Professor who got a stranger to help murder his lover in sick sex fantasy

Wyndham Lathem liked drugged-up group romps and had a fetish for knives

- GAIL SHORTLAND

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.

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.