Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, August 21, 2017. Happy solar eclipse day!
- Prosecutors: Ex-Northwestern professor killed boyfriend in a murder, sex, suicide fantasy plot
Former Northwestern professor Wyndham Lathem and Oxford University employee Andrew Warren murdered 26-year-old Trenton Cornell-Duranleau as a part of a shared sex, murder, and suicide fantasy, according to prosecutors. Late Friday night, Lathem and Warren returned to Chicago from the San Francisco Bay Area, where the previous week they surrendered to law enforcement after a national manhunt. Lathem paid for Warren’s plane ticket from London to Chicago in late July, and Lathem was supposed to choose victims for the two men to kill, after which they would “kill each other simultaneously, Warren shooting Lathem while Lathem stabbed Warren,” prosecutors said. The victim was allegedly stabbed more than 70 times by Lathem and Warren, and he was nearly left decapitated, according to authorities. His last words allegedly were: ” “Wyndham, what are you doing?” Warren and Lathem are being held in the Cook County Jail without bail. [Tribune] [Sun-Times]
- Rahm: Trump administration is “playing politics” to promote its law enforcement policies
Mayor Rahm Emanuel says President Donald Trump’s administration is “playing politics” in order to promote its stringent law enforcement policies, and claimed the White House is using a “racial component” to link big cities like Chicago and high violence rates. “They use cities as a way of describing violence, as a characterization which they never use around the violence associated with opiates and the drugs that are in suburban and rural communities,” the mayor told former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on an episode of the Axe Files, a podcast from CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “They’re using the immigrant community, particularly, as a way to create something that’s not of us that we have to be frightened [of].” [CNN]
- Rauner vetoes comptroller Mendoza’s bill requiring bill backlog reporting
Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed a bill that required his cabinet to regularly report bill backlogs. Rauner called the legislation an attempt by comptroller Susana Mendoza “to micromanage executive agencies.” [NBC Chicago]
- Police release surveillance photo of alleged Red Line shooter
The Chicago Police Department is asking the public to help identify the alleged shooter who shot a man at the CTA Red Line stop at Jackson Thursday evening. Authorities released a surveillance picture of the alleged shooter. “The victim was targeted on the platform and attempting to flee from the offender by entering the train when he was shot,” law enforcement said in a statement. [DNAinfo Chicago]
- Coldplay’s Chris Martin visits ill teen at southwest-side Lou Malnati’s
Coldplay singer Chris Martin visited 17-year-old Heidi Hernandez, who’s suffering from a serious illness, at the Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria near Midway International Airport Saturday morning. He got her tickets to first-row tickets to Coldplay’s September 23 concert in Seattle and tickets to Bruno Mars’s concert at United Center that night. [ABC 7 Chicago]
- Monday’s sketchy weather could affect solar eclipse viewing
Chicagoans’ view of the solar eclipse could be ruined by clouds Monday, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Mott. If it’s cloudy, it could be hard to view the eclipse right before noon, and a slight chance of rain could make it worse. [DNAinfo Chicago]