State asks to end Chester Weger’s exoneration bid in Starved Rock murder case

Chester Weger, who was convicted in the 1960 Starved Rock murders case, has been seeking exoneration.

A special prosecutor argued Tuesday that the time has come to end Weger’s bid.

[Weger’s] repeated insistence that the ‘false confession’ was the only evidence against him is simply not true.”

—  Special prosecutor James Glasgow and assistant Colleen Griffin

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow filed a 78-page pleading Tuesday in La Salle County Circuit Court. In it, Glasgow argued that Weger, who is soon to be 85 years old, was in fact guilty of killing Lillian Oetting, one of three women found bludgeoned to death at the state park.

“[Weger’s] repeated insistence that the ‘false confession’ was the only evidence against him is simply not true,” Glasgow assistant Colleen Griffin wrote.

Whether or not Weger can continue his bid for exoneration – a successive post-conviction petition, in legal parlance – will be up to a judge in La Salle County.

Judge Michael C. Jansz has scheduled an April 10 hearing on the state’s motion to dismiss.

First, however, lawyers for Weger will have a chance to argue why Jansz should let Weger pursue his exoneration bid. Now that Glasgow’s pleading is on file, a reply from Hale & Monico, the Chicago firm representing Weger, is expected within 30 days.

In Tuesday’s pleading, the special prosecutor argued that Weger’s claims of innocence have been heard and rejected before. And although Weger may have raised issues he characterizes as “new,” Glasgow and Griffin argued that Weger could have raised these issues at trial but never did so.

Glasgow and Griffin also argued that recent laboratory findings are not exculpatory; that is, they do not prove he didn’t commit the crime. In particular, they zeroed in on a recent finding that DNA retrieved from hair, recovered from the glove of victim Frances Murphy, was found not to have been Weger’s.

“That it did not match [Weger’s] hair did not mean that [Weger] did not commit this crime,” they wrote. “The people would add that [Weger’s] trial cannot be judged by 2024 standards and law but by the standards and law in effect [when Weger stood trial] in 1961.”