. The Sun also said Warren had expressed an interested in bondage and torture in online dating profiles.

Alice Prochaska, the principal of Somerville College, issued a statement during the manhunt describing the news as upsetting.

"Neither the College nor the university were aware of the case, which is clearly extremely worrying," Prochaska said. "We and the university authorities will liaise with the investigating authorities and provide any assistance that is required."

Lathem had been a member of the Northwestern faculty since 2007. He was an internationally renowned expert on the bubonic plague who had been denied security clearance by French authorities to lead a research lab at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, according to The Scientist. At the time of his boyfriend's killing, Lathem was an associate professor of microbiology and immunology. The university first placed Lathem on administrative leave and banned him from its campuses after an arrest warrant was issued for him and Warren.

But after both men turned themselves in Aug. 4, 2017, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Alan Cubbage, Northwestern's former vice president for university relations, issued a statement saying Lathem had been fired on the day the two men were taken into custody "for the act of fleeing from police when there was an arrest warrant out for him." His termination appeared to have violated Northwestern's policies, the Chicago Reader reported, citing the university's faculty handbook.

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