Wyndham Lathem liked drugged-up group romps and had a fetish for knives but they were only supposed to be for role play until his true intentions were revealed in an horrific way
Professor Wyndham Lathem was a highly respected microbiologist. His research – which partly focused on the bubonic plague, commonly known as the Black Death – had made him an expert on how pathogenic bacteria cause diseases and in 2017 he was a professor at the prestigious Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Lathem was openly gay and dating Trenton Cornell-Durenleau, 26, who was building a reputation as a hair stylist. Things had started casually after they met on Grindr, but after a while their “friends with benefits” arrangement had grown into something more. Trenton would often stay at Lathem’s luxury high-rise apartment.
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According to Lathem, they had an open relationship, experimenting in the bedroom with other partners and enjoying “chemsex” – having sex while under the influence of disinhibiting drugs, like methamphetamine.
On 27 July 2017, the front desk at Lathem’s apartment building got an anonymous call saying a crime had been committed in his apartment. The police were called and entered using a master key. Officers found Trenton lying face-down in a pool of blood with knife wounds in his back. An autopsy would reveal he had been stabbed over 70 times. A cut to the neck was so deep it had almost decapitated him.
Blood-stained knives were found at the scene – two kitchen knives, one of them broken because of the force used, and a drywall knife. There was no sign of Lathem and he was named as the prime suspect in Trenton’s death. Investigators soon discovered that Lathem had been talking online with a British man called Andrew Warren – a financial officer at Oxford University’s Somerville College.
The pair had been flirting online for months but as well as talking about their sexual fantasies, they had discussed committing suicide together. Lathem had then paid for Warren to fly from the UK to Chicago. Were they on the run together?
8-DAY, 2,000-MILE MANHUNT
As Lathem was hunted down, he was fired from his job. His parents contacted the police to say he had sent them an email, which included a video of himself. He could be heard talking about Trenton, saying, “He trusted me and felt safe with me, and I betrayed that… I took that all away when I killed him.”
Police started to track down Lathem and Warren. They had made an anonymous cash donation of $5,610 in Trenton’s name at the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago, then continued to drive across the country. In Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, they made another donation of $1,000 in Trenton’s name at a public library.
After an eight-day manhunt covering 2,000 miles, the pair handed themselves in to authorities in California – and blamed each other for Trenton’s death.
Lathem claimed Warren had attacked and killed his boyfriend while he hid in the bathroom. But Warren said Lathem started the attack and he joined in by hitting Trenton over the head with a lamp and stabbing him twice.
In 2019, Warren, 61, made a plea deal. In exchange for testifying against Lathem, he would get 45 years in prison for first-degree murder.
“I want to say that I’m really so sorry,” he told Trenton’s family in court. But he would have plenty more to say when he took the stand at Lathem’s trial in 2021. Meanwhile, with the start of the Covid pandemic, Lathem tried to persuade a judge to release him on a $1million bail so that his knowledge of microbiology could be used to fight the disease. The appeal was denied.
At the start of Lathem’s trial, the defence said the former professor and Trenton had engaged in “three-way sex with people they met online”, meth use during sex, and bondage and submission roleplay that involved knives.
They said Warren had joined the couple in the bedroom and then attacked them. Lathem admitted he’d hidden in the bathroom “like a coward” while the attack continued and said Trenton was dead when he came back out. “He was at a loss as to what to do,” the defence told the court. “He felt responsible for putting Trent in harm’s way. He believed – and still believes to this day – he bears responsibility for Trent’s death. It was Dr Lathem, after all, who brought Andrew Warren into their lives.”
Lathem took the stand to say that when Warren had arrived in Chicago, he was disappointed by his looks and felt “catfished”. But on the night of 26 July, he had engaged in a threesome with Warren and Trenton, during which they had brought knives into the bedroom for consensual role play. “No one is meant to get harmed,” Lathem testified. “One enjoys the use of the knife because it’s a little bit scary, it requires trust and there’s a range of sexual experiences that you can get by the feel of the knife on the body.”
It was then, he said, Warren had attacked. The defence said he had killed Trenton out of jealousy. The prosecution said Lathem had orchestrated Trenton’s death as part of a disturbing sexual fantasy and brought Warren in on the plan. Lathem had plenty of time to get Trenton help but after the killing he had instead taken a shower and gone on the run with the man he accused of being a killer.
The prosecution said Lathem had lured Warren to the US with a promise they would commit suicide together – but it was really so he could fulfil his fantasy of killing Trenton. Lathem’s blood was at the apartment and he’d confessed in the video to his parents.
METH-FUELLED THREESOME
Warren took the stand and said that the unexpected death of his father and other family problems had left him depressed, so he’d searched the internet for someone to kill him. He’d found Lathem, who claimed he was suicidal because he’d lost out on a job.
He said they made a pact to kill each other but when he got to Chicago, they struggled to buy a gun. Then Lathem revealed his true plan – he wanted them to kill Trenton together. The horror had begun as a meth-fuelled threesome. Warren described how Lathem started stabbing Trenton when he was asleep and as he fought back, Warren subdued him by hitting him with a heavy metal lamp.
Lathem was found guilty of first-degree murder in October 2021 and sentenced this January to 53 years in prison. The judge said the murder was an “execution”, adding, “To butcher Trenton Cornell, the way that he died, in order to fulfil a bizarre, antisocial, perverted fantasy based on whatever sense of reality, is beyond my understanding.”
Trenton’s family said he was trusting and loving, which made him a “perfect target for the murderer he fell in love with”.
Lathem, now 48, said in a statement, “I want Trent’s family to know I have been grief-stricken since the moment everything happened.” But whatever grief he may feel over his actions, nothing had been more important to him than slaking his depraved lust – whatever the cost.