Was there remorse in Chicago killing?
Suspects fled on a cross-country trek to San Francisco, with hints at contrition along the way
The manhunt for Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem and Oxford University administrator Andrew Warren ended last Friday in the Bay Area with a whimper, not a bang.
For a week, the two men had been on the run after the bloody slaying in a Chicago high-rise of 26-year- old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, a man police said was in a relationship with Lathem.
It ended at a police station near Golden Gate Park, where Warren, 56, walked in and said he was wanted for a crime. A haggard Lathem, 42, surrendered outside the federal building in Oakland.
The story had all the ingredients of a memorable tabloid tale: Big-name universities. A relationship between a professor and a young man that went sour. Unlikely fugitives. A cross- country trek.
But one aspect of the case intrigued me particularly: If the police story is accurate, Lathem and Warren stopped by a public library in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where one of them made a $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau’s name.
Then, according to investigators, Lathem made a video and sent it to friends and family, saying that he had committed “the biggest mistake of his life.’’
And that raised the question: Can there be believable remorse after such a bloody and savage killing? Does it make any difference in the way we think of the two defendants?
The facts don’t evoke much sympathy. About 8:30 p.m. on Friday, July 27, a man called the front desk of the Grand Plaza, a 57-story building on
Chicago’s Near North Side, where Lathem owned an apartment on the 10th floor.
“There may have been a crime committed in Room 1004,’’ the voice said, according to police sources quoted by the Chicago Tribune. “You need to check it out.’’
When police entered the apartment, they found blood everywhere. Cornell-Duranleau, a cosmetologist who grew up in Michigan, had been stabbed so hard that the knife blade broke off. Police said they were still trying to reconstruct the scene.
Later, investigators said, they recovered surveillance tape that showed Lathem and Warren leaving the building shortly after 5 a.m. — fifteen hours earlier — when they believe the crime occurred.
It’s uncertain how Lathem and Warren came to know each other. And it’s unclear whether Warren knew the slain man. What we do know is that the Oxford administrator, who lived with his mother in Great Britain, recently flew to the United States.
Lathem’s local lawyer, Kenneth Wine, has described Lathem as a “gentle soul” who stands accused of a crime that is “totally contrary” to the person his friends and family know.
The Northwestern professor, who graduated from Vassar in 1996, earned his plaudits as a researcher by investigating the bacteria responsible for the plague, or “Black Death.”
While we have to remember that no one has been convicted, that litany takes me back to the question of remorse: Could Lathem and Warren be genuinely sorry for such a savage crime, one that has all the earmarks of passion?
The answer is probably yes: The reports of the strange library donation and the video sent to friends show a willingness to admit that something terrible occurred.
Whether that should have any effect on our thinking about this crime is another matter. Cer- tainly remorse won’t bring back Trenton Cornell-Duranleau. It won’t satisfy his grieving family.
I’m reminded of the case of John Paul Madrona, a California hit man who in 1993 knocked on the wrong door and shot the wrong man at an apartment building in Gardena.
After the victim’s brother wrote a letter to Madrona beseeching him to turn his life around, the hit man defied expectations and tried to atone. He is still in prison, serving inmates who are dying.
There are very big differences in the crimes. But the human capacity for change does not wholly vanish even after a horrible crime. It’s one reason I oppose the death penalty.
However many eminent people support the professor, we should not take Lathem’s word that he feels remorse. We can, however, be open to the idea of letting him prove it.