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The Strange and Stranger Case of Wyndham Lathem

A Northwestern University plague researcher has been charged with a brutal murder. Here’s what we know about him.

Written byAnna Azvolinsky
| 5 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, TONY WEBSTER

Update (January 26, 2022): Wyndham Lathem was convicted of first-degree murder in October 2021 and has now been sentenced to 53 years in prison, the Associated Press reports.

On July 27, The Chicago Tribune reported that there was an arrest warrant issued for Wyndham Lathem, a microbiologist at Northwestern University. The crime Lathem would later be charged with was brutal—26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, whose body was found in Lathem’s apartment, had been stabbed dozens of times.

But Lathem was nowhere to be found. As events unfolded over the following days, it became clear he had fled from Chicago to California with a second suspect, 56-year-old Andrew Warren, a University of Oxford employee from the United Kingdom visiting the states. Along the way, the two men ...

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Meet the Author

  • head shot of blond woman wearing glasses

    Anna Azvolinsky received a PhD in molecular biology in November 2008 from Princeton University. Her graduate research focused on a genome-wide analyses of genomic integrity and DNA replication. She did a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and then left academia to pursue science writing. She has been a freelance science writer since 2012, based in New York City.

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