Pod Insights Park Predators UPDATED: The Housewives About this episode In 1960, three housewives from Chicago never make it out of Starved Rock State Park alive and police in Illinois quickly realize a piece of nature itself might be the murder weapon. The investigation zeros in on a predator who was hiding in plain sight. In recent years, his guilt has come into question and new evidence emerged that only deepened this enduring mystery.
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0:30 Speaker 02 Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Speaker 02 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And today's case is one that I think is a true testament to understanding just how massive an undertaking it is to investigate a multi-victim murder. And how tricky a case can be when the suspected murder weapon is a piece of nature. The story takes place in Starved Rock State Park in Illinois, which is home to 13 miles of trails that loop along the Illinois River. Its unique name comes from a Native American legend that dates back to the 1760s. The legend details the history of a bitter battle for power between two indigenous tribes that resulted in one tribe taking refuge on a massive rock inside of the park.
1:52 Speaker 02 The story goes that while the group was cornered by their enemies for several days without access to food or water, they all starved to death. And thus, Starved Rock State Park got its name.
2:05 Speaker 02 The park is heralded as one of Illinois’ most beautiful destinations. Its big attractions are canyons that feature vertical rock walls, sandstone bluffs, and access to waterfalls. These sights are just as enchanting during the winter months as they are in the summer and spring. Because everything, including the waterfalls, freezes over and the canyons turn into, essentially, ice caves. In March of 1960, a violent killer cornered three middle-aged women near one of these scenic areas and left a bloody trail of clues that led police straight to him. But in recent years, some have questioned if there’s much more to the story than meets the eye. The Starved Rock Murders, as they’re often referred to, is a case that I covered years
2:48 Speaker 02 ago when Park Predators first came out. But just this year, new developments and court hearings once again surged it back into the headlines. So I decided to revisit this story with updated reporting that will likely leave you with some answers, but perhaps even more questions. This is Park Predators.
3:50 Speaker 02 On Monday, March 14, 1960, a man named George Edding, sometimes pronounced “Oding,” dialed the telephone number for his wife Lillian’s room inside Starved Rock Lodge in Oglesby, Illinois. It had only been a few hours since 50-year-old Lillian had left their home in Riverside, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and made the hour-and-a-half-or-so drive to the park. The mother of two was on a four-day vacation with two of her friends, 47-year-old Frances Murphy and 50-year-old Mildred Lindquist. George was eager to hear how his wife and the other women's road trip had gone, and if they were settling in well for their stay. This was Lillian and her friends' first trip together after what was said to be a hard and trying winter.
4:33 Speaker 02 You see, a few months earlier, George had suffered a heart attack. And in the aftermath of that, Lillian had been caring for him at home in addition to balancing all of her other social activities in Riverside. So she was due for a fun getaway with her girlfriends. According to coverage in Life Magazine, all three women were very close with one another, and they each had their hands full serving on education boards together and participating in garden and reading clubs. All their families actively attended a Presbyterian church outside of Chicago, where they raised their children and grandchildren. But when George dialed his wife's room, the phone rang, and no one picked up. According to reporting by the Chicago Tribune, the women's plan was to spend their first day of vacation, which was Monday, March 14,
5:17 Speaker 02 walking the trails in Starved Rock State Park. At the time, George was a high-ranking supervisor for Illinois Bell Telephone Company, and he liked to make sure that he and Lillian stayed in touch whenever they were apart, especially since he'd just had that heart attack. According to the Daily Illini, Frances's husband, R.W. Murphy, was a lawyer and vice president for a worldwide automotive parts supplier in Chicago. Mildred's husband was the vice president for a large bank in the city. According to more reporting by the Chicago Tribune, there was no question that the women had the necessary funds and supplies for their four-day getaway. When Lillian didn't pick up on Monday afternoon, George figured that the women had probably just stayed longer in the park than they'd planned. And so, the next morning, Tuesday, March 15,
6:02 Speaker 02 he tried calling again, but no one answered. When he phoned the number for the lodge's front desk, a staff member told him they hadn't seen Lillian or the other two women that morning, but would send someone up to Lillian's room to leave a note for her to call George. According to the coverage, a bellboy for the lodge went up to the room with a card to hang on the doorknob. It's unclear from reports, though, what exactly the message on the paper hanger said, but it was something to the effect of, "You have a message downstairs, and George has been calling." The fact that George couldn't get ahold of his wife or any of her friends concerned him, so he decided to call the other women's husbands to see if they'd spoken with their wives. But the news wasn't comforting. The other men revealed to George that they hadn't heard from their wives either
6:47 Speaker 02 since the trio had left Chicago. At that point, the husbands decided each of them would call the lodge back the following morning. Their collective concern for their wives only grew stronger throughout Tuesday night because they learned from watching local weather reports that the forecast for the greater Chicago area predicted a blinding snowstorm that was going to descend on Starved Rock State Park that night. On Wednesday morning, March 16, after the snowstorm hit, Frances's husband called the lodge to check on the women. But once again, none of the staff reported seeing them come or go from their rooms. Shortly after that is when the workers for the hotel got into the women's quarters and found that none of their beds appeared to have been slept in. The sheets and linens were all freshly made
