Chester Weger hopes for DNA results in Starved Rock murder case by Jan. 10

Chester Weger is on track to get a hearing in which he’ll argue he was framed for murder, but it won’t happen in 2023.

On Friday, the 84-year-old parolee appeared in La Salle County Circuit Court for a status hearing on his ongoing effort to overturn his conviction for murder in 1960. There still is no date set for arguments, but Weger did leave with a Jan. 10 status hearing.

By that time, attorneys for Weger hope to have additional DNA and genealogy results that they hope will show Weger did not commit the Starved Rock murders.

“We could be talking days or weeks to several months,” Weger’s attorney Celeste Stack told Judge Michael Jansz.

She pledged to update the judge and opposing counsel as results are obtained.

With that uncertain timetable for lab results – and with a just-filed petition from Weger spelling out how he was framed – Jansz moved the new proceedings to 2024. That gives him and the special prosecutor a chance to wade through Weger’s lengthy pleading and whatever else his lawyers submit in the weeks to come.

“There’s a lot to go through,” Jansz said. “There’s a lot to unpack.”

The materials to be unpacked include a petition filed Thursday in which Weger alleged that he was framed for murder and that his constitutional rights were violated on multiple fronts.

“The newly discovered evidence demonstrates that Weger’s case should have never gone to trial and should have been dismissed by the state’s attorney’s office,” Stack and co-counsel Andy Hale wrote.

Most of the contents of the petition filed Thursday – about 90 pages in length – will be familiar to anyone who has followed Hale’s podcast. In the podcast, Hale said investigators in the 1960s coerced Weger’s confession, ignored leads pointing to other suspects and disregarded evidence of Weger’s innocence.

As previously reported, Weger cleared a key hurdle – the first of three – needed to prove him innocent of the Starved Rock murders. Jansz last month approved his request for successive post-conviction relief. That ruling does not mean Weger is cleared of murder, but it opens the door for Weger to argue that he was wrongly convicted of murder.

Weger was sentenced to life in prison for the 1960 murder of Lillian Oetting, who was found bludgeoned to death along with two companions. He confessed to the killings but recanted and has spent the past six decades trying to throw out his conviction.