The fatal stabbing of a hairstylist in Chicago was part of a sexual fantasy hatched in an online chatroom between an American professor and an employee of Oxford University, whose plan included killing someone and then themselves, prosecutors have said. The disturbing details about the 27 July killing revealed how Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, the boyfriend of Northwestern University microbiology professor Wyndham Lathem, was stabbed 70 times at Lathem’s Chicago condo and with such brutality that he was nearly decapitated. His throat was slit and pulmonary artery torn, the bond hearing in Chicago on Sunday was told.

Lathem, 46, had communicated for months before with Andrew Warren, 56, a senior treasury assistant at Somerville College, about “carrying out their sexual fantasies of killing others and then themselves”, Natosha Toller, an assistant state’s attorney told the court. Judge Adam Bourgeois said both men were potentially dangerous and flight risks, ordering them to remain in jail pending trial on first-degree murder charges. “The heinous facts speak for themselves,” he said. Lathem and Warren were dressed in their own clothes in court. They stood with their hands behind their backs as the prosecutor and judge spoke.  Lathem paid for Warren’s ticket to travel to the United States and he picked him up at Chicago’s O’Hare airport a few days before the killing, the prosecutor said. On 26 July, one day before the killing, Lathem booked a room for Warren near the condo, Toller said.(theguardian)…[+]