7:32 Speaker 02 and none of the towels had been used and none of their luggage was unpacked. All of those things indicated the three women had never stayed the first night in their rooms. Staff then went outside and checked the lodge's parking lot and found Frances's station wagon parked in a spot. Her car was the vehicle that the three women had car-pulled in from their homes. And according to Steve Stout's reporting, it was covered in snow when it was found, so almost like it hadn't been moved in days. At that point, the women's husbands agreed that after two days of not hearing from their wives, something was definitely wrong and they alerted the local police. According to the Daily Illini, by midday on that Wednesday, the LaSalle County Sheriff's Office and the Illinois State Police
8:16 Speaker 02 organized several search parties to start walking the trails in Starved Rock State Park to look for the missing women. One group, which was made up of young men from a nearby youth camp, set out on the snow-covered trails in rocky terrain. The weather conditions had deteriorated over the past two days, so these searchers were having to plod over very narrow, snow-covered trails with sheets of ice and slippery rocks hidden underneath. Shortly after launching the search parties, the group of young men from the youth camp found all three women dead in the snow. Their bodies were tucked a little ways into a cave in an area of the park known as St. Louis Canyon, about a half mile away from the Starved Rock Lodge. According to coverage by The Daily Illini, the scene was gruesome.
9:00 Speaker 02 The victims' skulls had all been bashed by some sort of large object, and there were trails of blood on the ground and in the snow around their bodies. They were each laying face up, and it was clear that their hands and feet had been bound with some kind of twine. The only major difference was that the binding around Frances's ankles had seemingly come undone, which indicated that at some point she might have had the chance to run away or attempted to run away. Not far from the bodies, searchers found the women's purses, a broken camera, and a pair of binoculars with traces of blood on them. Right away, the Illinois State Police were called in and began assessing the crime scene. The state police's chief, William Morris, told reporters that he suspected it would have been very difficult
9:45 Speaker 02 for one person to overtake all three women at the same time, especially if they'd put up a fight. He said, based on his initial observation of the crime scene, it was possible whoever had killed the women might have been part of a group of perpetrators. The state attorney for the region, a man named Harlan Warren, agreed and told news reporters that he was convinced, based on the brutal nature of the murders, that more than one person was involved. He did speculate, though, that if it was one person, it was likely a man who was strong enough to overpower three victims at once. And just as a note here, Mildred, Lillian, and Frances were not frail women by any means. They were middle-aged, average height, and maybe even on the taller side, and would have been capable
10:28 Speaker 02 of fighting off an attacker if they needed to. Anyway, immediately after their bodies were found, Chief Morris called investigators from the Illinois Bureau of Investigation to help search the cave for clues and figure out if any of the victims had been sexually assaulted. According to Life Magazine's reporting, Mildred and Lillian had their pants and underwear removed. Their clothing had also been torn in several places, and the killer or killers had placed their winter coats between their legs. One of the victims also had a tuft of short hair clutched in her hand. After making these observations, officers removed all three of the victims’ bodies and transported them to the nearby town of Ottawa for autopsies. As I was researching the case, though, it appears the medical examiner never formally
11:13 Speaker 02 ruled on whether any of the victims were sexually assaulted. However, later, coverage did state that none of the victims had been sexually assaulted. I have to assume, and so did author Steve Stout, who wrote a book on this case called “The Star of Rock Murders,” that sexual assault kit collection and technology at the time just wasn’t advanced enough to make that determination for certain in 1960. But, like I said, it appears a later study of that detail confirmed none of them had been sexually assaulted. One thing that was clear, though, at that time was that the killer had used something large, like a club or some sort of blunt object, to inflict the victims’ head injuries. So investigators fanned out around the cave and looked for a potential murder weapon,
11:55 Speaker 02 but finding any further clues like that was challenging because, like I mentioned earlier, between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, eight inches of snow had fallen in the park, and a lot of the area near the cave had been covered with snow. So to get at what was beneath all that, investigators used brooms, like actual straw brooms you’d store in your house, to turn over the recent snow blanket. And if that wasn’t cringe-worthy enough, according to a news report featured in a documentary about this case, investigators also used flamethrowers to melt some of the snow at the crime scene. I know, I have so many thoughts about their decision-making process there, but let’s keep going. I feel like this is exactly what crime scene tech classes nowadays would tell you not
12:38 Speaker 02 to do, but again, this is 1960, and no one back then was really thinking about crime scene preservation, or DNA, or anything like that. Police officers continued to use these methods to cone through the snowdrift, sweeping back and forth, trying to uncover any additional evidence they believed could be related to the crime. In one news report from that time, the anchor says that after burning up one section of snow, investigators found a small piece of aluminum foil, which they concluded was the wrapping to a roll of film. The film itself, though, was no longer intact, likely meaning it had been burned away. After a few hours of blowtorching and sweeping snow away like this, deputies located a three-foot tree limb that had been buried beneath fresh snow.
