April 23, 2024
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Starved Rock murders DNA hair sample comes up empty

It wasn’t Weger’s hair, but analysts still don’t know whose it was

By Tom Collins
Chester Weger's attorney Andy Hale speaks inside the courtroom at the La Salle County Government Complex on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022 in Ottawa.

A hair from the Starved Rock murders was found to have DNA Chester Weger's attorney Andy Hale (shown in this file photo) said Friday, Feb. 24, 2023, they still don’t know whose it was. An attempt to crosscheck it against a DNA databank came up empty. (Scott Anderson)

A hair from the Starved Rock murders was found to have DNA. It wasn’t Chester Weger’s. So whose hair was it?

Weger attorney Andy Hale said Friday that they still don’t know. An attempt to crosscheck it against a DNA databank came up empty.

Hale said the DNA sample met the criteria to be crosschecked against a state-run database (although not the federal database), and the analysis didn’t yield a match.

Hale said he wasn’t surprised. The database was established about 30 years after the Starved Rock murders, by which time many of the people at the crime scene were gone and unavailable for comparison.