Starved Rock killer is dead, a week after losing bid to overturn 1961 conviction

The 86-year-old man known as the Starved Rock killer has died of cancer, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Chester Weger died Sunday in Missouri with his family around him, according to his attorney Andrew Hale, who said Weger was recently diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

Last week, Weger lost his bid to have his conviction overturned in the killing of one of three women found bludgeoned to death in 1960 in Starved Rock State Park, about 90 miles from Chicago in LaSalle County.

Weger was paroled in 2020 for good behavior in prison but didn’t have his conviction overturned. He was in prison for more than 60 years.

Hale sought to overturn Weger’s conviction, saying in a June 18 evidentiary hearing in LaSalle County that the Chicago Outfit was probably behind the killings.

But Judge Michael Jansz didn’t buy the DNA evidence and witness statements about possible mob ties to the killings that Hale presented in court. Hale’s new evidence wasn’t “sufficient for the court to lose confidence in the guilty verdict,” the judge said.

After that ruling, Hale filed a scathing motion asking Jansz to reconsider it. Hale said errors of law in the ruling were “shocking both in quality and character.”

He suggested the court “was invested in a predetermined outcome that could only be reached through intentional disregard of the well-settled legal standards that govern actual innocence claims.”

“It’s so sad,” Hale said Tuesday of Weger’s death, “especially because without Chester there’s no appeal” of Jansz’s ruling.

“It’s a dead-end for the post-conviction case and appeal, but I am going to continue to try to prove his innocence and explore whatever options there are,” Hale said.

In March 1960, the bodies of west suburban Riverside friends Lillian Oetting, 50, Frances Murphy, 47, and Mildred Linquist, 50, were found outside a cave at Starved Rock State Park after they went on a hike. In 1961, Weger, a dishwasher at a lodge at the park, was found guilty of killing Oetting. Prosecutors said he acted alone.