13:21 Speaker 02 It was frozen solid and had dried blood caked on one end. They also found a long icicle from the cave that appeared to have traces of blood on it, too. At that point, investigators considered both of these items as potential murder weapons. Back inside the cave where the women's bodies had been found, blood evidence investigators saw there seemed to indicate that that was not the location where the women were initially attacked. According to coverage by the Chicago Tribune, there was some blood found inside the cave and on the walls, but not a lot. Certainly not the amount you'd expect to see if the cave was the site where the women had been bludgeoned to death. So the lack of blood in the cave told the state police that the killer may have murdered
14:05 Speaker 02 the women elsewhere. For example, a clearing in the woods. Then left them there and possibly returned later to drag their bodies into the cave to prevent someone else from finding them. Feeling the pressure mounting to find a suspect, investigators tried to backtrack the women's last known movements. Records from the lodge, as well as interviews with staff there, confirmed that right before lunchtime on Monday, March 14th, the three victims had checked into the lodge and eaten lunch together. Then shortly after 1:00 PM, they were seen dressed appropriately for a hike and leaving the lodge. That was the last known sighting of them before they were found two days later dead in the park. As you can imagine, the horrific nature of this crime sent people in the immediate
14:48 Speaker 02 area into a panic, and there was palpable fear that a killer was on the loose and could potentially strike again. Because of this, the state police's search for the suspect or suspects was ramped up significantly. LaSalle County deputies set up roadblocks in and around the lodge and all the streets leading to the state park. They stopped everyone who came and went and asked them to be on the lookout for people, most likely a man, who may have a scratched face or injuries consistent with having been in a tussle or fight. Naturally, authorities focused a lot of attention on the guests and employees at Starved Rock Lodge. On the Thursday and Friday after the murders, detectives rounded up everyone who worked there, as well as park rangers from the area, and asked them to take polygraphs.
15:32 Speaker 02 According to news reports, most everyone did, and they all passed. Interestingly, though, during one of those interviews, a worker told authorities a strange and interesting story about a 21-year-old dishwasher from the lodge named Chester Uyger, who'd shown up to work on March 15th with some scratches on his face that appeared to be fresh. Now, this information obviously got the police's attention, and so they quickly got ahold of Chester for an interview. According to news reports, Chester told the police that he'd accidentally cut himself shaving before coming to work on the 15th, and that's why he had that noticeable gash on his chin. He told the police that during the timeframe of the murders, he was in the basement of the lodge stoking a coal furnace and writing letters.
16:17 Speaker 02 Now, authorities had no reason to suspect Chester was lying to them at that point because they had no tangible proof he was involved. Well, not really. According to an article in Life Magazine, they did notice a large, dark stain on his leather jacket that they thought looked a whole lot like blood. When they asked Chester for the jacket, he gave it to them, and investigators quickly sent it off for testing. A few days later, the state lab determined the blood was animal blood, so not human. At that point, detectives pretty much stopped looking at Chester as a suspect and moved on with their investigation.
16:53 Speaker 02 After that, state police decided to cool it with the interviews and polygraphs for a bit and turn their attention to the physical evidence they'd collected from the crime scene. One item they suspected was going to be important was Lillian's camera. You know, the one that had been left severely damaged and partially buried in the snow. The strap on the device was completely broken, which made authorities suspect it had likely been ripped away from her, causing the strap to snap in the process. According to Steve Stouts' reporting, Lillian's camera was an Argus C3, which at the time was known to take good-quality pictures. Whenever a photo was taken on that particular device, the operator had to manually wind a knob on the top of it to advance the film roll to the next available frame.
