Corruption, Conspiracy, or Incompetence Blog Series: The Tale of the Twine
This blog is the first in the “Corruption, Conspiracy, or Incompetence Series” which takes a deeper dive into areas of the case that e think the public should get a thorough understanding of in order to understand the level of corruption, conspiracy, and incompetence amongst the police, investigators, and prosecutors.
View the PDF of Exhibits Referenced in the Article Here
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The Tale of the Twine
One of the greatest fallacies regarding the evidence found in connection to the murders at Starved Rock has been that the twine found at the crime scene was the same twine found in the Starved Rock Lodge’s kitchen. There is absolutely no connection between the twine from the crime scene and the twine from the kitchen and yet time and time again that twine has been argued by representatives of the LaSalle County State’s Attorney’s Office as though it is the lynchpin of the case.
For example, in the recent HBO docuseries “The Murders at Starved Rock,” there is footage of a 2005 interview with former LaSalle County State’s Attorney Harland Warren. During that interview, Mr. Warren claims that he was sitting around his office trying to solve the crime when he “absentmindedly” decided to look at the knotted cord that he claimed was around the wrists of the three ladies.[1] Mr. Warren claims that he counted the number of strands and that it came to 32. Mr. Warren then claims that he went to the Lodge, late at night, when no one was around, and found a cone of 20 strand twine and a ball of 12 strand twine and when you add that up – aha! – 32 strands!
But there is a problem with Mr. Warren’s dramatic story. It’s factually untrue. Contemporaneous newspaper accounts report that 20-strand twine was found tied around the wrists of Frances Murphy and Lillian Oetting and that a piece of 20-strand twine was found knotted to a piece of 10-strand twine near the mouth of the cave in St. Louis Canyon.[2] These newspaper accounts are corroborated by March 20, 1960 handwritten notes produced pursuant to a freedom of information act request that indicate there was 20 strand twine found around the wrists of victim A (Mrs. Murphy) and victim C (Mrs. Oetting). Those handwritten notes also state that there was a piece of twine found below victim B (Mrs. Lindquist) that was comprised of two different sizes of twine knotted together, 20-strand and 10-strand.[3]
If that were not proof enough, the criminal trial testimony is the nail in the coffin on this issue. There was absolutely zero evidence offered at Chester Weger’s trial that there was any 12-strand twine found at the crime scene. In spite of this Harland Warren would continue to claim in the years and decades following the trial that the twine clenched the case. Again, no evidence of 12-strand twine was introduced at trial. If there was actually 12-strand twine found at the crime scene, surely the State would have introduced that twine into evidence. It did not, as there was no such 12-strand twine. The false narrative of the twine lived on in the countless retellings of the case by Harland Warren and others until it started to become gospel.
In reality, the only evidence the State offered regarding twine was that Mrs. Oetting was found with 20-strand twine tied around her wrist.[4] However, there was no evidence or testimony connecting this 20-strand twine to the Starved Rock Lodge.
Glen Comatti, the chef at the Starved Rock Lodge, testified that he would order 20-strand and 12-strand twine for use in the kitchen.[5] Mr. Comatti was allowed to testify on his direct examination – over a strenuous and proper defense objection – that he had seen twine “similar” to the 20-strand twine found around Mrs. Oetting’s wrist in the kitchen at the Starved Rock Lodge.[6] On cross-examination, Mr. Comatti admitted that he could not personally say that the 20-strand twine found on Mrs. Oetting’s wrist came from the kitchen at the Lodge. He further admitted that the 20-strand twine found around Mrs. Oetting’s wrist was a very common type of twine and could be purchased from several sources.
The State also called Edward Werhand as a witness. Mr. Werhand testified that he was the office manager of B.A. Railton Company, a wholesale grocer in Chicago. Mr. Werhand testified that in September 1959, his company had received an order for 20-strand twine from Nick Spiros at the Starved Rock Lodge. Mr. Werhand testified that his company purchased the 20-strand twine from the J.L. Duggan Company in Chicago. On cross-examination, attorney McNamara asked Mr. Werhand “[a]nd is there anything particularly unusual about this particular 20-pound twine” to which Mr. Werhand responded “No, sir.”[7]
Finally, the State also called James Duggan as a witness. Mr. Duggan testified that in January of 1959, his company, J.L. Duggan, shipped about 200 pounds of 20-strand twine to the B.A. Railton company where Mr. Werhand worked. Mr. Duggan further testified that this 20-strand twine was manufactured by the January & Wood company in Maysville, Kentucky. On cross-examination, Mr. Duggan testified that his company sells twine to wholesalers including industrial accounts like Sears, Roebuck.[8] That was the extent of Mr. Duggan’s testimony. The State did not offer any witness from the January & Wood company in Maysville, Kentucky.
