Okay, ladies and gents, this is one for all of our true crime lovers. HBO recently released a docu-series known as ‘The Murders at Starved Rock’ and if you haven’t watched it yet, you absolutely should. We’re the first to admit we’re pretty picky about documentaries, especially those of the true-crime variety, but this one goes above and beyond our standard of excellence. If you like to start your documentary viewing experience with a bit of background information, then you’ll appreciate our brief history of these brutal murders that had a lasting impact on the Illinois River Valley region. Here we go.
Starved Rock State Park sits near Utica, Illinois and on March 14th, 1960 the bodies of three Chicago women were found in St. Louis Canyon. The seemingly peaceful parts of Northern Illinois were shocked when word got out and folks were terrified once they learned the gruesome details.
(image via: starved rock lodge)
Mildred Lindquist, Lillian Oetting, and Frances Murphy, all from the Chicago suburbs had driven to Starved Rock Park for a long weekend getaway together. Upon arrival, the group checked into their rooms, dropped off their luggage, ate lunch, then with cameras and binoculars in hand, took off for a hike on a sunny March afternoon. While the three were on their hike they took a number of photos, then once they approached the dead-end of St. Louis Canyon, they snapped several slides of the canyon before them. As they turned to leave, their nightmare was only just beginning.
At this point, we find it important to let readers know that Lillian Oetting’s husband had telephoned the lodge the same day the women had arrived, just to make sure they were okay because he hadn’t heard from his wife. Then after another day of not hearing from his wife, he phoned the lodge again; this time staff mistakenly told him the women had been at breakfast that morning, and once again Oetting felt reassured, and ended the phone call. The next day, after an unusually heavy winter storm had hit the area, Oetting called again to check on his wife and staff could not confirm that they had in fact recently seen the group. Oetting then demanded their room be checked by staff, when staff entered the room they discovered both their bags and beds had been untouched. Furthermore, the vehicle that they had arrived in hadn’t been moved. This meant the women had been missing for over forty hours. Oetting then called Virgil Peterson, director of the Chicago Crime Commission, and search parties left for the park immediately.
(image via: the cinemaholic)
Bill Danley, a local reporter got a tip about the disappearances, grabbed his camera, and headed out to brave the wintery conditions. Upon arriving he noticed a kid running across an icy ravine in an attempt to make it to the road; Danley noticed several other kids, all shouting the same thing: the bodies had been found. Danley called the lodge, the police, then the newspaper. Within minutes, the whole country knew of the terror that was the Starved Rock murders.
We won’t go into the gory details regarding the condition of the women’s bodies, but the scene was covered in blood. However, the snowy conditions made the crime scene extremely difficult to examine. Murphy’s camera was found not far from the bodies, bloody, as well as the women’s bloody binoculars, and a bloody frozen tree limb that was believed to be the murder weapon. The women were taken to the Hulse Funeral Home in Ottawa, and while it was determined the women had been molested and murdered not long after their lunch at the lodge, but not much else could be confirmed.
(image via: strange outdoors)
The investigation moved slowly due to a number of reasons, but after months of nothing, fear had gripped the entire region. Harland Warren felt the pressure, so he began to look at the case from a new angle and noticed the killer had used twine to tie the victims up. So Warren took his own money and purchased a microscope and found that both 20-ply and 12-ply twine had been used. Warren, along with two hand-picked detectives found that the Starved Rock Lodge housed both kinds of twine that at been used for the murders. After some digging, Warren’s theory was proven correct: the killer either worked at or had access to the park’s lodge.
Exam after exam was administered and employees were passing with flying colors, to the point that law enforcement thought they were wasting their time; until Chester Otto Weger entered the picture. After administering his test, the polygraph examiner looked as though he had seen a ghost, and once Weger left the cabin the examiner turned to Warren and said: there’s your man. Now today we know that a polygraph test is neither here nor there, but at the time, there was a lot of blind faith in the law.
Weger, 21 at the time, married with two kids surrendered a coat with splotches of human blood on it, and “failed” every test administered to him. After the police dug a little deeper, they found a number of rape and robbery charges against Weger that had all occurred not far from Starved Rock. After even more questioning, issued warrants, and a visit with his parents, Weger eventually confessed a number of times to the three murders, initially claiming he was trying to rob the women, but the women started fighting back. Weger went back and forth with his story for months, his case eventually went to trial, and the jury, unfamiliar with the fine print of Illinois law, sentenced Weger to life in prison. Only, in Illinois, this means that after so many years, Weger would actually be eligible for parole. In 2019, Charles Weger was released.
Much like anyone and everyone familiar with this case, we have a lot of thoughts and questions about Weger, Warren, and well, everyone involved. Binge the documentary and let us know what you think! Happy sleuthing.