17:36 Speaker 02 But oftentimes, if you didn't twist the knob all the way, frames of film would overlap on one another. This usually resulted in what authorities eventually referred to as a triple exposure. When officers processed the film from Lillian's camera, they realized that the women had taken several pictures throughout their hike. Most of the images showed them bundled up, posing in front of overlooks and huge rocks or waterfalls. But authorities noted that the last picture on the roll was a triple exposure, meaning Lillian didn't twist the knob on the top of the camera all the way before snapping the photo. The picture showed Frances and Mildred standing in front of a frozen waterfall with trees in the background and lots of snow piled around them.
18:19 Speaker 02 That image was overlaid onto another frame of film, so it looked kind of ghostly and unnatural. Both the state police and the LaSalle County Sheriff's Office thought the triple exposure showed the faint outline of a man's face in a shadow between the rock face of St. Louis Canyon and a tree trunk behind where Mildred was standing. Investigators knew that the location where the women had posed was only a few steps away from the cave where their bodies were eventually found. So, the prevailing theory was most likely Lillian had snapped the picture right before the victim's assailant or assailants had struck. Detectives spent hours and even days analyzing the photo, trying to figure out if in fact the women had inadvertently taken a picture of their own killer, who was lurking in the shadows near them.
19:04 Speaker 02 Some investigators were convinced the image clearly showed a man was present, while others just thought the ghostly image was a byproduct of the accidental triple exposure. According to Steve Stouts' reporting, in the end, authorities ruled out the theory that the women had photographed their killer. But that didn't stop publications at the time from running full steam ahead with that angle of the story. Life Magazine published a several-page article that detailed how it was possible the women had captured a haunting glimpse of their killer just moments before being brutally murdered. Two other clues police followed up on included a case for a set of keys found on the trail leading to the cave, and a reported sighting of a gray station wagon seen in the area where the women entered the park shortly before they were suspected of being killed.
19:49 Speaker 02 But with little other information to go on about those two things, the leads fizzled out. March dragged on, and the families of the victims grew frustrated that police had no suspects in the case. According to archive news footage in Hunter Cox's documentary on this case, a man named Virgil Peterson, who worked for the Chicago Crime Commission and was close friends with all three victims' families, criticized the LaSalle County Sheriff's Office for not organizing a search sooner for the women. He told reporters it was outrageous that two days had passed with no sign of the trio before any effort was made to find them. He said that when multiple attempts by the victims' husbands on Monday and Tuesday to get in touch with their wives went unanswered, that should have been a red flag to everyone
20:34 Speaker 02 that something horrible had happened. He also criticized the fact that there was no protection or police presence in the park to help deter a crime like this from happening. The criticism, though harsh, was understandable because law enforcement had worked the case for several weeks and interviewed more than 250 people. But still, they were no closer to catching a killer or killers. With tensions growing to see some kind of progress, the companies that employed the three women's husbands banded together and offered up a $30,000 reward for information, which back in 1960 was a substantial chunk of change considering inflation. By the end of March, State Attorney Harland Warren, State Police Chief William Morris, and the LaSalle County Sheriff's Office asked Illinois legislators for more money
21:19 Speaker 02 to fund the investigation, but that request was denied. According to Hunter Cox's documentary on the case, the total man-hours put into solving the murders up until that point was totaling close to 22,000 hours. The mounting cost to pay for those efforts was nearing $65,000, which, again, keeping in mind the era this happened in, was a significant amount of money. So with funds drying up, the case slowly turned cold.
21:48 Speaker 02 A few months later, in July, an interesting thing happened, though, that you almost never see in homicide investigations. The state attorney decided he was going to launch his own personal investigation into the case, which is unusual, even by today's standards. State attorneys are essentially like district attorneys. Typically, they're not the detectives or investigators who try to solve crimes. They're the legal officers in charge of assessing what police have to investigate, and then it's their job to figure out if a case has enough legs to go to trial. State attorneys file charges against a suspect on behalf of the state and move forward with prosecution. They're not supposed to play the role of detective themselves. But in this case, Harland Warren did exactly that, and he ruffled a few feathers in the process,
22:33 Speaker 02 particularly with the Illinois State Police. According to Steve Stout's reporting, not long after launching his personal investigation, which was Harland's pretty clear way of saying he didn't think the state police were doing a good enough job, someone threw a rock through a window at his home.
22:50 Speaker 02 So it was clear that not only were law enforcement investigators not making any progress finding a suspect, they were now in an escalating battle of egos with the state attorney, who was criticizing their lack of progress. As part of Harland's effort, he called for all the evidence in the case to be returned to his office in Ottawa, which was the LaSalle County seat. And for several weeks, he and two deputies reviewed all the pictures and evidence from the investigation. Out of all the items they reviewed, which included the broken camera, the frozen tree limb, the broken binoculars, and all the bloody clothing taken from the crime scene, there was one thing the group identified as uniquely important: the twine, which had been used to bind the victim's hands and feet.
