Further reading for the Starved Rock Murders:
Info:
March, 1960 three women set out on a hike at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. They never return.
The three women, Lillian Oetting,50, Francis Murphy, 47, and Mildred Linquist, 50, had gone on a four day girls vacation. They Checked into the Starved Rock Lodge, ate lunch and then decided to go out on a hike, through the local canyon touting a scenic waterfall and beautiful high rock walls. The women were all married, their husband all promenint Chicago business men, so when they did not get in contact with the men it was quickly noticed that they had not returned to their lodging.
Two days later searchers found the women’s bodies in a nearby cave. They were bound, nude from the waist down, and bludgeoned to death, each woman showing to have suffered around 100 blows. Near by they found a frozen tree limb which was believed to have been the weapon used to deliver the blows. Tragically in the days between the women’s disappearance and the finding of the bodies it had snowed and much of the evidence was buried.
Some of the small evidence that was collected however, were lengths of twine that was use to tie the womens wrists. The detectives took this twin to the lodge in which the women had planned to stay and asked the employees if it looked familiar. The match was found in a toolshed near the back of the lodge frequently used by the 21 year old dish washer Chester Weger.
Not only did Weger have access to the twine used to bind the women, he also matched the description of an assailant who had bound a girl with twine and raped her at a park nearby just months before the murders. This put the police on his trail and they started nonstop surveillance on him.
With the pressure on, Chester Weger confesses to the murders, he has intimate knowledge that only person who committed the crimes would know and he reenacts the crimes with the police.
By November Weger is indicted for the murder of the three women. The next day however he retracts his confession, saying that the police scared him into confessing with threats of the electric chair and that they also gave him all of the information that lead to his detailed confession.
For years Weger claimed innocence and fought for parole, being denied repeatedly. Until Feb 21, 2020 when at 80 years old he was released from Pinckneyville Correctional Center.
The Sherri Papini Kidnapping
Sherri Papini disappeared Non 2, 2016, while out for a run near her Reading Ca home. Twenty-two days later, on Thanksgiving morning she was found by a passing motorist. She was emaciated, bound with chains and zip ties and had had her hair drastically cut.
Sherri claimed that she had been abducted and held captive by two Hispanic women. Police were unable to determine where she had been held captive and nobody came forward with information despite national attention, sketches of said kidnappers and monetary rewards being offered.
But this case just gets weirder and weirder….
Episode 48
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