• Donation of $1, 000 in gay victim's name deepens mystery of brutal stab

    From LGBTQIA Record@21:1/5 to All on Tue Aug 15 02:36:59 2017
    XPost: talk.politics.medicine, talk.rape, talk.religion.newage

    Trenton Cornell-Duranleau showed promise as a young hairstylist
    in Michigan, but struggled to hold a steady job. The 26-year-old
    was funny and personable and always seemed to find a home
    wherever he landed, friends said, even when he moved to Chicago.

    Wyndham Lathem, 42, is known as a well-published researcher of
    infectious diseases at Northwestern University. An extremely
    private man, he nevertheless had a busy public life as an
    esteemed academic, invited to speak at conferences across the
    country.

    Andrew Warren, 56, a reserved employee at Oxford University in
    England, lived quietly with his sister and his boyfriend.

    Still grieving the death of his father eight months ago, Warren
    suddenly flew to Chicago on July 24, his first trip to the
    United States.

    Three days later, the lives of all three men converged in a
    bloody scene in a Near North Side high-rise, authorities said.

    Acting on an anonymous call, police found Cornell-Duranleau
    stabbed to death in an apartment belonging to Lathem, who
    apparently disappeared with Warren. Both Lathem and Warren were
    caught on surveillance video at the building, police said.

    Adding to the mystery surrounding the slaying, investigators
    believe the two made a $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau's
    name at a library in Lake Geneva, Wis., shortly after the
    attack. Police aren't sure why.

    The gruesome attack has set off an intense nationwide search for
    the men and drawn international interest.

    Late Thursday, chief Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi
    said police have an idea where the two may have fled and don’t
    believe they have left the country. The U.S. State Department
    has flagged their passports and travel documents, and the U.S.
    Marshals Service has joined the manhunt.

    “Our search efforts have intensified,” Guglielmi said. “At this
    point, they can turn themselves in to any police department in
    the U.S. or their attorneys can contact (Chicago police). We are
    stressing that we want a peaceful and safe surrender.”

    Authorities have so far offered little information about what
    may have led to the attack. Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau were
    involved in some sort of relationship and had “some type of
    falling out,” Guglielmi said. He could not elaborate on the
    relationship and could not say how Warren knew Lathem and
    Cornell-Duranleau.

    A broken blade and blood everywhere

    Police believe Cornell-Duranleau was killed around 5 a.m. July
    27, but officers were not alerted until someone called the front
    desk of the building around 8:30 p.m., more than 15 hours later.

    “There may have been a crime committed in Room 1004,” the male
    voice said, according to law enforcement sources. “You need to
    check it out.”

    The caller hung up.

    The building’s chief engineer rang the room and got no answer.
    Then he dialed 911.

    Officers responded and, after knocking, entered the apartment
    with a master key. They saw blood on the bedroom door, opened it
    and found Cornell-Duranleau lying face down, dead from stab
    wounds to his back, the report said.

    In the kitchen, police found a knife with a broken blade in the
    trash can and another knife near the sink. Blood was everywhere,
    the sources said.

    Police could not locate Lathem. Four days later, a judge issued
    arrest warrants for him and Warren, charging each with first-
    degree murder. A police alert said the two were last seen in a
    gray 2007 Hyundai. “Both subjects are to be considered armed and
    extremely dangerous,” the alert warned.

    The killing has stunned those who know the victim and suspects,
    and it's left them wondering what brought them together.

    Cornell-Duranleau’s mother said her son’s family in Michigan
    doesn’t know the suspects.

    “Our family is deeply saddened by the death of our son,”
    Charlotte Cornell said in a statement Thursday. “It is our hope
    that the person or persons responsible for his death are brought
    to justice.”

    ‘Energetic and young and talented’

    Cornell-Duranleau was around 6 when his biological mother died.
    He was adopted by a friend of his mother and grew up in the
    small town of Lennon in eastern Michigan. He attended high
    school in Grand Rapids and earned a state certification in
    cosmetology in 2011.

    He landed his first job about two years later at Timber’s Salon
    in Trenton, Mich., a little more than 100 miles southeast of his
    hometown. A mutual friend helped arrange the opportunity, said
    Timber Baun-Crooks, who owns the business.

    “He was a great guy. He was energetic and young and talented,”
    she said. “He was an excellent hair dresser — very creative —
    but he wasn’t from the area and he didn’t build a clientele as
    fast as he would have liked.”

    Cornell-Duranleau bounced from job to job at about six salons
    after that, Baun-Crooks said.

    Other friends from Michigan remember Cornell-Duranleau as funny,
    curious and a lover of video games and animated flicks.