The only other mention of 12-strand twine at the trial came from Assistant State’s Attorney Craig Armstrong, who testified that he went to Chester Weger’s house looking for 20-strand twine but only found 12-strand twine, which Chester Weger told him belonged to his uncle.[9] Again, there was no claim by Assistant State’s Attorney Armstrong, or any other witness, that 12-strand twine had been found at the crime scene.
This extremely weak trial testimony regarding the 20-strand twine, and attorney McNamara’s effective cross-examination of these witnesses, must have caused the State to abandon making any claim that the 20-strand twine found around Mrs. Oetting came from the Lodge, as all Mr. Richardson could muster during his closing argument on this issue was the following: “So they went into the cave or by the cave on the rock, sat there and allowed themselves to be tied. With what? With string. What kind of string? 20 ply cord. This man has a propensity for carrying string in his pockets. That has been brought out in this case.” Thus, the State abandoned any argument that the 20-strand twine found around the wrist of Mrs. Oetting was the same type of twine used at the Starved Rock Lodge and instead weakly argued that Chester Weger had a propensity for carrying twine in his pocket. Hardly a persuasive argument.
Mr. McNamara, in his closing argument, however, made it a point to argue to the jury how the State had not connected the 20-strand twine at the crime scene to Chester Weger, stating:
“Now, let’s go to the string: Now, this string, which was identified as being on the wrist of Mrs. Oetting, the victim in this case, can be dismissed as being a common 20-ply butcher twine which is common throughout the entire world and has not been tied into this case or in with the defendant in any way, aside from his confessions which he has denied as being completely involuntary, and as partially told to him by Deputy William Dummett. . . In fact, as will be shown later on when his home was completely searched, you will recall, the only kind of string that was found was a 12-ply string, and that type string has no connection with this case or has been tied in with the defendant in any way. . . Now, referring again to the string: There is no testimony that the string that was on the wrist of Mrs. Oetting is the same string that is contained in the lodge. The only testimony you have is that it looked similar, and there is no effort made, there was no effort made by the prosecution to examine the same or to set down the time when any sample might have been obtained, and the only evidence before you is that the string at the lodge is purchased from – is manufactured by a company in Kentucky who sells it to a company in Chicago who sells it to the lodge. I say that is completely immaterial. Further than that, that the string on the lady’s wrist is not identified as being the same string that is obtainable in the lodge. This string has not been tied in with the defendant in any way. There has been much testimony about it but it has not been tied in with the defendant in any way.”
In the State’s rebuttal closing argument, Assistant State’s Attorney Anthony Raccuglia, who had just heard Mr. McNamara’s arguments to the jury as to the twine, elected not to discuss the twine at all.
But, we are not yet done with our “Tale of the Twine.” There are a few more tall tales that need to be discussed. In reviewing my files, I recently came across a July 23, 2004 editorial written in The Daily Times, Ottawa, IL, by former Assistant State’s Attorney Peter F. Ferracuti titled “No doubt that Weger is guilty.”[10] In his editorial, Mr. Ferracuti states that at the time of the murders he was assigned to prosecute major criminal cases involving the LaSalle County State’s Attorney’s Office and that he remains “firmly convinced that Chester Weger did commit the unspeakable crimes resulting in the deaths of three women at Starved Rock State Park in March 1960.” Mr. Ferracuti further states that “[u]nquestionably, State’s Attorney Harland Warren and two LaSalle County Sheriff’s department deputies, the late William Dummett and the late Wayne Hess, by their persistence together, solved this crime where the FBI, the State Police and the FBI had failed.” In support of this claim, Mr. Ferracuti offers a stunning argument, one I had never heard before:
“I recall Harland, in an analytical way, observing there was actually only one piece of evidence foreign to the crime scene, obviously brought there by the murderer, that being the beige butcher’s twine used to bind the women’s wrists with nautical knots. This became the primary focus on their investigation. To the naked eye, the twine appeared to be the kind used practically everywhere, but under microscope the twine had embedded colored fragments of other dyed twine, otherwise not visible. The inquiry now was to determine who manufactured such colored twine. We ultimately found a plant in Kentucky and one of its customers was in fact Starved Rock Lodge, where the same butcher’s twine was used in the dining room kitchen. The investigation turned towards kitchen employees, one of whom was Chester Weger.”
