Former Chicago professor accused of murder agrees to Illinois transfer

[August 08, 2017]  By Alissa Greenberg

DUBLIN, Calif. (Reuters) - A former Northwestern University professor who led police on a week-long manhunt after he was accused of stabbing to death a Chicago-area man agreed on Monday to be transferred from California to Illinois to face a murder charge.

The manhunt for Wyndam Lathem, 42, and Andrew Warren, a second suspect who worked at Britain's Oxford University, attracted international attention. The two, who surrendered to authorities separately on Friday, were seen on surveillance video leaving the victim's apartment building, police said.

Chicago authorities, who are seeking to extradite both men, have described the crime as domestic in nature, without offering a motive.

Before turning himself in, Lathem made a video to apologize about the slaying, and he may have made a mysterious donation to a library in the victim's name.

"What he is accused of is totally contrary to the way he has lived his entire life," Lathem's attorney, Kenneth Wine, said in a statement.

Lathem, with close-cropped hair, appeared on Monday in Alameda County Superior Court in the Northern California community of Dublin.

During the hearing, prosecutors asked a judge to order him sent to Illinois, where he faces a murder charge. Lathem told the judge he has agreed to be transferred.

He will likely be moved within a week or two, Wine said outside the court.

The victim, Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, was found stabbed to death on July 27 in Lathem's Chicago apartment, along with a knife with a broken blade, said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department.

Attorney Ken Wine speaks to the press outside the Alameda County Superior Court regarding the arraignment of Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem on charges stemming from the death of Trenton Cornell Duranleau, in Dublin, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

Northwestern dismissed Lathem from his position as associate professor of microbiology and immunology, the Evanston, Illinois-based university said in a statement on Monday.

Warren surrendered to police in San Francisco on Friday, the same day Lathem surrendered in nearby Oakland.

Guglielmi said Warren had arrived in the United States one or two days before the slaying. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

Warren, a senior treasury assistant at Oxford's Somerville College, is expected to appear in court on Friday at a hearing where prosecutors will seek to have him transferred to Illinois, said Max Szabo, a spokesman for the San Francisco district attorney's office.

Lathem sent family and friends a video apologizing for the crime, police said. The case also took investigators to Wisconsin's Lake Geneva resort community, where a man police believe was Lathem made a $1,000 donation to a library in Cornell-Duranleau's name.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Joseph Ax in New York; editing by Dan Grebler and G Crosse)

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