23:32 Speaker 02 That was not an item authorities suspected the women already had brought with them when they entered the park. It was something the killer had seemingly packed themselves to restrain the victims. So naturally, Harland asked the big question anyone would, which was, where did the twine come from? In September of 1960, he and the two deputies who were helping him refocused their investigation to try and answer that question. They set their sights once again on the employees of the Starved Rock Lodge. They spoke with the building's manager, and he told them there was a ball of twine that stayed stored in the kitchen's pantry because the cooks would sometimes use it to tie up large chunks of meat before putting them in the freezer. When investigators got ahold of that twine and compared it to the string that had been
24:16 Speaker 02 found on the women's bodies, they confirmed it was a match. That's also when they realized there was one lodge employee whom they'd previously spoken with who would have had access to that twine: Chester Uyger. After that, investigators revisited Chester as a potential person of interest, and again brought him in for questioning. After his first interview, they learned he'd quit his job at the lodge not long after the murders and began working as a house painter for a family member. During his second sit-down with police, investigators asked him to take a polygraph. And according to news coverage from that time, Chester reportedly failed all of them.
25:02 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
25:22 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
25:29 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
25:37 Speaker 05 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
25:40 Speaker 06 One time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
25:45 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
25:50 Speaker 03 I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
26:07 Speaker 02 Despite police in Illinois being super suspicious of Chester, they didn't really have any physical evidence that amounted to probable cause to keep him in custody. So, once again, authorities had no other choice but to let him walk. For the entire month of October, police kept him under close watch, though. 24 hours a day, they had a surveillance team tail him, watching his every move as he went to and from work and lived with his wife, Joanne, and their two small children. Investigators suspected on many occasions that the former Marine was toying with them, leading them into the woods and on unplanned hunting trips, and making officers chase him through bars as he ran in circles between alleyways and buildings. While they surveilled him, they also began researching other violent crimes
26:51 Speaker 02 in the area that they speculated he might be connected to. Authorities discovered that in the fall of 1959, so roughly six months prior to the Starved Rock murders, two high school seniors on a date in nearby Matheson State Park had been robbed at gunpoint while getting into their car. In that case, the couple reported to authorities that they'd been tied up by a man who was wielding a rifle and hiding in the shadows of a trailhead parking lot. Their assailant robbed the young man and sexually assaulted the young woman. Steve Stout reported that when those victims first went to LaSalle County Sheriff's Office to report their attack, deputies didn't believe them and dismissed their story as made up.
27:32 Speaker 02 Well, fast forward to the fall of 1960, and authorities revisited those two victims and showed them a stack of pictures of various men, which included a photo of Chester Uyghur. According to the coverage, the female victim screamed at the sight of Chester's picture and positively identified him as the man who she said had sexually assaulted her and robbed her partner. Immediately after that, on November 16, 1960, police used the woman's positive ID of Chester to arrest him for that sexual assault and robbery incident. That was essentially authorities' way of getting him into custody while they continued to investigate him for a Lilian Francis and Mildred's murders. According to the Star of Rock Murders documentary, when police brought Chester in for the 1959
28:15 Speaker 02 assault and robbery and proceeded to interrogate him during the early morning hours of November 17, he eventually confessed to the triple murder of the housewives in Star of Rock State Park. His confession only came, though, after about eight hours of intense questioning by police, who reportedly at one point suggested he would be executed via the electric chair, and that his wife would cheat on him if he went to prison. Also during this interrogation, police allowed Chester's parents, wife and kids, two court reporters, a medical doctor, and several other non-law enforcement personnel to come into the room. According to the documentary on this case, after being pressed for hours about where he'd been on March 14 and what he'd done, Chester had started sobbing uncontrollably
28:59 Speaker 02 and sighed and made the utterance, quote, "All right, I did it," end quote. The day after he confessed, Chester volunteered to take the state police to St. Louis Canyon and walk them through how he'd committed the crime. Eager to show the public that they'd managed to arrest a prime suspect in the case, the state police alerted roughly 20 newspaper and radio reporters about this field trip. And with a crowd of journalists and police following him, Chester sobbed and whispered as he walked everyone through how he'd killed the women. His story at that point in time was that on the day Lillian, Frances, and Mildred entered the park, he'd been on a mission to rob someone. When he saw them near St. Louis Canyon, he attempted to snatch one of their purses,
29:43 Speaker 02 but when he grabbed what he thought was a purse strap on Frances's shoulder, it broke, and he realized it was actually the strap to her camera. At that point, the women were frightened, and Chester became worried that he would get caught. So he begged the women to go further into the canyon and give him time to escape. He said the women were shaken up but agreed to his request. The trio then quickly walked away from him in the direction of a rock formation deeper into the canyon. But after that, Chester said he decided to continue stalking the women because he was determined to rob them. He said near the end of the canyon, next to a cave, he jumped out of the woods and threatened them with a large tree limb and herded them into the cavern. He said he then tied them up with the twine he'd stolen from the kitchen at the Star of Rock Lodge.
