'Starved Rock Killer' Chester Weger Died After Being Granted Parole Following 23 Denials

In November 1960, Chester Weger’s humble life as an ex-Marine and married father of two came crashing down. The 21-year-old veteran was arrested for a gruesome triple murder that occurred months earlier in Starved Rock State Park. Weger worked as a dishwasher at the park lodge in Oglesby, Ill., about 100 miles outside of Chicago. Despite passing six polygraph exams and a lack of DNA evidence tying Weger to the horrific crime scene, authorities were convinced they had their killer.

“It was a huge cover-up, in my opinion,” Andy Hale, Weger’s lawyer, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “There was mounting pressure to solve this case.”

In the months leading up to Weger’s arrest, three friends from Chicago’s affluent Riverside neighborhood—Lillian Oetting and Mildred Lindquist, both 50, and Frances Murphy, 47, embarked on a four-day girls trip to Starved Rock State Park. After checking into the lodge, the women went for a hike, but they never came back.

A search party discovered their battered bodies in a cave in St. Louis Canyon two days later. Two of the victims were naked from the waist down and each had been bludgeoned more than 100 times. Weger, who was reportedly on his break at the time of the murders, alleged investigators coerced him into confessing to the slayings following months of pressure and threats to his life.

“Chester was picked out because he worked at the lodge and he was dirt poor, had limited education, and [he was] a young guy that they thought they could pin it on,” Hale says. “There was no probable cause. So he's arrested, handcuffed and told, ‘You're charged with a triple murder, and if you don't confess, you're going to get the death penalty.’”

Hale claims that investigators told his client, “‘If you don't confess, you're going to ride the thunderbolt'—meaning you're going to get the electric chair.”

In the interrogation room, Weger caved from investigators’ pressure and owned up to the triple homicide, but during his trial, he maintained his innocence and claimed the deadly admission was coerced.

“What people don't realize is the evidence against Chester was the confession—that's the only thing linking him to the crime—which he recanted as soon as he was given a public defender,” Hale explains.

According to court documents, Weger's colleagues testified that they had noticed scratches on his face on the evening of the deaths or “shortly thereafter.” A wood expert testified that a piece of wood found in Oetting's head came from a long club found near the murder scene, which Weger had confessed was one of the murder weapons. An examination of the jacket Weger wore on the day of the murders also revealed bloodstains.

As a result, the jury didn’t buy Weger’s defense. In March 1961, he was found guilty in the bludgeoning death of Oetting. Weger was sentenced to life in prison for her murder, but never tried for the deaths of the other two victims, Lindquist and Murphy.

“My whole theory is that the Chicago mob was involved. One of the victims’ husbands wanted his wife killed,” Hale alleges, adding that numerous blonde and black hairs were found at the crime scene, supporting Weger’s innocence. “And back in 1960, people didn't understand the mob was huge and had their tentacles everywhere in government and police.”

The once-avid fisherman spent the next six decades of his life locked up. During that time, his wife divorced him.

Throughout the years, Weger petitioned for parole on numerous occasions and sought full exoneration. Finally, in February 2020, at 80 years old, Weger was released on parole from Illinois’ Pickneyville Correctional Center, after previously being denied 23 times. Freed from prison, Wegner continued the fight to clear his name. However, the judge for Weger’s June 2025 evidentiary hearing was unconvinced by the DNA evidence and witness statements regarding potential mob ties to the killings that Hale presented.

“All he wanted his entire life was his conviction vacated,” Weger’s niece, Nita Freeman, 53, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

Freeman was among several family members who would regularly visit Weger—whom she knew lovingly as “Uncle Otto”— throughout the years. They waited patiently for his long-overdue release.

“He basically saw hell for 60 years,” Freeman cries. “I don’t understand how he made it for as long as he did and still came out very humble, very giving; just a gentleman.”

Weger died from lung cancer June 22 in Kansas City, Mo., just days after a judge denied his post-conviction exoneration. He was 86.

“I think because he was so insistent on proving his innocence, he endured all that time,” Hale believes. “He should have been the [longest-serving] exoneree in U.S. history. Arrested at 21, died at 86, and the fact that he was denied relief in light of our evidence is astonishing to me. There was a colossal injustice in 1961 when he got convicted, and there was a colossal injustice in 2025 when his post-conviction petition got denied.”

Even though Weger no longer has a right to appeal following his death, Hale is "still looking for ways to prove Chester's innocence, get him justice and just as importantly, get justice for the three victims.”

“The final chapter has not been written. The fat lady has not sung,” he says, adding, “I'm not trying to put a square peg in a round hole. If I felt Chester Weger was guilty, I would not have wasted nine years and all my time and money on this. But I feel so passionately and strongly that he's innocent. The evidence has proved it.”

Adds a hopeful Freeman: “Uncle Otto was exonerated in heaven.”