A Cook County judge sentenced former Northwestern University microbiology professor Wyndham Lathem to 53 years in prison on Tuesday for killing his 26-year-old boyfriend in a River North apartment in July 2017.
Prosecutors said Latham and a British man he met online conspired to kill Trenton Cornell-Duranleau in a sexual fantasy scene that they carried out in Lathem’s tenth-floor apartment on the 500 block of North State Street.
Lathem and the other man, Andrew Warren, were on the run when police found Cornell-Duranleau dead in Lathem’s bedroom with 78 stab wounds.
The duo traveled to Lakeview, Wisconsin, and St. Louis before Lathem dropped Warren off at a San Francisco police station to surrender. Lathem then turned himself in to federal authorities in Oakland, California.
Before surrendering, Lathem told family members in a video that killing Cornell-Duranleau was, “the biggest mistake of my life.”
Warren, now 62, had reportedly arrived in Chicago for his first visit to the United States just days before the murder. His family had recently reported him missing in the UK. He entered into a plea deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to testify against Lathem in exchange for a recommended 45-year sentence.
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