30:28 Speaker 02 He said he originally planned to just leave them tied up in the cave, but as he was departing, Frances broke free from her bindings and ran after him, holding a pair of binoculars. He said she attempted to strike him on the back of the head with them, but they broke. Chester said during that tussle, he picked up the tree limb he'd used to corral the women into the cave and struck Frances on the back of her neck. After that, he dragged her body back into the mouth of the cave where he'd left Mildred and Lillian. Except, when he saw them, he realized, just like Frances, they'd managed to get out of their bindings. And they too came after him and began trying to claw at his face. He said at that point, he realized the situation was out of his control and he couldn't leave any of them alive.
31:12 Speaker 02 After bludgeoning each of them to death with the tree limb, he checked their pulses to ensure that they were dead. Then dragged their bodies further into the cave to conceal them from a red and white airplane he said had been flying above the park.
31:25 Speaker 02 Police later followed up on that detail about the plane and confirmed that a pilot flying a red and white airplane out of a nearby airport had been cruising over St. Louis Canyon on the afternoon of March 14th. So that much of Chester's story checked out. As far as some of the victims' state of disarray went, Chester said he'd partially undressed Mildred and Lillian to make the scene appear as if a sexual predator had committed the murders. You know, to throw off the police. After the crime, he said he washed his hands with a scoop of fresh snow and high-tailed it back to the lodge for his dishwashing shift at 5 o'clock. The Chicago Tribune pointed out in an article published after Chester's confession that none of the three victims' expensive jewelry, rings, or purses had been taken after they were murdered.
32:09 Speaker 02 When police asked Chester to explain why he hadn't robbed the women, if robbery was supposedly his sole motive, he didn't have an answer. He only replied, quote, "It all started with robbery, but I don't know what I needed the money for," end quote. On November 18th, 1960, a grand jury in LaSalle County indicted Chester for three counts of first-degree murder and eight other felonies related to the 1959 sexual assault and robbery of the high school couple in Matheson State Park. Some of those felonies were also for a purse-snatching incident from another state park and the molestation of a woman. By the time Chester went to trial in February 1961, though, for Lillian's murder, his public
32:51 Speaker 02 defender claimed his confession and his reenactment in the park were coerced. Later reporting states that Chester had actually recanted his confession just two days after giving it. His lawyer at trial maintained that Chester was innocent and that police had bungled the investigation from the very beginning. The defense claimed the state had been prejudiced against Chester throughout much of 1960, and on top of that, prosecutors had no credible physical evidence tying him to the crime. But despite the defense fighting hard to keep Chester's confession out, the prosecution successfully won a motion to allow it in as evidence. According to reporting by the Daily Illini, the one victory Chester's attorney managed
33:33 Speaker 02 to score was getting a motion granted that ensured jurors would only see a select number of crime scene images. During the trial, the judge only allowed prosecutors to show the jury one photo of the victims in the cave. But that was it. The defense had successfully argued that the photos, in their totality, were, quote, "inflammatory and would prejudice the jury against the defendant," end quote. Overall, it was hard, though, for Chester and his lawyer to combat the state's case when it came down to forensic evidence. And that's because the two deputies who'd helped former state attorney Harland Warren build the case against him had uncovered something very important about the twine used to bind the victims.
34:19 Speaker 03 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
34:39 Speaker 04 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
34:47 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
34:54 Speaker 05 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
34:57 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops, because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
35:02 Speaker 07 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
35:07 Speaker 03 I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
35:24 Speaker 02 With the help of a manufacturer, LaSalle County deputies determined that the twine from the starved rock lodges kitchen that the cook would use to secure meat was a very close match to the twine used to bind Francis, Mildred, and Lilian. It was explained at trial that the twine had a distinct 20-strand weave pattern and reportedly wasn't made often or sold in a lot of places. So there was no denying: the twine from the lodges kitchen was critical to the state's theory about Chester. In addition to that, prosecutors also believed Chester's leather jacket was a crucial piece of evidence that connected him to the crime. At trial, prosecutors explained that the state lab which performed the initial testing on the jacket had made an error when it identified the blood stain as belonging to an animal.
