Chester Weger, who was convicted of the 1960 slaying of three Riverside women who were killed at Starved Rock State Park, has died of cancer.
According to Weger’s attorney, the 86-year-old died June 22 in Missouri after having been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Earlier that week, he failed to have his conviction for the murder overturned.
Weger, who maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration, was granted parole in November 2019 after 23 consecutive denials over his 59 years in prison.
In 1961, 22-year-old Weger was found guilty of killing 50-year-old Lillian Oetting while she and two other Riverside women, 50-year-old Mildred Lindquist and 47-year-old Frances Murphy, had been hiking through Starved Rock State Park, nearly 90 miles southwest of the village, the year before. While Weger was initially indicted for killing all three women, he was only tried and charged for Oetting’s murder.
In March 1960, two days after leaving their hotel, the women’s bodies were found in a cave in the park. They had been bludgeoned to death, having suffered severe head trauma, and their bodies were bound and partially stripped.
Weger, then 21, worked as a dishwasher at the women’s hotel. While he quickly became a prime suspect in the case and was repeatedly interviewed by investigators, he was charged in November 1960 after confessing to all three murders, according to archived news reports from the Daily Illini, following eight hours of questioning.
He later recanted his confession, saying he had been threatened with capital punishment and confessed under duress.
Prison Review Board records show Weger had been arrested for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and rape in 1959, but was not convicted on the charges against him.
Weger was reportedly the longest-serving inmate in the Illinois Department of Corrections system, but he insisted upon his innocence for the duration of his imprisonment. In 2016, he told the Chicago Tribune he would rather die in prison than confess or express remorse for the killings.
“Why should I say I committed a crime that I never committed?” he said. “I’ll stay in prison the rest of my life to prove my innocence before I’ll make any deal with any of you crooked people.”
