UNMAKING A MURDERER
On February 21, 2020, Chester Otto Weger, prisoner C-01114, stepped out of far-downstate Pinckneyville Correctional Center into the cool air of an overcast morning. It was the 21,646th day behind bars for the state’s longest-held inmate. It would also be his last.
When he ceased to be a free man back in 1961 and became known far and wide as the Starved Rock Killer, Weger was only 22, a chain-smoking ex-Marine, avid hunter and fisherman, and married father of two young children. In those days he had James Dean’s swooping pompadour and svelte build, if not quite a matinee idol face. But now, at the age of 80, he showed signs that he had been hobbled by time served in concrete-and-steel cages all over Illinois — at Stateville and Menard and Pontiac and Graham. He was down to only 113 pounds, his pale scalp encircled by a faint halo of short gray hair that he no longer bothered running a comb through. Emphysema made breathing a struggle, and the pain of rheumatoid arthritis limited his movement.
Three months earlier, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board had met to decide Weger’s fate. Would he be granted parole, or would he continue to serve out a life sentence for murder in connection with one of the most notorious cases in Illinois history: the 1960 triple homicide at Starved Rock State Park? He had long been aware that the board wanted him to express remorse and that not doing so would almost certainly doom his chance of early release. But year after year, over the course of 23 hearings since he became eligible for parole a half-century ago, he refused. His claim of innocence, he said, was all he had to cling to. That immovable stance made the conclusion of his 24th hearing all the more stunning: a vote of 9–4 in favor of release.
As the prison doors swung open, Weger saw his beloved younger sister, Mary Pruett, as well as her husband and two daughters, who had lobbied the Prisoner Review Board for the man they lovingly call Uncle Otto. Later that evening over dinner, Weger would reunite with his children, Rebecca and John, who were ages 3 and 1, respectively, when their dad was locked up. Pruett, who was a teenager during Weger’s trial, had bawled in court when the guilty verdict was read. Through the years, she wrote and called and visited frequently, but she had not been allowed to embrace her brother in the 59 years he was behind bars.
Weger’s family agreed they’d never seen him smile like he smiled that day. The prospect of freedom after so long was exciting — and, for an institutionalized man such as Weger, terrifying. The mere glimmer of hope of this day’s arrival, he says, kept him alive, comforting him on the many dark nights alone in his cell when he doubted he’d live to see it actually come.
Wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, Weger gingerly folded himself into the passenger seat of his niece’s gray Honda SUV. The vehicle carried Weger over the flatlands of southern and central Illinois, toward St. Leonard’s Ministries, a halfway house in Chicago where he would initially reside as a stipulation of his parole. Through the windshield, he watched a strange new world speeding by. He must have marveled at the oddly futuristic-looking vehicles along the highway, drivers guided by a talking map on a wireless phone that had more computing power than an Apollo spacecraft. He had missed so many moments, from the moon landing to the entire lifespan of the internet, but also his parents’ funerals and nearly all of his children’s birthdays. He knew little of fast food. At one point, the Honda pulled into a McDonald’s drive-through, and Weger ordered his first post-release meal, a biscuit sandwich.
In the midst of the 300-mile journey, Weger’s thoughts drifted back, as they often did, through the fog of decades of incarceration, to the tragic, twisted events that led to his imprisonment.
ON MARCH 14, 1960, THREE women from west suburban Riverside — wives of Chicago corporate executives and prominent members of Riverside Presbyterian Church — departed on a midweek vacation to Starved Rock, one of the state’s most picturesque sites, located on the Illinois River in LaSalle County, 90 miles southwest of the Loop. They were drawn to the park, like more than two million tourists still are each year, by its glacier-carved sandstone bluffs and canyons, its dramatic waterfalls, its miles of wooded trails snaking across what was then 1,500 acres. Two days later, the women were reported missing. Soon thereafter they were found dead, their bludgeoned bodies lying in a cave within a scenic canyon.
“I don’t want to die with people thinking I’m guilty of a crime I never committed.”
The crime made headlines around the world and triggered what was then the most resource-intensive manhunt in state history. But it wasn’t until several months later, after the investigation had stalled, that the authorities zeroed in on Weger, who had been employed as a dishwasher in the lodge kitchen at the time of the killings. After professing his innocence for a month in the face of constant surveillance and repeated interrogation, Weger finally broke down and confessed. He soon recanted, testifying that police coerced him. But by then it was too late, and he was convicted largely on the basis of his own words.
It was only the beginning of what would become one of the most widely publicized and fiercely debated criminal justice sagas in Illinois history, a kind of heartland noir that has played out over the course of three generations, sparking numerous articles, a book, and most recently an HBO documentary. In the enclave of quaint riverside towns near Starved Rock known as the Illinois Valley, where I was born and raised and where much of my family still lives, the murders have been endowed with the mythic quality of folklore, a sepia-toned ghost story recounted in hushed tones around campfires. But that petrified tale told by the townspeople oversimplifies what in truth is a knotty epic of crime and punishment studded with conflicting narratives, questions of reasonable doubt, allegations of misconduct, and a host of alternate theories. And Weger’s release from prison kicked off a wild new chapter.
The brute savagery and seemingly random nature of the triple homicide, the idyllic public setting of a state park, and the prominent social standing of the victims made the story catnip to the news media.
Many men in a similar position might decide to live out the remainder of their days quietly, basking in the glow of family and attempting to make up for lost time. But now that his day of liberation had finally arrived, Weger knew exactly what his next move would be. He had been telegraphing it for half a century. Back in 1972, before what was Weger’s second parole hearing, a Prisoner Review Board member had visited him at Stateville Correctional Center and asked about his plans were he to be released. Without a thought, Weger replied that he would seek, by all legal means, to prove his innocence.
And now he has that opportunity.