36:09 Speaker 02 Since then, investigators had sent the jacket to the FBI's lab in Washington. And those results concluded the stain on the jacket could be human blood. There was a bit of a catch, though, because the FBI's experts couldn't necessarily totally rule out animal blood due to the tanning process used to make the leather. The FBI agent who testified at the trial said it appeared someone had tried very hard to wash the stain to remove whatever blood had soaked into it. To try and win jurors over, Chester took the stand in his own defense. For three hours, the state attorney grilled him about the case, but he maintained his innocence and claimed the deputies from LaSalle County had threatened him into confessing to something he didn't do.
36:51 Speaker 02 After five long weeks of trial, both sides rested their cases and jurors deliberated for nearly 10 hours. According to the coverage, on Friday, March 3, 1961, they found Chester guilty of Lillian's murder, and a few weeks later, in April, he was sentenced to life in prison. According to Illinois law at the time, Chester was eligible for parole after serving 20 years of that sentence. He quickly appealed his conviction and asked for a new trial, but he still had two more murder trials to get through for Francis and Mildred's deaths. Interestingly, though, in his appeal after being convicted of Lillian's murder, a juror co-signed an affidavit and suggested that LaSalle County deputies had pressured the jury into finding Chester guilty.
37:34 Speaker 02 Despite this, though, in 1962, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Chester's conviction and denied his request for a new trial. A year later, in February 1963, LaSalle County was forced to drop all charges against him for the 1959 sexual assault and robbery in Matheson State Park. Because the speedy trial clock to prosecute him for those crimes had run out, and by law, he could not be tried for that incident. In April of 1963, a new state attorney in LaSalle County dropped the remaining murder indictments against him for Francis and Mildred's murders. He told the Chicago Tribune that he'd made the decision because there was reluctance from the Illinois State Legislature to impose the death penalty.
38:16 Speaker 02 Basically, if Chester had been convicted of Francis and Mildred's murders, he would have received the same life sentence that he got for Lillian's murder. Those sentences would be served concurrently, meaning he would still have been able to apply for parole after serving only 20 years. Because the state attorney couldn't guarantee a jury would put Chester to death, he didn't see the point in moving forward, and so he just bailed entirely on taking the remaining murder cases to trial. He told news reporters, though, that despite this, he would do everything in his power to make sure Chester was never released from prison early. After that, Chester penned a 48-page memoir in prison and gave it to the Chicago Tribune. In it, he claimed he was framed for the Stardrock murders and explained in detail how the authorities
39:01 Speaker 02 had coerced him into falsely confessing. When reporters asked him about some of his previous convictions for sexual assault and theft prior to 1960, he claimed police involved in those investigations had tricked him into falsely confessing as well. For decades, every time Chester applied for parole, the state of Illinois denied his request. But then, in 2004, more than 40 years after his conviction, a group of post-conviction attorneys attempted to have new DNA testing done on items of evidence in the case. They hoped that advancements in DNA technology might prove the blood on Chester's jacket and the hair that had been found clutched in one of the victim's hands would rule him out as being involved.
39:43 Speaker 02 But unfortunately, by that point, LaSalle County had allowed school groups, civic clubs, and journalists to handle and examine key pieces of evidence in the case while it was in storage. So a lot of the items had been contaminated. Chester's friends and family, who'd always believed he was innocent, were disappointed when the judge ruled against having new testing done because of that. However, as you can imagine, descendants of Lillian, Mildred, and Francis were relieved to know they wouldn't have to relive any more legal proceedings related to the case. In 2007, 2016, and 2018, Chester again applied for early release but was denied. Then, in November 2019, he was paroled, and a few months later, in February 2020,
40:27 Speaker 02 he walked out of prison. He immediately set his sights on clearing his name and had some brand-new help in his corner. According to coverage by WPLO, the Chicago Sun-Times, and WSPY, by 2023, an attorney named Andrew Hale, who'd taken up the case and done his own investigation, wrote a letter to a special prosecutor claiming that a brown hair that had been found on the left index finger of Francis Murphy's wool glove was not Chester Uyghur's or any of the victims. Turns out, further forensic testing of the hair's root and bulb revealed it belonged to one of three brothers who all since passed away. But back when the crime occurred, one of them lived near the crime scene in Starved Rock State Park.
