Ed. Note: Chris Halkides has been kind enough to try to make us lawyers smarter by dumbing down science enough that we have a small chance of understanding how it’s being used to wrongfully convict and, in some cases, execute defendants. Chris graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and teaches biochemistry, organic chemistry, and forensic chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

The murder of three women in March of 1960 at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois had gone cold when Chester Weger confessed under dubious circumstances. Shortly thereafter, he recanted. The recent publication of the book The Starved Rock Murders by Jim Ridings and a petition for executive clemency are reasons to examine the events again. One of many reasons to have concerns over Weger’s confession is that it is not consonant with some of the forensic facts.

According to the confession, the murder weapon was a specific piece of white oak. Yet the state crime lab said it was not the murder weapon, and John Schaich’s laboratory report indicated it was rotting in places and not strong enough for that reason. The last scintilla of doubt that the white oak branch might have been the murder weapon was removed in 2024 when one of the splinters found in victim Lillian Oetting’s head was shown by DNA to be basswood or linden (Ridings, pp. 81-82).

The existence of bloody fingermarks on the women’s clothing is even more problematic for the prosecution’s case. A contemporary news article stated,

State Police Superintendent William Morris called the discover “the biggest break in the investigation so far.” He said five or six fingerprints and a thumb print appear on a silk stocking, the hem of a slip and a girdle.

Although it is regrettable that the clothing was not preserved, there is sufficient information in contemporary news accounts to draw two inferences: One, the bloody fingermarks were quite sufficient for comparison to reference fingerprints. After the murder, the police asked 500 people to provide reference prints. There would have been no reason to do so unless the prints were of good quality. The Chicago Tribune (16 April 1960) reported, “’We can read the bloody fingerprints, and we will know who the killer is if we find prints that match with them,’ said James Christensen, superintendent of the state bureau.” Christensen also said that these fingermarks did not belong to the three victims.

Two, Chester Weger’s reference prints were available from at least two and possibly three sources. The newspaper article “Fingerprint Hundreds at Ottawa” stated that, “Employees of the park will be among the first fingerprinted,” and Chester Weger worked as a dishwasher in the lodge. Even if this fingerprint dragnet had somehow overlooked Weger in the spring, his reference fingerprints would have been available upon his arrest. Weger also served in the Marine Corps; which is a third source of his reference fingerprints.

Fingermarks are highly individualizing evidence. It is frequently true that fingermarks cannot be dated, but that is not so in the Starved Rock case. “Bloody fingerprints on clothing have a special value because they must have been produced at the time of bleeding and before the blood dried.”¹ In other words, these fingermarks are localized within a narrow window of time. If they did not come from the murderer, they would have to arise from someone’s finding the bodies without being detected by the murderer(s), touching the bodies, and then not reporting this to the authorities.

In addition, the bloody fingermarks might be sufficient for exclusion, even without minutiae (individualizing details in fingerprints). For example, suppose that that one of the fingermarks were a radial loop and all of Chester Weger’s were whorls; then Weger could not have made the marks in question. Certainly Weger’s reference fingerprints were compared to the bloody fingermarks. If the two had matched, this would have been powerful evidence against Weger. This evidence, however, was not introduced at the trial, and Weger’s defense attorney was not told of their existence.

Equally as probative as the fingermark evidence is the hair evidence, which is valuable trace evidence. People have been convicted based upon hair comparisons alone. Microscopic hair examination can detect how hairs were cut, whether hairs had been chemically treated, and so forth.² Microscopic hair comparisons are good at excluding donors (examinations produce very few false negatives). It can produce false positives, making hair examination a good presumptive test. DNA profiling is an excellent confirmatory test.

Hair from at least two people was found on Oetting and Frances Murphy; one was thought to be from a young man and the other from a middle-aged man. In 1960, a laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis excluded Chester Weger and the women as donors. There was a second laboratory that also excluded Weger. The middle-aged donor could not have been Chester, who was in his early twenties at the time. Some of the hairs retained their roots, indicating that they had been pulled out forcefully.² In 2023, it was shown through DNA testing at Othram Labs that one of the hairs belonged to one of three brothers who lived in the area in which the crime took place. One of the brothers, Edward Bray, died within days of the three Starved Rock murders.

The prosecution suggested that the hair from Edward Bray was somehow transferred to Murphy’s glove: “\

The prosecution pointed out that Edward Bray died the same day as the three women were found dead in 1960. That lead prosecutors to paint the possibility a hair from Bray could’ve transferred to Frances Murphy’s glove as the 4 bodies were handled by same individuals performing their autopsies.³

The prosecution speculated that hairs caught in the zipper of a body bag were transferred from Edward Bray to the women. Although this sounds somewhat plausible upon first hearing, the prosecution ignored pertinent facts: “Edward Bray’s body was taken from Seneca to a funeral home in Utica in the morning. The victims were taken from Starved Rock to an Ottawa funeral home that night, more than 12 hours later. These undertakers and funeral homes were ten miles apart.” (Ridings, p. 309). In addition, LaSalle County Judge Michael Jansz, who denied Weger a new trial in 2025 shortly before Weger died, wrongly believed that the same man, Norman Hulse, helped in transporting both bodies.

This transfer hypothesis assumes that Edward Bray specifically was the source of the hair, but the evidence only indicates that it was one of the Bray brothers. This hypothesis also assumes without evidence that the same bag was used. The onus is on the prosecution not to speculate but rather to show by experiment how hair from the glove showed damage consistent with being caught within a zipper. A trier of fact should be equally cautious in accepting transfer hypotheses, whether they arise from the defense or the prosecution.

To sum up, the fact that the splinter was not oak cast additional doubt on the identity of the murder weapon. The time-stamped fingermarks cannot reasonably be Chester Weger’s. Likewise, the microscopic appearance of the hair and the DNA profile excluded Mr. Weger..

¹ Jane Taupin and Chesterine Cwiklik, Scientific Protocols for the Forensic Examination of Clothing, 2011 CRC Press.
² Richard E. Bisbing “The Forensic Identification and Association of Human Hair” in Forensic Science Handbook, Richard Saferstein, ed., 2002, Prentice Hall.
³ See https://www.starvedrock.media/wlpo/testimony-wraps-up-in-chester-weger-evidentiary-hearing/article_db07cc67-18df-41a8-92a2-86cbc22dd5da.html