However, the State did not offer any evidence at Chester Weger’s criminal trial regarding these alleged “colored fragment” characteristics of the twine. The State offered no expert testimony from anyone seeking to compare the twine found around Mrs. Oetting’s wrist to the twine used in the Lodge. Instead, as discussed above, the State merely called Glen Comatti to testify that he ordered the twine from the Lodge, Mr. Werhand to testify that he supplied twine to the Lodge that he received from J.L. Duggan Company in Chicago, and Mr. Duggan to testify that he received this twine from the January & Wood Company in Maysville, Kentucky. None of this testimony could connect the 20-strand twine found at the crime scene to the Lodge and none of this testimony did anything to disprove that the 20-strand twine found at the crime scene was anything other than ordinary and common 20-strand twine.
At the end of the day, the State essentially conceded that the 20-strand twine found around Mrs. Oetting’s wrist was common twine and no connection could be made to the Starved Rock Lodge. The State also made no claim that 12-strand twine was involved in the crime, as it was not. And, most importantly, the State made no mention of the 10-strand twine found in the cave.
Our “Tale of the Twine” ends with a discussion of the twine from the book “The Starved Rock Murders,” an alleged “True Story by Steve Stout.”[11] In that book, the author claims that State’s Attorney Harland Warren, using a microscope that he had purchased for $80, “examined the cords used to tie the victims together” and
“found that there were two types of twine used in the fatal assault. One was 20-ply, the other 12-ply.”[12]As discussed above, that is blatantly false. Again, there was no evidence of any 12-ply twine being found at the crime scene.
We have saved the largest tale for last. In “The Starved Rock Murders,” the author claims that LaSalle County Sheriff’s Deputies Bill Dummett and Wayne Hess consulted with an executive at January & Wood in Maysville, Kentucky and that “the two officers proved through chemical analysis that the 12-ply section of cord found on the women’s bodies was originally taken from the roll in the lodge.”[13] The author claims that this bombshell discovery by Deputies Dummett and Hess caused Harland Warren to focus on Starved Rock Lodge kitchen employees, which soon turned the investigation towards Chester Weger. Despite allegedly making this stunning forensic discovery, neither Deputy Dummett, nor Deputy Hess, nor anyone else, testified about any “chemical analysis” of the twine at Chester Weger’s criminal trial.
Why didn’t they testify at the trial about the alleged chemical analysis of the twine? Again, and for the final time, they never testified because there was no evidence that there was any 12-ply twine found on the victims, let alone 12-ply twine that had been proven, through chemical analysis or in any other manner, to have been taken from a roll of twine in the Starved Rock Lodge. This is simply another tall tale that has been passed on over the years.
One has to ask, why? Why has the twine evidence been so misrepresented? Is it simply an innocent mistake? Did Harland Warren really think there was 12-ply twine found at the crime scene? If so, did he not realize, once the trial took place, that he was mistaken? Did Deputies Dummett and Hess simply forget to tell the State of their stunning forensic analysis that proved this mysterious 12-ply twine recovered at the crime scene had been taken from a roll of twine at the Starved Rock Lodge? Or was this all part of a plan to perpetuate the myth that Chester Weger was the person responsible for the brutal killing of three women at the Starved Rock Lodge on March 14, 1960?
[1] Mr. Warren’s description is factually incorrect. There was no knotted twine found on the wrists of the three women. The piece of knotted twine was found in the cave near the womens’ bodies.
[2] See Chicago Tribune article dated March 21, 1960, attached hereto as Exhibit A.
[3] See March 20, 1960 handwritten notes attached hereto as Exhibit B.
[4] The State could have elected to introduce evidence that there was also a piece of 20-strand twine knotted to a piece of 10-strand twine found in the cave but, tellingly, the State chose not to do so.
[5] See Glen Comatti’s criminal trial testimony attached hereto as Exhibit C.
[6] During the side bar conference with the court, Chester Weger’s attorney, John McNamara, argued that Mr. Comatti was not qualified to render an opinion as the source of the twine and stated “If they want to bring in an expert to compare the two kinds of string, that is another matter.” The State offered no such expert testimony during the trial.
[7] See Edward F. Werhand’s criminal trial testimony attached hereto as Exhibit D.
[8] See James L. Duggan’s criminal trial testimony attached hereto as Exhibit E.
[9] See Craig Armstrong criminal trial testimony attached hereto as Exhibit F.
[10] A copy of ASA Ferracuti’s July 23, 2004 editorial is attached hereto as Exhibit G.
[11] That introduction of that book states: “Dedicated to the three men who ultimately solved the case: Harland Warren, Wayne Hess, and Bill Dummett…” See “The Starved Rock Murders, A True Story By Steve Stout,” copyright 1982, Third printing – December 1994, at p. 5.
[12] See “The Starved Rock Murders, A True Story By Steve Stout,” copyright 1982, Third printing – December 1994, at page 77.
[13] See “The Starved Rock Murders, A True Story By Steve Stout,” copyright 1982, Third printing – December 1994, at page 78.