    He sometimes relied on friends for a place to stay, the friends
    said. He took college classes to become a veterinary technician
    but found the workload too demanding and dropped out, said one
    friend who hosted him.

    “He doesn’t put down roots very deeply. I used to tell him he
    was a nomad,” said the friend, who spoke on condition of
    anonymity. “The last time I ever talked to him was early March
    of 2016. He said he was coming to Chicago for a job offer at a
    salon.”

    It’s not clear where Cornell-Duranleau worked in Chicago. He had
    lived in the 2200 block of South Wood Street in the Heart of
    Chicago neighborhood on the Near Southwest Side, according to
    the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

    In an obituary posted by his mother, Mischelle Duranleau said
    her son “loved music and animals. His enthusiasm for life was
    infectious. Trenton was a caregiver and loved to help others.
    His youthful free-spirit fueled his love of cars, video games
    and cartoons.”

    ‘A model scientist’

    At 42, Wyndham Lathem was known as a driven scientist whose work
    on the plague known as the Black Death made national headlines
    in 2015.

    He joined Northwestern in 2007 and worked primarily in a
    research lab within the Department of Microbiology-Immunology at
    the Feinberg School of Medicine. “At some point in the past few
    years he taught medical students or graduate students,” said
    school spokesman Alan K. Cubbage.

    Lathem was an undergraduate at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie,
    N.Y., from 1992 to 1996. Adam McDaniel didn’t share any classes
    with him, but the campus was small and they would run into each
    other at social gatherings, discussing movies or music.

    “He was a very kind, warmhearted, funny guy. Everybody loved
    him. He struck me as a genuinely good person,” said McDaniel,
    who recalled Lathem as “fiercely intelligent.”

    McDaniel, a client relations administrator at Warner Bros.
    Entertainment in Burbank, Calif., said that when he first saw
    the news of the attack in Chicago, he thought Lathem had pulled
    a prank.

    “The current events go against every single impression I had of
    him in college,” McDaniel said. “I hope that people will give
    him the benefit of the doubt.”

    William Goldman, who advised Lathem as a postdoctoral student
    between 2003 and 2007 at Washington University in St. Louis,
    reacted similarly when he learned about the stabbing.

    “He was very private about his personal life,” Goldman said
    Thursday in a phone interview. “I know his work is very
    important to him. He worked extremely hard when he was in my
    lab, and it meant a lot to him. I think he was driven by
    excellence. He’s a model scientist.”

    Goldman said he kept in touch with Lathem in the years since he
    moved on to Northwestern. He invited Lathem to speak at a
    seminar in 2016. They most recently talked on the phone about
    six weeks ago, discussing whether Lathem should take a job at a
    French research institution. He chose to stay in Chicago.

    Nothing seemed awry in that conversation, Goldman said.

    Since the killing, Lathem has been placed on administrative
    leave and is banned from all Northwestern campuses, according to
    Cubbage. He was not currently teaching and was not scheduled to
    be in a classroom in the fall.

    Lathem’s family declined to comment.

    ‘Andy had gone’

    Andrew Warren was a senior treasury assistant at Somerville
    College, part of the Oxford University network, when he
    disappeared this summer.

    Investigators believe he traveled to the United States on July
    24, according to police and British media reports. He made the
    trip without telling his sister or his boyfriend in Faringdon,
    Oxfordshire.

    “He didn’t tell anybody about going to America. The first thing
    I knew was his sister rang me to ask whether I knew where Andy
    had gone,” longtime friend Janice King told The Telegraph
    newspaper.

    Friends wondered whether the death of his father in a car crash
    eight months ago played a role in his behavior. He had confided
    in them that he was depressed and still grieving.

    Neighbors told the Mirror that Warren had lived with his younger
    sister Tracey and his father, Dereck, in the house where he grew
    up.

    They remembered him as a kid with a “strict” upbringing who
    would accompany his mother, Mabel, to bingo rather than playing
    with village children.

    Four days after his sister reported him missing, she posted a
    picture of herself with Andy and their dad on Facebook. She
    wrote: “Miss dad and wake up bruv life is too precious to waste.”

    Oxford University released a statement saying that “we have been
    in contact with the police in the UK and are ready to help the
    US investigating authorities in any way they need. Andrew
    Warren’s colleagues at Somerville College have now all been
    informed and are shocked to learn of the case.”

    In Chicago, police spokesman Guglielmi said anyone with
    information can contact Chicago police anonymously, including
    through the department’s new tips website, www.cpdtip.com.

    echerney@chicagotribune.com

    rsobol@chicagotribune.com

    jgorner@chicagotribune.com

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct- northwestern-professor-stabbing-20170803-story.html
     

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)