Chicago Police headed west to pick up suspects in brutal murder

Chicago Police officers will travel to California later this week to pick up two murder suspects who turned themselves in last week after a nationwide manhunt: Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem and British college administrator Andrew Warren.

Two teams of detectives from Area Central will first travel to Oakland to pick up Lathem, 42, then continue on to San Francisco to get Warren, 56, according to Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Both men have been charged with the brutal, July 27 murder of 26-year-old cosmetologist Trenton Cornell-Duranleau in Lathem’s River North apartment.

Lathem, a micro-biology professor best known for his research on the Black Plague, surrendered to police in Oakland after a week on the lam with Warren that eluded a nationwide manhunt. Warren accompanied Lathem to California, but turned himself in in San Francisco.

Both men have waived their extradition rights. They are likely to arrive in Chicago for questioning early next week, Guglielmi said.

Once the co-defendants arrive in Chicago, police hope to question the two men, scour their work and personal computers and cell phones, “put a time-line together” and unravel the mystery about the feud that prompted the brutal stabbing that left Lathem’s apartment covered with blood.

Chicago Police believe there was a romantic “relationship” between Lathem and Duranleau and that “something went terribly wrong,” Guglielmi said.

Specifically, police want to know why Warren, who arrived in the U.S. roughly 36 hours before the murder, came to this country and how and why he ended up connecting with Lathem.

“They didn’t know each other, other than through academics,” Guglielmi said Tuesday.

“There’s nothing to suspect they were longtime friends. Warren was not here for any official reason. Neither Northwestern nor Oxford [University] had any official function. And we don’t think they had anything extensive planned.”

Guglielmi noted that Warren had generated “a lot of internet activity” and that police have been “scouring” all of that “available traffic.” Warren had recently lost his father and had been reported “missing” by his family in England.

Police have also contacted at least some of the people who received an “apologetic video” that Lathem sent to family and friends after the murder.

A police source has told the Chicago Sun-Times’ Michael Sneed that Cornell-Duranleau was stabbed more than 40 times.

Cornell-Duranleau graduated from cosmetology school in Michigan and moved to Chicago fairly recently. His address was a small, worn-looking apartment building in the Heart of Chicago neighborhood, and neighbors said he was quiet and kept to himself.