CHICAGO (AP) – A former Northwestern University professor and an Oxford University employee pleaded not guilty Thursday to first-degree murder charges in the stabbing death of the professor’s boyfriend.
Wyndham Lathem, 46, and Andrew Warren, 56, stood quietly in separate Chicago court hearings as their attorneys entered pleas on their behalf. Both men spoke little during the hearings, only briefly answering when Cook County Judge Ursula Walowski asked if they understood the charges.
Unlike a previous court hearing, when prosecutors gave often chilling details of the July 27 stabbing death of 26-year-old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, Walowski simply laid out the charges. However, she referred to the crime as “exceptionally brutal” and said it was carried out in a “calculated and premeditated manner.”
The men are accused of attacking Cornell-Duranleau while he slept in Lathem’s Chicago apartment, stabbing him dozens of times. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 20 years to life in state prison, Walowski said.
After Lathem’s hearing, his attorneys Barry and Adam Sheppard said they would be fling a motion to have the two men tried separately, explaining that they do not want the jury to hear statements Warren made to police after he surrendered days later in San Francisco.