41:11 Speaker 02 How this hair got in the index finger of Francis's glove was a question the defense very much set out to answer. And it really was this new bit of information about the hair DNA that seemed to garner a lot of renewed interest in the story. A few years prior, Andrew Hale had launched his own podcast about the murders titled "The Starved Rock Murders Podcast," where he chronicled his investigation into the crime and a lot of the nuanced legal issues involved in Chester's interrogation, prosecution, and post-conviction claims. There was also increased activity on a Facebook page that had been around for a few years called Friends of Chester Uyghur, which was a place a lot of his supporters would post. In 2024, Chester's supervised release was lifted, and his defense team quickly filed
41:56 Speaker 02 a request in LaSalle County to have what they suggested were several critical pieces of physical evidence tested with modern technologies and methods. Those items included signatures on Chester's confession, a piece of wood believed to have belonged to the murder weapon, a lock of curly hair, and a piece of fuzz. But the judge presiding over the case at that point only agreed to let a private lab test the piece of wood because, in his opinion, it was the most interesting item of evidence. Andrew Hale believed that a fragment of that wood that had been found embedded in Lillian's head had actually come from some kind of blunt object, like a wooden baseball bat, and not the frozen tree limb which Chester had previously confessed to wielding during the attack.
42:38 Speaker 02 Hale emphasized to the press that if a microscopic examination of the piece of wood revealed it had varnish on it or any other type of treatment, that could prove Chester was not guilty of the crime and his previous confession was in fact, false. The catch with all this, though, was that the defense was going to have to front the bill to pay for the testing, not the state. The wood had to be delivered to the lab by sheriff's deputies, not anyone else. By mid-May 2025, everything in the case came to a head when an evidentiary hearing was held to evaluate Chester's post-conviction claims. Andrew Hale argued for the defense that the newly discovered evidence he and his team had uncovered was so powerfully exculpatory, jurors in a new trial likely wouldn't be
43:21 Speaker 02 able to convict Chester beyond a reasonable doubt. A special prosecutor for the state saw things very differently, though. She told the court that most of what defense attorney Hale and his team planned to present would probably be considered inadmissible in a new trial. Among the many things that were explored during the evidentiary hearing was testimony from a forensic pathologist who'd reviewed the three victims' autopsies. This guy testified that it was possible the women had been bludgeoned with the camera and broken binoculars, but blows from those items would not have been what killed them. He said the victims' fatal injuries likely came from some type of a hard, heavy, strong, curved object, similar to a bat, metal pipe, or possibly a crowbar.
44:05 Speaker 02 In his expert opinion, he didn't think a frozen log or tree limb could have been the murder weapon. Andrew Hale told the court that witnesses for the defense would testify that Lillian, Francis, and Mildred's murders were not the result of a botched robbery attempt, but instead, a mob hit orchestrated by members of the Chicago mafia.
44:26 Speaker 02 Testimony the defense presented to back up that theory came from a woman who claimed her grandfather had given a deathbed confession stating he orchestrated the women's murders for the mob. According to coverage by WLPO and Shaw Local, the woman testified that right before her grandfather passed away from cancer, he'd confided in her that he knew for a fact Chester Uyghur was innocent of the Starved Rock murders. Because he'd been the person responsible for organizing the hit. But the defense was never able to make a clear connection between that claim and the trio of brothers who the hair DNA had been linked to because those men's bodies were never exhumed for direct comparison. The prosecution's rebuttal to this theory was a witness who was the older sister of
45:11 Speaker 02 a guy who claimed he'd carried out the murders with some of his friends for $25,000. And that man just so happened to be an associate of Chester Uyghur's at the time of the crime. There were also a few witnesses who testified they overheard former investigators on the case state that Chester might be innocent or had been wrongfully convicted. But none of those witnesses knew that knowledge firsthand. It was declarations they overheard in conversations throughout the years. So yeah, there was a lot of what would be considered hearsay flying around at this evidentiary hearing. When the proceeding finally ended, the judge ultimately decided the defense had not made a convincing enough argument to prove Chester's innocence.
45:53 Speaker 02 His main reasons for denying Chester's request for a new trial was because he concluded the new DNA evidence was insufficient and nearly all of the hearsay testimony the defense had presented was unreliable. No witnesses had been presented who'd been present for the murders or could talk about specific details of the crime. A few days after losing in court, Chester, who was in his mid-80s, passed away. Until his dying day, he maintained his innocence. Whether or not you believe him is something you'll have to decide for yourself. Did he commit this heinous triple murder, or did someone else pull off the perfect crime? It appears only the woods and canyons of Starved Rock State Park hold the answers.
46:42 Speaker 02 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
47:00 Speaker 02 I think Chuck would approve.
47:07 Speaker 02 In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
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