Fired Northwestern professor sentenced to 53 years in stabbing murder of his boyfriend
An ex-professor at Northwestern University was sentenced to more than five decades behind bars on Tuesday, months after he was found guilty in the murder of his boyfriend.
Wyndham Lathem received a 53-year sentence in connection with the July 2017 death of hairdresser Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, who prosecutors say suffered more than 70 stab wounds.
Lathem and another man, Andrew Warren, were arrested in 2017 after Cornell-Duranleau was found dead. Warren pleaded guilty in 2019, claiming Lathem stabbed the 26-year-old man first, before he did the same.
On Tuesday, a Cook County, Ill., judge described Cornell-Duranleau’s death as an “execution.”
Lathem, who claimed during his testimony that only Warren stabbed Cornell-Duranleau, surrendered to officials in Oakland, Calif., in 2017 after fleeing Chicago.
Prosecutors accused Lathem of paying Warren to help him carrying out the attack.
Northwestern fired Lathem, who was an associate professor of microbiology-immunology at the university in Chicago.
In 2020, Lathem was denied a request to be released from jail, where he was being held without bail, to help with the COVID-19 pandemic.
With News Wire Services
