Chester Weger, convicted in the 1960 Starved Rock murders and dead since June, heads to a rare posthumous pardon hearing as victims' families insist he was guilty.
The Illinois Prisoner Review Board has set an October 6 hearing on a posthumous pardon for Chester Weger, the former lodge dishwasher known for decades as the Starved Rock killer. Weger died in June 2025 at age 86, only days after a county judge denied his bid to overturn the conviction.
If the board recommends clemency, Gov. JB Pritzker makes the final call. Posthumous pardons are extremely rare, fewer than 200 have ever been issued. Weger's lawyer argues fresh evidence and a coerced confession demand a clean slate. Descendants of the three murdered women have long maintained he was guilty.
Daily Mail reporting laid out the long arc from the 1960 canyon killings through Weger's death and the coming board date.
Three Chicago women never came back from the canyon
In the spring of 1960, Lillian Oetting, 50, Frances Murphy, 47, and Mildred Lindquist, 50, left for a getaway at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. The three were wives of upper-class Chicago businessmen. They checked into Starved Rock Lodge on March 14.
Searchers found their bodies on March 16 in St. Louis Canyon. Detectives believed the women had suffered more than 100 blows. Investigators also recovered lengths of twine at the scene that resembled stock kept in a toolshed near the lodge.
Weger worked at the lodge as a dishwasher. Employees reported scratches on his face. By September 1960, local police had him under constant surveillance. Authorities arrested him in November 1960 in connection with the deaths.
Confession, recantation, and a life sentence
A 1962 Illinois Supreme Court opinion by Justice Harry Hershey described what happened next. On November 16, two sheriff's deputies visited Weger at home, took him in for interrogation, and served him with nine warrants. He confessed. Two days later he recanted.
Weger pleaded not guilty and denied any role at trial. On March 3, 1961, a jury convicted him of murdering Lillian Oetting and the court imposed life imprisonment. Prosecutors chose not to try him on the other two killings once he already faced a life term. The state's high court upheld the conviction on appeal in 1962.
Weger and his lawyers later claimed deputies pressured him with a choice between life if he confessed and the electric chair if he refused. The state's attorney and the sheriff's office denied that account. Weger had also failed multiple lie detector tests during the investigation. Police tied the twine to a nearby teenage-girl rape months earlier, though Weger was never tried or convicted in that separate case.
DNA questions arrived decades late
DNA evidence in the file did not surface until 2004. Weger's attorneys have argued that a hair found on one victim's finger matched neither Weger nor any of the three women on the trip. He sought clemency about three years after that discovery and was denied.
Modern forensics have reopened other old killings, including a 1988 Orlando murder arrest tied to genetic matches nearly four decades later. In Weger's case, the same tools produced arguments rather than a new trial win before his death.
A county judge still rejected his petition to throw out the conviction in the final days of his life. That denial left the posthumous pardon route as the remaining path.
Parole on the 24th try, then five free years
The Illinois Prisoner Review Board finally granted Weger parole in 2019 on his 24th attempt, voting 9-4. He walked out in 2020 and lived with family for five years. After release he told the Chicago Tribune the system had destroyed him.
"They ruined my life," Weger said. He added, "(They) locked me up for 60 years for something I've never done."
Other long-dormant files have turned on lab work as well, such as a 2003 Dayton strangulation case advanced by DNA from old evidence. Weger's team made similar claims; Illinois courts never vacated the judgment while he lived.
Attorney wants a clean legacy; families still say guilty
Andrew Hale, Weger's lawyer, told the Chicago Sun-Times he expects to prevail if officials reexamine the record.
"I feel like this board and the governor's office, if they take a fresh look at this, I should win,"
After Weger died, Hale told the Chicago Tribune that friends and family were "deeply saddened that Chester's legacy is marred by this unjust conviction." Descendants of Oetting, Murphy, and Lindquist have kept the opposite view: they believe the right man was convicted.
Cross-state DNA work has also closed older mysteries, including an Ohio assist on a 30-year California case that identified remains. Here the forensic fight never produced an exoneration order before the October hearing date.
Hale has said the defense did not get a fair shot at the last evidentiary hearing and remains hopeful about a governor's pardon. Daily Mail sought comment from the attorney and from the governor's office.
Genetic genealogy and mixed samples still complicate many investigations, as in the Nancy Guthrie home DNA mixture that has slowed identification work. Weger's pardon bid now sits with the review board regardless of those broader lab limits.
The board must hold the October 6 session and send a recommendation to Pritzker. That is the statutory path. No new trial is pending. The conviction stood through appeal, parole, a late petition denial, and Weger's death.
Officials in other active probes still point to lab leads as the possible break, the way a sheriff has said DNA could crack the Guthrie kidnapping. In the Starved Rock file, the remaining decision is clemency after death, not a fresh guilt-phase verdict.
Victims' families buried three women from a short park trip in 1960. Taxpayers carried a six-decade incarceration, a contested parole, and now a rare posthumous process. The board and the governor own the next call on whether the judgment remains the last word.
Finality protects the public and the dead alike when evidence has already been tested in court. A pardon after the defendant is gone should clear a higher bar than a press conference claim.
